In the News

Many people were outraged when Dharun Ravi, who was convicted of bias intimidation for spying on a roommate who later committed suicide, was sentenced to only 30 days in jail. Some went so far as accusing Ravi of “murdering” Tyler Clementi, who was gay. But a gay rights activist speaking at my church in Maplewood Sunday had a different take.

The church is in the midst of a new reformation, and the stakes couldn’t be higher, a prominent progressive speaker told a Morristown audience.

“Religion must stop being what it has been until now, which has been an essential source of intolerance, contempt for the other and even mad apocalyptic violence,” James Carroll  said recently at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. “Survival of religions is not the issue. Neither therefore is survival of the church.”

What matters, he said, is survival of humankind.

St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown became an artists’ colony on Saturday. Make that a young artists’ colony.

Some 55 kids ages 6-13 participated in a Children’s Day of Art, rotating through workshops in cartooning, drama, eco-sculpture, music, poetry and pottery–with a lunchtime break to create “food art.”

Local performers organize an arts initiative to breathe new life into St. John's Church and the community of Union City.

Responding to President Obama's statement yesterday that "Same-sex couples should be able to get married," the Rev. Bernard "Bernie" Poppe of St. George's Church in Maplewood tells columnist Bob Braun of The Star-Ledger, "...I don’t think love ever destroyed anything."

Thirty years ago Geoff Curtiss was a young, recently ordained Episcopal reverend and eager to minister to an urban congregation. He found one in Hoboken.

Soon after, he also found himself in a fight raging along several battle lines—about politics, poverty, development, progress, gentrification, class warfare and the role of religion in the community—which resulted in the founding of the Hoboken Homeless Shelter, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary on Thursday.

Helen Paktor was not going to miss the 35th annual Interfaith Holocaust Remembrance Service on April 22.

As a survivor of Auschwitz and two other concentration camps, she sat with nine other survivors who served as living reminders of the Holocaust.

The wooden pews of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Maplewood were filled with a crowd of about 230 people, some wearing yarmulkes, the traditional Jewish head coverings.

When the raging Rahway River flooded much of Millburn [during Hurricane Irene], Patch reported that St. Stephen’s Church “was one of the first hit as water rushed through, filling the pre-school with four to five feet of water....”

Local sculptors, jewelers and artists from All Saints Episcopal Church in Glen Rock on Easter Sunday will premiere the first parishioner art show.

According to Rector Rev. Timothy Burger, over 80 pieces of art crafted by those young and old, will be used throughout the worship space and the parish hall.