Love of certainty is a demand for guarantees in advance of action. —John Dewey
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. —Hebrews 11:1
My first memory of Saint James’ Church dates to my brief time as a law student at NYU, about 35 years ago. I’d completed a Rockefeller Trial Year Fellowship at seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts, connecting me to the ministries of John Coburn and Hays Rockwell. I still did not know what I was supposed to “do” with my life. My future wife, Anne Brewer, would visit me in New York from medical school, and we’d visit parishes in the City. My first impression visiting you was that this was a parish of obviously busy, successful people who made time for Church and who took mission and ministry seriously! Seeing how alive your faith was as Christians was part of what clarified for me that I wanted to be a priest more than I wanted to be a lawyer.
Twenty years later I would become Rector of Saint Luke’s Parish, Darien. How fortunate we were to inherit extraordinary former parishioners of Saint James’ who decided to raise their families in Connecticut. These were people for whom the experience of Church and faith in Christ through Saint James’ had been personally uplifting and also a call to ministry beyond self.
As Dean of the Cathedral, involved in the Diocese and City of New York, engaged with our national Church, and traveling for interfaith and international work, I have become more fully aware of your reputation and long history of leadership. Saint James’ has attracted and shared with the larger Church and community gifted clergy who served your parishioners and others. Perhaps even more impressively, through generations of widely arrayed lay ministries, you have connected faith and everyday life both explicitly through the Church and through wide civic engagement as well.
You worked hard to break down Apartheid. You continue to help prisoners reclaim their dignity and a new life. You have trained seminarians. You have set an example of pastoral support that helps each other and also goes beyond the boundaries of parish. Although you are actually a neighborhood parish—as your Rector reminds you, with many of you living within walking distance of the parish—your reach has inspired people of faith and of no faith, far and near.
John Dewey, who died the year after I was born, espoused an educational philosophy that learning was active. He believed that schooling was unnecessarily long and restrictive. Dewey wanted children to come to school and do things and also to live in communities where they would experience guided opportunities to develop their capacity to contribute to society. He wrote, "Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife." (School and Society,1889)
Well, until recently, I had spent half my life in school. We do, however, learn not only “in school” but as we act and then reflect, as people of faith and as citizens. What a school for faith in action Saint James’ has been! What is the certainty or guarantee of that two-hundred-year legacy of ministry? That it must be born anew in each generation. You have manifested the assurance of what we and God can hope for, even when it is not yet seen. Thank you for keeping that legacy alive and for inspiring all of us to join with you in endeavoring to build more just societies for God’s people.
—The Very Reverend Dr. James A. Kowalski
Dean of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine
Dean Kowalski will be the first Bicentennial Guest Preacher at St. James' on Sunday, September 20. He will preach at both the 9:10 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. services and speak on "Anglican Tradition and Theology and the Hopefulness for Our World" at the adult education forum at 10:30 a.m.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. —Hebrews 11:1
My first memory of Saint James’ Church dates to my brief time as a law student at NYU, about 35 years ago. I’d completed a Rockefeller Trial Year Fellowship at seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts, connecting me to the ministries of John Coburn and Hays Rockwell. I still did not know what I was supposed to “do” with my life. My future wife, Anne Brewer, would visit me in New York from medical school, and we’d visit parishes in the City. My first impression visiting you was that this was a parish of obviously busy, successful people who made time for Church and who took mission and ministry seriously! Seeing how alive your faith was as Christians was part of what clarified for me that I wanted to be a priest more than I wanted to be a lawyer.
Twenty years later I would become Rector of Saint Luke’s Parish, Darien. How fortunate we were to inherit extraordinary former parishioners of Saint James’ who decided to raise their families in Connecticut. These were people for whom the experience of Church and faith in Christ through Saint James’ had been personally uplifting and also a call to ministry beyond self.
As Dean of the Cathedral, involved in the Diocese and City of New York, engaged with our national Church, and traveling for interfaith and international work, I have become more fully aware of your reputation and long history of leadership. Saint James’ has attracted and shared with the larger Church and community gifted clergy who served your parishioners and others. Perhaps even more impressively, through generations of widely arrayed lay ministries, you have connected faith and everyday life both explicitly through the Church and through wide civic engagement as well.
You worked hard to break down Apartheid. You continue to help prisoners reclaim their dignity and a new life. You have trained seminarians. You have set an example of pastoral support that helps each other and also goes beyond the boundaries of parish. Although you are actually a neighborhood parish—as your Rector reminds you, with many of you living within walking distance of the parish—your reach has inspired people of faith and of no faith, far and near.
John Dewey, who died the year after I was born, espoused an educational philosophy that learning was active. He believed that schooling was unnecessarily long and restrictive. Dewey wanted children to come to school and do things and also to live in communities where they would experience guided opportunities to develop their capacity to contribute to society. He wrote, "Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife." (School and Society,1889)
Well, until recently, I had spent half my life in school. We do, however, learn not only “in school” but as we act and then reflect, as people of faith and as citizens. What a school for faith in action Saint James’ has been! What is the certainty or guarantee of that two-hundred-year legacy of ministry? That it must be born anew in each generation. You have manifested the assurance of what we and God can hope for, even when it is not yet seen. Thank you for keeping that legacy alive and for inspiring all of us to join with you in endeavoring to build more just societies for God’s people.
—The Very Reverend Dr. James A. Kowalski
Dean of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine
Dean Kowalski will be the first Bicentennial Guest Preacher at St. James' on Sunday, September 20. He will preach at both the 9:10 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. services and speak on "Anglican Tradition and Theology and the Hopefulness for Our World" at the adult education forum at 10:30 a.m.
