(NY Times)—Making History, Twice, at Grace [Episcopal] Cathedral

Posted by Kendall Harmon

The installation of Jane Alison Shaw as the eighth dean of Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill on Nov. 6 is a milestone — she will be the first woman to lead the cathedral, which was founded during the Gold Rush in 1849.

Dr. Shaw will also be the cathedral’s first openly gay dean.

“I’m glad I live in a moment in history when I can answer the call,” Dr. Shaw said in a telephone interview from England, where she is finishing work as the dean of divinity at Oxford University.

While one’s sexual orientation rarely raises an eyebrow in San Francisco these days, the Episcopal Church has been torn apart over the issue of full inclusion for gay men and lesbians. Dr. Shaw’s elevation to lead one of the denomination’s most prominent churches is “a signal moment,” said The Rev. Marc Handley Andrus, bishop of the Diocese of California. “We seek to be a house of prayer for all people.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained

4 Comments
Posted September 26, 2010 at 6:26 am [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. Timothy Fountain wrote:

Andrus, bishop of the Diocese of California. “We seek to be a house of prayer for all people.”

Never been the issue.  We are talking about a disproportionately LGBT clergy caste and changes made in direct defiance of Canons, BCP and ordination promises ahead of even the denomination’s own changes in teaching.

And of course fewer and fewer people do come to pray, and those who do are ever more monochrome.

September 26, 4:40 pm | [comment link]
2. keithj0731 wrote:

Geez, Marc, are people in San Francisco so stuck up that there wasn’t a qualified American for the job? You know the irony of the situation is rich. If an American took a job in the UK, TEC would question his or her loyalty to TEC. Yet a person from England can come here with no problem and be welcomed. You know you just can’t make this stuff up….

September 26, 11:13 pm | [comment link]
3. Hakkatan wrote:

“We seek to be a house of prayer for all people.”

The biblical context of this statement is that peoples of all nations will come to worship the one, true, Triune God.  However, most of those who use the quote mean that they are instituting a spiritual free-for-all with no distinctions being made about what is true and good - merely a mish-mash of religions, and no moral distinctions at all (except perhaps the superiority of socialism…)

September 27, 9:10 am | [comment link]
4. Hursley wrote:

As long as all the people are the same on all the socio-political indicators! What a tiresome delusion. This is the worst of neo-Imperialism’s inability to be honest or self-aware; or, perhaps more akin to watching a person with untreated mental illness walk around town, talking to herself and gradually dying of malnutrition and exposure.

September 27, 10:05 am | [comment link]
Registered members must log in to comment.



Next entry (above): Local paper Front Page: In 2011, South Carolina will grapple with bigger budget woes

Previous entry (below): A prayer to Begin the Day

Return to blog homepage

Return to Mobile view (headlines)