Fr Ben Garren

Dear Siblings in Christ,

The earliest a priest can generally be ordained is the age of twenty-five. A Bishop is expected to visit every congregation in their diocese once a year. Dioceses hope that a Presiding Bishop may visit them once during their tenure.

In 1876 a twenty-four-year-old woman became the National Secretary of the Women’s Auxiliary of the Board of Missions for the Episcopal Church. She would go on to hold that position for forty years. She would visit every diocese regularly, she would travel to Lambeth and around the world to mission dioceses. She was never ordained, rarely had official voice, and never had official vote… but traveled and engaged the mission of the church more than many of our presiding bishops.

In those decades, with quiet determination, she would bring the church to ordain the first dedicated deacons, all women who were ordained to the order of deaconesses. She would also bring the Episcopal Church to require the Women’s Auxiliary be present at General Convention. This was over sixty years before women were granted voice and vote at General Convention and before they would be granted full access to discern calls to ordained ministry. She set the foundations for what would happen two generations later.

Amidst all of this she founded the United Thank Offering. Their Christian Discipline is simple: every time one finds a reason to be thankful one puts a dime or a dollar, maybe even a ten or a twenty, into a box. Each congregation gathers these boxes once a year and then this goes to the UTO, where it is distributed to support ministries within the Episcopal Church and beyond.

It is not too late, this year, to make a resolution to take up this mode of Christian Discipline. On this day when we commemorate Julia Chester Emory it would be overwhelmingly appropriate to do so. 

Pax,

—Ben