Swahili 101

Jambo! Habari! Hujambo! Hamjambo! Shikamoo!
Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello!
Or so I gather.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/378583912405639636/

And Mambo = What's up?

Guess who's going to Tanzania???!!!!! To the Diocese of Tanga, to be precise.
Ahem. Not at all excited. Of course not. See me being blasée.

At least until I do a jig and ruin the effect.

So amid considering Deet and Permethrin sprays, doing an expedited passport renewal, getting my inoculations and antimalarial drugs, I am attempting to learn a few phrases in Swahili. Clearly it's the polite thing to do, but who wouldn't want to pick up another language, however small an amount of it?

Truly, if I hope to participate in the renewal of a diocesan partnership, language learning is more than a gesture.

I have, therefore, renewed my friendship with my Duolingo app, which seems to have forgiven me for letting my Spanish slide (temporarily). A free app to teach you Swahili is not a small thing, even when you have turned off the audio so as not to break the Great Silence inadvertantly or disturb the sister in the next room. God bless the creators of this app.

Tonight I have added YouTube (with sound, safely in my office), so I thought I'd share.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQv6QJHLmDA

More later...

Kwa heri, usiku mwema, na lala salama (Goodbye, goodnight, and sleep peacefully*).

*http://tanzaniasafariadvisor.com/hello-in-swahili-greetings/

why I marched: baptism, compassion, and justice

Women's March, Boston Common 1-21-17

From our baptismal service:

Celebrant	Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
People	I will, with God's help.
Celebrant	Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
People	I will, with God's help.

-- Book of Common Prayer p. 305 (or http://www.bcponline.org/)

This looks different over time - indeed, day by day. This year brings me a new way of living it out.

I made a few hats, too. (None of these, though.)

When was I last in a march, I wonder?

I recall a candlelight vigil with the sisters in 2003 in hopes of staving off another invasion of Iraq.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1

I recall a demonstration against apartheid when I was in college. I skipped psych class (and I wasn't a class skipper) to stand with others near the shanty town built next to the Beinecke Library. We were so excited when Archbishop Desmond Tutu sent us a word! I found some old pictures online, as a matter of fact, and am grateful to the alum who shared them:

https://yalealumnimagazine.com/blog_posts/1649

I recall a Take Back the Night march in Ann Arbor, MI a year or two earlier. Looked online and found that the organization still exists (http://tbtnannarbor.org/). As a signboard I read this weekend phrased it, "I can't believe I'm still protesting this ----." OK, I can believe it. I just wish I couldn't.

Mostly, however, I've written and called my representatives, signed petitions, and learned - too slowly - to speak up instead of smoothing things over that really needed not to be smoothed over at all.

Sometimes you need to make noise.
Boston Public Garden 1-21-17

I wonder if that is changing.

Yes. Yes, it is.
Let's make it better.
Boston Common 1-21-17

What will this year bring?

more of this? more than this, certainly

Yes, we can. Together. All of us.

Snowflakes, unite!

If I am going to live the promises I made in my baptism alongside my community's historical concern for women and children, it seems to me that more may be required in the days ahead.

I might note that there were quite a few concerns expressed Saturday, climate change among them. I am beginning to learn more about that, too.

Talk about something that will affect us all, or at least anyone who is going to live a while longer. I plan to.

Marching. Praying. Writing. Calling. Networking. Listening. More listening. Reading. More praying. Work I can't yet envision. Prayer that is listening and listening that is prayer moving into action.

Jesus may be calling me out of my sycamore tree.
(A sycamore tree would have been very handy on the Common on Saturday. Some of us are too short to see over 175,000 people. However, all the good trees were taken, as you can see.)

I will, with God's help.

Join me?

Dear President-Elect Trump: a letter from the Episcopal bishops in MA about the environment

Dec. 12, 2016

Donald J. Trump

President-Elect of the United States of America

Trump Tower

735 5th Avenue

New York, NY 10022

Dear President-Elect Trump,

We, the bishops of the Episcopal Church in Massachusetts, are glad to let you know that all of our 235 churches pray for you regularly in our liturgies with these or similar words: “For those in positions of public trust, especially Barack our President and Donald our President-Elect, that they may serve justice, and promote the dignity and freedom of every person.”

We also pray: “Give us reverence for the earth as your own creation, that we may use its resources rightly in the service of others and to your honor and glory.”

The Episcopal Church stands strongly for the protection of the environment. We respect the facts of science.  We support laws and policies that address the reality of climate change. We are in the process of divesting our financial interest in fossil fuels. Most recently our Presiding Bishop, the Most Rev. Michael Curry, joined Native Americans at Standing Rock in their effort to protect their water and their sacred land. Numerous other Episcopal Church leaders have likewise traveled to Standing Rock.

Our respect for our government leaders and our reverence for the earth as God’s creation impel us to write you to express our dismay about your selection of Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. We wonder why a person who has consistently and adamantly opposed all laws and policies that provide even minimal “protection” to the environment should be entrusted with leading such an agency.

President-elect Trump, you have promised economic development. Like you, we value a stable and prosperous economy.  However, a thriving economy depends on a healthy environment. The more we weaken and dismantle the E.P.A.’s vital protections of our natural world, the more we threaten the common good.

You have also promised to strengthen our national defense. Like you, we value national security.  However, our country’s top military intelligence have concluded that climate change is a “threat multiplier” that is already creating instability around the world and will likely create significant security challenges in the years ahead.  If someone who casts doubt on the reality of climate change becomes the head of the E.P.A., our national security will be compromised.

As citizens of this beloved country, we intend to write our members of Congress, urging them to block the nomination of Scott Pruitt to lead the E.P.A. We will pray for a better choice.

And we will continue to pray for you as you assume this office of tremendous responsibility for the good of all.

Respectfully,

The Rt. Rev. Douglas J. Fisher, Bishop Diocesan of Western Massachusetts

The Rt. Rev. Alan M. Gates, Bishop Diocesan of Massachusetts

The Rt. Rev. Gayle E. Harris, Bishop Suffragan of Massachusetts

The Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris, Bishop Suffragan of Massachusetts (retired)

The Rt. Rev. Roy F. Cederholm, Bishop Suffragan of Massachusetts (retired)

http://www.diomass.org/diocesan-news/ma-bishops-oppose-trump-pick-epa

wary and generous

Wise as serpents, innocent as doves? Something like that...

I have read a number of things about giving to help with the devastation in Haiti. I have a feeling we don't yet know the half of what Haiti is experiencing. Yes, Florida. But for all we complain about FEMA, at least we have one. 

Haiti doesn't.

What Haiti does have is people - Haitian and foreign - who are already there and working to improve lives. No need to fly people down and pay for housing and such when there are already trained personnel in the field. They aren't hard to find. They just don't get anyone up here any brownie points in the press. 

Anyway, I've just read on Facebook a commentary to which I'd like to add an emphatic AMEN, the last paragraph of an update someone in Haiti has written. I now have permission to share it. I'll include the previous paragraph for context.

We're still hearing reports from our people upcountry. Those in the western part of the peninsula have nothing and we have yet to hear from most of ours. The road is apparently passable to Petit Goave again (by driving through the river since the bridge is gone) so that's a start. People are gathering up what meager personal belongings that they can find and organizations such as Agape Flights Inc are organizing airlifts of locally purchased relief supplies.

During this crisis many have been advising people to use small local ministries to reach into the provinces rather than channeling millions into the big money hungry international aid groups who spend more of their staff support than actually seems to get to the people in need. Those who actually minister here don't need to be flown into the country, rent expensive homes and vehicles or pay translators and guides to get them around, and also don't need to attend endless meetings at expensive hotels or go out to fancy restaurants at night and drink just to unwind. (Sorry, I've finally come out and said it. Please don't hate me.)

AMEN.

Naturally, I have suggestions!

St. Vincent's School - now expanded to a Center - was started by our Sr. Joan in 1945 as the first school in Haiti for disabled children. Another of our sisters is an alum. We don't run it anymore, though we currently have a sister on the board. They do essential work. There are boarding as well as day students whose needs must be met; just keeping up with basic supplies is a challenge, especially since the earthquake. And now this. They do have a new website and clearer American connections, which makes it easier to donate directly. 

http://stvincentshaiti.org/  
You can also donate to St. Vincent's through these two respected groups:
West Tennessee Haiti Partnership (I met these people when I lived in Haiti. They do good work, and volunteers pay for their own travel expenses. There is one fund for the school, including food and medicine for the children, and another separate fund to support travel for a surgeon or medical team members if that is of interest.)
The Children’s Medical Mission of Haiti

Next, Partners in Health/Zanmi Lasante, begun by Paul Farmer, does amazing work. They have two hospitals, the original in Cange and a new one in Mirebalais, and they train medical personnel. I was delighted last year to see a young nurse of my acquaintance in one of their media posts. I knew her back in her early student days! They have a Haitian-run organization on the ground, though they also have the Harvard Medical School connection and the American PIH group as well. There has been a donate button in the right column of this blog for years, but here's the link to their website's article on Matthew in Haiti: http://www.pih.org/blog/hurricane-matthew-aims-for-haiti

Finally, you can't lose with Episcopal Relief and Development. I'd be willing to bet they have been there for decades, possibly soon after their foundation in 1940, but Anglicanism has been there for longer than that, thanks to James Theodore Holly, a man not easily discouraged.

It's also best for the Haitian economy if money is sent down there so that the supplies needed might be bought from local businesses.  Haitian business owners need to eat and send their children to school, too - and for all we know, they might themselves have lost homes or have taken in family and friends who have. So don't, say, send peanut butter from the US when there is a thriving market for it in Haiti (along with plain, there's a version with hot peppers!). Coals to Newcastle and all.

[I just searched for a picture of mamba (peanut butter) and found this article which says basically the same thing I'm saying while promoting spicy mamba by Rebo. At the convent in Haiti, we bought cheaper mamba and normally the plain version with no peppers, but I do know this company's coffee, which is good, so I bet their mamba is, too.]
[Word to the wise: if you buy spicy peanut butter by accident, it's actually not too bad on bananas for breakfast! With Haitian coffee, of course. I miss Haitian coffee. With condensed milk. 

Mmmmmm...
Wouldn't it also be good to let Haitian people buy the food they like?]

-  -  -  -  -
One more possibility to offer: There is a school of nursing in Leogane I've visited, the Faculté des Sciences Infirmières de l'Université Episcopale d'Haïti or, as it is usually known , the Faculté des Sciences Infirmières de Léogane. FSIL is near Darbonne, the town where I did the original internship that led to this blog. The nurse I previously mentioned is a graduate, as a matter of fact.  They are located near the epicenter of the 2010 earthquake and are on the southwestern peninsula that was slammed by Matthew. In both cases, nursing students have been challenged to see what they could do to help in the aftermath of disaster. The dean, Hilda Alcindor, is a very determined woman, and I'm sure these students as well as the faculty members will be making a difference. (Read the reports here: http://www.haitinursing.org/hurricane-matthew.) They are worth your support. The easiest way to get them money is to send it through the small foundation in Ann Arbor, MI, set up for their support and for the development of nursing in Haiti.
 http://www.haitinursing.org/

Finally, please be generous with your prayer. It makes a difference. 

Seriously.

interesting MA event - Meet a Muslim Day

Look at this! I wish I could go. but between obligations and the distance, I don't think it's going to work. I will console myself by remembering that I have been on a couple of mosque tours before, including one of the new mosque in Roxbury near the old convent. Now this is the way to work for peace and mutual understanding. If you are near Worcester, MA, go!

#GC78: what the heck this all is, anyway, social media version

What on earth are they all up to in Salt Lake City? The General Convention of the Episcopal Church is up and running! 

House of Bishops
House of Deputies (clergy and lay (non-ordained) deputies, elected by diocesan conventions, which are made up of members of each parish)

Meets every three years
Both houses have to pass resolutions (sound familiar?)

Reunions. More reunions. 
People handing out pamphlets. Or leaving them on designated tables. Or whatever this year's system is that attempts to let people share information without tackling others in the hall.
Swag.
And lots and lots of booths for organizations and books and vestments and so on, including one for religious communities! Two of our sisters are there helping staff it.

And worship. The best part, of course, if you ask me. Even if you don't like the liturgy or the music or the preaching that day, breaking bread together reminds everyone of what - WHO - is more real than anything else. Thanks be to God. (Also, go listen to the last bit of the Widor toccata with jazz from today: https://vimeo.com/131935500 . Just, wow. I love this.)

Here's a video introduction to it. Not short, but not boring. Includes what they think will be the "sleeper issues."  Should we start a scorecard to see what predictions turn out to be correct? 

"Streamed live on Jun 10, 2015

Restructuring! PB Election! Blue Books! Trusted public figures! Witty back-and-forths!"

So that's the introduction.

To follow live, I've set up a Twitter list, so I think if you go to this web address you can follow the conversation.
https://twitter.com/sarahrandallssm/lists/general-convention
You can also search for #GC78. That will have people I haven't found yet, but only those tweets that are actually labeled.

And here is the official media hub:
http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/gc/ 

Let's pray for everyone there and the General Convention as a whole, that they may be guided by the Holy Spirit.

For a Church Convention or Meeting
Almighty and everliving God, source of all wisdom and understanding, be present with those who take counsel for the renewal and mission of your Church. Teach us in all things to seek first your honor and glory. Guide us to perceive what is right, and grant us both the courage to pursue it and the grace to accomplish it; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
- Book of Common Prayer 1979. p. 818

Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Climate Change

Archbishop Tutu, who with Nelson Mandela took on apartheid in South Africa and against all odds won, is now taking on climate change. Here is an excerpt from an article:

Never before in history have human beings been called on to act collectively in defence of the Earth. As a species, we have endured world wars, epidemics, famine, slavery, apartheid and many other hideous consequences of religious, class, race, gender and ideological intolerance. People are extraordinarily resilient. The Earth has proven pretty resilient, too. It's managed to absorb most of what's been thrown at it since the industrial revolution and the invention of the internal combustion engine.

Until now, that is. Because the science is clear: the sponge that cushions and sustains us, our environment, is already saturated with carbon. If we don't limit global warming to two degrees or less we are doomed to a period of unprecedented instability, insecurity and loss of species. Fossil fuels have powered human endeavour since our ancestors developed the skills to make and manage fire. Coal, gas and oil warm our homes, fuel our industries and enable our movements. We have allowed ourselves to become totally dependent, and are guilty of ignoring the warning signs of pending disaster. It is time to act.

As responsible citizens of the world – sisters and brothers of one family, the human family, God's family – we have a duty to persuade our leaders to lead us in a new direction: to help us abandon our collective addiction to fossil fuels, starting this week in New York at the United Nations Climate Summit. Reducing our carbon footprint is not just a technical scientific necessity; it has also emerged as the human rights challenge of our time. While global emissions have risen unchecked, real-world impacts have taken hold in earnest. The most devastating effects of climate change – deadly storms, heat waves, droughts, rising food prices and the advent of climate refugees – are being visited on the world's poor. Those who have no involvement in creating the problem are the most affected, while those with the capacity to arrest the slide dither. Africans, who emit far less carbon than the people of any other continent, will pay the steepest price. It is a deep injustice...

There is a word we use in South Africa that describes human relationships:Ubuntu. It says: I am because you are. My successes and my failures are bound up in yours. We are made for each other, for interdependence. Together, we can change the world for the better.

Who can stop climate change? We can. You and you and you, and me. And it is not just that we can stop it, we have a responsibility to do so that began in the genesis of humanity, when God commanded the earliest human inhabitants of the Garden of Eden, "to till it and keep it". To "keep" it; not to abuse it, not to make as much money as possible from it, not to destroy it.

To read the full article by Archbishop Tutu:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/21/desmond-tutu-climate-change-is-the-global-enemy

There is more on this this month:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/01/church-of-england-wields-its-influence-in-fight-against-climate-change  

summer mission opportunity in Haiti

Camp 2014

Mini-camp at St. Vincent's 

MISSION OPPORTUNITY summer 2015

Let me say up front that I don't know the people who run the camp, but I do know someone involved who sent this to me (and to her mailing list). And I KNOW that St Vincent's School for the Disabled is an amazing place, and not just because it was founded by our Sr. Joan.  I meant to post something on this last summer, but I don't think I ever did. Maybe on Facebook... Anyway, there are people who have asked me about going to Haiti, and I never know of any groups. Well, here's your chance. You couldn't ask for a better group of kids to work with.

Also, if you just want to donate money to St. Vincent's, that would be great, too. Last I heard they were having real trouble feeding the kids.  Talk about basics. If you'd like to donate to that, go to this website:  www.wtnhaitipartnership.org  I gather you can indicate if you want it to be for food (or medical care or...).

* * *

Dear Haiti friends,

If you are interested in a summer camp opportunity to work with the kids at St Vincents this summer, read on......

'MINI' CAMP AT ST. VINCENT'S

If there is enough interest, I (Tom Landry, the founder of Jacob’s Color Link Initiative)  thewill host a mini-camp at St. Vincent's in the latter part of August 2015.  This camp will be 5 days in length (3 of which will be spent at the Center with the children).  I would like to have a group of no less than 10 persons.  My tentative plan would be to stay at the Le Plaza near St. Vincent's so that we can walk to St. Vincent's each day and avoid costly travel to and from Petion-Ville.  Breakfast and dinner will be served at the hotel and lunch will be catered at the Center for the residents (70-80) or we cook together as group as I have done in the past.  The activities will commensurate with the experience of those in attendance. I am quite fluid with this given we have done so many different activities with the children.  I would however, like to focus on a few necessary life skills like teaching them how to cook in addition to fun- play activities.  

If anyone is interested in this or knows of anyone, please send me their names and contact information.  This is very informal at this time because I don't want to spend too much time planning if there is not enough interest.

TOM LANDRY II
Executive Director   Jacob's Color Link Initiative
201 St. Charles Avenue | Suite 114-255 | New Orleans, Louisiana 70170
M: 504 520 9626  |  L: 800 921 7839  |  F:  504 910 8342
jacobscolorlink.org

facebook.com/jacobscolorlink

* * *

about the camp via their website:

campJacob is an annual retreat offered to the residents of St. Vincent's Center for Handicapped Children in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Campers are brought to a resort on the northern coast of Haiti and instantly become guests of JCLI. The organization creates a fun-filled environment that also offers a variety of holistic therapies and programming to develop life skills. Volunteers from the United States and Canada host the camp over the course of eight days.

campJacob removes the barriers of the campers' day-to-day lives that are restricted due to lack of accessibility, social stigma and funding. The program provides life skills and self-care training that builds confidence and inspires them toward independence. We work with the youth year-round to ensure the skills they have learned are being further developed and applied in their daily lives. The medical programming offered provides much needed physical and occupational therapy, setting the groundwork for independent living.

The cost for each camper is approximately $1,600 USD. This includes travel expenses to and from the resort, accommodations at the resort, three full meals and two snacks a day, and a backpack filled with necessities for the week and supplies for the camp. Your generous donation funds a life-changing week for these children.

http://www.jacobscolorlink.org/campjacob.php 

lightning tour of Cincinnati

Just how fast can you retrieve baggage, get picked up by your nephew and his girlfriend, eat lunch, and get a lightning tour of the University of Cincinnati area and still arrive in time for vespers at your conference nearby? Well, I found out! And I didn't even get rained on much in the process.

Welcome to Cincinnati!

I recommend Graeter's ice cream wholeheartedly. Good fuel for a speedwalking tour.

Welcome to the University of Cincinnati!

Interesting campus architecture and lots of tulips - it's spring here!

more interesting campus architecture

delighted to see them

They don't make pools the way I remember them... and this is just the recreational swimming pool on campus. They also have a lap pool (which may or may not be the competitive swimming pool; I forgot to ask).

UC architecture class final projects on display
I would love to know what the assignment was.

How's this for some high school architecture?

quick view of the outside of my father's doctoral alma mater with a picture taken just for him
(I love you, Dad!)

My nephew pays a whole $200/month rent for a room in this house. Toto, we're not in Massachusetts anymore...

Whew! We made it!
And it was a great conference, too.

MLK, Jr., remembrances

As we all surely know, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is Monday. In the Episcopal Church calendar, we have two days on which we can remember him. Thursday, January 15, is the alternate date; April 4 the primary one. The Sisters of St. Margaret will be remembering him tomorrow.

Martin Luther King, Jr. - Episcopal Lectionary Page

Martin Luther King, Jr. preaching from the Cathedral’s pulpit on May 17, 1956 (The Cathedral Archives).
Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City
http://www.newyorkled.com/event/the-cathedral-of-st-john-the-divine-celebrates-the-life-of-dr-martin-luther-king-jr

Big events going on everywhere. The photo above is attached to an announcement about events at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.  Naturally, there are less well publicized events right here in eastern MA.

Here is the first event I am excited about. (When did I start getting excited about preaching and anti-racisim panels?)  I'm putting out a sign-up sheet to take a carload of Sisters up to Boston with me.

Bishop Curry, Marian Wright Edelman at Trinity, Copley Square, Boston http://trinitychurchboston.org/lectures

Then, on Monday, some of us will be attending the Martin Luther King, Jr., Day Prayer Breakfast sponsored by the Duxbury Interfaith Council. If you are from the area, please join us.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Prayer Breakfast
Duxbury Interfaith Council

With so much that has happened this year and all these needless deaths bringing our ingrained racism into the spotlight, it's important that we spend time in prayer - always, of course, but especially this weekend. This cultural situation need not continue. There can be healing. It's going to take a lot of repentance and work for justice, though - it won't fix itself. We've tried that...

If Martin Luther King and all those who had the courage to march back then could remember that in God, there is always hope, then so can we. With God, nothing is impossible. We just need to participate. God's not going to make us do it.

I learned today that his final sermon was at the Washington National Cathedral.

A closing excerpt from Dr. King's final sermon, which was at the Washington National Cathedral:

We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right—as we were singing earlier today,

Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne.

Yet that scaffold sways the future.

And behind the dim unknown stands God,

Within the shadow keeping watch above his own

.

With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair the stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

Thank God for John, who centuries ago out on a lonely, obscure island called Patmos caught vision of a new Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God, who heard a voice saying, "Behold, I make all things new; former things are passed away."

God grant that we will be participants in this newness and this magnificent development. If we will but do it, we will bring about a new day of justice and brotherhood and peace. And that day the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy. God bless you.

The full text is absolutely worth reading:

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/remaining_awake_through_a_great_revolution/

*   *   *   *   *

Almighty God, by the hand of Moses your servant you led your people out of slavery, and made them free at last; Grant that your Church, following the example of your prophet Martin Luther King, may resist oppression in the name of your love, and may secure for all your children the blessed liberty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.  (Collect for the Feast of Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Alexander Crummell

Today in the Episcopal Church, we remember the Rev. Alexander Crummell. Priest, scholar, missionary, abolitionist, and writer, he had the courage and tenacity to pursue his vocation in the Episcopal Church at a time when only white men were welcomed as priests. He finally found a home in the Diocese of Massachusetts and was ordained to the diaconate in 1842 and the priesthood in 1844. He earned a degree in Cambridge (UK) in 1853 while serving as a parish priest there, and continued on to work in Liberia before returning to the US.  He is one of the founders of what is now the Union of Black Episcopalians.

The Rev. Alexander Crummell, 1877 - http://www.episcopalarchives.org/Afro-Anglican_history/exhibit/images/leadership/orig/crummell.jpg

http://www.episcopalarchives.org/Afro-Anglican_history/exhibit/leadership/crummell.php

The Union of Black Episcopalians offers a good biographical sketch:

The Rev. Alexander Crummel’s Biography:

Born March 3, 1819 in New York City, Alexander Crummell struggled against racism all his life. As a young man he was driven out of an academy in New Hampshire, dismissed as a candidate for Holy Orders in New York and rejected for admittance to General Seminary. Ordained in 1844 as a priest in the Diocese of Massachusetts, he left for England after being excluded from participating in diocesan convention.

After receiving a degree from Cambridge he went to Liberia as a missionary. A model Christian republic seemed possible in Liberia. He traveled extensively in the United States urging blacks to immigrate to Liberia and support the work of the Church there. On returning to Liberia he worked to establish a national Episcopal Church. Political opposition and a lack of funding finally forced him to return to the United States.

He concentrated his efforts on establishing a strong urban presence of independent black congregations that would be centers of worship, education and social service. When southern bishops proposed that a separate missionary district be created for black congregations, Crummell created  a national convocation to fight the proposal. The Union of Black Episcopalians is an outgrowth of that organization.

His faith in God, his preseverance in spite of repeated discouragement, his perception that the Church transcended the racism and limited vision of its rulers, and his unfailing belief in the goodness and greatness of black people are the legacy of the Afro-American pioneer.

http://www.ube.org/dfc/newsdetail_2/3166728 

From Dr. Sarah Meer, a lecturer at Cambridge University, one of Alexander Crummell's alma maters:




W.E.B. DuBois himself writes of Crummell.  Here is the pertinent chapter, via YouTube audio books:

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B Du Bois - Chapter 12: Of Alexander Crummell:

You may also read this online here: http://www.bartleby.com/114/12.html

I am also interested to see that Stanford University has him listed in their Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Clearly he is not only a church pioneer, but a secular scholar as well.  Since this is not the focus of the church biographies, I had not realized that until now. 

Alexander Crummell (1819–1898) was the most prominent rationalist of the black American enlightenment thinkers in the nineteenth-century. He stands out among his contemporaries—Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, Booker T. Washington, most notably—for his robust defense of the central place of reason in moral agency. His attempts to work out the consequences of that view for the nature of language and history lends his philosophy a breadth and depth not matched by other enlightenment thinkers.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/alexander-crummell/

His papers are among those of the New York City Public Library Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Almighty and everlasting God, we thank you for your servant Alexander Crummell, whom you called to preach the Gospel to those who were far off and to those who were near. Raise up in this and every land evangelists and heralds of your kingdom, that your Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

http://www.lectionarypage.net/LesserFF/Sep/Crummell.html