wfn.org | Diocese of California celebrates its 150th

[Daphne Mack <dmack@dfms.org>]

For more information contact:
Kathryn McCormick
kccormick@dfms.org
212/922-5383

Visit our web site at
http://www.ecusa.anglican.org/ens

99-119

Born in the Gold Rush, Diocese of California celebrates its 150th 
anniversary

by Dennis Delman

     (ENS) With prayers, psalms, a parade and a picnic, the 
Diocese of California began a year-long anniversary celebration 
on July 17, some 150 years after the Rev. Flavel Scott Mines 
conducted the first Service of Morning Prayer that launched 
Episcopal ministry in the early days of California's gold rush.

     Opening the celebration with that same service, nearly 500 
people gathered in Trinity Parish, San Francisco, the first 
Episcopal church west of the Rocky Mountains. In his welcoming 
comments, the Rev. Robert Warren Cromey, Trinity's current 
rector, noted that the congregation was seated where hundreds of 
thousands had worshipped over the years, including 72 funerals in 
the past two decades for Trinity parishioners who died of AIDS.

     The Rt. Rev. William Swing, seventh bishop of the diocese, 
welcomed Presiding Bishop and Mrs. Frank T. Griswold, together 
with several visiting bishops, ecumenical and interfaith guests, 
and  reminded the congregation that in the founding of Episcopal 
ministry in California, "before bishops, before any priest, there 
were lay people." It was a call in late 1848 by prominent lay 
people to the Board of Missions in New York that brought  Mines, 
then the Rev. John Ver Mehr, first rector of Grace Church (now 
Grace Cathedral), to San Francisco.

Procession to Grace Cathedral

     Following the service, crucifer Michael Hilty led an ever-
expanding procession from Trinity to Grace Cathedral. Halting San 
Francisco's famed cable cars, the procession climbed the 
California Street hill, fed continually at each intersection by 
members of the diocese's 86 churches and its social institutions, 
joining the procession in the order of their founding.

     Joining Swing and Griswold in the procession were Bishops G. 
Richard Millard (retired suffragan of California) Mark MacDonald 
(Alaska), Jerry Lamb (Northern California) Samir Kafity 
(Jerusalem, retired) and Otis Charles (Utah, retired)

     Approaching Grace Cathedral, behind its banner proclaiming 
the sesquicentennial theme: Let It Shine, the procession, which 
included Chinese dragons, bagpipers and a sea of church banners, 
numbered more than 2,500 and stretched nearly four blocks. As 
marchers arrived, they gathered on the cathedral stairs to pose 
for a family photograph. Members of the Church of Our Saviour, in 
Oakland's Chinatown, presented Swing a framed reproduction of the 
Let It Shine theme done in Chinese characters, using exactly 150 
pennies.

     An overflow crowd jammed the cathedral and close to conclude 
the morning's worship with the Eucharist, which featured a 300-
member choir under the direction of John Fenstermaker, Grace 
Cathedral's organist and choirmaster, and drawn from nearly half 
of the diocese's churches. In keeping with the diocese's ethnic 
diversity, the Gospel was read in nine languages, from American 
Sign to Fijian and Hindi.

Sermon by the Presiding Bishop

     In his sermon, Griswold recounted a recent visit to Russia 
during which he learned that the Diocese of California's first 
bishop, William Ingraham Kip, convinced an 1860's General 
Convention to establish a relationship with the Russian Orthodox 
Church. "As a result of Bishop Kip's efforts," said Griswold, 
"the Russian Church has long regarded the Episcopal Church as a 
friend," and called upon it to help "rebuild the structures of 
the church in the wake of the Soviet years."

     Saying he was personally grateful to the first bishop of 
California, Griswold noted that "determined farsightedness is a 
characteristic I particularly associate with this diocese and 
many of its bishops across the years...as well as your present 
bishop's vision of the potential force of the world's religions 
to bind up and bring together, rather than divide and turn the 
people of the earth against one another."

Anniversary hymn

     Following Renewal of the Baptismal Covenant, the choir led 
in singing the offertory anthem, Jesus Christ is Our Story,  
based on the 150th Psalm (text by Brian Wren and music by Conrad 
Susa) and composed specifically for the diocesan anniversary 
celebration. In the course of the anthem, people, as instructed, 
began to chant in monotone Psalm 150 in one of the nine languages 
used in the Gospel reading.

     After the Eucharist and capping the day's festivities, 
people picnicked on the cathedral close and in Huntington Park 
across the street, accompanied by live entertainment that 
showcased the diocese's ethnic diversity.

--Dennis Delman is the editor of the Diocese of California's 
Pacific Church News.