During St. Mark’s Centennial year a variety of opportunities are planned to explore and highlight the history of St. Mark’s as a place of hope in the struggle for social justice and racial equality. In January of 2009, two such opportunities provided a grand “inauguration” of this historic year of celebration.
The first, “St. Mark’s and the City” was held on Sunday, January 18th and featured the Reverend Dr. Ellen Blue who is the Mouzon Biggs, Jr. Associate Professor of the History of Christianity and United Methodist Studies at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Dr. Blue is an ordained elder in the Louisiana Annual Conference, holding an M. Div. From Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University and a Ph.D. from Tulane University, where she wrote her dissertation on the history of St. Mark’s Community Center and the Methodist women of New Orleans who established it. Dr. Blue was awarded the Lilly Faculty Fellowship for 2008-2009 for her sabbatical research project “In Case of Katrina: Reinventing the United Methodist Church in Post-Katrina Louisiana.” She is spending the academic year in New Orleans, where she is also a Visiting Scholar at the Newcomb College Center for Research on Women.
The second occurred on January 25th when the Bishop of the Louisiana Annual Conference, William Hutchinson delivered an inspired sermon based on I Corinthians 7: 29-31, entitled “Supreme Living in a Super World.” He affirmed St. Mark’s ministry of social justice and encouraged us to continue in our efforts to “be in the world but not of the world.” Kay Hutchinson, wife of Bishop Hutchinson and Dr. Rev. Ramonalynn Bethley, New Orleans District Superintendent, with her family were also in attendance for this very special worship service.
The next “event” is scheduled for February 15th at 4:00 p.m. when World Beat Connection, a Jazz Combo from Minneapolis, MN will give a free and open to the public concert in the St. Mark’s sanctuary.
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