The Arcus Foundation has granted external funding to help support the work of Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music over the next three years as it responds to the charge assigned it by General Convention and resolution C056. That resolution, passed last year in Anaheim, directed the Episcopal Church to begin gathering liturgical resources used in blessing same-gender relationships.
The funding from the Arcus Foundation will allow CDSP [Church Divinity School of the Pacific] to support the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music in fostering widespread participation from throughout the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion by convening task groups, holding meetings with bishops and representatives from each diocese, translating materials into Spanish, and hiring staff support.
A significant portion of the grant will pay for a gathering in March 2011, to which the Standing Commission will ask each of the 110 dioceses in the Episcopal Church to send one clergy and one lay representative. At that meeting, the Standing Commission will present the work in progress and ask for input to guide its completion.
“Developing liturgical resources for blessing same-sex unions is a once-in-a-generation charge, and we want to do it well,” said Meyers. “However, the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music has fourteen projects during this triennium and a budget of just $25,000 for this project. This generous support to CDSP from the Arcus Foundation provides financial, logistical and intellectual resources that wouldn’t otherwise be available. As a result, we will be able to involve many more people and more perspectives in our work.”
The Religion News Service has coverage of the news here. From that article:
Though ultimate decisions and recommendations will be left to the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, the seminary hopes the grant will help keep the process going, with the necessary funds to match.
Tom Kam, the foundation’s deputy director of gay programming, said Arcus is committed to assisting the church in its “continued progress toward moral equality for (lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender) people.”
Episcopal News Service’s coverage can be viewed here.
The full press release from the seminary follows after the jump.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
contact: Jerry Campbell, 510-204-0707, jcampbell@cdsp.edu
NEW GRANT WILL ADVANCE WORK ON BLESSINGS FOR SAME-SEX UNIONS
CDSP to Partner with Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA, July 15, 2010-Church Divinity School of the Pacific has been awarded a grant of $404,000 by the Arcus Foundation to support the development of liturgical resources for blessing same-sex relationships in the Episcopal Church.
Through a contract with the Episcopal Church, the grant makes it possible for CDSP to support the church’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music and its work to fulfill Resolution C056 of the church’s 2009 General Convention.
Resolution C056 calls on the Standing Commission, in consultation with the House of Bishops, to “collect and develop theological and liturgical resources [for the blessing of same-sex relationships], and report to the 77th General Convention.”
“CDSP has a tradition of first-rate, innovative liturgical education,” said the Rev. Dr. W. Mark Richardson, president and dean of CDSP. “Through this generous grant, we can offer that expertise and experience in service to the wider church. We are proud that our outstanding faculty will lead the way in developing liturgical resources to provide pastoral care and response to gay and lesbian Episcopalians.”
The Rev. Dr. Ruth Meyers, Hodges-Haynes Professor of Liturgics at CDSP, chairs the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, and the Rev. Dr. Louis Weil, Hodges-Haynes Professor Emeritus, is a member.
CDSP is the only Episcopal seminary that supports two faculty chairs in liturgy. A member of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, the seminary maintains a partnership with the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at the Pacific School of Religion.
The funding from the Arcus Foundation will allow CDSP to support the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music in fostering widespread participation from throughout the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion by convening task groups, holding meetings with bishops and representatives from each diocese, translating materials into Spanish, and hiring staff support.
A significant portion of the grant will pay for a gathering in March 2011, to which the Standing Commission will ask each of the 110 dioceses in the Episcopal Church to send one clergy and one lay representative. At that meeting, the Standing Commission will present the work in progress and ask for input to guide its completion.
“Developing liturgical resources for blessing same-sex unions is a once-in-a-generation charge, and we want to do it well,” said Meyers. “However, the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music has fourteen projects during this triennium and a budget of just $25,000 for this project. This generous support to CDSP from the Arcus Foundation provides financial, logistical and intellectual resources that wouldn’t otherwise be available. As a result, we will be able to involve many more people and more perspectives in our work.”
The Arcus Foundation, headquartered in Kalamazoo, Michigan, works around the globe in human rights and conservation. Within those areas, its work is focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights and preservation of the world’s great apes and their habitat.
The Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP) is a graduate theological seminary of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, and is a founding member of the Graduate Theological Union (GTU), an ecumenical and interfaith consortium in Berkeley, California. CDSP provides the highest quality Christian theological education in an environment of scholarship, reflection and worship, rooted in the Anglican tradition.