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Rev. Canon Dr. Jane Alison Shaw is Eighth Dean of Grace Cathedral
A scholar whose interests include the Enlightenment,
modern religious history, and issues in gender and sexuality has
been named as the eight dean of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral.
Nominated by the Rt. Rev. Marc
Handley
Andrus,
the
Rev. Canon Dr. Jane Alison Shaw
was appointed by by unanimous roll call vote of Grace Cathedral’s
Board of Trustees. She has served as
consultant to the
Lesbian
and Gay Christian Movement.
Jane Shaw’s spiritual depth, commitment to the Gospel,
theological vision and leadership skills make her uniquely qualified to
help guide Grace Cathedral into its second century,” said the Rt. Rev.
Marc Handley Andrus, Bishop of California.
\] Dr. Shaw joins Grace Cathedral from the University of Oxford in
England where she has served as the Dean of Divinity and a Fellow of New
College, Oxford. In addition, she has taught history and theology at the
university.Serving with distinction as a priest, academic theologian and
historian, Dr. Shaw brings powerful preaching and
deep expertise in liturgy, management and administration, program
development, teaching, community building and fundraising.
The Episcopal Cafe
reports:
In 2007, Shaw wrote an op-ed for
The
Guardian saying that the fact of our baptisms precludes the need for
an Anglican Covenant.
There is much talk at present in the Anglican
communion of a new covenant to bind us together. This is seen as a
solution to our problems, to our disagreements about homosexuality.
Some argue that we just need to agree to certain new "essentials".
But many of us hesitate to embrace such a covenant because we
already have a covenant: our baptismal covenant. That is how we are
joined together and it is based on the long-established
"essentials": the historic creeds. From the very earliest days of
Christianity, baptism marked that moment when men and women assented
to the Christian essentials - one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit -
and came into relationship with those who shared this belief in the
creator God, the risen Christ and the Spirit who sustains us daily.
Baptism is therefore the foundation of our identity as Christians.
With Paul's words to the Galatians in our memories, we hesitate to
assent to a covenant in which there will be a new distinction
between lay and ordained by handing over decision-making power to
the Anglican primates. Having made our assent to the historic
creeds, we hesitate to create new "essentials" about an issue -
homosexuality - that may be purely of this moment.
Dr. Shaw is known internationally for her exceptional
talents in the communication of Christianity in the public sphere. In
Great Britain, she has been successful in bridging differences in
governance and policies pertaining to inclusion, and has served as
Theological Consultant to the Church of England House of Bishops. Dr.
Shaw is Canon Theologian at Salisbury Cathedral and an honorary canon of
Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.
Dr. Shaw's appointment is the result of a global search by the Dean
Search Committee, a group of 17 cathedral and diocesan thought leaders,
led by chair Valerie Crane Dorfman and co-chair Tobias Keller. Crane
Dorfman and Keller are cathedral trustees and congregation members.
"The thorough, 18-month discernment process, which asked, `Who will be
our next dean?' led us to meet many talented candidates and carefully
discern the goals and vision of Grace Cathedral," said Greg Scott, chair
of the cathedral's Board of Trustees. "Through a period of careful
discernment, we found that Jane Shaw was the right fit for us."
Residing in the U.S. isn't entirely new for Dr. Shaw. Since the late
1980s, she has studied or held academic positions at several United
States institutions of higher education. She earned a Master's of
Divinity from Harvard Divinity School in 1988 and a Ph.D. in History
from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994. In 2006, she was
awarded an honorary doctorate from Episcopal Divinity School. In the
1990s, she taught at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, the
Episcopal seminary in Berkeley, Calif. Dr. Shaw has been a Visiting
Professor at U.C. Berkeley, Emory University, and Florida Atlantic
University. This appointment comes a century after the
installation of the Grace Cathedral's first dean, the Very Rev. James
Wilmer Gresham, who served the cathedral for almost three decades, from
1910 to 1939.
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