“It has been a decade-long journey,” said Angela Thorpe Mason, the center’s executive director. The house was slated for demolition in the early 2000s, and was in extremely bad shape. A group of local advocates rallied to save it. The Pauli Murray Center was established in 2012, but the rehabilitation wasn’t complete until this April.

Murray’s grandfather, Robert Fitzgerald, built the house in 1898, and Murray moved there to live with her grandparents and two aunts in 1914, at the age of 3. Her aunt sold the house in 1953, but Murray visited it even after it had been sold and felt a deep connection to it. One reason the rehabilitation took so long was a desire to restore its early 20th-century state as much as possible, using historic construction techniques.

This is not, however, a historic house museum full of period furniture. It’s also not a shrine full of altars and reliquaries. Murray’s typewriter will be on display, as will her writing, and there will be a room with a recording of her talking.

Mason does see the space as sacred, and hopes visitors will feel the same way. “I’m hoping that visitors will enter into a relationship with Pauli Murray, and that relationship building will inspire people to do something, even if it’s small, to create social change,” Mason said.

Lacking a chapel doesn’t mean Murray’s faith is overlooked. “Faith is a through line,” Mason said. The center helps with the annual St. Pauli Murray service at her home parish, St. Titus’ Episcopal Church, which is less than two miles from the center. St. Titus will host a Pauli Murray pilgrimage from the center to the parish in October. A commemoration of Murray on July 1 was added to Lesser Feasts and Fasts in 2012.

The exhibit on Murray’s life emphasizes her lifelong Episcopal faith, which was formed by her grandmother, Cornelia, as well as pioneering work in fighting for women’s rights within the Episcopal Church. Murray and her partner, Renee Barlow, attended St Mark’s-in-the-Bowery in New York City, and Murray once walked out because she was so dismayed that men filled every role other than chorister.

After Barlow’s death in 1973, Murray planned the memorial service, and the officiant asked her if she had ever considered ordination. She would be ordained to the priesthood just four years later, just a year after the Episcopal Church voted to welcome women to the priesthood.

Murray is best known as a leader in the civil rights movement. Her 1950 book States’ Laws on Race and Color catalogued and critiqued discriminatory laws, and urged civil rights lawyers to draw on sociological and psychological evidence to challenge them directly as unconstitutional, a strategy at the heart of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

Murray critiqued sexism within the civil rights movement and coined the phrase “Jane Crow” to describe the complex challenges faced by women of color in American society. She was a cofounder of the National Organization for Women, which she hoped would follow the NAACP’s role in the civil rights movement as a leader in the fight for equality.

The center wants the space to be more than a memorial to the past, and to honor Murray’s legacy by continuing to foster activism. “This is an active space designed to move contemporary social justice work forward,” Mason said. This is part of why there are few items on display, although the center has more in storage for potential future exhibits.

The center hopes to have events and workshops for educators, reflecting Murray’s career as a professor at two law schools. It offers various free curriculum resources on a variety of aspects of her life, including a four-session Christian education course. It has hosted numerous virtual talks by professors, lawyers, and clergy about different aspects of Murray’s legacy and issues facing women, African-Americans, and LGBT people.

This July, the center hosted a pro bono legal clinic for transgender people to discuss changing their legal names. Murray’s given name was Anna Pauline, but she started using “Pauli” as a young adult. She wore androgynous clothing, was often distressed by womanhood, and tried to find a doctor who would give her hormone therapy. The center sees supporting LGBT persons as an important part of reflecting Murray’s legacy.

The center also sees itself as a place where local community organizations focused on social justice can meet and work in Murray’s spirit. The house is located in Durham’s West End, a historically black neighborhood that has been increasingly gentrified. It’s the last original structure on its street. “We want to help preserve the historical integrity of the West End,” Mason said.

“How do we activate public history for a public good?” asked Mason, who spent a decade working for the state helping black communities in North Carolina understand their history. Only 2 percent of the 95,000 places on the National Register of Historic Places focus on African-American history. The center, which was designated a National Historic Landmark by the Department of the Interior, hopes to raise awareness of the importance of preservation of African-American history to understand both the past and the present.

A report prepared by the center about the restoration said that most archaeological sites about African-Americans have, until recently, focused on pre-Emancipation history, particularly on plantations. The center hopes its work can contribute to a growing world of African-American historical interpretation focused on urban, 20th-century Black life.

“I’m most excited about getting to know the people in this diocese and seeing the amazing ministry already happening,” she said. “I’m doing a lot of listening right now — what are the joys? What are the sorrows?” The diocese has 82 congregations, and comprises the entire state of Mississippi. “It’s a big diocese. I want to work on building relationships, not just between me and communities, but between communities. It’s very diverse, and there’s a little bit of everything. I want to make sure we can all see we’re part of one big, beautiful church,” she said.

She thinks visibility and helping people to know about the Episcopal Church are very important. “Young people today are very committed to community, but I don’t know if church is always seen as the best way to express that. We the church have to express that,” she said. She also thinks that the more the church is known for doing good in the world, the more people will see that and will want to know more.

Wells wants people to know that God and the church are there for them. “Bishop Curry has reminded us that our God is a God of love and peace. I want to share that peace where it isn’t necessarily always obvious. I want to look around us and see how our loving God would respond. I want us to become the heart and hand of God on Earth, and make God’s love very visible,” she said.

Mississippi is the poorest state in the nation, and many residents struggle with significant hardships. “I’ve always been deeply involved with ministries that support the most vulnerable, and I’m hopeful that I’m going to get involved with those ministries in Mississippi,” she said. She also wants to do both interfaith and ecumenical work, especially as she sees all Christians as united in a common mission.

She wants to work on increasing a sense of connection. “We need to nurture young people so once they get past teen years and college, where they’re very involved and engaged, they see there’s still something for them. And when we see sparks, what does it mean to begin to discern a call?” she said.

She wants to start hosting ministry experience weekends, in which people can learn about both lay and ordained roles and what it’s like to live out those callings. She especially wants to challenge the idea that people can only live out ministry in the world if they are ordained.

She has a keen interest in promoting the vocational diaconate. “A lot of folks probably don’t realize they could be called to that role. A lot of churches have little to no exposure to it,” she said. “People already involved in healthcare or senior care don’t realize their expertise can be used for the church.”

A challenge in Mississippi is how many churches are destroyed by tornadoes and hurricanes. She visited Trinity Church in Yazoo City, which was destroyed three times, and after the third time, during the Great Depression, all that was left was the altar and the sanctuary around it. It took ten years for the parish to raise the money to rebuild.

“God really wants you in this community,” she told the people of Trinity Church. “We know this is where God wants us to be serving God’s people, and we’re going to serve until we don’t have anything left.”

The Bishop of Mississippi is on the board of trustees at Sewanee: The University of the South. “I’m learning a lot about them, and I know there’s been several incidents in and around the campus, but the university has committed to addressing a lot of those things,” she said.

Wells was previously a lawyer, and worked at large corporations before becoming a priest. She believes this gives her insight into the administrative aspects of the episcopacy. “We’re serving the people who are serving the people,” she said about the role of dioceses.

She was ordained to the priesthood in 2012 by Bishop Don Edward Johnson of West Tennessee. She has served as the rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Germantown, Tennessee, a Memphis suburb, since 2013. She was previously a curate at Church of the Holy Apostles in Collierville, Tennessee.

She was elected on the fourth ballot, from a slate of five nominees. Wells will be the first Black person and the first woman to be Bishop of Mississippi.

Wells is originally from Mobile, Alabama, but moved to Memphis for college. She has an M.Div. from Memphis Theological Seminary and a D.Min. from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in vocal performance from Rhodes College and a J.D. from the University of Memphis. She and her husband, Herbert, have two daughters.

“I want to come in and know the diocese and be known. I want to build trust, be a keen listener, and know where the yearnings and longings are,” Whitworth said about her first expected steps for Massachusetts. She’s excited by the prospects of work in the diocese: it’s one of the largest in the country, with 180 parishes, missions, chapels, and chaplaincies, and a large variety of parachurch organizations.

She sees a lot of opportunities for growth. “There’s a longing for community that people can’t necessarily identify. There’s a crisis of belonging right now,” she said. “Belonging to the body of Christ is belonging to a body of love.” She thinks the Episcopal Church has a lot to offer, and her goal is helping people learn about it.

One strength she sees is the breadth of worship found in the Episcopal Church. “I love our denomination. We have such a rich diversity of people and ways of practicing our faith,” she said. “There are ways to be creative with our liturgy for people who have been hurt by traditional church, and there are also ways to pull from ancient practices.” The Diocese of Massachusetts has services in 16 different languages, and she’s looking forward to working with immigrant communities.

Another strength she sees in Massachusetts is on vocations. “There’s a rich history of supporting and raising up young adults,” she said. In the last ordination cycle, Massachusetts ordained eight new priests.

She recalls that when she was a teenager in Virginia, Bishop Peter Lee asked her to consider the priesthood, and this was in the 1980s, when female priests were not common. “It was a powerful call on my life. I hope to be part of that work for others,” she said.

She also wants to work with the Anglican Studies program at Boston University’s School of Theology, which the diocese has supported since the relocation of the Episcopal Divinity School. There are also numerous university chaplaincies, both in Boston and elsewhere in the state, such as the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, that she hopes to strengthen.

Some of the diocese’s 180 parishes are very small. She wants to work with smaller churches to provide resources and ideas for them to think about creative new ways to evangelize. “I want to gather people in the diocese and make strategies together, especially across churches — not just small church to small church, but small church to large church,” she said. She’s also big on good communication, and thinking about how parishes can tell their story and why they’re important to people who don’t know about them.

In addition to its parishes, Massachusetts has five Episcopal schools. Whitworth was previously on the governing board of the National Association of Episcopal Schools, and she sees them as highly important. “I believe that educational spaces are amazing missional fields for our church — spaces where we can live into the traditions of our faith, our deep respect for diversity, and our passion for social justice,” she said.

Epiphany School in Boston and Esperanza Academy in Lawrence are tuition-free and educate children from highly disadvantaged backgrounds, a mission she wants to work on promoting. Three others, the Groton School, St. Mark’s School in Southborough, and Brooks School in North Andover, are college preparatory boarding schools. Her goal is to work with chaplains to strengthen the schools’ identity as Episcopal and to build a ministry of “relationship and presence.”

Whitworth comes from Trinity Episcopal Church in Indianapolis, which she has served as rector since 2016. Trinity is a large parish with a variety of outreach ministries, and she thinks this experience will serve her well as a bishop. She’s particularly proud of her work with LGBT outreach, including helping found Trinity Haven, the first dedicated house for LGBT youth at risk of homelessness in Indiana.

“I love being a spiritual witness,” she said about doing theologically informed advocacy. But she also knows that Massachusetts has different needs than Indiana, and she wants to learn from the people already doing the work first. One thing she wants to work on is advocacy for the unhoused, particularly in the area surrounding the cathedral in downtown Boston. She looks forward to joining the work of MANNA, the ministry of St. Paul’s Cathedral for and with the unhoused, as well as engaging theologically and publicly on climate and racial injustice. “I want to be a witness for God’s justice,” she said.

Whitworth will be the first woman to serve as diocesan Bishop of Massachusetts. She was elected on the fourth ballot from a five-person slate on May 18.

The diocese has a long legacy of senior female leadership, having elected the Anglican Communion’s first female bishop, the Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris, as a suffragan bishop in 1988. Two other women have served as suffragan bishops in the diocese since then, the Rt. Rev. Gayle Harris and the Rt. Rev. Carol Gallagher.

Whitworth was ordained to the priesthood in 2010 by Bishop Mark Sisk of New York. Before Trinity Episcopal Church, she served as Canon for Liturgy and the Arts at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City and assistant rector at St. James’ Episcopal Church in West Hartford, Connecticut. She served on General Convention’s Liturgy and Music Legislative Committee in 2024.

She holds a master of divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York, as well as an M.A. and M.Phil from New York University and a B.A. from Dartmouth College. She previously taught courses in theater at New York University, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and directed theatrical productions at different venues in the Northeast. She and her husband, Ray Neufeld, have three children.

“I’m excited about ministry in Olympia,” said LaBelle, who has served as the rector of St. Mark’s Church in Southborough, Massachusetts, since 2011. “People are hungry for authentic spirituality and truly experiencing the love of Jesus.”

“I believe in the importance of relationships,” he said. “I believe in the centrality of God being in relationship with us, and creating us so that we might be in relationships with others and with the natural world.”

He also sees his new vocation as one of dedication and service. “I want to embody the call to serve others, not to draw attention to myself with the vestments or miter. “That’s the call of Jesus, not to be served, but to serve others,” he said.

LaBelle has spent almost 20 years in clerical service. He was ordained to the diaconate in June 2004 and the priesthood in January 2005 by Bishop Gordon Scruton of the Diocese of Western Massachusetts. Before his years at St. Mark’s, he served as rector at Christ the King Church in Arvada, Colorado, and associate rector of St. Luke’s Parish in Darien, Connecticut.

LaBelle will finish his Doctor of Ministry degree at Fuller Theological Seminary in June. His research has been on Zimzum, a Jewish mystical concept meaning “contraction.” This is how LaBelle explains the concept on his website, The Rambling Priest: “Because God was everywhere all at once and since nothing else existed with God — including the nothingness — God needed to make space before God could create. So the Jewish mystics claim God withdrew from a space within Godself in order to create, forming a type of womb.”

He has used this idea to think about how people living busy lives can contract themselves and make space. LaBelle said that many people, especially among Christians he knows, do not heed the Fourth Commandment, to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy and do no work. “There’s a tendency to ignore being told to take a break,” he said.

He cofounded Neighbors for Peace with Dr. Safdar Medina, which hosted a community-wide Iftar dinner during Ramadan, as well as an interfaith Thanksgiving service. “Interfaith relationships are vitally important in our world, both in support of religious freedom but also to form a really deep connection — not to proselytize, but to develop friendship and learn from each other,” LaBelle said.

He mentioned his admiration for his Muslim friends who pray five times a day and his Jewish friends’ level of repentance on Yom Kippur. He has also served on the core team of Central MA Connections in Faith, which seeks to bring members of different religious traditions together.

LaBelle looks forward to supporting the work of the Rev. Canon Carla Robinson, the Diocese of Olympia’s canon for multicultural ministries and community transformation. “I want to build beloved community that reflects the amazing diversity that was dreamed up by God,” he said. “I want to come together and recognize past wrongs and deepen relationships.”

He particularly wants to work with and learn from Indigenous people and their connection with the land. He also hopes to further strengthen the diocese’s work on homelessness, particularly in urban environments. “I believe in living faithfully into the call to take care of those in need,” he said.

Care for the environment is also important to him. “It’s not a climate crisis, but an overconsumption crisis in the West. We need to repent and do repentance for that,” he said.

Seattle is the least religious metro area in the United States, but after over a decade in the third-least religious metro area of greater Boston, he does not see that as a problem. He spoke about the non-religious young people he met while walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain, and how he could see their desire for a spiritual life.

“People see the institutional church standing against things, not standing for the love of Jesus,” he said. He wants to bring that love to those who are yet to experience it. “God desires to be in relationship with us, God delights in us, and the call is to embrace Jesus and the way of love.

In a collective statement, the vestry of St. Mark’s, Southborough, said: “We are very excited for Phil. He has many wonderful gifts to bring to his new role as bishop. He clearly stood out as a candidate for us during our rector search 13 years ago, so of course he would stand out in Olympia’s search for a bishop. We wish him and his family the best, but we will miss them all very much.”

The Diocese of Olympia is in the western part of Washington, and Seattle is its see city. It has 90 congregations and 19,000 congregants. He was elected on the fourth ballot May 18 with 91 clerical votes and 119 lay votes, from a slate of four candidates. He will be consecrated and installed on September 14, pending consents of bishops and standing committees.

LaBelle will be Olympia’s ninth bishop, succeeding the Rt. Rev. Greg Rickel, who retired in 2022 after 15 years as bishop.

LaBelle attended seminary at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University. He also has a master’s degree in rhetoric and composition from Northeastern University and a bachelor’s degree in English, with an additional concentration in theological studies from Gordon College. He and his wife, Dr. Melissa Tobey LaBelle, are parents to two young adults.

Since January 2023 at the American house, one man has made a life profession of vows, another has made a first profession of vows, and three became new novices. Two men men have made first vows at the South African house, which has welcomed also three new novices.

Br. Josép Martínez-Cubero, the order’s vocations director, attributes this success to the internet. He was appointed vocations director shortly before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and his plans to visit seminaries and parishes fell through. “I felt kind of trapped,” he said.

He began to film vocations profiles of the brothers for the order’s YouTube channel. He asked brothers about their vocations and their lives as monks. “It was like showing people who we are,” he said. “We don’t live in the sixth century. We’re not going to get people knocking on the door asking to try their vocation.”

The order also has a presence on Facebook and Instagram, and a weekly post on Blogspot by Br. Bernard Delcourt, director of associates. All of this allows a man who might be discerning his calling to learn what it’s like to be a monk, even if he can’t visit in person. The videos show the brothers as normal men who are intensely devoted to God.

“A desire to give one’s heart fully to God — that’s what we all have in common,” said Martínez-Cubero. The brothers come from a variety of ethnic, educational, and initial denominational backgrounds, but in their shared love of Christ they live a life together.

He receives eight to 15 inquiries a year, and he finds about six of them are serious candidates. The initial discernment takes between six months to a year, including monthly meetings with Martínez-Cubero to discuss the man’s faith, spiritual journey, and potential calling to OHC. Then an aspirant visits the monastery for two weeks to live the life of a monk for a short time. If the aspirant and the community believe he will be a good fit, he is invited to apply for postulancy.

Br. Luc Thuku, assistant vocations director for South Africa, said his strength is “to give full time attention to inquirers.” Thuku, who is from Kenya, recalled initially discerning a call at a Roman Catholic monastery in South Africa. The vocations director at this monastery was very responsive, which shapes his work to this day. “I felt like a person who was wanted,” he said, and this is the energy he tries to bring to OHC.

The Order of the Holy Cross was invited to South Africa in 1998 by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The order was previously located in Grahamstown on the Eastern Cape, and now shares space at the Volmoed Retreat and Conference Center. The order has a problem that many monasteries would like to have: inadequate space for all the men who would like to enter. Thuku hopes the order can expand and grow more.

The Anglican Church of Southern Africa has a long history with religious life, with brothers from the Society of St. John the Evangelist and the Community of the Resurrection playing an early role in the life of the church. Thuku credits this heritage for driving the current growth in OHC’s vocations. “Religious life is more encouraged in South Africa, and they talk about it at confirmation,” he said.

While the men in formation grew up Anglican, some of their inquirers grew up Roman Catholic. Many of the brothers in New York are also former Roman Catholics, both laymen and former monks. Martínez-Cubero said the Order of the Holy Cross and the Episcopal Church are appealing because he believes they are less punitive than many Roman Catholic orders.

OHC is, however, on good terms with Roman Catholic religious houses. It has a long-standing friendship with New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California. Holy Cross participates in shared formation events in the Hudson Valley with both men’s and women’s congregations. “It’s a wonderful formation supplement,” Martínez-Cubero said. He and a brother of the Community of the Resurrection recently spent three months at a Roman Catholic monastic formation program in Italy.

Holy Cross is also on good terms with the Society of St. John the Evangelist, the other large Episcopal men’s monastery, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “They’re our buddies,” Martínez-Cubero said. “I’ve referred men to them, and vice versa.”

OHC welcomes men ages 25 to 50 who are members of churches in the Anglican Communion and have no dependents. “I am very attentive to what someone’s aim seems to be. Some brothers are more wired for contemplation, others for active ministry,” Martínez-Cubero said. Men who are not ordained but feel called to the priesthood are invited to further discernment after their profession of vows.

“People are hungry for that connection with Christ,” Martínez-Cubero said. This is what spurred the initial flourishing of religious life in the Episcopal Church in the 19th century, and is what will let it bloom in the 21st.