Courtesy photos
Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski and Jane Redmont
Bishop Alan M. Gates has appointed the Rev. Dr. Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski as an ecumenical and interreligious officer for the Diocese of Massachusetts. Joslyn-Siemiatkoski joins Jane C. Redmont who has served in this capacity since 2018. Together, they co-chair the diocesan Commission for Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations.
"I am so grateful to Jane Redmont for her many years of service to the diocese as ecumenical and interreligious officer, and am delighted to welcome the Rev. Dr. Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski to join her in that work. In that capacity, they serve as our official representatives at ecumenical and interreligious events, provide updates to the Diocesan Council and the wider diocese on important developments in our relationship with religious companions and partners, keep track of official actions of The Episcopal Church which may affect our local partnerships, provide advice to the bishops, and resources and encouragement to congregations, and more," Gates said of the appointment.
"There is a familiar benediction by William Sloane Coffin which suggests that 'the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love,'" Gates added. "I suggest that the world is too small, also, for us to remain in isolation from our Christian co-religionists, from our cousins in the Abrahamic faiths or from those who are part of other faith traditions with whom we must advance commonly held values for the sake of all God’s children."
Joslyn-Siemiatkoski said, "I am honored to serve with the people of the diocese in this capacity. In our increasingly polarized age, finding ways for communities of faith to work together for the common good is vitally important," Joslyn-Siemiatkoski said. "The Diocese of Massachusetts has long supported the work of ecumenical and interreligious relations and I am excited to collaborate with my colleague Jane Redmont as the next chapter of that history unfolds."
Joslyn-Siemiatkoski is the Kraft Family Professor and Director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College. He is a scholar of Jewish-Christian relations and comparative theology and the author of The More Torah, The More Life: A Christian Commentary on Mishnah Avot and Christian Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs, as well as numerous articles. He represents The Episcopal Church for the Anglican-Roman Catholic USA ecumenical dialogue and is an appointed member of the Committee on Ethics, Religion and the Holocaust of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Prior to his position at Boston College, he served as the Duncalf-Villavoso Professor of Church at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Tex. He previously taught at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific and Episcopal Divinity School. In the Diocese of Massachusetts, he serves as priest associate at Christ Church in Cambridge.
Jane C. Redmont is a theologian, writer and retreat leader with a lifelong commitment to fostering connections between the contemplative life and social justice activism. She earned a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School and has studied and practiced hatha yoga, centering prayer and Zen meditation. In the late 1970s she chaired the first Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue committee in Madison, Wis., while serving as the first woman chaplain at St. Paul’s University Catholic Center. She is the author of Generous Lives: American Catholic Women Today and When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life. During her Ph.D. studies at the Graduate Theological Union, she served as the Bogard Teaching Fellow at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific and taught at other area seminaries. She served as religious studies faculty at Guilford College, Greensboro, N.C., chair of the Bishop's Committee for Racial Justice and Reconciliation in the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina and co-chair of the World Christianity Group of the American Academy of Religion. A member of Emmanuel Church in Boston, she also serves as a congregational consultant and guest preacher in the Diocese of Massachusetts.
"I am delighted for this opportunity to work with Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski for and in our diocesan community," Redmont said. "We know that many here are already building relationships and working for justice and healing with neighbors in our religiously diverse region: in marriages and partnerships, at work and in college residences, in service and advocacy, in friendships that make room for difference and in sharing church buildings with with other congregations, many of which serve immigrant communities. We look forward to hearing more about these grassroots efforts and their challenges and hopes, to serving as resources and to continuing to listen and learn."
Jane Redmont can be reached at janered@earthlink.net. Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski can be reached at
d.joslyn-siemiatkoski@bc.edu