The Latest Cathedral News Author: Beau Surratt
Book Talk August 3 at 3 p.m. "A Queer Lectionary"
July 16, 2025
The St. James LGBTQ+ Affinity Group will host Peter P. C. Carlson, Ph. D, Editor and Principal Author of A Queer Lectionary: (Im)Proper Readings from the Margins Year A on Sunday, August 3 at 3 p.m. in the Cathedral. This event is free and open to the public.
From an interdenominational group of preachers and scholars, a queer commentary to address recent concerns around LGBTQ+ rights.
This preaching resource features commentaries on every Sunday and feast day reading in the Revised Common Lectionary from an interdenominational group of scholars and homileticians. Offering queer interpretations of biblical texts, the series will appeal to scholars of queer theology and will support preachers in crafting sermons that convey a message of liberation, rather than one that reinforces the power structures of the world.
A Queer Lectionary features commentators from a variety of liturgical traditions, including clergy and scholars from the Episcopal Church, United Church of Christ, African Methodist Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Metropolitan Community Churches, and beyond. Written to enable preachers to engage with every assigned text, each volume features sermons that respond to every lesson in each lectionary entry.
Peter Carlson is a scholar of religious history and gender. Their work has focused on constructions of masculinity and femininity in the late medieval and early modern periods, as well as theologies of sexuality and gender construction across religious traditions. A graduate of Claremont Graduate School and Wheaton College, Carlson was a fellow at Lincoln College Oxford. They are currently associate professor of religion at California Lutheran University, where they regularly teach courses in gender and queer theology and direct the gender and women’s studies minor. A committed Episcopalian, Carlson has presented to religious groups on the history of the Christian church, the pursuit and quality of sacred space, medieval history, and the history of gender and marriage. They also preach regularly. Carlson lives in Thousand Oaks, California.
Still Looking For Some Summer Reading?
July 16, 2025
Still looking for some summer reading? The St. James Book Group is reading Kate Quinn’s The Rose Code and David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day and will discuss both on Tuesday, September 2 in Room 210. Social time will begin at 6:30 p.m. and book discussion at 6:45 p.m.
Three Openings for 2025 Sesquicentennial Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage
July 15, 2025
Three openings have arisen for the 2025 Sesquicentennial Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage with the Dean.
For more information about the itinerary, click here. If you are interested in claiming one of the three openings for the pilgrimage, contact Randy Pierson.
October 2025 marks a milestone in our St. James history, honoring the rebuilding and re-dedication of the Cathedral after the Great Chicago Fire. We will be kicking off our 150th year with a pilgrimage led by our Dean, Lisa Hackney-James, and St. James member Álvaro de Salas Giménez de Azcárate, Consul General of Spain to the U.S.
This journey will follow parts of the Camino de Santiago, the historic path to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, with a special stop in Zaragoza, Consul General DeSalas’s hometown and a key pilgrimage site. This itinerary is a "kinder gentler" camino and geared toward those who might find extensive hiking difficult.
