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Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski
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The Very Reverend Dr. James A. Kowalski has been Dean of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York City since March of 2002, elected by its Board soon after 9/11 and just before a devastating fire struck the Cathedral a month after that election. The Cathedral has been undergoing restoration and strategic repositioning. It was rededicated on November 30, 2008, beginning the launch of what may be the most exciting chapter in its history since its cornerstone was laid in 1892.

Dean Kowalski was recruited to ordained ministry by the Rockefeller “Trial Year” fellowship in 1973, when he graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, CT. Since his ordination in 1978, he has also served parishes in Newtown, Hartford, and Darien, Connecticut. He is an inaugural Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a Fellow of the American Leadership Forum. He is a member of the Board of Overseers for St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York; trustee of Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, MA; a director of the Center for Interreligious Understanding; and a member of the advisory board of the Episcopal Actors’ Guild of America, Inc. He is also president of the foundation board of the Grace Cottage Hospital in Townshend, VT, where he and his wife, the Reverend Anne A. Brewer, MD, own a home. Dr. Brewer is associate director of the Family Medicine residency program at Stamford Hospital and an Episcopal priest. They have two grown children: Becky, a surgery resident at Lenox Hill Hospital in NYC, and Matt, an electrical engineer who owns a telecommunications and computer company in Baltimore.

Blog Entries by Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski

Faiths For Safe Water: A Pledge For World Water Day 2013

(14) Comments | Posted March 22, 2013 | 7:55 AM

We Don't Honor God when 8,000 children die every day from the lack of something we take it for granted every day: a safe glass of water.

It's the world's dirty secret with a staggering impact, starting with children. You may be surprised to learn when you see those heart-wrenching...

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Making People's Hopes Our Own

(0) Comments | Posted September 27, 2012 | 1:39 PM

"What a wonderful gift you gave us. ... Over his distinguished career in the Foreign Service, Chris won friends for the United States in far-flung places. He made those people's hopes his own. During the revolution in Libya, he risked his life to help protect the Libyan people from a...

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Saving Christianity

(21) Comments | Posted July 17, 2012 | 2:18 PM

"I didn't know I had a quarrel with him."
--Henry Thoreau's answer to the question, "Have you made your peace with God?"

"The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following...

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Health Security: We Can Do Better

(2) Comments | Posted July 5, 2012 | 4:27 PM

"Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body." --1 Corinthians 6:19-20

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Everything Wrong With Racial Profiling

(14) Comments | Posted April 25, 2012 | 12:01 PM

"...God is light and in him there is no darkness at all ... if we walk in the light ... we have fellowship with one another..."
--1 John 1:2

"The central problem is that ... the general public and most academics are entirely comfortable using the kind of...

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A Sermon for Water

(29) Comments | Posted March 16, 2012 | 7:53 AM

Authors' note: Faiths for Safe Water is a project that seeks to unite all faiths around the singular religious symbol shared by all: Water. On March 17 at the historic Riverside Church in New York City, the faiths will gather for an informative and entertaining opportunity to learn more about...

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Science, Faith and the War on Women

(75) Comments | Posted March 14, 2012 | 3:13 PM

"If we're going to have to pay for this -- then we want something in return... And that would be the videos of all this sex posted online so we can see what we're getting for our money... I said if we're paying for this, it makes these women sluts,...

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Religious Freedom or Freedom of Choice?

(28) Comments | Posted February 15, 2012 | 11:30 AM

[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess,...
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An Open Letter to Congress From Leaders of the Faith Community: Don't Cut Foreign Aid!

(6) Comments | Posted November 3, 2011 | 10:44 AM

The human condition is a precarious one; we cannot separate ourselves from others who are suffering. All of us are vulnerable, and in these particularly vulnerable times, we have to be counted upon to do more to alleviate suffering in the world.

But with all the chatter about religion...

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The Cathedral of St. John the Divine and The Value of Water

(1) Comments | Posted October 4, 2011 | 11:39 AM

"If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: thou shalt not ration justice." -- Judge Learned Hand

"When the well is dry, we know the worth of water." -- Benjamin Franklin

"This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let...

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Stressful Choices

(1) Comments | Posted August 2, 2011 | 8:33 AM

"Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success." -- Dale Carnegie

"Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value." -- Albert Einstein



I'm not the first born, but...

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Gay Couples Have Equal Worth

(31) Comments | Posted July 7, 2011 | 5:00 PM

"Treat people as if they were what they should be, and you help them become what they are capable of becoming." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Their love is worth the same as your love. Their partnership is worth the same
as your partnership. And they are equal in...

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Turning Cheeks: Why Christians and Muslims Should Break the Cycle of Hate

(210) Comments | Posted April 5, 2011 | 9:03 PM

To figure out how to build freer, better societies, Muslims need not look across the ocean. They need only look back into their own history ... consultation is the magic word. It occurs again and again in classical Islamic texts. It goes back to the time of the Prophet himself...

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Ash Wednesday: Mortality, Humanity and Humility

(55) Comments | Posted March 8, 2011 | 7:24 PM

"If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the...

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The Clarity of Choices Before Us In Egypt

(6) Comments | Posted February 11, 2011 | 1:12 PM

If you choose, you can keep the commandments,
and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice.
He has placed before you fire and water;
stretch out your hand for whichever you choose.
Before each person are life and death,
and whichever one...

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Advent: A Four-Week Course on Patience

(21) Comments | Posted December 11, 2010 | 6:22 PM

"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake." --Victor Hugo

Advent is about waiting. In a sense, it is a four-week course on patience. That's a good...

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The Midterm Elections and True Leadership

(4) Comments | Posted November 8, 2010 | 11:36 AM

The midterm elections in the United States and our roles as citizens got me thinking about Ronald A. Heifetz's (co-director, the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard's Kennedy School of Government), Leadership Without Easy Answers (Belknap Press, 1994).

I know that "followers" often expect solutions from their leaders....

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St. Francis: The Power of Loving All Creation

(238) Comments | Posted October 2, 2010 | 9:27 PM

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
--Mark Twain

For nearly three decades, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine has celebrated Creation with an Earth Mass and by blessing animals. Pictures of creatures great...

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