Prize winner Justene Hill Edwards pictured above, photo by Reuben Kleiner
Episcopal Church Foundation’s President and CEO, Dail St. Claire, and Richard D. Emery, Esq., attended the 2025 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner Award Ceremony at Trinity Church New York on February 12, 2026. The recipient of the twenty-seventh annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize was Justene Hill Edwards for *Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank* (W. W. Norton and Company, 2024). Ms. Hill Edwards and the three finalists for the prize were honored at the award ceremony at Trinity Church NYC, where the rector, the Rev. Phillip A. Jackson, serves on the board of directors of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The Gilder Lehrman Institute grants the prize annually in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University.The Board of Foreign Parishes held its first benefit for the Convocation Refugee Grant Program for The Episcopal Church in Europe at the House of Redeemer in New York City on February 19, 2026. Kate Adams, ECF’s Interim Chief of Staff, attended the performance by the creative, liturgically based jazz ensemble – Theodicy Jazz Collective – of “The World House,” a concert of music as constant prayer and global communication. A video highlighting the impactful ministry of the Convocation’s work in Ukraine demonstrated the “Holy Spirit moving at ground level.”ECF’s Head of Fellows Community, Richard J. Marks, attended the Annual Winter Benefit for House of the Redeemer on February 26, 2026. The evening’s guest of honor was the Very Rev. Winnie Varghese, Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and the group was joined by the Rt. Rev. Matthew Heyd, Bishop of New York, and the Rt. Rev. Allen K. Shin, Bishop Suffragan of New York. Dean Varghese closed her remarks with a heartfelt message that this is a time to speak up and “Proclaim what you were made for.”
