Rev. Donna Schaper

she/her/hers

The Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper, formerly at Coral Gables Congregational Church in Miami and before that at Yale University, is Senior Minister for Judson Memorial Church on the corner of Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, New York City.  She has been at Judson ten years, ordained forty, has twins who are thirty this year and will celebrate her 50th High School Reunion at Martinsburg, West Virginia this year.  As an elder, she is passionately concerned about leaving the next generation well-prepared for all they have to face.

Schaper’s purpose in life is to provide spiritual nurture for public capacity.  She likes to “kick hope into high gear” and show people what is possible through the magnificence of human community strategically focused and spiritually filled.  Her plan at Judson is to be a steward of an extraordinary legacy and to carry the church into the 21s century in terms of organization, vision, resources and courage.  Schaper is no stranger to controversy, having led her Miami congregation through an institutional transformation that opened it to gays, Jews, anti-war protests, significant membership growth and fund and fun raising on behalf of the poor and outcast.  Her 34 published books tell the tale of her interfaith marriage, her pioneer as an ordained woman, her quiet spirituality and noisy activism. Most recently she wrote PRAYERS FOR PEOPLE WHO THINK THEY CAN’T (Abingdon) and SPIRITUAL PREPARATION FOR DEATH AND DYING, Church Publishing.  One of the first women trained by Saul Alinsky, the founder of community organization strategies, Schaper has focused on issues of political and economic development and interfaith and open rituals which support action for social change.

 At Judson she has pioneered work with the New York City New Sanctuary Movement to protect those immigrants being detained or deported unjustly as well as making Judson a home for Occupy and Occupy Faith.  She has continued Judson’s legacy as a haven for women who insist on the right to choose an abortion and opened the building to countless groups, including Hudson River Clearwater, Domestic Workers and Sex workers organizations, while maintaining its work on harm reduction kits, support for GLBTQ people and especially for homeless gay youth.  She has initiated cooperation with NYU, especially through its Spiritual Life Center, now across the street, and has pioneered multifaith liturgy with the campus ministries at NYU. She has presided over a growing congregation and Sunday School and developed a community ministry program which has over nine years a total of 57 year long interns who are prepared to do Judson’s brand of public ministry from a parish base.  She has also nurtured the arts through Bailout Theater, a site for emerging artists to perform in a cabaret atmosphere, while also bringing free food to the growing numbers who come, and developed the “Gym at Judson,” a workout space for the arts.