PAPA has stood as a witness to the fruits of inter-faith parthership in its 150 plus years of collegiality and service to the greater Peekskill area. We do not know the exact date of PAPA’s founding. We do know that sometime prior to 1850 an association of several protestant churches from the Peekskill area organized volunteers from both black and white congregations to house refugees escaping slavery in the south as part of the underground railroad. Peekskill was a strong center for the Abolitionist movement. One of PAPA’s earliest clergy was the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, famous abolitionist, Congregational Mininster and friend of Frederick Douglas.
Diversity is a value that has defined the association from the beginning. A meeting roster from 1921 lists 34 churches, including clergy from six Roman Catholic parishes. It is not clear from the record when Synagogues joined the association, however, we know that it was sometime prior to 1980 when Rabbi Bernard Rosenberg of the First Hebrew Congregation appears in the minutes as an officer.
PAPA continues to grow in its religious diversity. In 2005 the first Islamic congregation joined PAPA, the Hudson Valley Islamic Community Center in Mohegan Lake. In 2006, the first Orthodox parish of the Eastern rite joined our association: The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.
The congregations of PAPA have been gathering to worship as one body for over 150 years, and possibly longer. In years past, the PAPA Thankgiving Community Worship Service was a major community wide event with over 200 community members in attendance each year. The service participants included members of the City Council, the Mayor of Peekskill, and other public servants of the community. The Thanksgiving Community Worship Service continues to be an annual worship event of PAPA.
The pooling of congregational resources to offer programs that serve people in need has been a long standing tradition. PAPA has offered a Thanksgiving Day dinner to disadvantaged families since 1969. In the 1980’s PAPA offered a pastoral support program for widows and widowers. Also in the 1980’s a Parish Nursing network was organized. In 1988, PAPA organized a drop-in center to give temporary shelter to homeless people in the Peekskill area. The City of Peekskill partnered with PAPA to shelter the homeless in the basement of the Salvation Army. The Jan Peek Homeless Shelter was born when PAPA organized a community board to oversee the shelter. The board was named CHOP (Caring for the Homeless of Peekskill). In 1989 a volunteer chaplain program was organized and launched at the Hudson Valley Hospital. Dr. Janet Foy served as the Volunteer Coordinator of the chaplains program for 16 years. In 2005 the Hospital Administration hired previous PAPA President, Margret Byrne as the chaplain program’s first paid director.
PAPA has been a voice of conscience, applying principles of faith to the challenges of local and national strife. It is likely that PAPA was organized in the context of the Abolition movement over 150 years ago. That tradition of principled dialogue with and action in the community has endured. Beginning in 1976, all clergy of PAPA took turns contributing to an op ed column in the Sunday issue of the Peekskill Star (later bought by the Journal News) called the “Clergy Corner”. In 1983 the name of this column was changed to “Isaiah’s Promise”. The column was discontinued in the late 1980’s. In 1977 Peekskill was in turmoil when teachers from the Lakeland High School refused to work without a contract. The teachers and the Board of Education were in a stalemate. The clergy of PAPA intervened to help the school overcome the impass.
This rich history is a testament to the strength and vitality that results when bodies of faith reach out across our doctrinal divides and join hands to worship, to serve and to speak out, in the greater community of God’s people.
