A Letter from NAAL President Driscoll
September 2002
Indianapolis, America's second monumental city, awaits your arrival January 2-5, 2003. The Indianapolis Hyatt has undertaken a vast renovation of the hotel situated in the heart of the city, caddy corner to the Indiana State Capitol, and the city offers all the amenities that one could possibly hope to find anywhere. Indianapolis, a city rich in arts and culture, history and heritage, time-honored traditions and endless possibilities, is the twelfth largest city in the United States and has undergone dramatic revitalization over the past ten years. Known as the Crossroads of America, Indianapolis is easily accessible from a wide variety of locations, as more interstate highways bisect this city than any other in the country. The Indianapolis International Airport offers travel on 21 airlines and makes nonstop and direct flights to more than 53 destinations and it's only a short 12-minute drive to the downtown where the NAAL will be meeting, just a block from the famous Soldier's and Sailor's Monument. The academy committee met at the hotel in June and we were very enthusiastic about this site for our 2003 meeting.
Among the many items of business transacted by the Academy Committee, I am pleased to announce the recipient of the Berakah award for 2003 and the creation of a new award that will be named to honor the memory of our esteemed, recently departed colleague, Godfrey Diekmann, OSB.
Earlier this summer I asked the membership for nominations for the Berakah Award and around fifteen names were submitted for the consideration of the Academy Committee. After thoughtful and careful deliberation the committee is pleased to announce that this year's recipient will be Hoyt L. Hickman. In the words of Ron Anderson, "Hoyt is a respected liturgical scholar, savvy bureaucrat, compassionate pastor, wise observer and counselor, pragmatic voice in times of disagreement and controversy, witness for justice, trusted friend, and avid conversationalist." He has served with extraordinary skill as an ecumenical leader and a judicatory specialist. He served as a member of the World Methodist Council from 1971-1981. He has also served as a member of the Consultation on Common Texts from 1970 to the present. He participated in the consultation’s development of the Common Lectionary (1983) and its revision as The Revised Common Lectionary (1992). A life-long Methodist, Hoyt was chairperson of worship in the Western Pennsylvania Conference from 1962-1968. He served as the executive secretary of the Worship Commission of The Methodist Church 1968-1972. In 1972 became the Director of Worship Resource Development for The General Board of Discipleship of The United Methodist Church, a position he held with distinction until his retirement in June of 1993. During that period, he gave critical and exceptional leadership in the revision of the worship and ritual of The United Methodist Church. According to his nominator, "More specifically, he, along with Don Saliers, Laurence Stookey, and James F. White formed what some have called the “Methodist mafia” in developing the “Supplemental Worship Resource” series. The series provided pastors and local churches post-Vatican II trial rituals of Holy Communion, Holy Baptism, Christian marriage, a Service of Death and Resurrection (funeral/memorial) as well as other volumes containing a three-year lectionary, and prayers and services for the Christian year." Hoyt engineered and staffed The United Methodist Church’s adoption of the official ritual texts contained its 1989 hymnal and in its 1992 book of worship, and has been called the Thomas Cranmer of 20th century United Methodism due to the revision of its prayer and ritual books. Hoyt is a member and leader in several significant scholarly communities. He has been a member of Societas Liturgica since the mid-1970s and attended its meetings in 1979, 1985, 1991, and 1997. He is a charter member of North American Academy of Liturgy and was a director on its Executive Committee 1976-77 and 1985-87, serving as the academy’s treasurer from 1992-1998. He taught worship courses during the spring semesters of 1978 and 1987 at Vanderbilt Divinity School, Vanderbilt University, and during the spring semesters of 1994 and 1996 at Drew University. He gave the Tipple Lecture in 1996 at Drew University on “The Theology of the Lord’s Supper in the New United Methodist Ritual.” The lecture was published in the Winter 1997 issue of Quarterly Review. Hoyt is a long time member of Fellowship of United Methodist in Music and Worship Arts and won its 1993 Roger Deschner Award for outstanding contributions to the worship life of the denomination. He was president of the Order of Saint Luke from 1965-68 and is a life member of the Order. He is an ordained elder (presbyter) and a clergy member of the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church.
I am pleased to announce the creation of a new award named in honor of the recently deceased Godfrey Diekmann, OSB. Godfrey spanned over six decades of teaching liturgy and the early Christian writers at Saint John's In Collegeville, MN, and other universities from the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., to the University of San Francisco. In the decades preceding the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Diekmann was involved in the liturgical renewal of the Catholic Church through his association with the Benedictine Rev. Virgil Michel, a pioneer of liturgical reform in the United States. At the death of Michel in 1938, Diekmann became the editor of the premiere journal of liturgical studies, Orate Fratres, later renamed Worship. The academy is pleased to honor the memory of our illustrious member by establishing this award, which can be given by the academy committee to a non-member who has made a substantial contribution to the liturgical life in North America. The academy is not bound to bestow this honor but may do so when the occasion merits. The academy committee decided to inaugurate this award for two reasons: first to honor Godfrey who worked tirelessly for liturgical renewal during his life, and second, to clarify the distinction that the Berakah Award is normally bequeathed to an academy member while the Diekmann award would be given to non-members.
The Academy Committee has decided that the first recipient of the Godfrey Diekmann OSB Award will be Edward Anders Sövik. Theologically adept, Evangelical Lutheran, architect, Ed Sövik has designed spaces for Christian worship for a half century. He worked on approximately 400 church related projects for Protestant and Roman Catholic communities, and has received numerous awards for his architectural design. He was one of the founding members of the North American Academy of Liturgy, but did not remain active in this learned society. Sövik has been a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects since 1967 and the first recipient of the Edward S. Frey Memorial Award for "great talent and long-term commitment in the field of religious architecture" from the Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture (IFRAA) in 1981, The next year he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Minnesota Society, American Institute of Architects (MSAIA). His publications are numerous and have shaped the ideas of many liturgists and architects concerned with the design of worship spaces for contemporary Christian communities. The academy would like to honor him with this award in Indianapolis at the closing Eucharist at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, which represents the largest renovation project of which Sövik was the primary architect. Mark Torgerson in his doctoral dissertation entitled Edward Anders Sövik and His Return to the "Non-Church" (Notre Dame, 1995) summarizes his contribution in the following words: "Sövik wanted to provoke people into reflecting upon their presence as Church and the space which they had a desire to construct for ministry. Sövik did not simply provide communities with plans for a worship space, execute those plans, and move on the next community. Sövik endeavored to lead each community through a process of education, presenting the people with a theological understanding of their worship space and its potential for service to the world" (p. 396).
Given that our keynote address this year will be made by Frank Burch Brown on the question of liturgical aesthetics, I hope that you will agree that Ed Sövik is a wonderful choice for the first recipient of the Diekmann Award. So mark your calendar, call your travel agent or visit your favorite travel website, and plan to be in Indianapolis January 2-5, 2003.
Signed,
Michael S. Driscoll
Theology Department
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN