Rumi Forum Scriptural Reasoning: Stewardship

This is a hybrid event. The Zoom link for this session will be provided the day of the event.

Scriptural Reasoning (SR) is a practice where Christians, Jews, and Muslims study each other’s sacred texts. SR participants meet once a month to read short passages from their respective scriptures on a certain topic. Facilitated by a study leader, each session is an opportunity to listen and share various perspectives. SR sessions help participants reflect on a curious list of topics within the Abrahamic tradition. The result is often a deeper understanding of others and one’s own scriptures, as well as the development of strong bonds across faith communities.

Our study leader for this session will be Mother Sara Palmer:

Mother Sara was chosen to serve as the 9th and first female Rector of All Souls’ Episcopal Church in Washington DC. She began working at All Souls on January 2nd, 2024.

Her first career in England was as a teacher of French and German in a Middle and High School near London. God called her to become a Spanish-speaking church-planting missionary with the Church of England in Bolivia, having studied at Bible and then Missionary College in England. She worked with an English family to start a new congregation in Santa Cruz, the second largest city in Bolivia, where she preached, taught Bible to the women and helped lead the Sunday School and youth group. She met and married her husband David, a missionary with the American Episcopal Church in La Paz. After three years, they moved to the USA. The newly planted congregation Cristo, Luz del Mundo, continues to grow and has their own building and land.

Mother Sara tutored privately in Spanish and French in the USA, then taught Spanish at college level in Rochester, NY and Charlotte, North Carolina. She was hired by the Diocese of North Carolina as lay Hispanic Missioner to help four small rural congregations plant a Latino congregation in Salisbury, NC. This congregation thrived and grew from 2002 to 20012 when the funding stopped. She entered the ordination process and attended the Virginia Theological School where she was awarded her M.Div. magna cum laude in 2010. After ordination to the priesthood in 2011, Mother Sara worked for six years as Assistant to the Rector in High Point, NC; she served as Rector of Holy Trinity in Oxford, Ohio, for four years, starting various ministries and reaching out to students at Miami University; she was Senior Associate Rector at St Mary’s, Arlington for three plus years, before being hired at All Souls in DC.

She is passionate about sharing God’s love and helping people grow in their relationship with God. She is delighted to have opportunities to speak French and Spanish, and to engage in interfaith dialogue. She is active in supporting social justice issues and international outreach.

Before this, she served as Senior Associate Rector at St. Mary’s in Arlington, VA where she had clergy oversight of Pastoral Care, Spiritual Formation, and the relationship with the Santa Maria congregation. She served as Assistant to the Rector at Saint Mary’s, High Point, North Carolina from 2010 to 2016, and then as Rector of Holy Trinity in Oxford, Ohio from 2016 to 2020. At Holy Trinity, she led the outreach to students at Miami University, leading a Bible study for them.

Mother Sara completed her Master of Divinity degree at Virginia Theological Seminary in 2010. She and her husband David, a music professor and musician, met in Bolivia where they served as church-planting missionaries with the Anglican Church. They have one adult son, Steven who lives in Ohio.

We would like to thank Rose Castle Foundation for their permission to use www.scripturalreasoning.org content.

A map of the VTS campus can be found here.

The text pack for this session can be found here.