WNY Today

A Prayer to Guide our Search

Be with us and guide us, Holy Spirit of God, as we seek your will for the future of our Diocese. Help us to discern the needs and hopes of your people in Western New York, so that our search for a Bishop may proceed with clear vision and joyful obedience. We pray through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

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WNY Today

Buffalo today is indebted to its industrial history, which brought wealth and prosperity to the city and allowed it to grow into a center of art and architecture. From the rebuilding of the Larkin Exchange Building to the reopening of Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in the newly restored

Asbury Delaware Church

Asbury Delaware Church, Buffalo's programs of preservation have revitalized historic landmarks for public use and enjoyment.

Buffalo is recognized as a national center for medical research and treatment, especially in cardiology, neurology, orthopedics, and cancer. In the city of Buffalo alone, there are 11 medical facilities serving Western New York and Northwestern Pennsylvania. Roswell Park Cancer Research Center has become a national leader in cancer research, prevention, and treatment. The world-renowned Cleveland Clinic is just four hours away, and Strong Memorial Medical Center in Rochester also serves the region. Kaleida Health Care Systems and the University at Buffalo have recently broken ground on a new vascular center in Buffalo that is the largest new medical construction project in the United States.

Buffalo is also a major center for higher education. The University at Buffalo is the largest and most comprehensive campus in the 64-campus SUNY system. With 28,000 students on two Buffalo campuses, it is central to the intellectual and cultural life of the city. The university offers a wide variety of premier theatre, music, and dance performances from September to May, as well as lectures and innovative education programs for the community, including a visit by the Dalai Lama in 2008. Nine other colleges and universities in the city of Buffalo offer a range of undergraduate and graduate programs designed for both traditional and non-traditional students. Within 90 minutes drive of Buffalo are over 10 additional private and public universities, in addition to community colleges and professional schools. The Episcopal Diocese of Western New York administers the Deveaux Scholarship Fund for students at Niagara University, located near Niagara Falls.

Kleinhan's Music Hall home of The Buffalo Philharmonic

Today, Buffalo is emerging as a national center for the arts. It is home to 14 professional theatres: Broadway musicals at Shea's Performing Arts Center, classic and contemporary musical theatre at the Lancaster Opera House and other community theatres, the greatest works of dramatic literature at the Irish Classical Theatre Company and the Jewish Repertory Theatre, pieces by African-Americans and people of color at Ujima Theatre and the Paul Robeson Theatre, and work by undiscovered playwrights at the Alleyway Theatre. In the summertime Shakespeare in Delaware Park is the second largest outdoor Shakespeare festival in the country.

Buffalo has a long tradition of rich and innovative musical performances. The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and its Music Director, JoAnn Falletta, are world-renowned. The variety of musical venues reflects the city's cultural diversity: experimental and avant-garde music at Soundlab, alternative rock at Mohawk Place, and jazz, roots rock, blues, country and soul on any evening of the week at small venues throughout the city. Ani DeFranco renovated the Asbury Delaware Church to be a first-class performance space and headquarters for Righteous Babe Records; 10,000 Maniacs had their start in Jamestown, and the GooGoo Dolls alternative rock band calls Buffalo home.

Albright-Knox Art Gallery

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery offers a haven of fine art, music, and light dining in the center of the city. Across the street, on the campus of Buffalo State College, the newly constructed Burchfield Penney Art Center is a gallery devoted to the work of visionary water-colorist Charles Burchfield and other regional artists. In addition to other smaller galleries in the city, a former windshield wiper factory has become the Buffalo Arts Studio, a home to potters, painters, and photographers charting provocative new directions in contemporary art.

Residents of Western New York can also easily take advantage of the cultural opportunities across the border in Toronto (about 90 minutes drive), the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the Lake, and amusement parks on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Closer to home, the summer program at the Chautauqua Institution, located on the shore of Lake

Episcopal Chapel at Chautauqua

Chautauqua, encompasses the arts, education, religion, and recreation. Welcoming people from across the country from June through August, Chautauqua provides a lecture series with world-renowned speakers, plays, operas, classes, popular entertainment, and opportunities for sailing, golf, tennis, and swimming, as well as children's summer camps. The Diocese of Western New York owns the Episcopal Chapel at Chautauqua and operates the Episcopal Cottage on the grounds. Founded in 1874, Chautauqua has been the stage for historic speeches by Susan B. Anthony, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Margaret Mead, Eli Wiesel, Thurgood Marshall, Sandra Day O'Conner, Kurt Vonnegut, and others. Many Western New Yorkers visit for a day or for a week, finding in a community of kindred spirits the renewal of faith and mind.

Sports are an important part of Western New York culture, for Western New Yorkers are avid sports fans. Local churches know to schedule fall events with the Buffalo Bills' games in mind and to end evening meetings before the third period of a Buffalo Sabres game. The Buffalo Bisons minor league baseball team and the Buffalo Bandits LaCrosse team draw enthusiastic crowds. Whether our teams win or lose, we tend to be practical optimists in all things.

Outside Buffalo, Western New York is largely rural. It includes the fruit orchards of Niagara and Orleans Counties and the rolling farmlands of Genesee and Wyoming Counties. Dairy farms and cheese factories are scattered in Cattaraugus County, and the vineyards of Niagara and Chautauqua Counties supply grapes for both wine and fruit preserves. Here, as in the cities, job losses caused by the decline in manufacturing have generated innovative new economies. Indeed, in the last decade winery trails have become popular tourist destinations along the shores of Lake Ontario in Niagara County and Lake Erie in Chautauqua County.

Niagara Falls is the most famous and magnificent of the natural wonders in Western New York and attracts millions of tourists each year. It is also the site of two revolutionary marvels of engineering. The first is the Roebling Suspension Bridge (named for the family of engineers who later built the Brooklyn Bridge), which opened in 1855; with the capacity to carry traffic on two levels-rail traffic above and carriages below-this bridge provided the shortest possible route between the East Coast and the growing cities of Detroit and Chicago. The second is the Edward Dean Adams hydroelectric generating station, which opened in 1895; it was the first commercial-scale producer of alternating current, which could be sent over great distances. As a result, for the first time electricity became an easily-obtained, dependable source of power for humanity.

The Niagara Falls Reservation was the first of New York's State Parks, and there are five other State Parks within easy driving distance of Buffalo, in addition to many campgrounds, nature preserves, wildlife refuges, and lakes. The opportunities for outdoor activities abound: downhill and cross-country skiing, kayaking and canoeing, hiking and bicycling, hunting and fishing. In fact, the readers of Ski Magazine have named Holiday Valley Ski Resort in Ellicottville the fourth best winter resort in North America. (St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Jamestown holds a service of Holy Eucharist at the ski slopes ("service on the slopes") every Sunday during ski season. Indeed, truth be told, on a summer Sunday Episcopalians in Western New York are just as likely to be in their campers, on their boats, or touring country roads on their bicycles or motorcycles, as they are to be in church.

Cultural and ethnic diversity has characterized Western New York since the 1840s, when the development of regional railways brought European

Amish communities

immigrants to the Buffalo area. Distinctive Polish, Irish, and Italian neighborhoods lie side by side with Hispanic and African-American neighborhoods and growing communities of refugees from Haiti, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Burma (Myanmar). Because Buffalo was the last stop on the underground railroad before slaves were taken across the Niagara River to Canada and freedom, a substantial African-American community has thrived in Buffalo since the 1860s; St. Philip's Episcopal Church, the seventh oldest African-American congregation in the United States, was founded in 1861 and incorporated in 1865. St. Paul's-Lewiston was a haven for escaped slaves waiting to cross into Canada. Small Amish communities exist in Niagara, Genesee, Cattaraugus, and Chautauqua counties, while the Cattauragus and Tonawanda Indian Reservations are centers where Native American culture exerts an important social and spiritual influence in the region. Indeed, the first Rector of Trinity Church-Buffalo was a Native American priest from North Carolina, and the current Rector of The Church of the Good Shepherd-Irving is Native American.

Delaware Park

Western New York's reputation for snow and cold winters makes for good stories. Very shortly after arriving, any newcomer is certain to hear someone tell about the days before schools closed for snow days, when everyone walked miles to school in knee-deep snow, against the wind, and uphill both ways. But most Western New Yorkers will also say that they choose to live in a region with four distinct seasons where they can balance body, mind, and spirit, where their children will know their great-grandparents and where social life revolves around family gatherings. Those of us who are called to be the Body of Christ in this place find in its challenges the promise of resurrection and the mandate of Matthew 25.35-36:

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. . . . Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.

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