Who's Who at ECP

The Rev. Peter French
Episcopal Chaplain at Princeton University

It is with much excitement that I join the Episcopal Church at Princeton as your new Chaplain in August 2008. The many members of ECP who I have met through these past months of mutual discernment have displayed many of the gifts the Episcopal Church rightly values: hospitality, openness, prayerfulness and a deep desire to discern the call of God in Christ in our lives. Praying and dining alongside both staff and student members of the Episcopal Church at Princeton has already been a great delight and I sincerely and joyfully look forward to sharing in worship, prayer, ministry and hospitality as we begin the new academic year together in September 2008.

I was born in Hertfordshire, England and grew up in Melbourne, Australia, from where I moved to Chicago, Illinois in 2006. Having completed a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in ancient and modern history at the University of Melbourne, I commenced a Bachelor of Theology at the United Faculty of Theology Melbourne where I majored in biblical studies. My concurrent seminary training was undertaken at Trinity College, the University of Melbourne and included seminarian internships in suburban parishes, rural Victoria and Nice, France. I was made deacon and ordained priest in 1999 in the rural Diocese of Wangaratta and enjoyed four years of ministry there as a parish priest and hospital chaplain. For the next four years I found a great deal of fulfilment ministering as Chaplain to the residential community at Trinity College, the University of Melbourne. Whilst residing at Trinity I commenced a PhD in the Art History Department of the University, my dissertation entitled 'David Wright: A New Antipodean Religious Iconography', a most enjoyable project I intend to finish in 2010.

In 2006, my wife the Revd Robyn Whitaker, an ordained minister of the Uniting Church of Australia, accepted a scholarship to the University of Chicago and has recently completed her second year of a PhD in the Divinity School working in New Testament Studies. Robyn has experience as a parish minister, a high school chaplain, and as dean of a seminary, and she and I are very much looking forward to engaging with the wide breadth of academic, spiritual and social opportunities available at Princeton.

Since moving to Chicago, I have worked in parish ministry in the city's south side, as Associate Rector of Grace Episcopal Church, Hinsdale, and as an adjunct professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at Elmhurst College. Over the past few years both Robyn and I have enjoyed travelling, including to South Africa, Turkey, Austria and Jamaica. We both very much enjoy cooking and good wine, the company of a wide-range of people, spending time in the garden and viewing and collecting art.

It is with great delight we join the community at ECP and we very much look forward to meeting members old and new of the vibrant, healthy and exciting ministry that my accomplished predecessor the Revd Dr Steve White has nourished and supported so successfully over these past few years.

With my warmest regards and blessings,

Stephen Buzard
Director of Music

I'm from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and found my love for music as a chorister and later organ scholar at the Episcopal Chapel of St. John the Divine on the University of Illinois campus. I studied piano for nine years and organ for three years. And I served as organist for First Presbyterian Church in Urbana. I am a sophomore at Westminster Choir College and am studying organ performance, though I might double-major in sacred music as well as organ performance. In addition, I am the junior organ scholar at Trinity Episcopal Church, Princeton.

I am a member of the American Guild of Organists (AGO), the Royal College of Organists, and the Herbert Howells Society. I've attended many Royal School of Church Music summer courses, two AGO Pipe Organ Encounters, and a week-long summer seminar for organ scholars in Oxford.

Although music is my passion, I have some other interests too. With a couple of friends I started a cricket club that meets on Sunday afternoons to play an inning or two. I also enjoy watching Brit-coms - a good anglophile all around! My favorite academic subject is philosophy, with history as a close second.

Making music in the magnificent space of Princeton Chapel and in the context of this excellent campus ministry is wonderful experience and I hope many of you will come out to sing in the choir or share your musical gifts in other ways!