Religion: New Pastorate, New Pastor

Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes.—Isaiah 54:2

One of New York City’s oldest and most famed churches was busy last week lengthening its cords and strengthening its stakes. Only a block and a half from the twin towers of 100-year-old St. George’s on once-fashionable Stuyvesant Square, an 18-block housing development was abuilding. This project and others nearby might mean a tripling of St. George’s 3,453 membership, a proportionate expansion of its extensive community activities. The challenge fitted St. George’s tradition and was welcome.

Social Christianity. Under the leadership of tall, dominating Dr. William S. Rainsford, rector from 1883 to 1905, St. George’s became the first great “institutional” church in the U.S. Rector Rainsford knew how to get hard work as well as hard cash from the rich among his parishioners,* startled ecclesiastical mossbacks by organizing a trade school, sewing school, boys’ club, men’s club and summer camps under church auspices. Young clergymen coveted appointments as his assistants to learn this new technique of urban church-with-community-center. St. George’s set a popular pattern.

After Pioneer Rainsford’s retirement, the church’s liberal, socially conscious tradition was carried on under high-church-baiting Dr. Karl Reiland,* since 1936 under solemn pacifist Dr. Elmore McKee. Last June, after ten years’ service, 50-year-old Dr. McKee resigned because of “fatigue.” Next month, a new rector will take over: tall (6 ft. 3 in.), bespectacled Edward Miller, 31. Born in St. Louis, he was graduated from Harvard (where he was fencing captain), studied for a year at Cambridge, then at New York’s General Theological Seminary before taking his present job as assistant rector of Christ Church in Cincinnati.

The Holy Table. The brownstone exterior of young Rector Miller’s new church matches the gloom within. Most noteworthy of its furnishings: instead of an altar, St. George’s has a “Holy Table”—approachable from all sides by communicants. Adjacent to the church are three “outbuildings,” two of them residences where young men & women starting careers in New York can get a room and two meals a day for $16.50 a week. The third, the parish house, teems with the activities of 17 parish organizations. One of its biggest projects: a medical clinic where two dentists, two doctors and a hygienist care for some 70 patients a week.

Says clinic director Katharine Mang: “The parish feels that in maintaining a clinic it is only following Christ’s injunction of ministry to the whole man.” Plans for the future include acquisition of two new assistant rectors to bring the clergy to a total of five.

Says liberal Edward Miller of his new job: “St. George’s has shown that the more a church strives to include all people, the more it bears faithful witness to God’s pattern for peace. . . . The Holy Table at St. George’s has for generations been a meeting point at which men of all classes and races could gather—a constant reminder that God cares for all men. . . . When people of different backgrounds and interests learn to share their hopes and beliefs within a parish, the foundations of world understanding are being laid.”

*Among them: J.P. Morgan the Elder, Columbia University’s Seth Low, Financier Robert Fulton Cutting. *Who once observed, in an address to the New York Lutheran Ministers Association: “In the Episcopal Church the bishop is an interesting decoration. We must have someone around to say grace at banquets.”

* Among them: J. P. Morgan the Elder, Columbia University’s Seth Low, Financier Robert Fulton Cutting.