A Song in the Night (15 page)

This peculiar invisibility may have reflected an age-old debate within Christianity about whether Christians should consider themselves active parts of this world, in all its complexity and contradiction, or adhere to a set of values that were by definition radically different. Put another way, in what way should one’s beliefs alter one’s behavior? Even John the Baptist had been asked by a cross-sampling of his followers what they should actually do to put his message of repentance into daily practice. And Jesus had been understood by some of his followers to say that Christians should allow their daily and most conventional actions to be guided by faith in God while suggesting that the world was governed by false assumptions and would soon be replaced.

Another possible explanation why people in seminaries did not talk about economic life is that they simply did not know much about it. How many divinity school students—or faculty—got up every morning filled with curiosity about what
was going to be on the business page? How many divinity school students had a background in business or training in finance or management? When I was in school, the answer was very few. I immediately tried to increase the number of opportunities for the divinity school community to learn more about the corporate world. I organized a small discussion group called the Economics and Ethics Research Center and even won a few small research grants to look at specific problems in Connecticut. I designed a course on corporate responsibility and somehow persuaded two faculty members to teach it with me.

Faced with my intense interest, people sometimes marveled or objected. “But how can you talk about all these things when you don’t really know anything about business?” In one sense it was an attack on my credentials, and thus my right to speak. I have always rejected this point of view as undemocratic. Citizens should be able to discuss anything they want and apply whatever values seem relevant to them. If we start barring people from conversations because they lack professional training, our ability to talk about our collective choices will erode.

At the same time, I recognized that there was an element of truth in my fellow students’ criticism. Despite my reading, my course, and my time in Washington, there were still many things I did not understand about business. If my intention was to become a strong and fair advocate for integrating economic creativity and political or religious purpose, then I needed to learn more. Within a year of returning to divinity school, I
had applied for and was admitted to a two-year degree program at the Yale School of Management, which was to begin the following year.

At this time I was also under the supervision of the Episcopal bishop of New York, Paul Moore, Jr. Paul was the model of a patrician clergyman, born on an enormous estate in Long Island and educated at St. Paul’s and Yale. He had become an officer in the Marines and was wounded in battle. When he returned to civilian life, he could easily have become an investment banker or a politician. But he chose the ministry and launched on a bold career as a leader for social justice, taking positions in poor churches, leading marches, and speaking out fearlessly. He led the national church forward on civil rights and was one of the first bishops to ordain women. Given his breeding and appearance—he was as tall as a flagpole, with silver hair and a gravelly bass voice—it was perhaps inevitable that he would become a bishop. Eventually he became bishop of New York, presiding over the largest diocese and the largest cathedral in the country, St. John the Divine. Because I was within his jurisdiction, I had been sent to him. He would make the ultimate decision about whether to ordain me.

One day he came to New Haven (he was a trustee of Yale University) and invited me to lunch. I reviewed my ideas about going to the School of Management. He thought that going to business school was an excellent idea and that I could have a major effect over time. I beamed.

“But you know, Bob,” he said, “you are also very young. So I have a suggestion that you might want to consider.”

I looked at him with hesitation.

“You might want to defer going on to study management until you have had some practice in ministry. If you move forward with your ordination, you could join a parish and learn about how to be a minister directly. And then, after a year or two, you could go back.”

I thought about it. The school would accept deferments of up to two years.

“You would learn a lot about humanity in this role. When you are asked by people to participate in their weddings, their children’s baptisms, their slow decline, and their funerals, you come to love people even more,” he said, looking at me across the lunch table. “Listening and responding to people’s questions week in and week out will deepen your knowledge and your wisdom.” He paused. “But you should do what you feel called to do. It’s just something to consider.”

I went home and I did consider it, and I decided that he was right.

The end of my time at Yale Divinity School was marked by several momentous personal milestones. In March 1982 I became engaged to Dana Robert, a brilliant Ph.D. student in the Yale Religious Studies Department, who had grown up in Louisiana. In June I stood at the front of the local village parish of St. Barnabas in Irvington, New York, surrounded by friends and family, as Paul Moore laid his hands on me and ordained me a deacon. Following the order of service, I stood directly
in front of the bishop, who looked straight into my eyes. He adopted his most formal voice and gave me my charge. My responsibility, he said, was “to serve all people, particularly the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely.”

As I heard these words, I hoped that somehow, in some way, I might be able to fulfill this commitment.

In August, after more than nine months of searching, I moved to New York City to begin as an assistant minister—the most junior among five—at a magnificent and thriving congregation, Grace Church in Manhattan. In November, at a ceremony in Baton Rouge, Dana and I were married. In less than twelve months I had been transformed from an unmarried and unemployed student who could have ended up anywhere in the world into a married clergyman in one of the most amazing communities in New York City.

Nestled on the line between Greenwich Village and the East Village, Grace Church was a radiant force in the middle of the city. Designed by James Renwick in 1846 and built largely of white marble, the sanctuary was decorated with extraordinary stained glass windows, including one designed by Tiffany. The spire soared skyward on the corner of Tenth Street and Broadway. A few blocks west of the church lay Washington Square Park, originally the paupers’ burial ground. To the east was the bustling East Village, filled with marvelous eateries offering everything from Italian pastries and Polish sausages to Hungarian stuffed cabbage and vegan stews. The streets were filled with students, immigrants, artists, service employees, and drug addicts. After we were married, Dana
and I settled into a church-owned apartment on the top floor of Grace Church School, where I also served as the chaplain. My salary was tiny and barely covered our minimal needs, but we also had a free apartment with hardwood floors in New York City, prompting some of my visiting friends from college to ask if it was still possible for them to apply to divinity school.

Paul Moore had been right: the shift from being someone who thought about ministry in the abstract to someone who was serving a real congregation was transformative. Week after week I stood in the vast sanctuary with the great Te Deum window behind me, the long nave aisle leading to the rose window of the narthex before me. I regularly was invited by the senior staff to lead the service. On the table in front of me lay the polished silver paten and chalice given by generations now long gone, the white fair linen, the open prayer book, and the simple sacramental elements of bread and wine.

I would watch the people approach the altar rail—the young and the old, the strong and the frail, the honored and the despised, the joyful and the tortured. All would kneel; all would stretch out their hands to receive something that a material world could not give: hope, forgiveness, and deliverance. I was privileged to glimpse their eyes and see their longing assuaged, not through anything I had done but through some mysterious yet evident love that was reaching out to them.

There were many lovely aspects of serving in that community. The congregation was huge, filled with hundreds of young people in their twenties and thirties, many of whom had come to New York City to build their careers as actors, singers,
writers, painters, and dancers. Their vibrant creativity pulsed through the congregation and made the services hum with energy. Among the older, more established members of the church I found a cross section of remarkable people, many of whom invited me into their homes. I met the widow of the great economist Adolph Berle, whose book on corporate governance had established the theory through which Franklin Roosevelt had created the Securities and Exchange Commission. I came to know many faculty and deans from the different colleges and universities. Other extraordinary and well-known people regularly visited the church on Sunday.

As I came to know the community and I was invited month after month to speak to the congregation from the pulpit, I found my voice. The school, which taught children from kindergarten through eighth grade, asked me to talk once a week to them about Bible stories. I quickly discovered that if I read the stories, the students immediately lost interest, but if I told them or we acted them out, they found them electrifying. And so I learned to narrate, without notes, the stories of Abraham and Sarah; Isaac and Rebekah; Jacob, Rachel, and Leah. I could talk about the life of Moses and the deliverance of the Hebrew people from bondage in Egypt. I could repeat the parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the Workers in the Vineyard. Eventually I brought this newfound skill into my sermons for adults, who reacted just as powerfully.

And, in a pattern that was now well established in my life, once I had settled in the community, I began to look more closely at the structure of the institution and to ask questions
about its values. The early 1980s were the period when President Reagan and Congress were cutting funding for the housing and care of people with mental illness, and the trend was toward moving people away from large facilities and back into communities, which often meant out onto the streets. The United States economy was also in a recession. I watched with a growing feeling of outrage as the number of homeless people increased all around me. I noticed and worried about the wretched and filthy men and women who would sneak into the church garden for a place to sleep. When the rector of the church, a remote and difficult man, decided to evict them every night, I boiled with frustration.

One day the superintendent of the church posted a prominent sign on the grass that said “
PRIVATE GARDEN
.” The notion that a church ostensibly committed to the poor was kicking people out of our manicured space infuriated me. I protested to my superiors and was overruled. So, in a rather juvenile act, I stole the sign late at night. A few days later the sign reappeared, this time bolted directly to the stone wall of the church. The next night I took a crowbar and started to pry it off again. In the middle of my act of vandalism, the number-two minister in the church, my friend and mentor Ken Swanson, heard the cracking noises and came rushing down with a baseball bat to scare away the crook. When he discovered me, he was both furious and amused. He scolded me but kept my secret.

As I entered my second year, the contradictions between the life of joy and ebullient generosity of the congregation and the misery of the people who rubbed up against our exterior walls bothered me more and more. Eventually my dismay
focused on two questions: our refusal to tackle the problem of homelessness and the church leadership’s unwillingness to examine the serious contradictions in our investment policies. I started to agitate about both.

To find out more about the problem of homelessness, I visited shelters and human service agencies around the city. One day I dressed in my most ragged clothes, put on an old down jacket, and pulled a wool cap tightly over my head, trying to approximate the standard outfit of a homeless man. The outfit did the trick; as I wandered the streets from morning until late at night, I was completely ignored by everyone. People refused to look at me. Fast-walking commuters steered a wide path around me. Vendors watched me with suspicion when I loitered in their shops. In the evening I lined up with hundreds of other men to have dinner at one of the city’s biggest shelters. I could sense the dank and edgy depression that engulfed many of them. After dinner I waited on a dirty chair to be told by a social worker where I could spend the night. While I sat there, a fight erupted in the hallway. When I stepped out to see what was happening, two policemen were punching an unshaven man and throwing him up against a wall, shouting at him to stop doing something. When a small trickle of blood appeared from his nose, they backed off. I felt powerless and frightened. When I was finally called in and told that the only place for me that night meant taking a bus and then a ferry in the dark with hundreds of other men to sleep in a warehouse outside the prison on Riker’s Island, I declined. I returned to my safe, quiet apartment and to my own bed, deeply shaken.