Morton to Direct Urban Center
Diocesan Press Service. August 7, 1964 [XXIII-12]
The Rev. James P. Morton, director of the Episcopal urban work program, has been named director of the ecumenical Urban Training Center for Christian Mission in Chicago, Ill. He will succeed the Rev. C. Kilmer Myers, who is to be consecrated Suffragan Bishop of Michigan in September.
Fr. Morton will assume his duties Nov. 1, the Rev. Joseph W. Merchant, chairman of the Center's board of directors and urban church director of the United Church of Christ, has announced.
Since his ordination to the priesthood 10 years ago, Fr. Morton has spent all of his ministry in urban church work. For eight years he was part of a team ministry at Grace Church in Jersey City, N. J., and for the past two years he has served as an associate secretary of National Council's Home Department. In the latter position, the 34-year-old priest has instigated and coordinated five regional conferences on metropolitan problems that have involved Episcopal and other clergymen, lay persons, city planning consultants and community service authorities across the country.
A man of diverse interests and talents, Fr. Morton graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University with a degree in architecture. But two years of post-graduate study at Trinity College in Cambridge, England, and a chance to study the worker-priest movement in France reversed his career directions and he returned to New York for theological study at General Theological Seminary. There he added a Bachelor of Divinity degree to two BA's and a Master of Arts degree, the latter two obtained at Trinity College, Cambridge.
As director of Chicago's Urban Training Center, Fr. Morton will coordinate an experimental, cooperative venture that initially will involve more than 300 clergy and laymen from all over the country. The program, to be launched in September, has the support of 12 major American churches and will provide an ecumenical training ground for clergymen, seminarians and lay persons interested in metropolitan mission.
Backing the Center's program are the Church of the Brethren, the United Church of Christ, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Augustana Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church, the Disciples of Christ, the Church of God, the American Baptist Church, the Reformed Church in America, the Episcopal Church, and the Presbyterian Church, U.S.
Fr. Myers has carved out a year-round curriculum that ranges from four to 36 week stretches. He has warned prospective candidates that participation in the program will be both "intense and brutal."
An example of this is a five-day "exposure period" for students to discover what it is like to be hungry and jobless. They will be turned out on Chicago's streets and forced to forage for themselves, either by finding a job or by begging at church or social agencies. In addition to the problem of unemployment, students also will deal with political action, racial conflict, juvenile delinquency, and other social issues that hang over the nation's 220 sprawling city centers.
To help finance the new training program, the Sealantic Fund of New York City recently granted a total of $415, 000 to be stretched over the next five years. The grant was made as part of the Sealantic Fund's current program in the field of Protestant theological education. At the end of the five-year period the participating churches will shoulder the Center's total operating budget.