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| | East Harlem Protestant Parish, founded 1948When ex-GI ministers and Union alumni Bill Webber, Don Benedict, and J. Archie Hargraves opened a church in one of New York's worst slum districts, Webber was told, "You’ll never last here." But after two years, The New York Herald Tribune's "This Week" magazine reported that their experiment in what Hargraves called "hard-working practical religion" was still going strong. Offshoots from the East Harlem Protestant Parish thrive today in the vicinity of East 100th Street.
J. Archie Hargraves '48 leads worship in an East Harlem Protestant Parish storefront church. |
EAST HARLEM PROTESTANT PARISH: 1948-1968"For two of my years at Union, I lived and worked in East Harlem with clergy and lay people, while I learned from so many great teachers. This hands-on, practical work was invaluable. But it was because my field experience was grounded in specific theological reflection that I was able to develop the principles that have guided me since."
– noted educator David Hornbeck ['66]
In 1948, J. Archie Hargraves ['48], George (Bill) Webber ['48], and Donald Benedict ['49] gathered funds from several denominations and some interdenominational sources and set up a "store-front parish system" in the East Harlem neighborhood, where over 300,000 people lived jammed together in a little over a square mile from 96th to 125th Street. According to an early 1950s Parish pamphlet, the atmosphere was "tense with hatred, fear, discrimination, and conflict; people were separated by "race, religion, language, and culture." By 1953, the East Harlem Protestant Parish (EHPP) had set up four storefront churches and offered practical and spiritual help to people of all ages.
Bruce Kenrick, in his 1962 book, Come Out the Wilderness: the Story of East Harlem Protestant Parish, wrote that mainly through Bill Webber, "more than 500 students were to do field work in East Harlem, and over twenty were to commit themselves to a long-term ministry there." Webber divided his time between duties as Union's Dean of Students and duties of the Parish from 1950 to 1957.
Today, several Parish offshoots thrive, including the Church of the Resurrection at 325 East 101st Street. Three of the original storefront parishes combined to build this church in 1964.
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