Presences

About this book

Bishop Moore's life demonstrates the ways deep faith and strong social commitments can influence each other. Shortly after returning from military service, Moore entered the Episcopal ministry in New York City and was trained for ordination at the General Theological Seminary in Chelsea. At his first parish, Grace Church van Vorst, in a decaying section of Jersey City, he pioneered a new kind of urban ministry. As Dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Indianapolis, he struggled to reconcile his activism with the traditional social mores of the Midwest. In the 1960s, as Suffragan Bishop of Washington, D.C., he led rallies in support of civil rights (traveling to Mississippi during Freedom Summer) and protests against the Vietnam War. Then, in seventeen years as Bishop of New York, Moore brought the Church into dialogue with the poor and oppressed people of the city, acted to open the Episcopal clergy to women and gay people, and campaigned on behalf of human rights in South Africa, Nicaragua, the Soviet Union, East Timor, and elsewhere. Meanwhile, he faced the long illness and death of his first wife, Jenny; found new love with his present wife, Brenda; and raised his large family in the thick of the generational conflicts of the era, which were sharpened by his prominence as a clergyman. Moore writes movingly of the presence of God in his life, and stresses the importance of the Church's presence as a witness against the injustices in our country and abroad.