Religion: Church for the Inner City

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The average young minister lately out of theological seminary does not, as a rule, look for assignment to a rundown church in the midst of an urban slum. But that was just what Robert W. Castle Jr. had in mind. Graduating from New Haven's Berkeley Divinity School, crew-cut Episcopalian Castle put in five years at two suburban New Jersey parishes, chafed all the while for a city mission. Then he was asked to take over St. John's in Jersey City, a crumbling brownstone and granite edifice which the Episcopal diocese of Newark had thought of shutting down for lack of parishioners.

In industrial cities across the U.S., hundreds of churches much like St. John's have closed, merged, or moved lock, stock and chalice to the suburbs, after the middle-class territories they served degenerated into slums. This decline of Protestant strength in the "inner city" worries church leaders, and Castle, whose own community has lost at least two Episcopal and one Presbyterian church in the past 15 years, shares their concern. "We need to turn out from ourselves to see the people God has given us the privilege to minister and serve," he says.

Transition. Largely because of Father Castle, now 32, St. John's is successfully surviving the transition from a church for the affluent to a mission for the poorest. Founded in 1871, it was once the most fashionable parish in town. The families who lived on "the Heights" were well-to-do, and the house of worship they built at 120 Summit Avenue was a monument to their generosity. The stained-glass windows were by Tiffany; the altar, pulpit and lectern were of the best Carrara marble.

Shortly after World War I, the old families began to move to newer suburbs. At first the neighborhood became predominantly Irish Catholic; then Italians came; then Negro and Puerto Rican families moved in. St. John's made little effort to approach these potential new parishioners. By 1960, when Castle became rector, the church had only one Sunday service; attendance rarely reached 100. Six days out of seven, the church and parish hall were locked to keep out intruders.

Open-Door Policy. Castle's first move was to keep the church doors open all day long for prayer and meditation. Because of St. John's past reputation for indifference to the poor, Castle walked the streets, inviting everyone he met to come to services, and rented storefronts where he gave daily religious services. To attract children into a new Young People's Fellowship group, he played basketball on city playgrounds with neighborhood boys, skipped rope with schoolgirls. Attendance at the three Sunday services he conducts now is seldom less than 400. The number of children enrolled in the church school has risen from 20 to 200—kids who in their scrubbed smiles and neat clothes would not have to shrink from comparison with the St. John's Sunday-school children of 50 years ago.