Collect Day #21 REV. JEFFREY CAMPBELL
God of all Wisdom and Universal Love, your Son Jesus Christ promises the establish of a “new heaven and a new earth where all people of the earth are siblings of one Creator, and yet we too often choose to struggle in the Hell of separateness rather than rejoice in the bliss of your loving kindness; Grant us grace, following the example of the Rev. Jeffrey Campbell, to proclaim the power of your Universal Love. May those in positions of religious leadership, when discerning pastoral gifts offered freely and faithfully to the service of both church and society, resist their own fear and impulse to protect the status quo of racial privilege, in your Holy Name we pray. Amen.
DAY #21, March 29, 2019
NASHUA, NH
THE REV. JEFFREY CAMPBELL (1910 -1984)
Harry Purkhiser
Jeffrey Worthington Campbell was born in Boston in 1910; his sister, Marguerite, in 1916. Their father, Jeffrey Sr., was Black, and their mother, Lillian, was White. Jeffrey Sr. was killed in a racially motivated attack when his son was 12. The family moved to Nashua, NH, around 1919 and Jeffrey, Marguerite, and Lillian became active members of the Universalist Church.
After high school, Jeffrey was accepted to the Theological School at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. He was the first African-American to enter this school and his presence immediately presented a challenge and soul-searching within the Universalist denomination. In Personality not Pigmentation, published in 1940 in The Christian Leader, Jeffrey wrote of his experience with the committee that granted him fellowship as a minister: “I shall never forget the Committee on Fellowship which examined me for ordination. Thirty minutes on my theology and four hours on my politics and racial attitudes.”
After graduating in 1933 and being ordained as a Universalist minister in 1935, Jeffrey was unable to find a permanent position in ministry. His race overshadowed all other considerations of his resume, despite supportive and glowing recommendations from the people who knew him. In 1938, the Unitarian denomination recognized Campbell as a minister by granting him fellowship on the basis of his Universalist credentials. But this acceptance did not lead to any permanent ministerial positions either.
During the mid-1930s, Jeffrey Campbell supported himself with part-time and temporary leadership positions. In 1951, after a stint in England, he took a position teaching English Literature at the Putney School in Vermont. He remained on the faculty there for the rest of his life, while also trying, repeatedly, to gain a full-time position as a UU minister. He never succeeded.
Despite his treatment, Campbell had unwavering faith in his church. He describes Universalists as a “band of men and women who, in the increasing chaos, can see ‘a new heaven and a new earth.’” But he also wrote: “It is the refusal of men to act on the reality of their common brotherhood which has produced the Hell in which we blindly struggle today.”
Though Jeffrey Campbell claims he became a Universalist because of the quantity of refreshments at Sunday School, it is clear he dedicated his life to this faith because he truly believed in the vision of universal love. Even near the end of his life, after all he had experienced, he wrote: “I would still undertake the call had I my life to relive.”
