Boston's Negro Bishop

The new suffragan bishop of the nation's most blueblooded Episcopal diocese is the son of a dining-car waiter on the Pere Marquette Railroad. Upon his consecration two weeks ago as one of the two auxiliaries to Boston Bishop Anson Phelps Stokes Jr., the Rt. Rev John Melville Burgess became the first Negro/- ever to serve the Protestant Episcopal Church as spiritual leader in a predominantly white diocese.

Square and scholarly-looking. Bishop Burgess, 53. was elected on solid qualifications. He did advanced study in sociology at the University of Michigan be fore graduating from the Episcopal Theo logical School at Cambridge, Mass., in 1934. After his ordination, he served a clerical apprenticeship at churches in Grand Rapids and Cincinnati. In 1946 he was called to the chaplaincy of Washing ton's Howard University, and five years later became a canon of Washington Cathedral. Until his consecration, Burgess was Archdeacon of Boston and supervisor of the Episcopal City Mission. Burgess was chosen for the suffragan bishopric over four white candidates on the first ballot at a convention of diocesan priests last September.

Burgess takes his election as an assignment to make his church face up more directly to race-relations problems. He believes that progress in civil rights for the Negro has been "miraculous," but that "of all the institutions, the church has been the least able to adjust to the change in racial atmosphere." The reason: "The church is too much white middleclass, and reflects too much the conservatism of this social and economic group. There is fear that the church might take too rad ical a stand."

Bishop Burgess will continue to command the efforts of his diocese--which comprises roughly the eastern half of Massachusetts--to meet the new religious needs of inner Boston. He wants to expand the church's chaplaincy services to universities in the Boston area, and thinks that the church should develop a pro gram of chaplains for industry to bridge the gap between religion and the workingman. "The church," he says, "should try to make religion relevant to the needs of all kinds of people. The church is not a sect organized around a particular doc trine or Biblical text. It is a great fellow ship bound by loyalty to Christ."

/- Liberia has two Negro Episcopal bishops, and the Virgin Islands will soon have one. Both Arkansas and North Carolina have had Negro suffragans whose supervision was limited to non-white parishes.

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