The Episcopal Campus Ministry At Rutgers: A Quick History
G. R. Bishop, Jr. and John P. Newton


How it all got started. In the late 1940's, following World War II, when Rutgers University was overcrowded with returning veterans, Dr. Walter Stowe, the distinguished Rector of Christ Church, New Brunswick, and official national historian of the Episcopal Church, started a ministry for college students at Christ Church. Clarence Lambelet, a graduate student in the Department of Ceramic Engineering at Rutgers, became very interested in this work, which in turn inspired him to change careers and enter the priesthood. As he left Rutgers for the General Theological Seminary, in New York City, the Rev. Clarence Sickles (Rutgers College '45) was appointed assistant at Christ Church with special concern for campus ministry. About 1952, Fr. Sickles accepted another call and Clarence Lambelet, now ordained, was appointed in his place. Fr. Lambelet built and served the chaplaincy for the next seventeen years. In the meantime, Canon Stowe had deftly tied the Rutgers initiative to the Diocesan Foundation for College Work, the William Alexander Procter Foundation, and the Board of the Procter Foundation came to draw its trustees from Princeton, Rutgers and the Diocese of New Jersey, one- third from each.

In the early 1950's, meetings were held weekly during the school year on Sunday evenings, with a short evening prayer service, a presentation and discussion led by an invited speaker (most often a Rutgers professor), and a delicious light super served by the rector's wife, Marguerite Stowe, Elizabeth Durham (a graduate of the first class at Douglass College, 1922, who died in 2002 at the age of 102), and Mrs. Catherine Pierce. Attendance ranged from fifteen to thirty, as a vigorous group developed.

The next stage. A ministry had formed at Christ Church. A chaplain had been found, and a house had been bought for the chaplain: 5 Mine Street, strategically located in the middle of goings and comings on the Rutgers Campus. By 1960, Fr. Lambelet felt the need for another, dramatic step. He began to look for some way to have a collegiate altar to provide a Sunday ministry focused directly on the agenda of university students. A strong committee of fifteen to twenty members from faculty and staff and two student wardens was now meeting monthly to develop the concept and to plan with the Procter Foundation for a collegiate chapel. Over the next five years, we sought to spread the word throughout the Diocese of New Jersey and raise the money to purchase a site and construct a chapel.

Included in this pioneering effort were: Reginald Bishop (Professor of French and Dean of Instruction, Rutgers College), Elizabeth Durham (Alumnae Secretary, Douglass College and Secretary for the University Bicentennial Celebration, 1966), Frank Gorman (Associate Dean of Instruction, Rutgers College), Henry Kaufman (Professor of Music, Rutgers College), Rudolf Kirk (Professor of English, Rutgers College), Isabelle Lambelet (Professor of Chemistry, Douglass College), Clyde MacAllister (Business Manager, Douglass College), John Newton (Professor of Electrical Engineering), Henry Torrey (Professor of Physics and Dean of the Graduate School), Jerome Waldron (a retired layman who served as Treasurer of the group), and others.

The site for the ministry was venturesomely chosen on the huge new campuses Rutgers was then building on the north bank of the Raritan, the former site of a military camp, Camp Kilmer, frontier of Rutgers' future, as it seemed. The site on Davidson Road was purchased , and plans for a chapel, meeting hall, and caretaker's apartment were drawn up and put out to bid. Estimates came in $100,000 over the expected figure and nearly killed the initiative in the winter of 1965-66. Bishop Banyard immediately rescued the project from oblivion with diocesan support to establish St. Michael's as a collegiate chapel on the Rutgers campus. The building was constructed under the watchful eye of Professor Newton as clerk of the works, and the Chapel was dedicated to the glory of God in 1966. The Procter Foundation put it under Bishop Banyard's spiritual jurisdiction on 1. October, 1967. In the early days, people at services could let their eyes wander and watch sheep grazing around the Chapel, escapees from the neighboring farmer.

Changes of the guard. In 1972, Fr. Lambelet resigned the chaplaincy to accept another position and was succeeded in turn by the Rev. Thomas Kerr. Fr. Kerr's chaplaincy was distinguished in many ways. Under his leadership, important student volunteer programs in the surrounding communities flourished, and St. Michael's became a leader in ecumenical collaboration among many denominations at Rutgers. A close-knit congregation of students, faculty, and staff grew up at St. Michael's, ready and eager for lay participation and evangelism. One permanent result of community outreach in those days was the permanent location of the Pine Grove Nursery at St. Michaels. After ten years, when Fr. Kerr moved on, Mother Roberta Clemens, one of the earliest women ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church, was appointed interim chaplain. Professor Paul Clemens (Department of History, Rutgers) chaired a committee to find a replacement. This led to the appointment in 1984 of Fr. Henry Lee Atkins, who had had extensive experience as college chaplain at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. In subsequent years, Fr. Atkins' interests let to a strong focus on the plight of oppressed people in Central America, particularly in El Salvador and Guatamala. On several occasions, Fr. Atkins led faculty and student work-tours to those country (and to Costa Rica), and, for some years, St. Michael's served as an official sanctuary for the Hispanic oppressed.

Over the years, the Chapel's work has been supported by contributions from its members and alumni/ae and by long-term facility rentals, as well as by generous and fundamental support from the Procter Foundation and the Diocese of New Jersey. The Pine Grove Nursery School uses the basement area and playgrounds. On Sundays and Holy Days, the Chapel is the locus for Roman Catholic worship as well as Episcopalian. Additionally, the chapel is the setting for frequent weddings and other activities in the University community, and it stands today as the one campus building dedicated for worship in the Busch/Livingston Campus, still a new and growing frontier.

Incumbents of the Chaplaincy at Rutgers:

• Clarence A. Lambelet, 1954-1972
• Thomas A. Kerr, 1972-1982
• Roberta L. Clemens (interim Chaplain), 1982-1984
• Henry Lee Atkins, 1984-2003
• Karl F. Morrison (Priest-in-Charge), 2003
• Linda Moeller (interim Chaplain), 2003-2004
• Greg Bezilla, 2004-present