Activist-Turned-Priest Returns In New Role

Thomas Jackson doesn’t see much difference between a good sermon and good journalism. Both, in his view, strive to make people see connections more deeply and build community.

Jackson knows both roles. An environmental activist and journalist in Fair Haven in the 1980s and 1990s, he made a life change and became a priest. Now he has returned to New Haven after a 16-year sojourn, in a new/old role: preaching the good environmental word and much else from the pulpit of historic St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on Whalley Avenue.

After beginning service in July as the St. Luke’s priest in charge, The Rev. Thomas Jackson found New Haven a decidedly different city from the one he left in 2003.

He left after having worn various hats: as a reporter with an environmental beat; a founder of the New Haven Land Trust, along with the first hazardous waste collection sites in the state; an incorporator of what became New Haven Pride Center; Board of Education member during the administration of Mayor John Daniels.

His new duties serving the historic African-American and Caribbean-American congregation have been keeping him very busy.

Rev. Jackson sat down with the Independent to talk about the journey his life has taken and what’s new and what’s different in church and town.

Independent: I understand you grew up in Baltimore. You got into a little brouhaha with your university president over your student activism, and you finished college at the University of Connecticut. There you got started writing and editing for the college daily, and ended up after graduation with an environmental beat at various papers including in Meriden. So what brought you down to New Haven, specifically Fair Haven?

Jackson: We tipped over on a cold morning near Cheshire [during a 15-mile boat trip on the Quinnipiac River]. When we finally got to New Haven, went under the I‑91 bridge, it was sunset. [I thought:] This is a beautiful New England village. I’d like to live here.

You bought an historic house on Front Street way back in 1980, and for the next two decades you became an activist, raised two kids you sent through the New Haven Schools. Then you left town — and changed your life, coming out in 2003, and moving with your partner to San Francisco. Can you speak a little about that and what brought you back to New Haven in 2019?

“I’m going to law school,” [declared his partner, attorney Alexander Han], “‘and you can go to seminary.” I had not thought of that since 1970.

In 1968. I went to my priest. He said to me, ​“There are [already] lots of clergy. Go do everything else you want, and then come back.”

And so you did!

God doesn’t always show up with a lightning bolt. Sometimes, it’s a nudge.

And out there you went to seminary at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. You were ordained at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, and you worked as the Episcopal chaplain at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto for eight years. You also worked at St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco. How has that prepared you for your current job and what’s new at the church and in New Haven?

I was vicar at St. Cyprian’s, an African-American congregation, so I was primed to be here. We’re at the cusp of monumental changes in Christian churches, moving from the industrial age to the internet age. All these factors create challenges to the way ​“we’ve done church.” St. Luke’s is on the cutting edge of what it means to be Christian in 21st Century New Haven. What’s worked for our parents and grandparents doesn’t work for us. We now have to go out to the neighborhoods and see where God is working salvation and lend our hand.

And what’s your preliminary finding in that regard?

Actually I have no idea [yet]. However, the way the Episcopal church does worship is a gift. You don’t have to sign a list [of beliefs or doctrines]. Our goal is to have community.

At St. Cyprians they did an extensive inquiry [of congregants’ needs]. But they didn’t ask about spirituality. We need to look at how people are coming together as community. I’m not a religious person.

I’m a deeply spiritual person. Jesus gave us a very simple theology: Love God. Love your neighbor. A lot of the theology [that has evolved since] is how to get away from the heavy lifting. I’s a lot easier for me to sit here and to judge you than to make myself more loving. Let the ​“religious” people go and judge. Spiritual people will get out there and see how to change the world in changing ourselves and the way we live.

And what have you seen that’s different in New Haven in general?

The city is much different. On Front Street, there’s now lower density, and that change is for the good. The parks are better. People are walking and jogging. In 1980 you didn’t run unless someone was chasing you. There’s more retail, however big box stores, fewer mom-and-pops. I think that takes away from local character.

We definitely are at risk of becoming like Anywhere U.S.A. We need to protect our architectural heritage from deterioration, a tear-down.

Given that St. Luke’s is an older congregation, with a largely African-American population. Were any concerns or issues expressed about having a white pastor? Any issues/concerns about having a gay man as pastor?

It’s no more unusual for an Episcopal African American Church to have a white priest then it is for the predominantly white Episcopal Church to have an African American Presiding Bishop as we do in the Rt. Reverend Michael Curry, the Bishop who gave that amazing sermon at the Royal Wedding recently.

St. Luke’s has long been a church where everyone us welcome. And when they say everyone, they really mean it.

Tell me once again how being a journalist is like being a priest …

I started up with obits. The editor sent me to the house [of parents of a brilliant kid who had died in a car accident] to get a picture. The whole house was a memorial. They took me to the back; they made me coffee. They told me how they were remembering their son. I took the picture . When I returned the picture,[the obituary] was there, laminated on the coffee table. I’ll remember that till the day I die.

Each sermon is an op-ed. It’s based on scripture, and if done well I get to have an op-ed in church, each week.