(Phila.Public Ledger 8 June 1915)
“Stormy Petrel” of Protestant Episcopal Church in America. Petrel as in a tough ocean bird that can outweather the toughest storms and seems to flutter, its feet touching the ocean surface while still in flight, seeming to walk on the water like Saint Peter.
George Chalmers Richmond had a long and sometimes controversial, turbulent career as an outspoken clergyman in many cities and states, and most times on the side of social and racial justice. Outspoken critic of Standard Oil in Western New York state in 1904. Outspoken too on remarriage, as in the case of divorced John Jacob Astor IV and Madeleine Talmadge Force in 1911. Critic of Philadelphia Mayor Reyburn’s tactics, violence against workers, in the handling of the Trolley Strike of 1910. Opinions often printed in New York and national newspapers. This while also being Rector of St. John’s Church of the Northern Liberties for nearly a decade at American and Brown Streets Philadelphia, the second oldest Episcopalian congregation in that city, founded in 1815. Graduate of Yale Class of 1895. Studies at Yale Divinity School 1895-97 and Hartford Theological Seminary 1897-98 (B.D 1898)
Miss Marjorie Gould and A.J. Drexel Jr. were married April 19, 1910. Miss Gould received a half million dollar New York east side townhouse as a wedding gift from her father to gauge the scope and perceived decadence of the event in the press, a shiny golden example of the obscenity of the difference of wealth between the haves and the have-nots of the Gilded Age in America.
On the Gould-Drexel wedding, social event of NYC in April 1910, Richmond took exception to the union based on the Drexel family roots in Philly with comments from his pulpit and quoted in newspapers from coast to coast. His quotes locally from the pulpit got much press in New York and nationally. Quotes such as:
"A vulgar and sensational event. A girl who has nothing to boast of save wealth made by a grandfather whose methods would not be countenanced these days"..."A youth (Drexel) who has never helped any social, moral or religious movement in this city."..."This arrogant display of plutocratic wealth stirs up the spirit of anarchy."...
It was not the Gould-Drexel wedding that brought Rev. Richmond up on ecclesiastic charges by his bishop Philip M. Rhinelander but more likely the remarks on divorce and the Astor-Force wedding. And an emphasis on Richmond's weekly sermon's and their appeal to Christianity to adopt a progressive social gospel that recognized the needs of the poor. He attacked the local bishop's ignoring the social gospel approach to his office which got Richmond suspended for one year at St. John's in 1915, mostly on his personal attacks of the bishop, and bringing about his eventual resignation a few years later from that assignment.
The rest of his career was in transient and low level pastoral work in several denominations, included back at the Episcopal church in Pennsylvania at the end of his career. Three years into retirement he died of a heart attack in a local drug store. He never married and was living at a rooming house in retirement. His fifteen minutes of fame as a clear moral Christian voice at the end of the gilded age and prior to World War One put him as a man remembered by many in America in his obituary posted decades after that one time fame.
Richmond condemned the lynching/immolation death of Black man Zach Taylor in Coatesville Pa, in August 1911 condemning the politicians and clergy and the whole town in nearby Chester county Pa., represented by that mob in the thousands that dragged an injured prisoner from the local hospital under the approving and blind eye of the local sheriff - condemned from his bully pulpit in Philadelphia, the injustice of a prisoner still handcuffed to his iron bedpost on the way to his funeral pyre.
A lone voice it would seem in Pennsylvania, that "Alabama" up north between Philly and Pittsburgh in modern political reference. His remarks being noteworthy coinciding with his attacks on the Astor-Force wedding, a divorced man, an Episcoplian, in September of that same year. His expressed progressive view of justice for minorities lasted until the end of his career and with public opposition to the KKK in the 1920s when on an short assignment in Los Angeles.
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