MAPLEWOOD, N.J. and SORRENTO

Rev. Dr. George D. Younger, a Baptist minister, theologian, educator, author, editor, historian and community leader who played a vital role in the ecumenical urban church and social justice movements, died on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2001. He was 75 and lived in Maplewood, N.J., and Sorrento, and was a regular summer visitor to Maine throughout his life. His wife, Doris Anne (Dodie) Hill Younger, said he died of cancer at their home.

For 16 years he served as executive minister for the American Baptist Churches of New Jersey, a Protestant denomination. He was chief administrative officer for more than 250 congregations with more than 70,000 members. Under his leadership the region established new churches and missions with an emphasis on churches to serve recent immigrants. He served as president of the New Jersey Coalition of Religious Leaders in 1979 and 1980.

Dr. Younger spent four years, beginning in 1951, as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Rochester, Pa., a steel town near Pittsburgh. He then served as a pastor on New York City’s Lower East Side for 11 years until 1966 when he became a leader in interdenominational urban ministry, training first in New York City from 1968 to 1972 at the Metropolitan Urban Service Training Facility (MUST) and later in Chicago as director of the Urban Training Center from 1972 to 1976.

While ministering to a predominantly African-American congregation drawn from public housing projects at the Mariner’s Temple Baptist Church in Lower Manhattan, he helped found Mobilization for Youth, an early antipoverty agency in 1966. He twice served as chairman of the local school board for the neighborhood and helped form the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council. He also served as editor for the Two Bridges News for 11 years until 1968.

George Dana Younger Jr. was born in Mt. Kisco, N.Y., on Saturday, July 24, 1926, near the Kips Bay Boys’ Club summer camp in Valhalla, N.Y., for underprivileged boys from New York City, which his parents ran. His father, G. Dana Younger, was managing director of the Kips Bay Boys’ Club in New York City, and his mother, Dorothy Diggdon Younger, served as nurse. He was raised in Manhattan and spent parts of many summers with his family in Naples, Me. Dr. Younger was descended from several prominent New England families and through his maternal grandmother he was descended from Stephen Hopkins, who came to Plymouth on the Mayflower. On his paternal side he was also descended from the Reed family who lived in Temple, Me., during the late 1700s and early 1800s.

He attended Yale University, graduating in 1947 after two years in the U.S. Army. He attended Yale Divinity School where he and his wife graduated in 1950. During the summer of 1949 as newlywed seminarians he and Dodie worked in the Presumpscot Union Parish in southern Maine which included the communities of: Raymond, North Windham, South Windham, Windham Center, Windham Hill, East Raymond, Foster’s Corner, East Windham, and North Gorham. They traveled through the parish each week taking turns preaching at the different churches and running a vacation church school program.

He later received a doctorate of ministry from New York Theological Seminary together with his wife in 1978. He was a lifelong member of the Riverside Church in Manhattan where his father served as deacon, and where Dr. Younger was dedicated, baptized, ordained and occasionally preached.

Dr. Younger served as adjunct professor and taught Baptist history, theology and polity and ecumenism at several leading American seminaries, including: Union Theological Seminary, New Brunswick Theological Seminary, Drew Theological School, and Princeton Theological Seminary. Many professional colleagues and former students have provided rich, personal testimony to the impact on their development that Dr. Younger had. His skill at working across racial and socioeconomic boundaries and in a wide variety of settings was especially valued by many.

Dr. Younger authored four major books and numerous scholarly articles. Among his published works are: “The Bible Calls for Action” (1958); “The Church and Urban Power Structure” (1963); “The Church and Urban Renewal” (1966); and “From New Creation to Urban Crisis: A History of Action Training Ministries 1962-1975” (1987). Recently he authored a history of the Baptist churches in New York City contained in the “Encyclopedia of New York City” (1995). He also served as editor for 10 years until 1968 of Foundations: A Baptist Journal of History and Theology (now American Baptist Quarterly).

He served from 1970 to 1983 as the North American representative on the Urban-Industrial Mission Working Group of the World Council of Churches. He traveled and preached extensively in the developing world, including in Zaire, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Myanmar. Dr. Younger was also serving at the time of his death as the representative to the United Nations for the Baptist World Alliance, an accredited NGO composed of some 42 million Baptists in 116 countries. 

He was most recently honored on Nov. 10, 2001, at the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan with the New York Theological Seminary’s annual award for Distinction in Ministry. He also was recently voted an honorary life member of the American Baptist Historical Society and received in 1995 the Homer J. Tucker Christian Service Award from the American Baptist Churches of New Jersey. In 1992 he received the annual Roe v. Wade award from the New Jersey Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights.

Dr. Younger summered for 45 years in Sorrento, where he and his wife built their own cottage in 1961. He preached occasionally during his summer vacations at the Church of the Redeemer and the Congregational Church in Sorrento as well as at the Hancock Point Chapel. He loved to sail the waters of Frenchman Bay and enjoyed playing tennis in Sorrento.

Dr. Younger loved choral music and while at Yale sang in the Yale Glee Club and later with the St. Cecilia Chorus, Berkshire Choral Festival and the Yale Alumni Chorus. He frequently attended concerts of the Arcady Music Festival on Mount Desert Island and the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors in Hancock.

In addition to his wife, Dodie, Dr. Younger is survived by a daughter, Judith Anne Laspesa of Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass.; and three sons, Dana Reed Younger of Takoma Park, Md., Stephen Peters Younger of Glen Ridge, N.J., and Samuel Hill Younger of Westfield, N.J.; and 10 grandchildren. Memorial services are planned for Dec. 8, 2001, at 10:30 a.m. at the First Baptist Church of Westfield in Westfield, N.J., and on Dec. 9 at 4:30 p.m. at the Riverside Church in New York City. Interment will be in the Doane’s Point Cemetery in Sorrento. Memorial gifts may be made to either: the Rev. George D. Younger Scholarship Fund c/o The Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Dr., New York, N.Y. 10027; or to the Rev. George D. Younger Annual Conference of the One in Christ Program of the American Baptist Churches of New Jersey, c/o American Baptist Churches of New Jersey, 3752 Nottingham Way, Suite 101, Trenton, N.J. 08690.