The Rev. Dr. V. Bruce Rigdon dies in Chicago at age 90

LOUISVILLE — The Rev. Dr. V. Bruce Rigdon, Presbyterian minister, church historian, and lifelong traveler in the cause of peace and justice, died of natural causes at his home in Chicago on Oct. 19. He was 90, an age he never quite stopped marveling at.

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He was born in Philadelphia on February 23, 1936, to Mabel and Vernon Rigdon. The wider world called to him early. He missed his own high school graduation because he was on a boat bound for Africa and a World Student Christian Federation conference, and he came home with a monkey named JoJo.

His family grew up hearing rumors of his other exploits, and every one of them turned out to be true. As a Yale student he went south with classmates to join the 1961 Freedom Rides. During the Cold War he slipped into East Berlin to meet with dissident pastors, and in 1968 he stood with protesters in Czechoslovakia shortly before Soviet troops marched in. In Greece, during a time of political upheaval, he helped smuggle dissidents out of the country. Each risk was taken in pursuit of peace and justice.

He was also a gifted scholar. After a junior year at the University of Hong Kong, he graduated cum laude from the College of Wooster in 1958, then finished first in his class at Yale Divinity School, earning his B.D. magna cum laude in 1962. He went on to an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Yale, studied at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York, and later held research fellowships at Mansfield College, Oxford, and King’s College London.

For two decades he taught church history at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, where he helped open theological education to the wider world, leading seminars to the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. His long friendship with the Russian Orthodox Church made him one of the foremost authorities on relations between the Reformed and Orthodox traditions. In the Presbytery of Chicago he chaired the Committee on Ecumenical Relations and founded the Middle East Task Force, and he addressed national gatherings of Presbyterian youth and women.

In 1988 he moved from the lectern to the pulpit as senior pastor of Grosse Pointe Memorial Church in Michigan, where he founded the Grosse Pointe Lay Theological Academy and served until 2002. From 1997 to 2006 he was also president of Ecumenical Theological Seminary in Detroit, which he guided to full accreditation. For the next seven summers, he preached at Siasconset Union Chapel on Nantucket.

He never shied away from good trouble. In the 1980s he was active in the movement against nuclear arms, and he fought for gay rights and for the ordination of gay clergy in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He was a member of the governing board of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, served the World Council of Churches and other ecumenical bodies, led the board of Pilgrims of Ibillin, which supports interfaith schools in the Galilee, and in 2008 received Yale Divinity School’s Distinction in Theological Education award.

Bruce is survived by Mary, his wife of 68 years; his children, Sascha Bensinger (Tyler Bensinger), Mark Rigdon (Caroline Schmalz), and Greg Rigdon (Molly Murphy); his grandchildren, Emily Bensinger (Jeremy Stern), Ethan Bensinger (Christy Sheehy), Katharine Rigdon, Hannah Rigdon, Hugh Rigdon, and Claire Rigdon; and his great-grandchildren, Gabriel, Joseph, and Natasha Stern.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Central Time on Friday, Dec. 4, at Fourth Presbyterian Church, 126 East Chestnut Street, Chicago. In lieu of flowers, the family invites gifts in Bruce’s memory to Pilgrims of Ibillin.