Guide to the Howard Rice Papers

The minister, theologian, and activist Howard Leland Rice was moderator of the 191st General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Born December 30, 1931, he grew up in Marshfield, Wisconsin. As a teenager he was active in the Westminster Fellowship at First Presbyterian Church (Marshfield, Wis.). Rice graduated from Carroll College in 1953 and began work at McCormick Theological Seminary. While at McCormick he spent 1954 in the Minister-in-Industry program of the Presbyterian Institute for Industrial Relations (PIIR). In Chicago he met Nancy Lee Zoerb; the couple were married in August 1956. Howard graduated from McCormick in 1956, was ordained by Winnebago Presbytery, and served House of Faith Presbyterian Church (Minneapolis, Minn.) for five years.

In March 1961, he was installed in the newly-developed Emmanuel Presbyterian Church at 19th Place and Carpenter Street in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Emmanuel was a multi-ethnic and bilingual church, formed by merging two Methodist churches and the former Howell Memorial Presbyterian Church. Rice at the time saw himself as the only person who could “keep the parts of the congregation together: White, Black, and Hispanic…I was a unifying force and all three groups had come to trust me as their leader.”

Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in his late 30s, Rice began using canes and crutches, and was advised by his doctors to get out of the Midwest. In 1968 he took an appointment as chaplain and professor of ministry at San Francisco Theological Seminary. Over the next thirty years he would be credited with rediscovering practices of spiritual renewal within the context of Reformed theology.

Elected moderator in 1979, he would use his moderatorial year advocating for the disabled and the impoverished, and preparing the UPCUSA for eventual reunion with the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. He hosted a series of prayer retreats. In the period just prior to the United States' decade of proxy wars there, Rice also directed Presbyterian attention to Central America, visiting Guatemala and Nicaragua, and meeting with the Sandinista priest Ernesto Cardenal. In September of 1979 Rice met with Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzeziński to support the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II).

Rice's major writings are Reformed spirituality : an introduction for believers (1991) and Reformed worship (2001). He retired from San Francisco Theological Seminary in 1997. In retirement he served on the board of Cook Native American Ministries. He died 8 August 2010 in Claremont, California.