Advancing the Kingdom

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Advancing T he Kingdom: Kingdom House 110
The late 1970s were a time of
upheaval for the American people.
Despite the successes of the Camp
David Accords that later earned
him the Nobel Peace Prize, Jimmy
Carter’s presidency was marked by the
problems inherited from the Nixon-Ford
period: inflation, unemployment, slow
economic growth and energy shortages.
Carter’s attempts to resolve these crises
only worsened the problems, and the
last years of his only term found him
addressing a hostage dilemma in Iran.
The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980
ushered in a new era of conservative
ascendancy in US politics that has had
profound and lasting effects upon the
last decades of the twentieth century and
beyond.
A new phase began at Kingdom
House when the Reverend Eugene
W. Morse arrived. “I think I came to
Kingdom House at a changing time…
when… community centers were under
fire...Everything was getting specialized,
and the type of expectation from the
larger community [was undergoing
change] in things like church, United
Way, donors…how problems were
attacked.”1 The grassroots neighborhood
services of a broad nature like Kingdom
House provided were under increasing
pressure to become specialized in
areas like childcare, tutoring or athletic
programs for their clients. Little outside
support existed for those agencies who
tried to provide more broadly with a
little of everything. Morse continued
that at the time of his arrival, services
had to be documented – and how
difficult it was to decide what unit of
service a cup of coffee to a neighbor
who came to visit the Thrift Store
provided. “My first thought when I
started was…to not know which way
to go…‘Course we didn’t have any
money when I started; there wasn’t any
money. I couldn’t change much – to
some extent, there were wider changes
going on. But the Great Society poverty
programs – those were winding down.”2
Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society
gains of Medicare, Medicaid and
programs associated with the War on
Poverty were overshadowed by notable
failures that had a heavy impact on
St. Louis. The high-rise tenement
apartments of Pruitt-Igoe had been razed
in the early 1970s; the empty lots where
they once stood were a grim national
testimony to the failure of urban
planning.
Despite the discontinuance of
programs initiated in the Great Society
era, the population in the communities
of Darst-Webbe and Clinton-Peabody
was still quite large – about 1,400 to
1,500 families according to Morse.3
But the state of affairs during the lame
duck period beginning when Koeppe
announced his desire to retire and Morse
was brought in had taken its toll on
the agency. By the time of his arrival,
the United Way had placed Kingdom
House on probation with a mandate to
invigorate its programs. Despite Morse’s
self-deprecating protests that he “came
here not knowing nearly as much as I
should about what I was doing,”4 his
background in community work at a
mission near Toynbee Hall, the founding
institution of the settlement house
movement in London, had well prepared
him for the challenges that Kingdom
House faced as well as equipped him
with the skills to lead the agency into
the 21st century.
Fresh out of seminary in 1968,
Reverend Eugene Morse and his
bride, Lettie, went to England where
Gene took a position at the East End
Mission, a ministry affiliated with the
British Methodist Church. There he
worked with Bengali immigrants in East
London, helping with settlement and
other issues specific to this population.
They stayed two years, and then took
a pastorate in western Nebraska. His
church was geographically the closest to
Wounded Knee – it was here that Rev.
Morse learned to work with the diversity
associated with Native American
culture. The Morse family returned
to East London in 1974 to resume
mission work there involving alcoholics,
tuberculosis patients, youth work,
homeless individuals and immigrants.
The desire for their young daughter
to know her American cousins and the
combined health issues of both Gene’s
and Lettie’s parents prompted the Morse
family to pursue returning to the States
for their ministry. This led them, in the
late 1970s, to come to Kingdom House.
A new phase began at
K ingdom House when
the Reverend E ugene
W. Morse arrived.
“I think I came to
K ingdom House at
a changing time…
when… community
centers were under
fire...Everything was
getting specialized ,
and the type of
expectation from the
larger community
[was undergoing
change] in things like
church, United Way,
donors…how problems
were attacked .”1