Rev. Dr. Percy Linwood Urban
Rev. Dr. Percy Linwood “Lin” Urban, a former 45-year resident of Swarthmore, passed away on Friday, January 29, 2021, at the Quadrangle, a senior living community in Haverford, due to Parkinson’s disease.
Lin was a loving and thoughtful husband, father, grandfather, professor, clergyman, peacemaker, servant of the poor and dispossessed, author, gardener, historian, crossword puzzle aficionado, and master of satire, dry humor, and plain speaking. His deep, abiding faith helped him face the challenges that life gave him with acceptance, grace, and hope. Patience, humor, and a long-term commitment to the less fortunate were overarching themes in his life.
Lin was born on April 12, 1924, in Philadelphia, to Percy Linwood Urban and Mary Robinson Hodge Urban. The eldest of three children, he spent his childhood in the farming community of North Haven, Connecticut, where his father was the rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church and later the dean of Berkeley Divinity School. His exuberant family included numerous clergy persons and theologians, who loved to get together for family reunions, to render the family song, expand the family scrapbook, and so on.
Lin was devoted to his siblings (Margaret and Bayard) and loved to recount their escapades and adventures and poke fun at the foibles of his extended family. After graduating from Choate in 1942, Lin earned an A.B. in philosophy from Princeton University in 1946. Shortly thereafter, he went on to earn bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in sacred theology at the General Theological Seminary in New York City.
In 1951, he married Ann (Nancy) Frances Coward, a close college friend of his sister, at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr. Lin and Nancy spent their early married life in Manhattan and Yonkers, New York, while Lin continued his seminary studies, served as priest-in-charge at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea (an underserved community at the time), and then as chaplain at the Leake and Watts Foundation children’s home for severely disturbed orphan boys in Yonkers. (Years later, he was tickled to encounter, on the plaza outside the Swarthmore College library, a former Leake and Watts resident who had come to campus to apply for a job as an assistant professor.)
While living in New York City, Lin and Nancy had their first two children, Catherine and Joan. The sudden, unexpected death of Cathy in 1957 agonized the family as well as the Leake and Watts Foundation community. Lin went on to finish his studies, and that spring was offered a teaching job at Swarthmore College, something he always credited to his remarkable memory: although he was waylaid by a flat tire while en route to the college for his job interview, Lin arrived in reasonable time because he remembered a short-cut his parents had taken almost 25 years earlier. This so impressed the interviewers that they thought they ought to hire him. David and Ann were born in Swarthmore, and Lin and Nancy lived a long and happy life here, raising the children and participating as active members of Trinity Episcopal Church.
Lin was passionate about academic study. He also loved to teach, to help students subject their beliefs to rational thought and rigorous fact-finding and find ways to carry their beliefs with consistency into the world. One student remembers that Lin taught him how to argue, while another remembers “his wry humor, his gentle digs, and a largesse of faith that is almost unique to him.”
Lin was the founder of Swarthmore’s Department of Religion and served on numerous committees at the college. Some have observed that no faculty members have ever chaired more crisis committees there than he. For example, in January 1969, when a group of students took over the admissions office and demanded a change to the college’s admissions policy, Lin was asked to chair the faculty meetings that were convened to respond to those demands, as well as the joint committee of students and faculty that was formed to address the students’ concerns. Classes were shut down for a few weeks, during which time the then-college president died of a heart attack at age 51. The committee ultimately acceded to several of the students’ demands; its efforts were said to have “played a major role in defusing the explosive situation.” As another example, Lin later chaired a faculty grievance committee that was charged with reviewing and challenging a tenure decision that had rocked the campus.
With the support of local Protestant churches and Swarthmore Friends Meeting, Lin helped establish Partners in Ministry at the college and remained one of its prime movers for decades. The organization was successful in its efforts to have the college hire a Protestant chaplain, a position later broadened to Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.
Lin retired in 1992 as the Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor Emeritus of Religion and is the author of two books: The Power of God, edited with Douglas N. Walton, and A Short History of Christian Thought.
After Lin’s family’s reunions had been suspended for over two decades due to the old age of many of the participants, Lin played the chief role in resurrecting the tradition and in organizing the first several reunions, which have been held every five years since then. In 2002, Lin and Nancy moved to the Quadrangle, where Lin remained immersed in Partners in Ministry and the study of religion, and for many years coordinated the weekly lecture series for the Quadrangle’s residents. Lin also remained active throughout his life in the Episcopal diocese of Pennsylvania, serving on many committees and as a temporary pastor when needed at local churches. In addition, he was dean of the Delaware County Deanery for the diocese of Pennsylvania for six years during his retirement.
Lin is preceded in death by two of his children, Catherine Jacobs Urban and Richard Urban; his parents; and his two siblings, Margaret Urban Johnson and Hugh Bayard Urban.
He is survived by his wife, Ann Coward Urban; children Margaret Joan Urban of Swarthmore, David Linwood Urban (Molly) of Shaker Heights, Ohio, and Ann Crenshaw Urban (Mark Glen) of Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and grandchildren James Linwood Urban (Courtney Mazur), Daniel Asher Urban, Nathaniel David Clark Urban, and Emma Louise Glen.
A memorial service will be held at a later date.