The Reverend Harlon L. Dalton, Associate Rector

E-Mail: assocrectorstpj@snet.net

I have been Associate Rector since June 2002. My responsibilities run the gamut, thanks to my unique working partnership with our Rector, Barbara Cheney.

Although I was born in Cleveland and raised primarily in Denver, I have clung to the East Coast my entire adult life. After graduating from Harvard College in 1969 and Yale Law School in 1973, I spent eight years as a public interest lawyer and as an Assistant to the Solicitor General in the United States Department of Justice. Since 1981, I have taught law at Yale, where I was tenured in 1990. Faced with a legal system that celebrates the mythical “reasonable man,” my scholarly ambition has been to reconstruct law so that it takes account of our propensity to be nonrational, including our capacity to love without condition, hate without reason, desire the unattainable, and embrace the holy.

As my 50th birthday neared, I responded to a quiet but insistent call to ordained ministry. Sponsored by St. Paul & St. James, I began a five-year process of “reading for orders.” (This consisted of self-study, audited courses at Yale and Berkeley Divinity Schools, tutorials, and an old-fashioned apprenticeship.) On June 8, 2002, I was ordained a deacon by the Bishop of Connecticut. On January 4, 2003, I was ordained a priest. I continue to teach at Yale Law School, where I have focused increasingly on placing law and theology in conversation with one another.

Throughout my life, I have engaged in the pursuit of social and economic justice, as an activist, writer, and public policy maven. For example, in the mid-1980's I helped found AIDS Interfaith Network, Inc., an HIV/AIDS service organization rooted in New Haven’s Black community. In 1987 I crafted AIDS and the Law, a book that helped shape and define an emerging area of law. In 1989, I authored an essay, “AIDS in Blackface,” that remains the best-read and most-cited piece on the dynamics of the AIDS epidemic within Black communities. From 1989-1993, I served on the National Commission on AIDS.

Writing continues to be an important part of my life. My most popular book, Racial Healing: Confronting the Fear Between Blacks and Whites (Doubleday 1995, Anchor 1996), grew out of my firm conviction that a healthy, robust, unflinching national conversation about race is long overdue. I am currently at work on a new book tentatively titled Shall We Gather? Striving for Community in a Self-Centered Age.

My avocations are many, including playing a variety of musical instruments, birding, and kayaking. I enjoy hitting a tennis ball, although I have little respect for the thin white line, and dream of getting back into basketball-playing shape. (Mostly, though, I am content to cheer on the UConn women’s basketball team.) On Monday evenings I can be found rehearsing with the Salt and Pepper Gospel Singers. I live with my life partner, Jill Strawn, in New Haven, together with (as our answering machine puts it) “two fabulous canines named Cleo and Zach.”