'Inspiration to us all': The Rev. Brock dies; co-founded Erie's Jefferson Educational Society
The Rev. J. Charles Brock, the Harvard-educated Unitarian minister and co-founder of Erie’s Jefferson Educational Society who urged local residents to embrace religion, history, social justice, empathy and compassion, has died.
Brock died at his Erie-area home on Wednesday, according to his obituary. He was 88.
“Charlie was one of the best people I knew,” said Ferki Ferati, the Jefferson Educational Society’s president. “He was a friend, he was a mentor, he was a colleague."
Obituary: The Rev. J. Charles Brock
The society, at 3207 State St., was founded in 2008 and is named after Thomas Jefferson. It sponsors lectures and programs — as well as a lecture series featuring internationally-known speakers — that are open to the public and focus on politics, social issues and community engagement.
“Charlie truly believed that if there’s any good I can do, let me do it now because I shall not pass this way again,” Ferati said. “He said that to me many times. We have lost a good one.”
For the past 20 years, Brock served as pastor of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Girard. He also founded the Public Policy Fund and the Institute on the American Dream at Penn State Behrend.
The institute’s website states: “The Institute on the American Dream explores the bright and the dark sides of the Dream so that ways forward can be discussed. From where did the Dream come? Does it work today? Who wins and who loses? Is it a way to hold American society together and also celebrate multi-culturalism? What are the international implications?”
Opinion: Rev. Charles Brock: Seeing the light of faith and freedom
Ferati said that Brock believed the subject was one that Americans need to think critically about — through the prisms of race, gender and economic empowerment — to create a better society.
“He talked a lot about how the dream is not there for a lot of minorities or the poor, for example,” Ferati said, “how meritocracy is not a thing or a concept that’s there for everybody to take advantage of. Charlie believed that we need to make our world a just community.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree in industrial management at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1957, Brock returned to Erie to work at a family-owned business, Erie Art Metal. He would eventually pursue even more education, receiving his Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University in 1962.
On the advice of one of his Harvard professors, Brock decided to continue his studies abroad at England’s Oxford University.
He would spend 35 years there in various roles, including as a teacher and chaplain. Brock also lectured in Japan.
According to Brock’s obituary, he was described by Oxford officials as a “colorful and liberal chaplain” who “epitomized the atmosphere of change in his spiritual generosity and mischievous sense of humor. The ease of passage of the college into a new relationship with its religious origins was due in no small part to his vision.”
Brock’s stepdaughter, former Erie resident Samantha Lincoln, remembered him as a family man who loved to laugh, enjoyed jazz music and “inspired my teenagers with his vast knowledge of history and religion."
“His sharp mind, naughty wit and kind heart inspired us all,” Lincoln said. “To the very end, he was engaged in his research and writing, continuing to both learn and teach. He was an inspiration to us all.”
Ferati added that Brock loved his hometown, which is why he returned after decades of teaching and ministry abroad.
"He believed that an Erie that is not for all of us is not for any of us," Ferati said.
Contact Kevin Flowers at kflowers@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ETNflowers.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: The Rev. Charles Brock dies; co-founder of Erie's Jefferson Society
