STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — The Rev. James Seawood, pastor of Brighton Heights Reformed Church, died Sunday morning at Robert Woods Johnson Medical Center in New Jersey, according to Rev. Terry Troia, executive director of Project Hospitality.
Rev. Seawood was a former faculty member and dean at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, He was only the second black person to ascend to the General Synod Presidency of the Reformed Church in America and served on the General Synod Council of the RCA upon his retirement from office.
He was the immediate past president of the Staten Island Council of Churches and a board member of Project Hospitality. He was a U.S. Army Chaplain and served in the active reserves. He did tours of duty in the Gulf War and in a Afghanistan or Iraq post 9/11.
He was a civil rights leader, as was his mother; she died in December.
Rev. Seawood was one of the first black students to integrate Little Rock High School in the 1960s. His mother was the sole black teacher for the Little School House for colored children in Little Rock.
He was the former pastor of the Eighth Avenue Baptist Church in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
Further information — including funeral arrangements — will be posted as it becomes available. A complete obituary will follow.
INFORMATION From : http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2014/01/rev_james_seawood_pastor_of_br.html and Rev. Marvin Wiley, Maywood, Illinois.
Filed under: Homegoing of a Saint
