Robert Corin Morris traces his father's family history to the English settlers who established Williamsburg, Virginia, more than three hundred years ago. The Scotch-Irish ancestors on his mother's side arrived in the Colonies a bit later, in the early 1700's.
"Those deep white Protestant roots have nothing to fear from integrating the gifts that all the other people have brought here as well as those of the Native Americans that we displaced," Morris asserts.
His English ancestors prospered as members the South's plantation-owning aristocracy, while his maternal relatives worked as farmers. By the 1920's and '30's, both families migrated north in search of economic opportunity.
Morris grew up in Detroit, joined the Episcopal Church during his undergraduate years at Yale, and subsequently became ordained as a priest. In 1981, he formed Interweave, an interreligious nonprofit organization.
Recently, Interweave partnered with the American Jewish Committee and other groups on a project called Abrahamic Kinship that convenes Christian, Muslim, and Jewish leaders in northern New Jersey to gain deeper knowledge and understanding for one another's faiths.
"There's no conflict between being deeply rooted in your own heritage and being open and respectful to people of other heritages," says Morris. "Each of our heritages is a treasure for the human race."
"I don't want mush. I don't want to go into a vague universalism where we're all alike."
