When Bob Edgar announced that he was stepping down as head of the National Council of Churches, someone suggested that he might apply for the soon-to-be-vacant pulpit across the street at the historic Riverside Church. Or perhaps a better fit might be yet another nearby position on Manhattan’s Upper West Side—the soon-to-be-vacant presidency at Union Theological Seminary, where Joseph C. Hough Jr. is retiring.
As it turned out, Edgar, a former Democratic member of Congress, returned to Washington to head the public advocacy group Common Cause.