Pamela D. Couture, assistant professor of pastoral care, and Rodney J. Hunter, professor of pastoral care, worked for three years to edit and compile a collection of essays titled Pastoral Care and Social Conflict (Abingdon Press) in honor of Gerkin, whom they both consider their mentor in the field. The book contains essays that review the tradition, values and forces that have shaped pastoral care, as well as essays about the relationship of various social issues with pastoral care and about pastoral care in its milieu -- the congregation, the hospital and the clinic. In Couture's introduction, she writes that the essays "offer a new image of pastoral care as it met, meets and will meet the challenges of society and culture."
The book is a fitting tribute to Gerkin who, as chaplain at Grady Memorial Hospital in its segregationalist days, refused to buckle under pressure from the white administrator to serve only the white population of the hospital. During the re-ception, Couture prompted Gerkin to recall some stories from his days at Grady where he created the chaplaincy department.
"When I took the job as chaplain at Grady," Gerkin said, "I forgot to get it in writing that if I was going to be the chaplain, I was going to be the chaplain for the whole hospital." At the time, Grady was a segregated hospital, with entirely separate services for white and black patients. Gerkin stood his ground and ministered in both worlds. When the chief administrator of the hospital died, Gerkin conducted a memorial service, and as Couture and Hunter tell in the book, he "refused to conduct two formal services, one for whites and one for blacks. Rather, by maintaining the integrity of the worship setting, he presided over the first integrated event at the Gradies." Gerkin, who retired in 1992, was recruited to Emory by James T. Laney, then-dean of Candler School of Theology, from Grady.
Couture and Hunter state the purpose of the book as "an attempt to continue and advance Gerkin's legacy of pastoral theological scholarship" and to "pursue the social themes and concerns to which his professional career was devoted and to which he made such a distinguished lifetime contribution."
-- Nancy M. Spitler