Frederick J. “Jerry” Streets ‘75 M.Div.

2020Lux et Veritas

The Lux et Veritas is awarded for excellence and distinction in applying the compassion of Christ to the diverse needs of the human condition through the wider church, ecumenical organizations, not-for-profit groups, government, or industry. We proudly give the award to the Rev. Dr. Jerry Streets.

The work of the Rev. Dr. Jerry Streets has long intersected themes of multi-faith dialogue, racial reconciliation, and pastoral care.

Born in Chicago, Rev. Streets is a graduate of Ottawa (Kansas) University, with master’s and doctoral degrees in social work from Yeshiva University in New York.

As pastor of the Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport from 1975 to 1992, Jerry fostered congregational growth and built a new church edifice. He served as University Chaplain and Senior Pastor of the Church of Christ in Yale from 1992 to 2007, the first Black minister and Baptist in that post. 

Rev. Streets is currently senior pastor of New Haven’s historic Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ. He is also a licensed clinical social worker who teaches at Columbia’s School of Social Work and its Teachers College.  

Jerry has lived a life of service and inquiry that has extended across Yale and across the world.

In 2008, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. He has made trips to the Balkans with the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, working with Christians and Muslims to care for post-war populations there. 

In addition, a UCC delegation took him to South America to promote humanitarian aid, and he has also led delegations to Cuba, Ghana, Turkey, and Israel. 

Rev. Streets has been associated with Yale for more than fifty years, ever since his YDS student days in the 1970s, when he helped the School start rectifying its neglect of the Black student presence in campus life and curriculum. 

Even then, he showed a broad vocational reach: he was elected to the New Haven Board of Alders, serving as a city alderman while still a divinity student. 

Since 1987, Rev. Streets has been an adjunct professor at YDS.

Jerry’s writings encompass both social work and religion. He was editor of the 2005 book Preaching in the New Millennium, a collection of Battell Chapel sermons commemorating Yale’s tercentennial.

Rev. Streets is also a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

This year, YDS created a student prize in Rev. Streets’ name for the graduating student who has made a distinguished contribution to the advancement of social justice.

In a recent Reflections journal interview, Rev. Streets said: “It’s human to feel overwhelmed and to think you have no impact. But that’s a delusion. We have to attack problems in small ways. Look into your heart and figure out how to find a voice against policies that hurt people.”