One Meeting, Two Agendas: Divergent Definitions of Mission
As indicated earlier, the Congregation for Reconciliation grew from
church leaders' desires to relate to the racial crisis of the mid to
late 1960s. The Miami Presbytery's 1968 proposal for a new congregation
and for a ministry of reconciliation drew heavily from the spirit and
content of a task force report on strategies for developing new
congregations adopted by the Board of National Missions of the United
Presbyterian Church the previous year.
The planning committee had stated the thesis to be tested by the
proposed project (with our emphasis added) as follows: "Can a
congregation based on a community of special concern develop a ministry
of racial reconciliation which
both contributes to needed social change
and relates helpfully to the ministries of other congregations?" The
clear implication in the thesis is: Must these two areas of ministry be
incompatible? The mood of the day was one of frustration over the
failures of direct action aimed at social change. Black power advocates
were telling whites that if they really were concerned to produce social
change they must accomplish it on their own turf, by changing attitudes
in their homes, churches, suburbs, and white-dominated governmental,
educational, and economic structures. It is not surprising, then, to
find mission goals presumed to test the thesis would place emphasis upon
ways for the experimental congregation to relate helpfully to the racial
ministries of other white congregations.
The Miami Presbytery proposal does not explicitly mention the Report of
the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Report),
released two weeks before the circulation of the design to members of
the Presbytery. The spirit of the proposal, however, very much reflects
the emphasis of the Kerner Report: white racism is at the core of the
crisis facing the nation. The suggested objectives for the new
congregation stress the importance of dealing with negative racial
attitudes within white churches as well as in the broader society. This
emphasis on working within white congregations can be seen in the
abbreviated summary of goals adopted by the Miami Presbytery on April
16, 1968:
- 1. Develop a congregation of action-oriented Christians with a
like commitment to strive for racial reconciliation within the church
and within society.
- 2. Provide a base for these Christians upon which to develop a
program of worship, education, fellowship, and service that will
enable them to carry on their ministry.
- 3. Develop a group of skilled communicators, educators,
technicians, and planners for use by local churches, Presbytery,
ecumenical, or secular organizations.
- 4. Support and supplement programs in the area of race relations
currently being conducted or planned by established congregations.
- 5. Provide a training ground for Presbytery and its congregations
where members can learn the methods of social action and where
churches can lend support to ministries of reconciliation in the racial
crisis.
- 6. Explore all possible avenues of ecumenical witness and mission
to bring about needed social change.
- 7. Explore and develop all possible courses of action that are
designed to change negative attitudes toward racial understanding in
all white churches.
Five of the seven goals explicitly involve working within existing
congregations toward the aim of increasing racial reconciliation within
society, and a sixth involves ecumenical witness, implying working
within other church groups. The only goal not directly calling for
working for racial reconciliation within existing church structures is
goal No. 2, and this involves the development of internal programs in
the congregation to carry out its mission vis-a-vis the other
objectives.
In sharp contrast, the statement of mission adopted by the Congregation
for Reconciliation makes only one brief mention of the desirability of
working with other congregations. And, significantly, this is the very
last sentence in their statement of goals, giving it the appearance of
having been tacked on as a necessary token concession to the Presbytery.
In actual behavior, the Congregation has almost totally disregarded its
relationship to other churches; it has made only token efforts toward
involving others in its projects. Righter sent a letter to each of the
Presbyterian pastors in Dayton early in his first year, listing some of
the areas he considered likely as social-action projects for the
Congregation. He asked if they had lay people whom they would like to
see involved in such projects, and offered the Congregation's
willingness to work cooperatively with them if mutual concern existed.
There were no responses to the letter. But having made this one gesture,
neither Righter nor the Congregation ever did follow up.
In fact, the relationship between the Congregation and other area
churches has generally been cool, occasionally even hostile. From the
viewpoint of several Dayton pastors, the Congregation has made
belligerent demands followed by immediate picketing
and leafleting of churches, without allowing the congregations an
opportunity to consider their claims.
For a variety of reasons, most of the early participants in the
Congregation held negative attitudes toward conventional churches. The
secular humanists had withdrawn physically and emotionally from
traditional religious organizations and, consequently, neither had nor
desired contacts with other churches. Similarly, many who had been
active in other congregations before joining the mission also felt
little incentive or desire to. maintain contact with conventional
religious bodies. As a rule, they had been labeled as troublemakers by
many members of their parent churches and had been frustrated in
attempts to initiate social-action projects. Having experienced social
isolation for their "deviant" religious perspectives, they had become
alienated from their former churches and were not anxious to renew
contact. Moreover, they were skeptical of the prospects for involving
their parent churches in cooperative programs of social change.
In contrast to the Presbytery's original plan that active church members
participate in the mission while maintaining ties to their traditional
congregation, only a few participants in the life of the Congregation
have maintained dual membership. In June of 1972, only two members were
doing so. One was an elderly lady who sought companionship with people
her own age in an established church. The other was an official in
another denomination who is required to maintain membership in one of
its congregations. One year later only the latter remained.
Thus, by the time they had achieved formal organization, the
Congregation's profile differed considerably from that planned by the
Miami Presbytery in 1968. The Congregation was neither serving as a
training ground for individuals expecting to return to conventional
churches nor was it engaging in efforts to involve other congregations
in cooperative social action.
