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Action in Search of an Issue

The initial members of the Cincinnati Congregation for Reconciliation, like their counterparts in Dayton, were eager to become involved in social action. During the first month, they decided to

support a rent strike among slum tenants. This project seems basically to have been chosen simply because "they had to start somewhere." The strike soon collapsed. Although a few got interested in statewide housing legislation from this, within a short time interest had waned. The Congregation's first attempt at social action was thus a critical disappointment.

Ohio law compels voters to periodically reassess their contribution to public education through tax levies. During the 1960s, more than one Ohio school system closed its doors while defiant voters trudged repeatedly to the polls to defeat the latest tax revision. This issue arose in Cincinnati during the early months of the Congregation's life. The mission soon devised a two-pronged strategy of confrontation. First, they launched a voter registration drive in a low-income neighborhood. Simultaneously, they began working through the Presbytery and its twenty-eight churches within the Cincinnati school district to generate support for the levy. They pushed an advocacy resolution through a meeting of the Cincinnati Presbytery and then distributed literature through the churches urging levy passage.

The two tactics met with unequal success. Holm recounted the experience to us as follows: "We had really seen ourselves in `Secular City' terms, going out there and outpoliticking the politicians, and we found that we could not deliver many new voters [in the neighborhood where we were working]. The registration drive flopped. For a lot of the folks this was their first encounter with record keeping in the inner city. just trying to find out where people live, what their names are, and if they are voters was a nightmare. It drove people up the wall. But I think the thing we learned from the experience is that since the Congregation does not have a neighborhood identification we would never be very effective in the secular political realm and our-power would come primarily by working through the churches. At least we had access and mutual accountability to these people."

We have argued that the initial social-action project in Dayton established their identity as an activist group. It set the tone and style for later confrontations in the city. It reinforced commitment to direct social action as a means of fulfilling their central goal. The Cincinnati Congregation for Reconciliation, by contrast, had from the onset seen itself as an agency to get established churches

involved in social action. The failures it encountered in attempting independent social-action projects reinforced its desire to work through other churches.

Having tried its hand at direct social action and having failed, the Congregation continued to search for an issue around which they could build a ministry of racial reconciliation which would contribute to needed social change and through which they could relate helpfully to the ministries of other congregations. Just such an issue was about to erupt.

The close of the tumultuous decade of the sixties found the nation in a mood of weariness and resignation to racial problems. The War on Poverty had waned, the government had ignored the protest of Resurrection City, Martin Luther King had become a memory, and the Kerner Report had only stirred more words. Conditions for the underprivileged in our society had improved somewhat, but major hurdles yet loomed on every horizon and there seemed little national psychic energy left. Only a genuine shock tactic managed to hurtle the poverty and race issues into the headlines once again.

On May 4, 1969, James Forman, speaking for the Black Economic Development Council, interrupted Sunday services in New York's Riverside Church and presented demands for financial reparations to the nation's black citizens. Accusing the present capitalism of the United States of being oppressive to blacks, the Black Manifesto Forman presented singled out the community of white religious institutions to begin making restitution for generations of slavery and subsequent oppression. Anything more than marginal participation in the society required a massive infusion of funds for black economic development in fields such as banking, education, and communications.

Support for the Black Manifesto was scattered. Some black leaders, within and without the churches, heralded it; others expressed reservations or disapproval. Nonetheless, the issue defied being ignored and white church leaders had to face it. The powerful language of the document repulsed some, and they found in its verbiage sufficient reason for rejection. To others, the radical wording and ideas appeared as a signal of the urgency and immensity of the problem.

Robert Lecky and Elliott Wright, in their volume analyzing the nature and impact of the Black Manifesto, addressed the vulnerability of white religion:

Hearing then, in 1969, that their collection plates must echo the sentiments of their pulpits, churches mainly responded in one of two ways. They either rejected the Manifesto and claimed already existing support or they rejected the direct strategy of payments to BEDC but did initiate some new program for black economic development.

Hoping to lead its Presbytery brethren in the latter course, the Cincinnati Congregation for Reconciliation began developing strategies for interpreting the Manifesto and devising practical means to address the subject of black economic development. Several weeks were spent developing action recommendations. Their resultant proposal was a package of collateral loans for black business enterprises, coupled with the recommendation that churches deposit money and buy stock in new black-controlled financial institutions in Cincinnati.

Interpreting the Black Manifesto to other churches, the Congregation kept the biblical themes focal. An example of this approach is cited below. It was distributed as part of the

Congregation's newsletter while the black economic development issue still commanded widespread concern.

The devotional then interprets this Old Testament story of the confrontation between Jacob and Laban as a biblical precedent for reparations to ex-slaves. "We, too, freed our slaves after years, and sent them out empty-handed. Without land or equipment or capital. Which is why black Americans are where they are today." God therefore commends the payment of reparations, it is argued, and through black economic development the churches can respond to the will of God.

Before church sessions dominated by Cincinnati businessmen, the Congregation occasionally legitimated its cause with economic ideology. In these instances, presentation teams argued that belief in free enterprise necessarily means wanting others to share in the system. Once church lay leadership agreed to the scriptural and ideological principles, the presenters could offer concrete proposals for action.

The summary report on the Congregation presented to the Cincinnati Presbytery in October of 1972, following the Congregation's termination, reflects upon this project.

This underscores the position that, for the Cincinnati Congregation, social action was not an end in itself. Equally important was the aim of helping churches to share in the process. This understanding of social action contrasts sharply with that of the Dayton Congregation.

The second major project of the Cincinnati Congregation involved the development of a church school curriculum. This project emerged as an attempt to address an internal structural problem within the Congregation but later suggested a way of providing another service to established churches.

In Cincinnati, as in Dayton, children attended worship services with their parents. Because its membership was so geographically decentralized, however, the Cincinnati Congregation followed its worship service with a second hour to handle most of the committee work of the mission. The presence of children during this period presented a problem. In this context, church school offered a logical solution, and so a curriculum was developed. The lesson material centered on black-white encounters in the Bible, and each adult member of the Congregation took his turn, for one month, teaching church school.

After the material had been completed, the Congregation began to consider how it might serve to enhance racial understanding in established churches. They concluded that evangelical

churches were probably least likely to emphasize the contributions of blacks to the Christian heritage. Since their lessons were based on Bible stories, they might well be most appreciated in these same churches. And so the material was rewritten with evangelicals in mind and turned into a vacation Bible school curriculum. Although, at the time of the Congregation's termination, the lesson package had yet to win approval for publication by either a church press or educational board, this may still be achieved. If so, the defunct Congregation will add one more success to its scorecard of strides toward racial reconciliation within established churches. If the issue is not pursued further, however, the Congregation will have missed a significant opportunity to extend its work and ideals while also enhancing its success as an experiment.