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Conclusion: A Challenge

During the 1960s liberal church leaders marched gallantly but haphazardly into the political arena. They got caught in a lot of crossfire. For the most part, they have since retreated. Many, like Kelley, now believe the move was ill-conceived or inappropriate from the beginning. This we cannot affirm. But to return and be effective in the ongoing struggle for human justice, the churches must learn from their experiences of the sixties. To us, two points seem paramount.

First, there exist inexorable boundaries beyond which the leaders of voluntary organizations dare not move without the consent of their constituencies. Liberal Protestant leaders drew dangerously close to violating those limits. Second, in doing so, they discovered the next great frontier, the organized church itself. This territory looms even more difficult to tame, for Pogo is right. The challenge, as we see it, is not to make raving radicals of those who prefer to sit in comfortable pews. Rather, the task is to

communicate to them the structural and ideological bases of our continuing cultural turmoil, to convince them that intentional morality is not enough, and, beyond this, to help them develop the faith and courage to participate in the creation of a new social order. Even if the churches can do no more than break down the resistance to change, it will have done a great deal.

It is, of course, easier to suggest that church leaders ought to concentrate on the task of helping their constituencies to understand the social chaos in which we live than it is to face the job. How can we and others be shaped to meet these demands? Most of us lack the spiritual commitment, the psychic strength, and the intellectual competence to muster ourselves to the battles we know must be waged. Deep down inside, we all hear whispers of what our agenda ought really to be. In our soberest, most intimate moments with the self, we know. But mostly we don't dwell so deep in consciousness; how could it be otherwise? The gross discrepancies between our real and ideal selves would shatter the ablest personality were it not for the human dynamics for coping with tensions and conflict. Social psychologists have known this and have described well the mechanisms we employ to temper dissonance.

Often we deny the validity of our own feelings and convince ourselves that an overly vivid imagination is casting shadows larger than our real experience of awareness. Or else we deny the realities we had focused on and offer ourselves excuses of exaggeration or misinterpretation of data. Further, we may choose simply to avoid the "bad news" of information which would reinforce our inner perceptions, or even seek counter evidence as consolation. Sometimes we look to "authorities" to tell us everything is fine: I'm OK, you're OK, and the world's going to be all right too.

Then, of course, by minimizing our own capabilities and viewing problems from a guppy-in-the-ocean perspective, we can offer ourselves another escape. Or else we can rationalize our activities as somehow being relevant to the problem-solving we ought to be about and avoid our own indictments of stopgapping and wheel-spinning. Finally, naturally, in our world of busyness we can manage not to schedule the moments of intense reflection when we might hear an echo inside suggest another road, a

different map to lead us to what we really feel is important and worthy.

Now, certainly, all this is human, very human, very understandable-but not necessarily immutable. To take seriously the challenge of today's world is to engage in a most threatening enterprise. The awesomeness of the problems, the dangers of failure, the intensity of needed commitment; the time, the energy, the drudgery-frightening prospects.

The world needs the church and its moral leadership to push, pull, and shove us deep inside ourselves and then out to the front. But the church cannot serve the world in this way until it resolves to carry out its mission to mankind, sans rationalizations and procrastinations. To do this it must put its own house in order and realistically appraise its objective conditions. There are at least three interrelated priorities on which church leaders must focus their attention. First of all, the credibility of the church as a sober and wise spokesman on important moral issues badly needs strengthening. The past has simultaneously witnessed too much reticence from some and unrestrained vigor and rhetoric from others within main-line leadership concerning important moral questions. Contradictory claims to divine wisdom on moral issues will continue. But skill, restraint in selecting issues, and strategic planning to neutralize conflicting claims can revitalize the image of the church as a focal point of moral wisdom.

The second priority must be the reversal of the growing gap between clergy and laity before church leaders find themselves standing alone, an island between two masses of laity, rather than serving as a bridge uniting for a better world. To consider the problem inevitable and insoluble is dangerous nonsense. Both laity who hold tight to orthodoxy and see their pastor as an apocalyptic anti-Christ and those who feel all or most clergy are hopeless refugees from sixteenth-century molds, lost and helpless amid the sophisticated dilemmas of the modern world, must be reached.

The former challenge religious leadership to creative endeavors to work with and bring them along in the creation of a new moral order. Preaching at them will solve nothing, and since they are theologically orthodox they are unlikely to drop out but likely instead to face and fight innovation. In the 1960s, they fought through closing their wallets, and the pain was indeed felt, since

this group tends to include a large proportion of the more affluent. Alternatives are few: they must be brought to new expectations of what precisely the church is all about. Though change-oriented clergy shun this task as not central to their endeavors, there can be little doubt that success here would ensure far greater effectiveness for the church in broader society.

Moreover, while church leaders ignore this problem, two very real dangers loom in the background. First, in what might be a rather simple coup, change-resisters might collectively use their resources to purge the church of innovative personnel. Second, and probably even more dangerous, lies the possibility of a massive defection from main-line religion smack into the waiting and welcoming tentacles of conservative religious groups with strong, right-wing, parapolitical leanings. This would deplete already scarce financial resources while swelling the ranks of a political alliance to neutralize, or perhaps overbalance, main-line Protestantism's efforts to effect social change. The forces of resistance would thus have won a major battle in defining the allegiance of God himself.

In addition to working with and winning over change-resisters, the churches need to pour energy into efforts to channel the talents of those who desire social change but lack the structure to make best use of their potential. In some instances this will mean reversing the churches' image for persons who have already abandoned their religious affiliation in frustration. They need new hope or, better, evidence that the church is addressing itself to today's world. America abounds in people willing to give and to work, people not yet convinced that the ideals they hold for humanity are unattainable. If the churches will, there is a natural resource waiting to be tapped, from sea to shining sea.

These tasks cannot be underestimated in either their difficulty or their importance. And the third priority is no simpler. The churches must develop a disciplined organization of highly skilled, change-oriented leaders. Although the decentralized organizational structure of the churches presents severe difficulties for controlling input once professional roles are assumed, numerous possibilities for improving recruitment, training, and socialization await exploration. Clearly, most seminaries will require extensive curriculum revisions to prepare students in solid social theory and

analysis of the political, economic, and social institutions of society. Practical politics of parish survival demand attention: the nitty-gritty how-to's for analyzing power, spotting change-seekers, tempering resistance, selecting personnel, augmenting ideas. If the churches are going to have the kind of leadership they need to effect change ten, twenty, or thirty years from now, courses in social theory and basic survival in the stained glass jungle must be given more than a token place in theological training programs.

Further, and equally urgent, is the demand for much stronger support mechanisms for clergy. Though Protestantism, as yet, faces less of a dropout crisis than does Catholicism, the problems of morale and mobility are obvious. As Edgar Mills and his associates have described it, there are too few good jobs, archaic mechanisms for placing men in the most suitable situations, conflicting role expectations, and a variety of other problems which erode commitment and breed sinking morale. [4] Mechanisms of ongoing education and psychic support are urgently needed. If clergy should be expected to avoid hopping on bandwagons and proclaiming jubilation in Jesus-freak and other movements deleterious to the liberal Protestant goals of justice and brotherhood, they need assistance.

When the road gets rough, ministers too need outlets for their frustrations and reinforcement of their commitment. They too need to have the reassurance of their peers trudging along beside them that it's all really worth it. Our own studies, however, indicate that little of this currently exists. Most denominations lack the resources and vision to create these mechanisms; most ministerial alliances, presbyteries, judicatories, and the like do not function in this way.

In all probability, if this need is to be met, it will have to come as a grass-roots movement. We know turned-on children are more effective in educating one another than highly trained professional teachers. We know people who have shared a common problem are more effective in helping one another than are outsiders. Why then shouldn't cadres of clergy join together in trust and commitment to help one another cope with the jobs to be done? For the present moment, at least, solutions are unlikely to come from on high. If, then, church bureaucracies cannot provide,

clergy must follow the design of our founding fathers, who never expected much from their government, and do it themselves. Organize. Divide labor. Create reciprocal expectations. Utilize community resources. Build psychic support. Develop the collective strength to purge defense mechanisms and rationalizations, and get on with the work.