University of Virginia Library

Interview

INTERVIEWER:

"How do you feel about the church's response to social issues in the 1970s?"

PASTOR:

"Well, I think the churches have largely been withdrawing. There is much more internal preoccupation in the church. Some of the activists are now into organizational development patterns in which the church, as organization, becomes a focus for mission. . . . There is an attempt to make its structure what you would want society to be. From a radical perspective one might see this as `power to the people' in microcosm. The attempt is to open up the decision-making processes of the church in a way that seldom happens in other institutional contexts. In this way the church can set an example for society. I have social activist friends who are very much into matters like transactional analysis, sensitivity groups, and liturgical creativity with their congregations now. There is no doubt that there is a great deal more of this internal preoccupation in congregations recently. But it seems to me that it just represents a whole lot of retreat from social issues which continue. There has not been a great social change. I think the injustice and the polarization between institutional establishments and those who are exploited by them has not lessened. . . .

"I think there has been [among liberal clergy] a lot of disillusionment with the effectiveness of mass movements and a recognition of the entrenchment of social injustice and a real confusion as to where the handles are, and even what are the appropriate social goals. I think a lot of social goals that were assumed to be appropriate ten, or even seven, years ago are now . open to question. For instance, how do black and white

communities appropriately work together? Are there really convergent goals? Certainly in education the labeling of busing as a bad thing is coming not only from the white but the black communities as well. I feel overwhelmed by the confusion of goals, myself, here as pastor of an interracial church in an integrated neighborhood. Five years ago, I suppose, it seemed like a place to really dig in and stabilize the neighborhood. `We'll stabilize the neighborhood' Now what does that really mean when whites say stabilize a neighborhood? `Organize a community.' Well, what does it really mean when the organization of the community is white primarily? It is to keep the whites sticking around longer and the blacks from coming in. It has become a very confused time as far as the social witness of the church is concerned. I'm sure you've heard that everywhere you've gone.

"Another side of it is the recognition in the whole culture, and the grudging recognition by some of us who really were turned on by the civil rights movement and the peace movement, that there has been a lot of emptiness in the institutional church when throughout society there have been so many manifestations-such as parapsychology, astrology, Jesus freaks, Satanism, transcendental meditation-of a tremendous search by people to find personal meaning and transcendence for their lives. I think liberal clergy must acknowledge that we have assumed the so-called spiritual dimension too easily. Ten years or so ago with The Secular City and Honest to God we were trying to say, `Hey, world! We're not weird! We are concerned for human beings and human issues and human pain.' But our answers in terms of social involvement did not distinguish us from good liberal humanist people in general. There has been a response to the theological emptiness of social action by middle-American clergy and laity emerging within the churches. It is a conservative reaction [in the form of] a new evangelism and fundamentalism. Liberal clergy and laity are extremely vulnerable to this reaction. We have nothing concrete to offer as an alternative since we have, in the Nixon years, become so goalless and rudderless on social concerns. There may have been an external storm gathering a few years ago, but now the storm is internal, inside the church, and social action is losing out. . . ."

INTERVIEWER:

"How have liberal clergy responded to this new privatism in the churches?"

PASTOR:

"There is now a crisis of confidence. Those who were out there on the picket lines, going south to march, going to city council meetings, have now capitulated in many ways. Some have started playing internal games in their churches, some of which I think have value but tend to ignore the social content of the Christian gospel and thus, in my view, are inadequate in themselves. Some have gotten out of the ministry and gone into social work and planning jobs. Then there are some others, and I think I count myself among them, who are saying, `Oh, my God! Where is the lever? How can I rally some troops to really take something on? And how can I tap into a transcendent dimension without just staying in the church building, withdrawn from the world?' That is, how can we continue to be on the move and involved in the suffering of the world and at the same time say that we are experiencing what it means to be a Christian?"

INTERVIEWER:

"Are you saying that some clergymen who saw the church as a viable institution from which to mount social action campaigns in the 1960s no longer see it that way?"

PASTOR:

"I still read The Christian Century every once in a while. Andrew D. Templeton wrote in a recent issue that there is still no institution in American society as capable of social transformation and redemption as the church. I don't believe it anymore. I wrote in the margin of the article that I wish that I still believed it as Templeton apparently does. . . .

"I think the church is much more obviously on the fringe now. This is a judgment on the illusion that it was meaningfully involved in the sixties. One of the things that the churches historically specialize in is inspiration and crusades. And, of course, some horrible things have been called by that glorious name. When social involvement and social change were seen primarily in terms of inspiration and crusades, and revivalism, of course then the church was very inclined to be in the center of the arena. But when social change means hard digging and reading through reams and reams of [bureaucratic] reports in order to understand how the system is doing its job, only to discover that you need still more information in order to pin down the concrete, bureaucratic lever which dispenses injustice in certain concrete

circumstances-well, you know, that's not very inspiring. This does not call for charismatic leadership so much as dogged persistence. It is not going to light the fires of crusades or revival and it does raise some rather serious questions of staying power. . . .

The action-oriented clergy are having to go back to where the troops are now that the crusade is over. This may indicate the shallowness of much of what went under the banner of social action and social change in the sixties.

"But wasn't it fun while it lasted? We were turned on by the feeling that we were tilting at windmills and the monsters were really falling. And in a way, I suppose, by creating asocial climate in which legislation could take place, we did have some effect. Our cause was so obviously just and the enemy was so dumb as to use knives, sticks, police dogs, and fire hoses. You got some victories then. But the enemy is not so dumb anymore; in fact, the enemy is us. At least we are coopted into the system. Those who are still seriously into social action, who are now doing the hard drudge work of making the system move, they are in the main no longer clergymen, or at least no longer active pastors. But it was such a groovy trip while it lasted. . . .