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CHAPTER 3
In the Beginning:
The Genesis of the Congregation

Creating an experimental congregation is a project fraught with perils. The process from drawing board to formal establishment looms heavy with pitfalls, each threatening abortion. The blueprint of the designers with its expression of their ambition, their choice of an organizing pastor with his own particular vision, talent, and interpretation of goals, and the charter members' individual expectations of the functioning and value of such a group offer a wide diversity of potential directions. Each of these contributors to the creation-the designers, the organizer, the participants-seminally influences what can or will happen. Early patterns narrow alternatives and establish a momentum which will dictate future developments. The character, personality, and mission of the congregation will be molded by the priorities, skills, and style of its three parents interacting within the limitations of environment and happenstance.

What develops through this process of interaction may or may not be as initially designed. A reality must be defined by those who operate within it. The social construction of such a reality is a dynamic process quite antithetical to the analogy of a builder following a blueprint. The construction of a reality capable of generating both life purpose for individuals and task-focused mission and meaning for the collectivity is a far more complex operation.

Calling a Pastor

In the spring of 1968, the Miami Presbytery received approval from the denomination's Board of National Missions for the new congregation. They also got a promise of financial support on a declining basis for the proposed three-year life of the congregation. To express its central concern and raison d'etre, the Presbytery named the newly approved mission the Congregation for Reconciliation.

During the next months the New Church Development Subcommittee of the National Missions Committee interviewed several prospective organizing pastors. In late June, after considering several others, the committee invited the Rev. Richard Righter, a pastor in Philadelphia, for an interview. Reared in the San Francisco area, Righter had attended the University of California at Berkeley for his undergraduate degree and had continued for a Master's in Business Administration. After seminary he had interned in an inner-city church in San Francisco before accepting the call to a racially transitional inner-city church in Philadelphia. Righter was an appealing candidate. First, he had a strong track record for involvement in social action in previous pastorates and, second, he had an intense concern with the development of lay leadership skills. In discussing this point with the committee, Righter insisted that the pastor should play a low-key role relative to lay leadership.

The committee was impressed. They anticipated that the experiment would attract strong people with diverse ideas and felt an authoritarian pastor would build destruction into the system. As one committeeman told us,' they feared that a pastor who insisted on running the show would trigger an explosion when confronted by a membership of hard-nosed activists: "They would just blow each other out of the water almost immediately. Everybody would leave or else the pastor would have to change his style."

Righter had studied the design passed by the Presbytery and had anticipated some hard bargaining. Eagerness to attempt such an experiment never overrode his rational interest and reservations. The proposal, as approved, provided for a three- to four-year experiment. The design called for three years of

financial support, decreasing by one third each year, and had deliberately left the impression of a temporary rather than a permanent experiment. The committee had emphasized impermanence so that the congregation, if it failed to take root and become self-supporting, could be ended with little flak. If the congregation did survive, however, the committee was in a position to consider the possibility of continuation at that time. Righter argued the possibility of permanence. He assumed survival and wanted assurance that the congregation would not be arbitrarily immolated after four years. Receiving this commitment, Righter accepted the call and became pastor of the Congregation for Reconciliation.

Passive Resistance to Early Organizational Efforts

The Righters moved to Dayton the first week in September 1968. The Presbytery had publicized the new congregation in its newsletter and had requested pastors to encourage selected members to consider participation on an experimental basis. When Righter arrived, the Presbytery had a list of twenty prospective members. To the best of Righter's recollection, none of these candidates were actually referred by pastors. Our own interviews with a sample of local pastors also failed to reveal any nominees or referrals. Most, if not all, of the list resulted from the initiative of the individuals themselves, and most of these people cited a front-page newspaper article in April as their primary source of information about the proposed congregation.

During his first week in Dayton, both daily newspapers interviewed Righter and wrote feature articles on the new congregation. This coverage produced additional calls from individuals expressing interest. With these two lists in hand, Righter proceeded to call on his prospective members. Also during his initial weeks in Dayton, Righter visited each of the Presbyterian ministers in the metropolitan area. He described the purpose of his calls as "simply to get acquainted, to personally relate to them and possibly see ways we might be able to cooperate." Righter reports that he did not ask any of them for members from their congregations, nor did any of them volunteer any of their people. This also is corroborated by our own

interviews with local pastors. [1] The fears of the National Missions Committee were thus early confirmed. Although the antagonism to the establishment of an experimental congregation had been overcome by the rhetoric of cooperation in the planning documents, the support of local clergymen in the organization of the congregation did not emerge. Passive resistance had replaced active opposition.

In September and early October, Righter organized three meetings in separate areas of the city for those interested in the new congregation. Approximately ten people attended each of these informal meetings, planned only to provide people with an opportunity to meet other prospective members and to share their views as to the nature of the congregation they would like to see emerge. Righter reports the main interest expressed in these meetings was the desire to meet participants in other areas of the city. So, on the third Sunday evening in October, the three groups met together. This meeting further served the function of getting acquainted. No organizational matters were discussed beyond the agreement to hold monthly meetings.

During these initial weeks in Dayton, Righter also made a concerted effort to familiarize himself with the metropolitan area and its problems. He obtained and studied a wide range of research reports on such subjects as demography, race relations, housing, employment, tax structure, utilities, transportation, and business activities. He attended meetings of the City Commission, the Board of Education, and other public groups. He also attempted to meet community leaders, and he cultivated and nourished his initial contacts with the news media. His contacts with journalists continued to provide publicity for the new mission. Equally important, these contacts proved to be an important source of information on community issues and problems. Later, they offered strategic information on issues with which the Congregation became involved.

In summary, Righter's first weeks as organizer of the Congregation for Reconciliation were busy ones. It is probably unfair to describe them as ordinary first weeks for an organizing pastor. In our assessment, Righter went about his work in a highly systematic, disciplined, and professional manner hardly typical of pastors in a new community. One church administrator told us, "Righter

had learned more about metropolitan Dayton in a few weeks' time than I had known after a year. . . . He seemed to know how to get around and get the information he wanted." These research skills later became both vital assets in the development of action projects and a routine part of action leadership training in the Congregation.

Footnotes

. . . And Ask Questions Later:
Instant Action Without Organization

The October meeting, while pursuing little more discussion of organization beyond an agreement to meet again, began the Congregation for Reconciliation. Before the next regularly scheduled meeting, some of the participants had already started planning their first social-action project. This apparent lack of concern with the imperatives of formal organization significantly set the mood and the style which became characteristic of the Congregation.

This congregation's reckless abandon of survival-oriented goals stands in sharp contrast to the "typical" life-style of new congregations. An excellent study of six new congregations conducted in 1964 by sociologist Donald Metz documented what every socially conscious church executive already knew: new congregations typically concentrate on one goal, their own survival. [2] The paramount structure and symbol of their viability is the construction of a church building. Closely related to this is the recruitment of new members, essential for financing the edifice. While new congregations typically have formal charters expressing goals relative to their theological heritage, to the nurture of community and spiritual life of the members, and to mission or service, Metz found all these insignificant compared with survival-oriented imperatives.

The lack of concern with formal organization and other survival-oriented tasks among the first participants in the Congregation for Reconciliation is partially explained by the initial conception of the church by the Miami Presbytery. The strategy paper from the Board of National Missions stated that "from the beginning the entire life of the [new] congregation [is to] be geared to its mission task." [3] And the Presbytery committee had

explicitly forbidden the Congregation to build or purchase a building. But these directives cannot adequately account for the almost total lack of concern with basic organizational imperatives among the participants of the group. As we shall see, the Congregation has typically dealt with organizational and financial matters only when they have become so pressing as no longer to permit oversight. Structurally, this conflicts with Righter's strong desire to establish a durable, self-supporting congregation. Yet he has seldom, if ever, portrayed survival and social-action goals as in conflict. This would indeed have been a self-defeating strategy during the initial organizational period.

While clearly not true of everyone, many of those who attended the first meeting were intensely interested in social action. Indeed, for some, Righter's credibility rested on his willingness to engage in immediate social action. The tasks of formal organization could wait. This seems to have presented no problem for Righter, as his instincts and impulses lay in the same direction. The group needed more immediately to prove to themselves and to the community their seriousness about social action. But, we should also add, this sense of urgency to act was not at all out of proportion to the mood of many socially conscious people in America at this time.

Their first social-action project, which Righter and some of the participants had begun planning before their November meeting, was to be a supportive action of a group of black employees, the "Second Family," at the National Cash Register Corporation. This group had been actively working against discriminatory hiring practices at NCR. At the November meeting of the Congregation, a proposal to assist the Second Family was presented and an ad hoc committee was formed to meet with both the leaders of the Second Family and executives of NCR. The NCR officials refused to meet with the committee. In early December, the Congregation printed Christmas cards protesting discrimination against minority groups and, on the morning of December 19, handed out 600 of them to white employees at the gates of the NCR administration building. Their activity received television,) radio, and newspaper coverage.

The first foray into social action is very significant for several reasons. First, by choosing a major corporation of Dayton as its

target, the Congregation from the beginning set itself in opposition to the powerful business community. For those hesitant about participating out of concern that the Congregation might be "too timid," this gesture offered reassurance the group would tackle "the establishment."

This initial action was equally significant in restricting the range of support and participation in the Congregation. Those constituting the initial informal leadership were not content to pursue action seen as "respectable" by community and business leaders. If they were to work with the establishment, it would be on the terms of the Congregation and not vice versa. Thus, those who were either members of the business leadership or who occupied positions in which they felt threatened by identification with the Congregation were virtually eliminated as prospective members. Three or four middle-range corporate executives had been involved in the early life of the Congregation, but they all dropped out. These people offered reasons other than their fear of reprisal, but the evidence of social science overwhelmingly attests that people seldom become actively involved and identified with activities threatening to their financial security. [4] At least one of these corporate executives has continued to provide modest financial subsidy and another has lent support through the Presbytery, but the controversial style of the Congregation barred their visible association with the group.

Individuals at the core of the Congregation are, consequently, persons with the structural freedom to participate; they are either self-employed or hold jobs sufficiently insulated from local politics. This has been particularly true of the leaders of social-action projects, that is, those exposed to publicity. Often they have been women whose husbands hold jobs relatively unthreatened by such social activism.

This initial action against NCR also served notice to business and political leaders that power would not ensure safety from attack by this religious group. So, from the onset, community leaders who defined all confrontation or protest politics as "too radical" characterized the Congregation as a group of extremist reformers and potential adversaries.

Another important aspect of this initial social action was its establishment of a modus operandi for involvement which has

since continued largely unchanged. Projects are suggested by one or more members of the Congregation, whereupon interested members are encouraged by Righter to form a committee for research and action. Though a committee seeks approval before undertaking action in the Congregation's name, the green light almost always flashes, and a "do your own thing" ethic combined with an emphasis upon tolerance has generally prevailed.

This ad hoc strategy seems a conscious device for diffusing and hence creating effective lay leadership within the Congregation and for dealing with the diversity of interests and orientations. But it has also been an effective device for furthering the power and influence of the activist core within the mission; those most interested in social action have created for themselves a situation of maximum freedom.

The first action project demonstrated Righter's leadership as it had appealed to the New Church Development Subcommittee which had called him to organize the new congregation. He had at once demonstrated his ability as action strategist and developer of lay leadership. He had thereby legitimated himself in the eyes of the committee, although, no doubt, without design.

Footnotes

. . . And Now You Come at Noon:
Organizational Postponement Analyzed

Throughout their first year the Congregation's level of involvement in social action escalated while its organizational activity lagged. In January and February of 1969, committees were set up to organize various aspects of the Congregation's life. Regularly scheduled meetings evolved into three types still being used by the Congregation-celebrations (liturgy and communion organized around various social issues), family festivals (five-hour get-togethers involving communal meals, games, and fellowship, often in the form of picnics or outings), andhouse church (Bible study and communion). In addition, a group meets periodically to pray and share personal concerns.

In addition to this minimal structure, the Congregation 'established a temporary budget and a committee to pursue formal organization. However, little progress was made until January of 1970, apparently for at least three reasons. First, as already

mentioned, the Congregation and Righter directed their attention to the formal goal of social action and avoided concern with survival goals. They preferred to demonstrate to outsiders that they "meant business." But this avoidance of such survival oriented activity as recruitment and financial stabilization has continued as a dominant theme in the Congregation's life. The presence of other clearly defined formal goals and the directly expressed concern of the Miami Presbytery that they not become survival-oriented only partially explain the avoidance of this common path. Perhaps more important was the antiorganizational bias of many of the mission members themselves. Having witnessed what they felt was exclusive preoccupation with survival oriented activity in their former churches, they determined not to follow suit in their new congregation.

A second major reason for delay seems to have been the desire, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid potentially divisive issues. From the onset the Congregation contained two latent groups. The first quite self-consciously viewed themselves within the Christian tradition and, although interested in social action and experimental worship, wished to maintain much of the traditional Christian language. The second group encompassed self-consciously secular humanists who viewed the institutional church as a viable organization for working toward social justice. We do not mean to imply a derogatory using of the church for their own goals. Rather, most of them probably philosophically saw the Christian tradition on the side of social justice, and hence it made every sense to align themselves with it. But their theology, to the extent that they had any, consisted in a loosely formulated Christian agnosticism or atheism, and they adamantly avoided "God-talk." While Righter's own theology leans more toward the conservative, he did not insist on imposing his views or making the affirmation of any specific Christian doctrine a prerequisite for participation in the group. While they were in the minority, secular humanists were among the most vocal and active of the participants. [5]

Recognizing the diversity of religious orientations within the group, the Congregation, by preoccupying themselves with social action, avoided the sensitive task of drawing up a statement of mission and postponed the needed reconciliation within their own

ranks. Though social action also elicited some controversy, the division came mainly between the aggressive core and the marginal participants. In contrast, the division over religious orientation cut through the social-action hierarchy of the group and presented more of a threat.

The third reason for delay in formal organization relates to the second. It involved difficulty with the affiliation requirements of the Presbyterian Church. Not only did they insist that members ascribe to various doctrinal truths but they also demanded that the authority of the Congregation be delegated to a "session," or board of elders. The humanists, of course, were not prepared to affirm the minimal statement of faith, nor was the Congregation willing to be ruled by a session. Policy matters had from the beginning been discussed and voted on by the entire congregation; this decision-making style suited the temperament of the group far better than a representative style.

That early divisions within the Congregation made formal organization a difficult task was readily acknowledged in most of our interviews. Since we do not consider folklore adequate documentation, however, we searched for first-hand accounts to chronicle these events.

Many of those involved in the Congregation at the onset have since left and were unavailable for interviews with us. Those who remained confess some ambiguity and uncertainty in recalling their own feelings and their perceptions of the feelings of others at that time. Moreover, we found considerable disagreement in the accounts of present members as to why certain former members dropped out. Fortunately, a brief questionnaire completed by those present at the January 15, 1969, meeting had been saved and has proven a helpful supplement to our interviews.

The questionnaire was designed "to help chart the direction the Congregation wishes to take." The instructions at the top of the questionnaire emphasize this was not to be "the total effort in picking goals" but only a beginning. The questionnaire consisted of twelve items. Nine of these could be answered by checking a box or filling in a one-word answer. The other three questions were open-ended, requiring a written response and asking the participants to express (a) their overriding reasons for interest in this experimental congregation, (b) the sort of congregation

meetings envisioned, and (c) the nature of pastoral services expected.

The task of answering open-ended questions in a group meeting is by nature not conducive to eliciting lengthy responses. Nevertheless, these short responses, combined with the responses to the other questions and our interviews with members, provide valuable information regarding the background and expectations of the participants in the newly formed congregation. A total of thirty questionnaires were completed and returned. Though the number present at the meeting was not recorded, checking through congregational records encourages us to believe that all or nearly all those present responded to the questionnaire, since attendance at these early meetings seldom exceeded thirty persons. Not all questions were answered by all respondents, but only three failed to write anything on the open-ended questions. Moreover, the length of responses varied significantly. Twenty-four persons voluntarily signed their names to the questionnaire, and our interpretation of responses partially draws on other information about these people. While an analysis of these responses is open to some misjudgment and error, we believe it does reflect a reasonably accurate picture of the group at the time.

The early participants are in virtual consensus in expressing concern for the racial crisis. However, it is not at all clear that they are of one mind relative to an action strategy for the Congregation. To the question "Do you think the Congregation should work actively for social change or serve as a discussion and educational group?" 10 opted for action, 1 for education, and 19 for both. But while 29 of 30 reported they were in favor of action, this predominant response is not tantamount to a mandate for confrontation politics. To the contrary, a number of responses to the open-ended questions, as well as marginal comments, indicate that several people conceived of action in more traditional, comfort-oriented terms of Christian service. For example, "efforts to serve community needs" and "neighborhood improvement programs" are typical of these responses.

Perhaps more important for understanding the composition of the group is the issue of "secularists" versus "traditionalists." We attempted to code the open-ended questions in terms of the presence or absence of traditional Christian language (using the

term "traditional Christian language" very loosely). Any mention whatsoever of ideas like "Christian fellowship," "Christian concern," "worship," or "theological basis for action" was classified as traditional. We recognize, of course, that very unorthodox Christians may utilize such language. However, our concern is an attempt to discern whether the participants conceived and articulated their involvement in the group as "religiously based." Using these admittedly crude measures, we found that sixteen made such use of traditional language and fourteen, including the three who did not answer the open-ended questions, did not. It cannot, of course, be concluded that the absence of Christian language makes all the others in the group secularists. Many of" them may very well think of themselves as Christian. However, given the setting (a congregational meeting) in which they answered the questions, we can conclude that they were not easily given to expressing themselves in terms of traditional Christian concepts. And, as already mentioned, we know that at least some of these people did not consider themselves Christians and were reluctant to have any "God-talk" present in their meetings.

Another interesting insight regarding the feelings of the early participants may be gleaned from the question "Do the services meet your religious needs?" To this point there had been only one brief homily which could have been called a sermon. Although there were some prayers, songs, and liturgies, they were informal and experimental in nature, not at all what one would expect in a normal Sunday morning worship service in an established church. Nineteen responded that the services did meet their religious needs and five responded no. An analysis of the open-ended questions of those who responded "no" indicates their desire to have some form of worship service. Two of those who responded "yes" indicated only partial satisfaction and a desire for more worship. Thus we have from the onset a minority of approximately one third who were quite explicit about their desire to have some form of worship or other expressions of their Christian heritage. These responses, no doubt, had much to do with the creation of the once-a-month Sunday evening house church and Bible study. Equally significant, however, is that approximately two thirds

seemed satisfied with having a congregational format free from additional forms of Christian worship.

Examination of responses to the question regarding pastoral services expected is also revealing. The largest category indicated an expectation of the pastor as resource person, strategist, and leader in social-action projects. Eight so indicated. Five described more or less traditional pastoral roles. Two others described their expectations in traditional language, such as "be a Christian friend." Two indicated explicitly that they expected no pastoral services. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of this question is that eleven of thirty respondents wrote nothing, by far the largest number of nonresponses to the items in the questionnaire. Since it was the final question, some may simply not have gotten to it. On the other hand, in part, this no doubt reflects the ambiguity built into the structure of an experimental congregation. Many people really didn't know what they expected. But we believe it also reflects for some the lack of background and experience from which to respond, that is, the concept "pastoral service" was foreign to them.

Whether Righter viewed the response to this question as a green light to eschew traditional pastoral leadership and counseling roles is not known. It is clear, however, that he has seldom functioned in these capacities, nor does he feel the Congregation expected such of him. His perception may have had the impact of a self-fulfilling prophecy. For some who left the Congregation, the lack of traditional pastoral care was a problem. Those who are presently in the Congregation do not expect Righter to begin playing a more traditional role, but among a few there remains a quiet wish it might have been otherwise. One charter member told us he felt the group had suffered for want of someone to play the role of "pastor-healer" of internal tensions. Righter seems not to take this too seriously. He insists that everyone in the Congregation is a pastor, tending to the needs and problems of others. To some degree this is probably true, but it does not erase the evidence of unresolved tension.

Sociologically speaking, Righter's low-key playing of the traditional pastor leadership role (including such activities as preaching, counseling, visiting the sick, and presiding over policymaking) served to undermine his legitimacy as the group's leader

for some participants. As social-action leader, his guidance is continually evaluated in terms of the individual member's perceptions of the wisdom of his strategies. Had he accepted the role of pastor in the more conventional sense, a greater measure of authority and legitimacy would no doubt have accrued to the office. On the other hand, in order to have convincingly donned a traditional leadership style he might have had to confront those most resistant to strong one-man leadership, thus igniting explosive conflicts and losing several activist participants. This is not to say that Righter never visits the sick or counsels those with difficulties. He does. Our point is that he has consciously played down the traditional pastoral image both within and outside the Congregation.

The dilemma in which Righter found himself in terms of the pastoral leadership role is expressed in notes he recorded immediately after the February 1969 congregation meeting, just a month after the questionnaire had been filled out.

It is difficult to speculate at this point which pastoral leadership style would have ultimately produced the least tension. One thing

is certain, however. For minimum conflict the leadership and congregational style must be complementary. Had Righter opted for a strong leadership style from the onset, the style of the congregation would have had to adjust to minimize conflict.

In summary, results of the questionnaire underscore and support our analysis of the reasons for delay in the formal organization of the Congregation. The divisions in belief and expectation obviously did not open an immediate schism, but they were undeniably present from the beginning. And the desire to avoid internal conflict does seem clearly related to the long delay in formally organizing.

Footnotes

Getting Their Thing Together:
Internal Dissension over Goals

For a new congregation to be organized officially, the Presbytery required a covenant, statement of mission, and constitution and bylaws. The task of developing these documents did not begin until nearly half a year after Righter's arrival. By this time, he anticipated increasing pressure from the Presbytery. Realizing the inherent difficulties, Righter began encouraging movement toward preparing the documents.

The task did indeed produce some considerable tension within the Congregation, as reflected in the working papers. Written by a lay member and circulated among the participants [6] of the Congregation on February 20, 1969, this preliminary draft served as a basis for discussion of goals in four separate meetings held in homes during the last week in February. The entirety of this working paper is couched in "church language." It begins with a theological statement and then moves to the role of laity, corporate worship, style, and service.

Strong reactions to this theological expression are reflected in a position paper prepared by another lay person. She objected to limiting the theological rationale. With reference to Buddha, she wrote:

She also objected to the concept of worship expressed in the working paper. Substituting the concept of celebration, she wrote that "anything that pulls us together as one is worship: a sit-in, a leafleting, a communion service, a yoga meditation session."

The initial statement, acknowledging but not dwelling upon working relationships with other congregations, proclaimed:

We see in this statement a conditional openness to other congregations, a willingness for other congregations to accept them (the Congregation for Reconciliation) on their own terms.

But this was far too moderate and generous for the author of the position paper, who responded that "the rustic, ridiculously wealthy, over-structured eternal mother figure, the church, guarantees the pledge-paying participant immunity from the world." Then, in a specific statement on the relationship between the new mission and other churches, she wrote:

In short, the position paper indicates clearly the author's feelings that an adequate statement of mission would explicitly indict mother church for her indifference to the problems of the

world and, moreover, extend the Congregation's ideological rationale beyond the Christian heritage.

After the four neighborhood sessions discussing the statement of mission (and presumably its rebuttal), a second draft was circulated on May 20, almost three months later. Without abandoning the Christian theological rationale, it made important concessions to the views articulated in the rebuttal position paper. Most importantly, the second draft included a subsection entitled "Diversity Within Unity," a phrase used in the position paper and an idea which became central to the Congregation's rhetoric. This subsection included the comment: "we agree to disagree and with all through Christ to remain one congregation." Equally significant, this compromise draft did not abandon the Christian vocabulary. Note the statement indicates that unity comes "through Christ."

Clearly, however, this compromise was insufficient for some of the secularists. On May 25, twenty-three participants met to hammer out a common set of goals. They proceeded systematically as though twenty-three mission statements were competing in an elimination tournament until one winner would be declared. Each person wrote down his or her ideas for congregational goals and then sought out a person with congruent thoughts. The pair then met with a dissimilar pair to attempt a reconciliation of their goals through compromise. When this was accomplished, the new statement was read, together with the statement that common ground had been found "in the spirit of Christ and/or for the love of mankind." This permitted the option of God-language. At the end of the exercise, however, the group had clearly not reached consensus. Of the 21 persons remaining, 4 had problems with the mission statement, 14 with membership requirements, 7 with bylaws. Four even had difficulty with the proposition that the Congregation should be publicized as a Christian church. Over three quarters rejected certain requirements necessary to be formally established as a Presbyterian congregation, among them that only professing Christians could be voting members and that a church order be accepted whereby policy decisions would be made by the ruling elders rather than the congregation at large. A four-page mimeographed statement of individual goals, not a corporate statement, emerged from the day-long retreat.

Another statement, undated and unsigned but obviously written about the same time, reveals the difficulty of one person who perceived himself as a Christian working in the same group with those who would have preferred to jettison all "God-talk."

In short, this person felt it inappropriate to exclude the secularists from the group but thought, by the same token, that the secularists ought, as a criterion of participation, to have accepted the group as organized and motivated by a sense of Christian ethics. Moreover, this person seems to say: Please don't step on my right to express my motivation in Christian language.

Secularists active in the group seem to have accepted this modest compromise. In time they have even come to accept Christian symbols as expressions of the unity of the Congregation. However, at that time, there were secularists in the group who viewed an appropriate "compromise" as the total abandonment of "God-talk." As a result, the "God-talk" seems to have been largely, although not exclusively, restricted to the once-a-month Sunday evening house church during the Congregation's early years.

In terms of the formal statement of mission, the secularists won. The formal statement of goals adopted in February 1970 was

almost entirely stripped of the theological rationale and traditional language expressed in the first two drafts.

Unable to agree on a common set of goals, the Congregation compromised with an eclectic statement:

We seek to be a gathered community celebrating our given life, loving each other and the world, seeking to act in response to our shared goals and in support of each other in our diverse goals. The following goals-shared and diverse-are open to expansion as our congregation grows:

• Social action Freedom
• Experimentation
• To retain personal individuality while working toward social justice through direct action with the golden rule as our guide
• To be a community dedicated to the humanizing of life for ourselves and for others
• To become a servant people led by the Holy Spirit, to be an instrument of healing society as well as one another
• For the love of mankind and/or in the Spirit of Christ, to fight for the freedom of every person to realize his life's authentic potential
• To be the people of God responding to Him by loving each other in out-pouring our individual and corporate life for His World through social change and healing acts
• To influence and involve other congregations in placing increasingly higher priorities on human concerns of society.

Three of the secularists remained adamant to the end. At the congregation meeting in February of 1970, one full year after the circulation of the first working paper on the mission of the church, a covenant, statement of mission, constitution and bylaws were adopted, but not without a fight. Some minor concessions were made to the small group of secular-humanists who remained uncompromising. By the time this meeting took place, however, sufficient consensus had developed among the Christian members and the more compromising secularists so that the remaining handful of hard-liners were no longer capable of intimidating the majority. In a final move, they threatened not to join the

Congregation if the proposed documents were adopted, whereupon one usually soft-spoken and pensive participant spoke the will of the group: "If you don't join this congregation after all we have adapted to you, then pooh on you." The documents were immediately adopted. At the same meeting the Congregation agreed on continuance after the experimental period on a self-supporting basis as a major collective goal. At last the pieces were falling into place.

The chickens were counted and the hatching was soon to be. But when the local Presbyterian church executives examined the documents prepared by the Congregation, they could not accept them. The Congregation would not disallow avowed non-Christians membership, nor would it submit to representative government. Rather, it had insisted that no credal statement be required for membership and that it would abide by a congregational polity. But even an experimental mission must yield to the Book of Church Order before officially becoming a Presbyterian congregation.

Righter's dream of establishing a permanent congregation appeared headed to end in bitter disillusionment. There was no breaching the impasse. The Congregation would play out its experimental life and then die a silent, uncompromised death and be forgotten with other experimental failures. So much time and energy had been consumed in the struggle for self-definition that even one sustained social-action project was unlikely. The Congregation, it seemed, had been born only to die in its crib. Was there not a merciful God in heaven who would stay the executioner's hand?

Footnotes

The Providential Loophole: Union Church

The strategy paper for the development of new congregations passed in 1967 by the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. expressed a clear desire for ecumenical witness.

The Presbytery plan for the Congregation for Reconciliation had also encouraged such a united ministry.

This loophole finally allowed the Congregation not to compromise its membership and polity statements, a compromise practically impossible to make. The dilemma was resolved when the United Church of Christ, shopping for a new mission project in Dayton and having been impressed with the social action accomplished by the Congregation in its first year, expressed interest in supporting it as a union church. Even the secularists must have considered this event providential.

Since the procedure for incorporation as a union church permitted the Congregation to pick and choose from the requirements of the participating denominations, they were released from the restrictive requirements of the Presbyterians. Though formally they chose structural elements from both denominations, in reality most of the elements were UCC since their constitutional requirements did not call for a statement of faith and specified that authority should be vested in the, congregation rather than in the elders. As a token gesture toward the Presbyterians, the constitution called for the pastor to be subject to their tenure procedure and for a council to be established as an executive board of elders.

In March of 1970 both denominations approved the constitution, and on May 17 the Congregation for Reconciliation was formally organized. But this was not until a year and a half after its first meeting. Their viability as a social-action group had long since been established.

Footnotes

Summary

We have examined the process whereby a reality came to be defined by those who operated within it. The pastor brought with him an idea of what he hoped the Congregation would become. His particular set of skills and perspectives helped to shape the incipient congregation. His choice to play a low-key pastoral

leadership role encouraged lay leadership development but at the same time contributed, by default, to the internal tensions which retarded the process of self-definition.

Passive resistance of local Presbyterian clergymen to the early organizational efforts of Mr. Righter severely hampered the recruitment of active churchpeople to the Congregation. Attracted by early media attention and the prompt movement to direct social action, those who gathered to form the charter group were a mixture of active churchgoers, disillusioned church dropouts, and secular humanists. The diversity of this group made the development of consensus on self-definition tedious and difficult. Consequently the Congregation was not formally organized for a year and a half after its first meeting in October of 1968, and then only by virtue of becoming a union church supported jointly by the Presbyterians and the less restrictive United Church of Christ.

The statement of mission finally agreed upon by the members was in sharp contrast with the goals of the Presbytery in the design for the experimental congregation. Whereas the Presbytery expressed a clear desire for the initiation of cooperative programs and the service of the mission as a training ground for other interested lay persons, this received only fleeting mention in the Congregation's statement of mission. As a matter of policy and practice, this goal had died in print.