University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER 4
Parental Disappointment: The Problem of Goals

As we have seen, the Congregation for Reconciliation experienced difficulty in developing consensus on even such basic statements as membership requirements and mission. The pastor chose not to promote the adoption of documents suitable to the Presbytery, but rather allowed the members themselves to hammer out definitions of the meaning and purpose of the Congregation and its governance. The members' views on these matters were so divergent and strongly held that consensus building necessitated postponing the formal organization of the Congregation for more than a year. In this chapter, we shall examine the outcome of this self-definition process vis-a-vis the original goals agreed upon by the Presbytery in authorizing the establishment of the Congregation two years earlier.

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. 1. Develop a congregation of action-oriented Christians with a like commitment to strive for racial reconciliation within the church and within society.
2. 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. 3. Develop a group of skilled communicators, educators, technicians, and planners for use by local churches, Presbytery, ecumenical, or secular organizations.
4. 4. Support and supplement programs in the area of race relations currently being conducted or planned by established congregations.

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5. 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. 6. Explore all possible avenues of ecumenical witness and mission to bring about needed social change.
7. 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.

One Man's Meat ...;
Initial Recruitment and Goal Definition

On the surface, it would be easy to lay blame for this squarely on the shoulders of Richard Righter. However, we believe the

situation to be considerably more complex. As has been mentioned, when Righter arrived in Dayton the Presbytery had a list of only twenty referrals. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, none of these people expressed interest at the urging of a pastor. Of these twenty, also, only six were to remain in the Congregation for any period of time. Of the thirty-five adults active in the church in 1989, twenty-two were of Presbyterian background but only about half of these had been active in a Presbyterian church prior to becoming involved with the Congregation for Reconciliation.

The failure to recruit active Presbyterian laity into the new congregation is the pivotal reason for the subversion of the goals established by the Miami Presbytery. Given the structural realities of the situation, it is hard to see how the Congregation for Reconciliation could have developed in any other manner. This point may now be obvious to those responsible for creating the mission congregation, but we believe it needs to be underscored and analyzed. It seems to us that the most important policy implication to be gleaned from this experiment emerges from understanding the critical importance of initial organizational imperatives.

With the benefit of hindsight, it should be clear that the denomination's efforts to recruit people into the Congregation were inadequate. Consider the following realities:

(1) The emphasis on budgets and warm bodies in American church life is so strong that it is unrealistic to expect pastors to encourage their own members to leave their congregation and join another.

(2) Socially conscious pastors typically have a difficult time encouraging and supporting social action within their own congregations. Socially conscious lay persons not only provide support for social concern, they also provide a 'buffer zone" between the pastor and those members who feel the church has no business being involved in social issues. Since socially conscious lay people are typically a small minority in any congregation, it is understandable that pastors are extremely reluctant to see them leave their congregations. The feared loss of activist laity, it must be remembered, signaled stiff opposition to the establishment of the Congregation initially.

(3) A significant proportion of pastors are not persuaded that the churches should be directly involved in social action. The route to social reform, to those who see reform as desirable, is through helping laity understand the "meaning of the gospel." The Christian community manifests itself in the day-to-day business and professional activities of its membership. Such an orientation is at best ambivalent toward the concept of an experimental social-action congregation. Clergy of this persuasion would be unlikely to encourage their laity to participate. Indeed, it is quite probable that they would discourage the flow of information about the social-action group to their congregation by failing either to read announcements or to place them on the bulletin board or in their Sunday morning worship programs.

The cooperation of local pastors was absolutely central to the goal of recruiting active Presbyterian laity. Yet, as we have seen, the obstacles to enlisting their cooperation were considerable. Moreover, there was little or no advance effort to overcome these obstacles. Without careful advance planning, prior to the arrival of an organizing pastor, it was virtually inevitable that the Congregation for Reconciliation would develop in the manner in which it did-attracting dissident and renegade Presbyterians with a supporting cast of humanists who saw the church as an appealing institution through which to work for social justice.

What Might Have Been: A Post Hoc Scenario

In retrospect, questions of the viability of the Congregation for Reconciliation as conceived by its designers keep coming to mind. How might the concept have been handled so as to increase the probability of achieving the stated goals? Post hoc scenarios implicitly seem to carry an indictment absent from futureoriented scenarios, that is, if the group in question had done such and such, then the desired goals would have obtained. We wish to disavow any such implicit judgment. At the same time, the question of why the specific group in question strayed from the goals set for it looms large. If one concludes the goals were ill-conceived and unrealistic, no further analysis is required. Still, if one considers these original goals worthwhile, the question

remains as to whether they might have in some measure been reached. To conclude this requires some image or model of how the organizational task might have proceeded.

In outline form, the following suggests what could have happened. Let us again emphasize that this is not intended in any way as an indictment. Nor do we view it as an exercise in Monday morning quarterbacking. If there is value to be derived from post hoc analysis, it must come from the application of learning to new situations. If, and only if, the lessons of the Congregation for Reconciliation are applied, can the experiment be judged a success vis-a-vis the originally stated goals.

Let us assume that those responsible for the experimental congregation understood that the accomplishment of their goals required the recruitment of active Presbyterian laity. Let us further assume they understood the delicate and precarious nature of this task. What was to be done?

First, local pastors would have needed assurance that they would not lose any laity to the experimental congregation. This guarantee demands a structure for the Congregation that is different from what emerged. Several organizational criteria seem appropriate. For one, joint memberships would have been required of those already belonging to another congregation, with membership in the experimental congregation clearly specified as secondary. Also, membership in the experimental congregation would have been temporary, with the length of affiliation not to exceed, say, two years. Further, persons unaffiliated with or inactive in other churches would have pledged, as a condition of membership, to seek a permanent home church where they would work to achieve the goals of the experimental church. The program of the experimental congregation would have been geared around the development of leadership skills applicable to the home congregation, and this transferral would have been an ongoing process. The experimental congregation would have served as a forum for evaluating and discussing the effectiveness of members' efforts to achieve specific goals in their home congregations. In short, the total socialization experience of the experimental congregation would have been aimed toward return to the home congregation as more effective leaders. And to

encourage maximum participation in the home congregation, the experimental congregation would never have scheduled meetings conflicting with the "prime time" meetings of other congregations, such as on Sunday morning. Finally, the charter of the experimental congregation would have clearly been for a limited time. Extension of the life span of the congregation would have been granted only on the basis of demonstrated ability to train leadership for other congregations. Extension of the charter for the purpose of fellowship among the members would have been explicitly forbidden.

A second major pledge to local pastors would have been a reassurance they would not have suffered financial losses. Such a procedure requires commitments. First, it would have meant a guaranteed operating budget for the experimental congregation, backed by the Presbytery and/or the Board of National Missions. Second, as a condition of membership in the experimental congregation, prospects would have had to pledge not to reduce their benevolence to their home church while participating in the experimental group. This would preclude neither the encouragement of participants to give to the experimental church nor the request for support from local congregations. The guarantee, however, that no pastor's budget would shrink as a result of his laity's participating in the experimental congregation is critical.

A third major consideration would have been to stress the benefits of the experimental program to local pastors. The development of leadership skills for the local congregation would have been emphasized. Moreover, the objective of creating a leadership to support and work with the pastor toward the accomplishment of mutually shared goals would have been stressed. While pastors could not be guaranteed that trainees would never work against them or employ strategies they disapproved of, the commitment to the objective of close collaboration between pastors and lay trainees would have provided much additional reassurance.

This close collaboration would have also required pastors to agree to participate periodically with their laity in seminars sponsored by the experimental congregation. These seminars, while designed to educate and enhance rapport between pastors

and their laity, would have focused on establishing goals and developing strategies to achieve these goals.

This strategy scenario not only would have reassured local pastors that an experimental congregation would not undermine their own programs but also would have offered them both the prospect of developing lay leadership and the possibility of developing their own leadership skills. By building local pastors into the structure of the experimental congregation, the probability of the success of the program would have been greatly enhanced.

While many modifications or additions to this plan are possible, we believe it outlines a strategy which could have overcome the great obstacle of recruiting active Presbyterian lay persons. It is a proposal not intrinsically threatening to local pastors interested in change. Moreover, the conditions of participation require commitments on the part of both laity and their pastors. The agreements demanded of the laity imply informal social pressure on their pastors to "stick with it," and vice versa. Obviously, not every Presbyterian congregation in the Dayton area would have sent participants. From our interviews, however, we would judge adequate interest to initiate such a program existed. If something like this had been created, the original goals might have been achieved.

Another obvious consideration in thinking through the viability of this scenario is the wisdom of thinking of the program as a congregation. That is, might it have been better to conceive of the experiment as a lay-clergy training institute rather than as a congregation? Some solid arguments can be made for the training institute structure. Without discussing the pros and cons of the alternate structures, however, we think the congregational structure has superior merit. We believe it has greater potential for binding participants together in a common sense of community with mutually reinforcing commitments. The training institute structure, on the other hand, seems to require less psychological commitment on the part of participants. When the scheduling of people's personal lives gets tight, an institute is more easily dropped, just as so many people drop the adult education courses offered by extension divisions in many American universities.

Failure by Default or Subversion?

Nothing like this scenario happened. The question remains: Would it have been possible for an organizing pastor to have conceived of his task in this or a similar manner? We doubt it. Such a general strategy would have to have been worked out prior to the arrival of an organizing pastor, including negotiation with local pastors for lay candidates. Unless the structural principles were worked out and clearly defined by the Presbytery, it would have been extremely difficult for an organizing pastor to gain the support of local pastors.

When Righter arrived in Dayton and made his rounds to meet other Presbyterian ministers, he found considerable interest and enthusiasm for the experimental congregation. Yet not one pastor volunteered the name of a single lay person as a prospective candidate for participation in the Congregation for Reconciliation. We do not believe Righter can be faulted for failing to ask other pastors about prospective members. The development and retention of rapport with other clergy required his abstention from any activity which might be interpreted as an attempt to raid other congregations for membership. Thus, his potential constituency was effectively delimited to those not actively involved in a Presbyterian congregation.

By failing to create a structure appropriate for the accomplishment of the goals established by the Miami Presbytery for the new congregation, the planners subverted those goals prior to the arrival of the organizing pastor. Albeit unintentionally, the very persons creating the goals simultaneously undermined them. By not structurally assuring the recruitment of a supportive cast of active lay persons, the designers defined the membership in direct contradiction with their ambitions for the congregation. Looking at the results, one of the initial strategists told us that "we just overestimated the readiness of pastors and their elders and members to respond to this bright, creative, ingenious idea that we had thought up. How could it fail? It was such a beautiful thing. . . . I remember very clearly being bewildered by the lack of response and cooperation and interest on the part of the pastors and sessions in the area. . . . By hindsight, we were just naive, I guess."

In our interviews with pastors and some denominational administrators in Dayton, we repeatedly heard Righter criticized for failing to fulfill his task. It is our judgment that Righter's instincts or predispositions lie in the direction of confrontation tactics and immediate social action rather than in the realm of education and theory. But whether he possesses the flexibility to adapt his leadership style to requirements of a scenario such as we have developed is a moot question. He simply did what he knew best, followed by a constituency which largely shared his orientation toward the mission of the congregation. Had the structural imperatives been better understood, both Righter and the recruitment committee could better have assessed his credentials for the job.

A Matter of Interpretation

The question still remains, however, as to whether Righter ignored the directive and charge laid out for him by the Miami Presbytery. We view this as problematic. To a considerable extent, the constituency he would have to work with was determined before he arrived. Had he pursued more "establishment" tactics he might well have lost the core of his potential congregation and the whole experiment could have died. Given the structural restraints of the inadequate foreplanning, the possibility of recruiting a more "moderate" constituency was doubtful.

Righter had read the list of Presbytery goals for the proposed experimental congregation when he was interviewed for the position of organizing pastor. He had no difficulty accepting those goals. Indeed, even today Righter affirms the goals as legitimizing the style of ministry which he pursued in leading the Congregation. In his view, the Congregation for Reconciliation has to a large degree accomplished the stated goals of the Presbytery.

We went over the list of goals with Righter in a long probing interview. Portions of this interview are quoted below in order to make clear his understanding of what the Presbytery had set out to accomplish through the experimental congregation.

INTERVIEWER:

"HOW do you interpret the following statements and how has the Congregation, and you as its leader, attempted to

accomplish each goal? First goal: Develop a congregation of action-oriented Christians with a like commitment to strive for racial reconciliation within the church and within society."

RIGHTER:

"That's What I was interested in [coming to do]." INTERVIEWER: "Second goal: 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."

RIGHTER:

"That's the building of a congregation. We have done that."

INTERVIEWER:

"Goal three: Develop a group of skilled communicators, educators, technicians, and planners for use by local churches, Presbytery, ecumenical, or secular organizations."

RIGHTER:

"That's very, very broad. I don't remember reading that when I first came. It certainly wasn't stressed when I was interviewed. But I think we have fulfilled that goal. To me, it calls for leadership development and we have done it."

INTERVIEWER:

"Goal four: Support and supplement programs in the area of race relations currently being conducted or planned by established congregations."

RIGHTER:

"We've always supported anything that's been done by other congregations in this area . . . but I don't think much has been done in the last five years. We have never been asked to help with programs in other congregations, probably because of our image."

INTERVIEWER:

"Goal five: 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."

RIGHTER:

"I visited all the pastors [in Dayton] early on, and then about a month or two later I sent a letter to all of them. It contained a list of some of the kinds of areas we were considering working in. I asked if they had people that they would like to see involved cooperatively in those kinds of projects or issue areas. I suggested that maybe our congregations could work together in this way. But I never got any responses to the letter at all. We tried to fulfill the goal, but we didn't have any people to train. . . . [I wasn't really surprised or disappointed because] I don't have a great deal of hope in the training institute concept. . . . I

think it's pretty hard for ministers to be change agents as far as their congregations are concerned. If they even have dialogue going on within their congregations between persons in different social positions they are doing pretty well. . . . I guess I don't expect great short-run change in the main-line institutional church."

INTERVIEWER:

"Goal six: Explore all possible avenues of ecumenical witness and mission to bring about needed social change."

RIGHTER:

"Our congregation is one of the most active in the major ecumenical body here-the Metropolitan Churches United. I don't think anyone can fault us on that."

INTERVIEWER:

"Goal seven: Explore and develop all possible courses of action that are designed to change negative attitudes toward racial understanding in all white churches."

RIGHTER:

"I'm sure, at least in the way this was intended, we did not come through at this point. After the Christmas card leafleting at NCR, the local churches were very suspicious of us. Church leadership knew that politically it would be difficult to bring us to their congregations for workshops and seminars on racial attitude change. And they didn't. It was an image problem. Whether we have had an impact through the media coverage of our involvement in the community-that is, a positive impact on attitude change-I don't know. I would argue that we've had some effect."

INTERVIEWER:

"One thing I think is obvious is that we read that list of goals and see entirely different things."

RIGHTER:

"I guess it is a political document in a sense because the language can be read in different ways."

The language, indeed, can be read in different ways. Many factors bear upon one's perception. The values and experience brought to a situation determine to a large extent how that situation is defined. The cues from the setting in which communication occurs also place the exchange in "a certain light."

Righter was called by the Miami Presbytery, as he saw it, for the explicit purpose of establishing an experimental congregation as a showcase of direct social action in the city. Our interviews with members of the calling committee indicate his perception was accurate. During his recruitment interview with the National

Missions Committee, the educational role of the proposed mission, emphasized so strongly in the statement of goals, was not emphasized to Righter. His past experience as a social action leader was, however, a primary focus of interest. Rightly or wrongly, he assumed the Presbytery expected him to relate to established congregations in the role of action specialist, as a resource available to them upon their request. It fulfilled the Presbytery's goals, as he understood them, to provide for other congregations the option of involvement in joint projects or leadership training ventures. That this resource remained unused was not, in Righter's view, a failure of the Congregation. Nor did it come as a surprise. In fact, the offer of assistance seemed to him window dressing, a nice thought but an item much lower on his agenda than developing an activist congregation. Yet he has always considered the doors to other congregations open.

In contrast to Righter's openness to the possibility of involving other churches in social action, the participants of his group expressed little interest in establishing educational-training relationships with other congregations. Indeed, some of them were openly contemptuous of other churches.

Unintended Consequences
of Purposive Social Action: A Blunder

Yet another critical ambiguity remains. While the Miami Presbytery proposal for a new congregation focused almost exclusively on relating to other congregations, a more lengthy rationale and strategy paper on the development of a new congregation lacked precise expression of exactly what they expected. The rationale paper is extremely conscious of the difficulty in developing social action programs within existing congregations. The drafters note "there is no reason to believe that general educational programs will overcome the apathy and hostility that kill off real change in church structures or programs." They go on, in essence, to propose a new mission as provision for a structurally free base for those Christians desiring but unable to initiate social action in their own congregations.

The question of how activists in a new mission congregation could engage their former churches in social action when they

could not do so "from the inside" seems never to have been asked. It does seem clear from the rationale paper that the drafters anticipated the new congregation's involvement in activities which, if undertaken in established congregations, would be extremely controversial and probably impossible. To the extent the drafters of the new congregation proposal knew or assumed this to be the case, they ignored another serious structural problem. How could a congregation created, sponsored, and supported by the Miami Presbytery engage in controversial social action without alienating those who were paying the bills? To be sure, the discrepancies between the explicitly stated objectives and the content of the rationale paper pointed further to the lack of advance planning and preparation for the new congregation. It further indicates a failure to understand social structures and anticipate the consequences of the experimental group for the broader Presbytery.

But this may not be the entire story. It seems to us altogether possible that those responsible for creating the new congregation were meaning one thing and saying another. Just as Righter could read the list of goals and say, "Yeah, that's what we are doing," we think those who set up the goals had perceptual problems from the other end.

As reported in chapter 2, two initial goals guided the strategy of new church development in the Miami Presbytery. One was to develop a congregation free to engage in direct social action in order to test the thesis that the congregation could be an effective organizational form for inducing social change in Dayton. The second was to develop a congregation to prick the consciences of the established churches in the city. Its function was to confront the main-line churches with social issues and to demonstrate that a Christian congregation could indeed do something by the use of direct-action techniques. The strategists planned the element of "tension" between the mission and other congregations by forcing them to relate to one another in the same local denominational structure.

Politically, the designers of the plan faced a problem. They needed to present their proposal in a way which would win support in the Presbytery. In attempting to facilitate this, they translated the second major goal into language of cooperation and

service. They hoped thereby not only to garner the necessary votes to pass the proposal but also to generate the active support of liberal clergy in the promotion of the experiment as it developed organizationally.

Albeit well intended, this political maneuver had unfortunate unintended consequences. Not having made the necessary structural preparation to ensure the recruitment of active Presbyterian lay persons to the project, the educational and service-oriented goals served only to place in the hands of established churches a weapon with which to discredit the Congregation when it began encroaching upon their social consciences. The move was thereby self-defeating.

A retrospective insight of one of the plan's designers is that it may have been entirely unrealistic to have expected pastors of established churches to embrace the Congregation regardless of the resources it had to offer. By doing so, they would run the risk of polarizing their own congregations and thereby, inviting nothing but trouble. The Congregation for Reconciliation, as it became embroiled in controversy, simply became too hot to handle. In establishing a structure to maximize freedom for active social involvement while expecting cooperative involvement with established congregations, the National Missions Committee may have been wanting to have their cake and eat it too. We feel the incompatibility of goals could have been overcome with proper forethought and planning. However, the committee person whom we interviewed assessed the situation as it did develop correctly.

Live or Let Die: An Administrative Dilemma

The role of the denominational officials responsible for the mission congregation is also important. Clearly, they recognized at an early date that the Congregation had strayed significantly from the objectives approved by the Presbytery. The handling of this problem understandably presented a serious dilemma. To have intervened with a heavy hand would have been to run the risk of smothering the Congregation before it had a chance to breathe. Such actions would no doubt have stifled any future possibilities for experimental congregations in the Miami Presbytery. On the other hand, to let the situation ride meant imminent conflict

within the Presbytery. This may not have been clearly foreseen at the onset. Whether deliberately or through indecision, however, denominational officials did not intervene and conflict within the Presbytery did ensue. Faced with the alternative of having no viable social mission program operating in the area, these officials chose to defend what was emerging. They did so by arguing for the necessity of flexibility, especially in an experimental situation where a model from past experience is nonexistent.

Summarizing the feelings of a review team after the mission's first year of operation, the Ministry Consultant for the Synod of Ohio wrote:

Reviewing the past tension and anticipating the future, he continued, "There has been some hot discussion along these lines already and we fully expect more of the same when the depth review is conducted in 1970." Since that time, the tension between the Congregation for Reconciliation and the Presbytery has continued unabated.

This is not to say that the Congregation is totally lacking in support among Presbyterian executives and some Presbyterian lay persons. We sense considerable sympathy. However, the complex and delicate politics of working with laity-and some clergy adamantly opposed to the Congregation makes continued support of the mission virtually impossible.

But We Thought You Said . . .

On one occasion the Congregation did make a concerted effort to carry out the Presbytery's goal of exploring all courses of action designed to change negative attitudes toward racial understanding. This attempt ended in a mild disaster. We trace those developments here to demonstrate the difficulties for the Congregation in seeking to follow one of the Presbytery's goals.

In 1969 the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. ordered the establishment of a task force on Southern Africa. Among other things, it was instructed "to examine the corporations and banks from which boards, agencies, and institutions now purchase goods and services or in which they have investments to ascertain what if any connections these firms and banks have in southern Africa." [1] On the basis of resolutions passed in the 1970 General Assembly, the task force undertook a series of studies focusing upon Gulf Oil Corporation's involvement in Portuguese Angola. As a result, they recommended on March 1, 1971, that Presbyterian. stockholders support in person, or by proxy, a resolution to be made at the forthcoming stockholders' meeting of Gulf which would "prohibit the corporation from making or maintaining investments in territories under or so long as they are under colonial rule, including the territories of Angola and. Mozambique." This request was sent to all Presbyterian churches.

The Congregation for Reconciliation had been studying the Gulf-Angola question and had in March 1971 passed a resolution establishing a committee to take social action aimed at coordinating a boycott of Gulf products "while the business relationship of Gulf Oil Corporation with the Portuguese Government in Angola continues."

On March 31 a letter addressed to "All Pastors and Congregations" was sent by the Task Force of the United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., encouraging study, interpretation, and favorable vote. The Gulf-Angola Committee of the Congregation for Reconciliation saw this as an opportunity to offer their services to the local Presbyterian churches. They called all the pastors in the area, offering their committee's resources for study and encouraging pastors to inform their congregations. Most pastors stated they would inform their members. One congregation invited the committee to speak briefly at worship and to lead an adult class afterward. Several other pastors requested proxy statements and further materials.

Three of the largest churches in Dayton, for various reasons, were unable to bring the issue before their sessions and then to their congregations for prompt consideration. This lack of urgency was interpreted by the Gulf-Angola Committee as evidence of

unwillingness on the part of the pastoral leadership of these churches to confront their congregations with the Gulf issue or to consult with their lay leadership on the matter. The Congregation for Reconciliation felt an obligation to see that the membership of those churches knew of the stand taken by the denomination and to encourage participation in the stockholders' meeting if they owned stock. One more attempt was made to reach the pastors of these churches. When cooperation was not forthcoming, members of the Gulf-Angola Committee placed copies of a letter to the church members on the windshields of their automobiles during the Sunday worship service on April 18. Attached to the letter was a proxy solicitation.

The response from the leadership of these churches was prompt. Four days after the leafleting a letter was sent to the Miami Presbytery Council by the pastor of the largest Presbyterian church in Dayton, one of three whose members had been leafleted. Portions of the letter follow:

A second congregation complained in a letter that they had received the offer of service from the Congregation for Reconciliation without sufficient time to send it through the channels before they were leafleted. They too were offended by the disparaging remarks about their pastoral leadership.

The members of the Congregation for Reconciliation felt, and indeed were operating under, great time pressure, since the Gulf stockholders' meeting was scheduled only nine days after the date of their leafleting. Had they waited for the one congregation to process the request through Session and/or had they firmly established that the pastors had refused to cooperate in bringing the request to their congregations, passing out proxy solicitations would have been an exercise in futility since the stockholders' meeting would already be past.

Some members of the Congregation now concede the message in their leaflet had been tactless at points. This they attribute to the combination of haste to get their message out, their sense of frustration, and their belief that the pastors in question were deliberately uncooperative. To the issue of cooperation with the broader structures of the Presbyterian denomination, they felt they were acting responsibly and in keeping with the goals of the General Assembly and Presbytery.

The Presbytery's National Missions Committee formed a subcommittee to investigate the matter. After a rather prolonged discussion with all parties on May 19, the committee agreed the incident represented more than a breakdown in communication between the Congregation and the three offended churches. In their view it resulted from a "series of serious errors in judgment and tactics by the Congregation." The most serious was the

personal attack upon what was called in the leaflet "pastoral leadership." The Congregation was asked to mend its ways.

But the onus of responsibility was not placed as clearly on the shoulders of the Congregation for Reconciliation as the complaining churches and some of the members of the National Missions Committee might have liked. Indeed, the complaining churches were also called on the carpet, as is demonstrated by the following passage from the subcommittee minutes:

The official letter of reprimand to the Congregation contains milder language than the subcommittee minutes. In fact, it almost has the flavor of an apologetic slap on the wrist. By and large, the members of the Congregation did not even interpret the whole affair as a reprimand. Some became incensed with us when we suggested the experience had been "humiliating."

The outcome of the committee's discipline has been more of a standoff than a truce or reconciliation between the Congregation and the large churches of the Presbytery. The sessions of two of the churches agreed to meet with representatives of the Congregation for Reconciliation. A third refused. These meetings provided an opportunity for both sides to present their views, but if further cooperation is viewed as a criterion of a meeting of minds, this has not occurred. At a later date, the Congregation again leafleted these same congregations, although under the aegis of another organization, the United People (see next chapter).

For the most part, the Congregation's relations with other churches now manifest a "once burned, twice shy" attitude. In spite of the insistence of some that they were not really reprimanded, or if they were, they do not accept the legitimacy of the National Missions Committee's action, they have mostly steered away from other churches. There has been no further "ministry of harassment" because there has been no further ministry. On the other hand, we saw no evidence the established

congregations have become more open toward the Congregation for Reconciliation. They have simply stayed out of each other's way.

Footnotes

Summary

The goals of the mission congregation were subverted very early in its life. We have tried to suggest several reasons for this. First, and most significantly, the achievement of the goals stated and approved by the Miami Presbytery required the recruitment of active lay people. Failure to plan adequately for this structural prerequisite virtually excluded at the onset the possibility of achieving these goals. In our discussion we have attempted to outline a scenario whereby the recruitment of active Presbyterians might have been achieved.

Second, the failure to provide an adequate structure to recruit active lay people meant the only potential recruits into the new congregation were persons alienated from traditional church life, with little interest in cooperating with other congregations. The immediate informal leaders of the mission congregation saw social action as their only legitimate reason for being. Indeed, their remaining in the group seems to have been conditional upon the organizing pastor's consent to move quickly into social-action projects.

Third, there is serious ambiguity regarding the intentions of those most intimately responsible for the creation of the new congregation. While formally stated goals place paramount emphasis on an educational-training relationship with other congregations, a strategy statement leaves open the door for the development of a direct social-action group. This strategy statement provided Righter legitimacy for what did emerge.

Fourth, the development of social-action projects employing confrontation strategies served to create very considerable strain between the mission congregation and other congregations in the Presbytery. At this point, it would be unrealistic to think further financial support for the mission congregation could be approved by the Presbytery. Furthermore, it would be equally unrealistic to think that the Congregation for Reconciliation might be redirected toward the achievement of the original coals.

Finally, given that the structural realities virtually precluded from the onset the achievement of the original goals, a fair assessment of the Congregation must focus on what they have achieved. In the next two chapters we shall examine two of their more important social-action projects. Other projects might have been selected. One, in particular, provides evidence of their ability to work effectively behind the scenes with nonconflict strategies. We have chosen not to examine this project because it is not possible to do so without (a) divulging information gained in confidence from sympathetic business and political leaders and (b) risking the Congregation's future effectiveness in this arena. After examining two action projects, in chapter 7 we shall discuss some broader issues of their conflict strategy.