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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.