University of Virginia Library

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.