Methodism under Siege

A simulated walnut pulpit stood before black clergy leader James M. Lawson as he issued a forceful call to repentance. His audience in Kiel Auditorium, St. Louis, one day last month had been “symbolically” surrounded by hundreds of peaceful supporters. There was nothing artificial, however, about the $21,500,000 annual price tag attached to the repentance. It was by far the biggest financial demand ever made upon America’s second-largest Protestant denomination, the United Methodist Church.

Lawson read from a carefully prepared document: “Black Methodists for Church Renewal (BMCR) call upon the special session of the 1970 General Conference to repent publicly its traditional neglect of the black communities’ need for empowerment for social justice as well as economic development. Every delegate is urged to repudiate the overt but subtle racism of the church which has permitted this pattern of neglect.”

The Memphis pastor, currently president of the BMCR, urged “immediate reordering of priorities” to provide for an annual guarantee of $10 million to the twelve black Methodist colleges. He asked that 25 per cent of the money annually deposited in the denomination’s central treasury—a minimum of $5 million—be diverted to his organization to “undergird the concept of self-determination.” He said further that at least $5 million from the Methodists’ two-year-old “Fund for Reconciliation” should go to the BMCR “for economic development in poverty pockets of America.” Another $1 million was requested for a scholarship loan fund for minority-group high-schoolers. Also asked was a minimum quota of 30 per cent black representation of all general boards and agencies of the church, and the same percentage of black voting delegates to all annual, jurisdictional, and general conferences.

Lawson did not use the term reparations, but his group’s decision to put Methodists under a massive financial siege obviously had been influenced by the wide publicity given James Forman’s financial demands upon organized religion last year. More significant was the BMCR’s reinforcement of a trend begun many months before Forman gained prominence. That trend shifts the liberal churchmen’s major hope for social restructure from political to economic power.

Lawson himself was a model of decorum as he spoke to the 900 delegates (half clergy, half lay) at the Methodist General Conference. He was clad in a conventional gray suit with clergy collar. His explanatory remarks were clean and persuasive, though unpolished. He voiced no threats. The only stir among the “demonstrators” came in occasional cries of “Right On!”

The five-day conference began uneasily. Rumors were rife that confrontations were planned and violence might ensue. The rumors gained momentum with a pair of incidents on the weekend preceding the Monday, April 20, opening session. Two bishops were reported slightly hurt when they tried to break free of a group of protesters following a Saturday meeting. On Sunday morning, twenty-three white persons were arrested for disrupting services at a Methodist church in downtown St. Louis; one was charged with possession of marijuana.

That evening, a coalition of militant blacks and radical whites staged a marathon meeting at a local YMCA. Among the speakers were Senator George McGovern, Congressman James Brademas, and the Reverend Ralph Abernathy. Abernathy’s speech covered the whole range of current social issues. He accused President Nixon of making a deal with the South, and charged that the administration is perpetuating discrimination in its financial aid programs.

That the conference expected the worst was coincidentally reflected in a stage backdrop (designed by a suburban St. Louis housewife) that summarized First Corinthians 13 thus: “Love bears, believes, hopes, endures all things.” Hippies attending the conference had their own slogan, inscribed on small buttons: “Can These Bones Live?”

Increasing beliefs that dollar-power makes the big difference in today’s world did not gain recognition, however, in the bishops’ Episcopal address, a traditional state-of-the-church declaration delivered this year by J. Gordon Howard of Philadelphia. The address extended over a wide range of issues, but steered clear of any commitment on economic clout. Howard warned that “society never tolerates either chaos or tyranny indefinitely. If the record of history means anything, after a period of widespread self-indulgence and social turbulence there comes a time when the pendulum swings the other way. The danger is that the swing will be all the way toward a police state with dictatorial powers under hard leaders who exercise authority without mercy to restore some degree of order and law observance.”

Lawson, who was not a delegate and therefore spoke under a special privilege, took a different tack. At one point he characterized his recommendations on redeployment of denominational funds as “symbolic but corrective.” But in speaking for the demonstrators he also said that “we come in the spirit and in the hope that the United Methodist Church … will want to greet all of these persons, not simply as symbols, but as what Christ is already bringing to pass in our own nation and in our own times.”

The United Methodist Church, though currently experiencing declining income, is still the richest Protestant denomination in North America. Southern Baptists may be associated with more property, but Methodists with their connectional polity actually hold collective title to more. Latest figures show a total of more than 40,000 local Methodist congregations with an unencumbered real-estate worth of nearly $5 billion. The BMCR declaration pointed out that, in addition, the combined assets of just two of the denomination’s major general boards approaches $1 billion.

Lawson asked implicitly whether General Conference delegates were satisfied that all these assets were producing adequate spiritual return. His presentation was discreet, however, and his influence undoubtedly served to cool tension temporarily.

“Last night was Passover among our Jewish brothers,” he told the conference. “If you’ll recall, there was a first day of the week in the time of our Lord just before Passover, when he led a massive, we are told, march of people into Jerusalem in a great celebration of what he saw to be the role of the one who came in the name of the Lord.”

Lawson recalled Christ’s words that the stones would cry out if the disciples did not. “He says yet to us that if the church cannot respond, then God will have to have the boards of this floor, the bars of these tables, the girders of this building cry out as witnesses to the reality of what he is trying to do today.… No one needs to call today for a revolution, for if the God that we worship is the God of Jesus Christ, then the very history in which we live will pull down judgment upon the Jerusalems of our time.…”

What disappointed evangelical Methodists about Lawson’s commendably rational campaign was its failure to confront the humanistic assumptions that have bred hypocrisy and indifference. Good News, a rapidly growing group that seeks a renewal of scriptural Christianity within Methodism, issued a statement at the outset of the conference that cited lack of motivation in thousands of Methodist churches.

Grassroots sentiment lays much of the blame at the feet of Methodist publishers. Conference spokesman said that 171 petitions, the second-largest* number submitted for consideration by delegates, dealt with requests that the Division of Curriculum Resources of the Board of Education produce curriculum materials that are more evangelical in nature.

DAVID KUCHARSKY

Bishops’ Agenda: Human Problems

Grapes. Priests in politics. Power to the people. The National Council of Churches: asset or liability? Merger with the Episcopalians. Social action, or a spiritual ministry?

These were among opening-day topics that greeted the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ semi-annual meeting in San Francisco’s $44-a-day Fairmount Hotel atop Nob Hill.

Apostolic Delegate Luigi Raimondi arrived from the Vatican with a strong word of caution: “There are human problems involving justice and the dignity of men, but, above all else, there are greater needs of a spiritual nature, which only the church by her divinely received mission is able and has the means to satisfy.”

However, the agenda reflected the trend of the age and dealt mostly with the human problems.

The 216 bishops extended firm support to their Ad Hoc Committee on the Farm Labor Dispute, involving Cesar Chavez and the California grape boycott. The committee, spearheaded by Bishop Joseph F. Donnelly of Hartford, Connecticut, and Bishop Hugh A. Donohoe of Fresno, California, got some growers and workers to the bargaining table, and three contracts signed, in March. The committee asked for—and got—authority to speak in the name of the NCCB in future deliberations, including “any necessary statement justifying economic and legal pressures in support of social justice.” The committee plans farm-labor organizing efforts in other states later.

The NCCB also approved a recommendation that bishops be instructed to discourage priests from running for public office. (Currently, a number of clerics have received dispensations to engage in such campaigns.)

The bishops accepted the ecumenism unit’s report. This spoke of moving into an “advanced stage” of merger talks with Episcopalians, for eucharistic doctrine was “no longer a major obstacle to reconciliation.” It flatly declares that “organic union” is an avowed goal of the talks. “Positive findings” of the consultation with Lutherans would soon be released, the report said.

As for National Council of Churches membership, a commission spokesman explained there are too many questions yet to be explored.

Some recommendations and implied accusations submitted by self-styled reform groups were rejected. The Society of Priests for a Free Ministry failed in its request for an office for “priests in transition.” The bishops sidestepped a request by the National Association of Laymen for more grassroots participation in NCCB agenda- and program-planning. Meanwhile, the NCCB is proceeding with plans for an advisory National Pastoral Council. But a national assembly of the American Catholic Church in Washington, D. C., this November—as demanded by the People’s Coalition—is definitely out.

The NCCB did look with approval on a recommendation by the Intra-Church Relations Committee that confrontation tactics be replaced by dialogue.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Praying The Space Heroes Home

It was the splash heard round the world.

An anxious audience from Houston to Hanoi hovered near TV sets, watching America’s crippled Apollo 13 space ship come in on an explosion-ripped module—and a prayer.

In a sophisticated Age of Aquarius, a power failure and oxygen leak 200,000 miles in space brought a nation to its knees—first beseeching a merciful God to return the three American astronauts safely to earth, and then thanking him for the successful splashdown.

President Nixon proclaimed a national day of prayer and thanksgiving, and there were special services April 19 in churches and synagogues throughout the country. “The prayers of millions all over the world helped to bring them home safely,” the President said.

When he saw the parachutes unfurling over the Apollo 13 capsule in the South Pacific Ocean, Pope Paul rose from his chair before the television set in his Vatican City apartment and said a prayer of thanks. So did other world religious leaders, including Archbishop Iakovos, primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in North and South America.

Time magazine’s cover showed the astronauts praying on the deck of the recovery vessel. The ship’s chaplain offered a short prayer: “O Lord, we jointly welcome back to earth astronauts Lovell, Haise, and Swigert, who by your grace and the skill of men on earth have returned back safely. We offer humble thanksgiving for the safe recovery.…”

In Jerusalem, about 100 Jews gathered at the Wailing Wall for a special prayer service during the orbital ordeal. In Timber Cove, Texas, Marilyn Lovell and her two daughters attended Communion at a local Episcopal church, while in nearby La Porte a Methodist minister prayed for lunar-lander pilot Fred W. Haise, Jr., and his wife Mary, seven months pregnant with their fourth child. And in Denver, a Catholic priest said prayers in the home of Dr. and Mrs. John Swigert, parents of bachelor crewman John L. Swigert, Jr.

The trouble-prone flight welded a world together as few events in history have done. In the opinion of Billy Graham, never had so many people at one time prayed more for a single event. The evangelist said the flight “might be used to bring a spiritual renewal that the world so desperately needs …,” adding that he found himself “praying almost day and night” for the astronauts’ safe return.

At an Ontario, Canada, Leadership Prayer Breakfast, the main speaker, referring to the moon-mission plight, asked: “Why is it we wait until there is a catastrophe, until it is evident that human efforts are not able to cope with the situation, to turn to prayer?”

Meanwhile, Marietta, Ohio, Jaycees delivered a resolution to space officials in Washington, D. C., protesting attempts to ban prayers broadcast from outer space.

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