100 Years of the Least, the Last, and the Lost

The churches for the most part have left the inner city, but the rescue missions are still there—as they have been for 100 years. It was in October, 1872, in New York City that Irish immigrant Jerry McAuley, a converted ex-con from Sing Sing who relapsed into alcoholic binges five times before getting the victory, opened Helping Hand Mission, the nation’s first rescue mission. Today it is known as the McAuley Water Street Mission. The original ramshackle frame building on Water Street just below the Brooklyn Bridge was torn down a long time ago, but the work goes on in modern quarters on nearby Lafayette Street.

Last month the executive committee of the International Union of Gospel Missions (IUGM) and 200 friends of the McAuley Mission gathered in New York to observe the centennial. At a $12 prime-rib banquet in the Biltmore Hotel they talked about the good old days and how times have changed. In the early days there were reportedly seven murders a week on Water Street. Vice and drunkenness abounded, but Jerry McAuley stayed, befriending the fallen, leading many of them to Christ—and a better life. Later, during the twenty years that Sam Hadley ran the mission, records show that nearly 80,000 professed Christ. (Hadley had been converted from crime and alcoholism in another mission McAuley had founded.) During the Depression, the McAuley mission fed 176,000 men annually.

Nowadays there are fewer older men. “The welfare state takes care of them,” explained an IUGM official. Young people are often the ones now who show up in need of food, lodging, and medical care. (Until recently, the McAuley mission had an unusual outreach among Greenwich Village denizens. Rising crime in the area forced curtailment.) Decisions for Christ seem harder to come by, say many mission personnel.

“Times have changed, but the men who walk the street have not,” declared banquet keynoter David C. Morley, a psychiatrist. Hunger afflicts the young as well as the old, and loneliness stalks blacks as well as whites, he pointed out. He lamented the apathy of church people toward ministry in skid row. A lot of people stand around wanting a piece of the action but refuse to get involved in the filth and stench of need, he complained.

There were testimonies from men whose lives had been transformed by contact with the mission. One of them: a parolee who accepted Christ in 1964 and is now regional manager of an electronics firm. Another, Christian and Missionary Alliance minister Paul Mauche of Fort Lee, New Jersey, recalled how at age 19 he found the mission on a cold and wet December night in 1921. He received Christ after listening to several testimonies, and stayed on to work in the mission. Later he attended a Bible institute, then worked for years as a street evangelist before opening a mission in Fort Lee that later became a church.

Someone sketched a history of the movement. In 1877 Colonel and Mrs. George Clarke opened the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, apparently without direct ties to McAuley. About that same time Water Street convert William H. Smith opened a rescue mission in Auckland, New Zealand, the first overseas. Another was launched in London by temperance lecturer William Noble, who had studied the McAuley venture. The third U. S. mission was established in 1879 by street missionaries A. J. Rauliffson and his wife in New York’s Lower East Side; it is known today as the Bowery Mission. McAuley next founded the Cremorne Mission in a vice-ridden area uptown. By 1913 there were fifty missions and they formed the IUGM, which today has 350 members. About 100 other missions choose to stay out of the IUGM, mostly because of separatist stands.

Letters from well-wishers were read. “You reach the century mark at a time when your compassionate commitment to humanity is needed more than ever,” wrote President Nixon. Pastor Ernest T. Campbell of New York’s Riverside Church wrote: “In a day when it is becoming increasingly fashionable to blame outside forces for the evils that plague man’s life, Rescue Missions keep alive the importance of the human will and God’s ability to change life from within.”

In a meeting the next day, anniversary committee chairman Stephen E. Burger of the York (Pennsylvania) Rescue Mission warned his fellow IUGM mission leaders to shift with the winds of change, “or we’ll end up standing on the street corners ourselves.” He called for greater understanding of the effects of welfare, of the youth scene, and of the need of people to see reconciliation in action. “They’ve been lied to by government and business, so when they come to our churches and missions they don’t believe us either. We’ve got to show them.”

At 32, college-trained, and holding ordination in the Missionary Church, Burger represents a new breed of rescue-mission leaders. Many founders and heads of rescue missions are products of the movement. Generally, they have been out in front of churchmen for years in gut-level involvement with society. But some are inflexibly committed to a sermon-and-stew approach only. They tend to view industrial rehabilitation programs, professional counseling clinics, and literacy projects, for example, with suspicion.

Burger’s mission in York is typical of the IUGM’s progressive wing. Its operations include shelters for individuals and families, a children’s emergency home, a detoxification center, an industrial rehabilitation program, a youth center and travel camps, a free store, and care for the elderly. (Most cities and counties across America lack emergency child-care facilities and often look to rescue missions to fill the gap.) Jimmy Resh’s Hagerstown, Maryland, mission has built a $500,000 rehabilitation treatment center in a rural location. Clyde Murdock’s mission in Charlestown, West Virginia, operates an orphanage and recently constructed a high-rise building to house the elderly. And the St. Paul, Minnesota, rescue mission runs several Boys Clubs of America chapters. (See February 13, 1970, issue, page 41.)

State and federal funds are often available for certain programs, but most rescue-mission boards toe the church-state separation line and look for funds elsewhere.

There are other trends. Burger’s staffers press for spiritual decisions in “encounter group” sessions more often than in chapel. Emphasis is given to quality of relationship rather than numbers in dealing with ghetto youngsters. “It’s tough to get through to the inner-city kid,” says Asbury College graduate Terry Wilcox, Burger’s youth director. “He doesn’t trust you, so you have to spend a lot of time with him.” (In York and many other cities, most of the young people who come to the mission are black. A chronic problem is a shortage of qualified blacks to work with them.)

IUGM executive Emile Leger, a former insurance man, says the IUGM missions provide five million meals and 2.5 million lodgings annually. Nevertheless, souls—not soup—are still the prime concern. Last year, says Leger, 65,000 “of the nation’s least, last, and lost” found their way to Christ and a better life because of a helping hand in the inner city.

LETTUCE REACH OUT

The newest leaf on the prophetic ministry plant is lettuce outreach. Three ministerial students from the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary are at work in the Cincinnati area to promote the use of union lettuce. The seminarians were chosen by Catholic priest John Bank, head of the city’s United Farm Workers Union. Bank calls the work a “clinical education in prophetic ministry.”

To prepare for their course work (it’s supervised by seminary professor Hal Warehime), the students talked and visited with Chicano tomato-pickers. The men were assigned work with the Sisters of Charity, who are spearheading a boycott of non-union lettuce by Catholic institutions. Don’t buy lettuce unless the union’s black eagle emblem is stamped on it, they preach.

The Pastor Is A Lady

At last a congregation in the Southern Baptist Convention has a woman as its pastor—a first for the 11.8-million-member denomination. But Mrs. Dreucillar Fordham, widowed pastor of the black Christ Temple Baptist Church in Harlem, wasn’t ordained a Southern Baptist.

Mrs. Fordham’s church applied for membership in the SBC a year ago and received a “watchcare” relationship, the first step toward affiliation with the SBC’s Metropolitan New York Baptist Association. Last month it was finalized. Local SBC missions superintendent Kenneth Lyle said the action was “highly significant” for the convention, but added that the New York association thought it “no big thing.”

Mrs. Fordham was ordained in 1942 by New York City’s New Hope Baptist Association and has been pastor of Christ Temple since 1953. Congregations affiliated with the SBC have ordained four women, none of whom has filled a Southern Baptist pastorate. Mrs. Fordham said that the slight opposition to her pastoral role within the denomination didn’t bother her, since she had already experienced much of that in the Progressive National Baptist Convention, with which her church is also associated.

Lyle characterized Mrs. Fordham as “a very gentle person who is deeply concerned about Harlem and reaching people for Christ.”

Religion In Transit

A federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled that college administrators cannot regulate length and style of students’ hair, but the ruling may apply to state-run schools only.

About 45 per cent of New York City’s high schoolers and 20 per cent of its junior high pupils use drugs regularly, according to a study commissioned by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller. In five other large New York cities 25 per cent of the high schoolers are said to be users. Also mentioned: an “epidemic” of venereal diseases.

Religion—formerly the number one topic of interest in Minneapolis—is now number two after sports, reports a Twin City newspaper.

The 10,000-member American Church Union, a conservative Episcopal organization, came out against ordination of women to the priesthood. The Northern California Diocese of the Episcopal Church at its annual convention adopted a similar stance by a vote of 138–112. The issue is shaping up as a major concern for the Episcopal national convention next year.

Phoenix businessmen who bailed out the Arizona Ecumenical Council from bankruptcy a year ago refuse to give another cent. They are angry at the council’s alleged links to a farm workers’ campaign to recall the governor. Council officials deny they are involved.

If you’re over 65, you qualify for a 50 per cent discount in tuition at Columbia Union College, Takoma Park, Maryland, a Washington, D. C., suburb. The Seventh-day Adventist school is encouraging a growing trend among senior citizens to return to college.

Yale divinity graduate Robert Hamilton, 27, self-described “bi-sexual” pastor of a church for homosexuals in Cleveland, wants backing and money from the United Presbyterian Church, whose area officials say they are “undecided” about the request.

The twenty-year-old Baptist Bible College of Denver has expanded its graduate school offerings this fall to include a full three-year seminary program. The independent school serves congregations that deem the older Conservative Baptist Seminary of the same city as insufficiently orthodox.

Philadelphia Inquirer religion writer Andrew Wallace in a survey found that the routine pastoral visit to a parishioner’s home is going out of style in many church circles. Pastors are busier, and more laymen are helping out with such visitation.

The financially ailing National Council of Churches got a $100,000 shot in the arm from the Irwin-Sweeney-Miller Foundation of Columbus, Indiana.

More bad news for church activists trying to muster opposition to Gulf Oil’s operations in Angola. On the basis of on-site study, a Harvard University report concludes that sale of the school’s Gulf stock worth $16.4 million would have no effect in advancing black Angolan independence.

The Lutheran Church in America’s theological education unit wants unification of the LCA seminaries in Gettysburg and Philadelphia.

Due soon from the U. S. Supreme Court: important decisions on parochaid, abortion, and compulsory chapel attendance at the military academies. Meanwhile, the court has upheld Minnesota’s right to refuse to license a marriage between two men. And it refused to hear the appeal of Mrs. Billie McClure, formerly associated with the Salvation Army in Atlanta, thus avoiding entanglement in intrachurch policy.

DEATHS

IAN THOMAS RAMSEY, 57, Anglican bishop and a leading theologian of the Church of England; in London, of a heart attack.

EARL L. DOUGLASS, 85, Presbyterian clergyman and long-time editor of an annual commentary on the International Sunday-School Lessons; in Princeton, New Jersey.

After thirty controversial years, motive is dead. The magazine, cut loose last year by the United Methodist Church, devoted its final issue of 128 pages to furthering the cause of gay liberation.

A judicial commission of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern) is investigating the action of a church in Cynthiana, Kentucky, that voted 98–62 for independence from the denomination.

Stoney Cooks and Rom Offenburger, top staffers of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, quit in protest against personnel cutbacks. The SCLC reported a deficit at its annual meeting.

An annual survey by Christian Life magazine shows the independent First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, to have the largest Sunday school in America (weekly average attendance: 5,917, with nearly half transported on the church’s seventy-six buses).

CBS television, following a storm of protests by Southern Baptists, told denomination officials it will not show “X” or “R” movies without editing out objectionable scenes.

Personalia

Presbyterian layman Donald E. Warner, a health expert and former space scientist, is the new director of the World Vision Relief Organization.

Philadelphia Baptist minister Leon Sullivan, founder of Opportunities Industrialization Center (it grew from an abandoned jail in 1964 into the nation’s leading privately sponsored anti-poverty program), was widely feted during national OIC day last month.

Mrs. Jeanette Ridlon Piccard, 77, has wanted to be an Episcopal priest ever since girlhood. Believing the church may soon allow ordination of women, she has entered an Episcopal seminary in New York.

Mrs. Helen Birch, a retired high school teacher, is the first woman to be elected moderator in the 266-year history of the Philadelphia Presbytery of the United Presbyterian Church.

The Assemblies of God radio department is distributing a tract entitled, “God Had a Better Idea.” It contains the testimony of Harold C. MacDonald, a Ford Motor Company vice president.

World Scene

Spanish evangelicals, under the leadership of José Grau of Barcelona’s Central Bible Institute, are planning an Iberian Conference on Evangelism for next year.

The Vatican convened an interfaith conference last month, but the guests never showed up. Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist leaders had been invited.

New Guinea is in the grips of famine because of drought and crop failure, according to emergency requests received at Seventh-day Adventist headquarters in Washington, D. C.

South Africa has banned all performances of the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. It emphasizes the crucifixion instead of the resurrection, complains a government official, and it would alienate further those who do not believe in Christ.

The Vatican ordered bishops in two dioceses in Holland to withdraw immediately as “gravely deficient” a new catechism for high schools that is critical of the church and reflects views of liberal theologians.

Anglican Archbishop Marcus Loane of Sydney sees in the Anglican-Roman Catholic Agreed Statement on the Eucharist encouragement for “biblically minded Catholics and Anglicans alike.” But the statement’s “lack of clarity” on the presence of Christ (Catholics can interpret it as transubstantiation) “is no service to the cause of truth,” he says in the first top-level Anglican comment on the statement.

United Nations official Robert Jackson says there is no evidence of starvation in Bangladesh, but he acknowledged that “malnutrition” exists.

The Christian Council of Tanzania, with leadership help from the Lutheran World Federation, will handle the resettlement of 15,000 Burundi refugees in central Tanzania.

More than 150,000 Polish Catholics gathered at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp to honor a priest who gave his life thirty-one years ago to save a fellow inmate. Concelebrants of a mass included John Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia, the first American Catholic prelate to visit inside the Soviet bloc, and Polish primate Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski.

Campus Crusade’s week-long Explo ’74 is expected to attract 300,000 to Seoul, Korea, in August of 1974, says Crusade director Bill Bright. He predicts students from 5,000 colleges and universities around the world will attend.

Christian Literature Crusade is setting up a program in Recife, Brazil, to prepare Brazilians for foreign missionary service.

The Gideons have raised $200,000 to distribute 500,000 Portuguese New Testaments in Brazil.

The Soviet newspaper Pravda in a front-page article calls for renewed efforts to stamp out religion. Communist party members and officials must stop attending religious services, it demands, and atheistic education of the young must be stepped up.

United Methodism’s youngest bishop, Onema Fama, 36, new leader of 122,000 Methodists in Zaire (formerly the Congo), says the top priorities for his church will be evangelism, education, and medical work.

Pope Paul VI says the Vatican is willing to renegotiate its forty-three-year-old agreement with the Italian government. The agreement, signed in 1929 by Pope Pius XI and Mussolini, ended the church’s temporal power in Italy but assured state recognition of canon laws.

A delegation of North Vietnamese Roman Catholics visiting Canada last month claimed they have had more religious freedom under the Communists than under the French and Japanese. “Only under socialism have we been allowed to practice our real faith,” contended Pierre Vu Thai Ho, identified as editor of a Catholic magazine. And, added a woman lawyer, Ho Chi Minh “was the kind of man Jesus Christ would have wanted us all to be.”

Protestant youths smashed their way into a Catholic church in Belfast, damaged religious objects, and set fire to the church hall.

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