Council Delineates Church's Response to Negro Needs and Struggle
Diocesan Press Service. March 3, 1967 [52-3]
The cry for "black power", the conditions of second-class citizenship imposed upon Negroes, the response of the church to such a cry and to such conditions - these were the subject of a special order of business Feb. 16 during the annual meeting of the Executive Council at Seabury House, Greenwich, Conn.
After expressing their support of the struggle of Negroes to obtain self-identification, self-respect and self-reliance, and, after stating that the church has a substantial part to play in this effort, the Council proceeded to adopt a series of resolutions designed to demonstrate such support.
The Council began with itself, pledging "constructive efforts do assure that Negro churchmen attain positions of leadership within our own Church...." It requested the Presiding Bishop to continue his efforts to appoint Negro clergymen and other professionals to top positions on the Council staff, and directed the Joint Urban Program to assist bishops in pilot dioceses to recruit and appoint Negroes wherever appropriate as pilot diocese coordinators and to other positions of key responsibility.
It urged dioceses and parishes to make substantial funds available in their budget for community organizations of the indigenous poor, and has recommended to General Convention that such programs be financed in the budget for the next Triennium, 1968 - 70.
The Council also asked the church "to support and, if necessary, initiate efforts which will lead to a substantial up-grading of all schools, particularly those largely attended by the Negro poor and other underprivileged groups...."
After the paper was presented on Thursday morning, Charles Crump, a Council member from Memphis, Tenn. introduced a substitute statement, drafted the night before by himself and Hugh Laughlin, a Council member from Toledo, Ohio.
After Mr. Crump's proposal was narrowly defeated, it was decided to adjourn the meeting so that a small committee representative of all points of view which had been expressed could incorporate some of Mr. Crump's statement into the original paper.
The committee reported back to the Council, and the final statement, with the resolutions, was adopted. In the process, the title of the statement was changed, again by a narrow margin, to "The Negro American and Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence."
"If, as the MRI document asserts, the 'keynote of our time is equality, interdependence, and mutual responsibility,' there is no more appropriate place to begin than within our own country, in our own church practices and structures."