Bishop Campbell Resigns from the Council Committee
Diocesan Press Service. December 14, 1972 [72202]
GREENWICH, Conn. (DPS) -- The Executive Council of the Episcopal Church, meeting here Dec. 12-14, has asked the Rt. Rev. John E. Hines, Presiding Bishop, to look into criticism of the administration techniques and philosophy of the Screening and Review Committee of the Church's General Convention Special Program (GCSP) by the Rt. Rev. Wilburn C. Campbell, Bishop of West Virginia and a member of the Council.
The criticism was made when Bishop Campbell submitted his resignation from the Screening and Review Committee, which considers applications for funding of community projects by the GCSP. The GCSP was established by General Convention in 1967 to support self-determination programs and justice for the poor and powerless.
The Screening and Review Committee, which is elected by the Executive Council, is composed of four Council members, two representatives of the Union of Black Episcopalians, and seven representatives of the poor. The Presiding Bishop is chairman.
Bishop Campbell cited a number of "personal, emotional frustrations" which contributed to his decision to resign from the committee, such as shifting of meeting dates and hours on short notice, insufficient reporting in the minutes, and a "hostility" by some committee members toward bishops and the church.
"Many of the members of the Screening and Review Committee," he said, "are basically hostile to the church. There have been moments when I felt I was in a meeting of Black Muslims and not Christianity. I'm too old to take that kind of pressure when I don't have to."
He also said he felt that the GCSP furnished insufficient data in some of the field reports. "Often a complete field appraisal of the reports is not available -- at least not available to me as a member of the Screening and Review Committee; they may be available to somebody else."
"I understand a little better, I think, " he continued, "how I must learn to bend out of a long-developed, tradition-molded, culturally fairly rigid framework, in which I have long interpreted the gospel, into a much more flexible stance which tends more now to yield to a position of as much understanding as I can muster up and total trust in and for people for whom previously I had very little understanding and oft times very little trust."
Whatever mistakes the Screening and Review Committee has made, he said, "I think they have to be understood in the total framework of what the GCSP stands for -- not as excuses for any individual, not as excuses for any race, or category of people, but understood rather because there are very likely new insights and new understandings and new relationships with which they are very familiar and which are integral to the whole human situation today, that I do not understand, and that I do not know nearly as well. "
The Council agreed to Bishop Hines' suggestion that he deal with the matter, rather than appointing a committee to make an investigation, as proposed by the Hon. Herbert V. Walker, Glendale, Calif.
"This is a matter for administration, " Bishop Hines said. "The whole matter should be gone into by me as chairman of the Screening and Review Committee where the responsibility really lies and should be dealt with. And if it's not dealt with adequately, then I'll be glad to take the kind of motion" that Judge Walker offered.
Bishop Campbell's resignation was accepted by the Council "with full appreciation" for his service on the committee.