New Church Coalition Organized in Memphis
Diocesan Press Service. May 7, 1969 [77-8]
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- A new coalition of Churches has emerged from the social and racial crisis of Memphis last spring in the creation of the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association (MIFA).
It is the result of more than two years of conversations between the congregations and regional leadership of the major Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches. Others, including Jewish agencies, have been invited to join.
MIFA will provide a means by which the Churches can plan and act together for the alleviation of poverty, promotion of justice in race relations and the support of joint ministries to youth and to the aged. It is expected, Memphis Church leaders say, that it will also help to open up lines of communication between the various elements of the community and the testing of new ways for dealing with the issues and conflicts which divide it.
MIFA, whose chairman is the Very Rev. William A. Dimmick, dean of St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, grew out of earlier work by the Downtown Churches Association and the Association for Christian Training and Service (ACTS). ACTS was initiated three years ago as a training program under the Episcopal Church's Joint Urban Program, and its director, the Rev. William A. Jones, will serve as a consultant to MIFA.
The Rt. Rev. John Vander Iorst, Episcopal Bishop of Tennessee; the Most Rev. Joseph A. Durick, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nashville; Bishop Homer E. Finger, United Methodist Church, and Bishop Cary A. Gibbs, African Methodist Episcopal Church, are among the founders of the new organization.