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Provincial Committee Studies Minority Recruitment

Episcopal News Service. December 1, 1977 [77384]

Ann Thomas

NEW ORLEANS, La. -- On November 12, while the city of New Orleans was electing her first black mayor, representatives from Province IV gathered there at St. Luke's complex for a conference sponsored by the Committee on Minority Recruitment and Equal Opportunity Employment. The 4 year-old provincial committee is chaired by the Rev. Henry Parker, Episcopal chaplain at Berea College, Kentucky.

Described by Fr. Parker as a "happening" rather than a conference, the event addressed itself to the need for more blacks in Episcopal seminaries. While there was a relatively small gathering at the conference, participants represented a crosssection of the country: New York, Kentucky, North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Washington, D.C., and Mississippi.

The Rt. Rev. James Barrow Brown, Bishop of Louisiana, gave the welcoming address in which he stated that "there'll always be a lack of catholicity in the Episcopal Church as long as it isn't for all people."

Bishop Brown pointed to the need for black clergy who would serve as mentors for younger men, a concern which became a recurring theme throughout the conference.

"We have lost the age of images," conference moderator, Fr. Parker, said in introducing the distinguished keynote speaker, the Rev. Kenneth de Poullain Hughes, rector emeritus of St. Bartholomew's, Cambridge, Mass. "Here is the kind of man all young men should meet. "

"The Church is trying to correct past injustices and to enter into the 21st century, " Fr. Hughes told the group. "For that I am thankful."

Reminding the group that the political charge against Jesus was "stirring up the people," Fr. Hughes said that the current problems within the Episcopal Church were what the Church was born for -- "creative trouble. "

"We Episcopalians are noted for hankering after elitism," he said. "Woe be any church at peace in a troubled world. "

"Our roots," he told the young men present, "run deeper than those dug up by Alex Haley. Africa was barbarized by the West while it was the mother of all religions. We were taught to despise this African culture from kindergarten to college. This is how our culture was destroyed....If you have no past, you have no future. "

Reviewing the divisive issues within the Church today, Fr. Hughes stated: "The ecclesiastical cacophony rolls around and around because the Church tries to erase sexism and idolotry. Idolotry of the past is our most terrible enemy."

Among the black clergy who addressed the conference were the Very Rev. Quinland R. Gordon, dean of Absalom Jones Theological Institute in Atlanta, and the Rev. Nathaniel Porter, Episcopal chaplain to Howard University, Washington, D.C.

Fr. Parker reported to the conference that of the 42 black seminarians in the United States, only 22 were American while the rest were African. He described the present as a crisis situation, citing the lack of blacks on cathedral and diocesan office staffs as well as among seminary faculties.

The conference was co-hosted by St. Luke's Parish and Episcopal Community Services of New Orleans.

[thumbnail: Mr. William Rucker, chair...]