Episcopal Church Delegation Hears Needs of Mississippi Children
Episcopal News Service. May 4, 1995 [95078]
Nan Cobbey, Features Editor for Episcopal Life newspaper
(ENS) When national church leaders visited Mississippi in April they heard one plea again and again: "Help us help the children."
A warden from Greenwood, a child care worker in Vicksburg, and a "conservative" Republican priest at an elegant plantation luncheon all delivered the same message.
"If we don't help the children we are writing our ticket as the century ends... and it don't look good," said Bishop Alfred Clarke Marble, host for the visit.
The delegation included Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning; Pamela Chinnis, president of the House of Deputies; Diane Porter, senior executive for program; and the Rev. Reynolds Cheney, Executive Council member and Mississippi native, now serving as a parish priest in Tennessee. Browning, Chinnis and Porter will be making a similar trip to the Diocese of Olympia (western Washington) as part of a continuing dialogue with the church. They visited Nevada in February and Connecticut in May.
As team members toured churches and outreach ministries in central Mississippi, they heard about violence and drug use, about children who are abused and living in poverty, who are kept out of schools and "bound for prison."
But they also saw the good news of church-sponsored ministries to "at-risk" pre-schoolers, to elementary students eager for tutoring and mentors, to teens at after-school programs and on a youth retreat weekend. And they saw a confidence-building ropes course being installed at a black middle school in Jackson, a school "adopted" by the cathedral congregation as part of a state-wide program.
By the time they got to the first gathering of clergy and lay leaders at Egypt Plantation outside Yazoo City, they were impressed and ready to talk about how they could offer help and support. "We come to see what the diocese is doing and to see how we can be in greater partnership and support," Browning told rectors and senior wardens gathered at the home of Steele and Bob Hardeman on the banks of the Tallahachee River.
Though their goal was to encourage and support, the team also brought a challenge as, with their hosts, they examined hard issues of race, poverty and privilege.
The state of Mississippi lags behind much of the nation in education and income, the team learned. Haves and have-nots are largely divided by race. So, for the most part, are schools. Public schools are black, private schools white.
As much as a third of the adult population in the Delta region where the team centered its visit remains illiterate. Statewide only 62 percent of Mississippi's citizens are high school graduates, ranking the state 48th out of the 50 states. Only Texas and South Carolina fare worse. The average per capita personal income, $13,631 in 1993, is the lowest in the nation.
Yet the challenges in Mississippi, as several clergy pointed out, are no different from those found throughout the church; they are just "writ large." During meetings with diocesan leaders, the team learned about three challenges identified as the diocese's priorities: children and families in crisis, races in need of reconciliation, and parishioners seeking deeper spiritual formation.
At the end of the visit, Browning and his team reflected on what they'd seen with leaders from across the diocese at the rebuilt lakeside camp and conference center named for former Bishop Duncan M. Gray.
There Marble told his dream of sponsoring Cursillos, or spiritual retreats, focused on racial reconciliation and of helping the diocese develop "the same strong presence and witness" in Mississippi that it has in Honduras with its Medical Mission. "We still have third-world conditions in our state," he said.
Attorney Lee David Thames of Vicksburg, a deputy to General Convention, said that "the church has got to continue to be prophetic... one of the things that [the national staff] needs to do is focus more on spirituality in the congregations, preparing the seedbed for the prophetic voice."
Mike Chaney, also a General Convention deputy and member of the Mississippi House of Representatives, said that the diocese could use some guidance in the current political climate about how to respond as social programs are cut.
Janet Ott, lay leader and founder of an after-school program for inner-city youth, told the visitors, "It would help me if the national church would make broad, bold statements about violence against women and children."
Porter responded immediately, saying that the church must address violence "the same way we addressed the AIDS pandemic. ... We've got to put the best minds in the church to work on it." She praised the diocese's work with children and youth, calling it "a very important learning for me" and an "excellent tool for evangelism."
Porter also saluted the diocese for putting racial reconciliation on the table "in a forthright, honest way." She and Cheney challenged the leadership to use their social connections and their considerable clout to influence the powerful in the state, to see advocacy as an important next step.
"Your direct services are wonderful," said Porter, "but isn't our goal to some day work ourselves out of jobs in soup kitchens?" Cheney asked, "Do we have the courage to put it on the line? To speak to...those who can change the system?"
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