Presiding Bishop Named
Diocesan Press Service. August 12, 1963 [XII-8]
Presiding Bishop Lichtenberger has been named chairman of an interdenominational and interracial Commission on Religion and Race.
Bishop Lichtenberger's appointment to spearhead direct action against segregation was made by J. Irwin Miller, president of the National Council of Churches, at the NCCC's General Board meeting June 6-8 in New York.
Serving as vice-chairmen will be the Rev. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake of New York, Stated Clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.; Bishop Julian Smith of Chicago, president of the Board of Christian Education, the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church; and Mrs. J. Fount Tillman of Louisberg, Tenn., president of the Women's Division of the Methodist Church.
The new Commission on Religion and Race will be composed of 25 religious leaders-- 10 Negro, 10 white, and five members of other minority groups--authorized by the General Board to press for civil rights legislation, to support economic boycotts through non-violent demonstrations, and to "witness to the fact that the race issue is a national moral problem and not a regional one."
Though Commission members have yet to be named by Mr. Miller, a temporary staff has been set up to implement planned action.