Confusion, anxiety, turmoil, uncertainty, and soul-searching mark the present mood of church life in Rochester, New York, in the aftermath of the confrontation between FIGHT and the Eastman Kodak Company at Kodak’s annual board meeting in Flemington, New Jersey. Race and job opportunities are not the only issues. Involved also is the future place of the church within American society. The action of the Rochester Area Council of Churches (RACC) in bringing Saul Alinsky’s FIGHT organization to the Flower City and the reaction of some churches and church members in repudiating RACC policy by withholding financial support are a foreshadowing of issues that few communities in the United States will be able to avoid. In the light of the RACC board’s painful reappraisal of the policies that have led to its present financial predicament, the question of social pressure and church policy ought to be of vital concern to Christian leaders and Christian laymen throughout the nation.
Rochester is an affluent and fast-changing city. For several decades people have been attracted to this scientific center by job opportunities and community advantages. More and more people, many from depressed economic areas, have been coming to the city. The large Negro population came in part to work on nearby farms and in orchards. Many migrants remained here because of the city’s liberal relief policies. Some of the adult migrants returned to the South for the winter, leaving their children behind with relatives so they could attend school. Long before the plight of these families became a recognized concern of denominational officials, the changing nature of the inner city and the problems of its churches cried out unheeded for attention.
The official records of Grace Lutheran Church, located in the inner city, attest to the unwillingness of denominational officials to confront the problems of the inner-city church. In 1946 a university president and a synod official recommended that the church either close or merge. Records of city agencies in that same year predicted an exceedingly short slum-free life for the once respectable multi-racial area around the church.
There were indeed great difficulties, but on the whole the predictions proved wrong. Considerable effort and educational promotion extended the active life of this congregation. Radical changes in policy and program were instituted with the sympathetic help of the Rochester Federation of Churches, which later became the RACC. Grace Church was the first Lutheran church in Rochester to welcome a Negro family as members. The father was president of the Rochester chapter of the NAACP at the time of the Rochester “riot” in 1964. His election to Grace’s Church Council took a heavy toll in active church membership, but as a result excellent relations were established with Negro congregations. Grace Church was among the first congregations to contribute from benevolence funds to the work of the RACC. Our church lawyer was the first and only secretary of the controversial Police Review Board now dying for lack of work. A fair percentage of our active church families came to know first-hand the fear of racial hatred.
Under the policies of the old Federation of Churches, board membership was more nearly a cross section of the total Rochester church community than it now is. When, in line with the policy of the National Council of Churches, board members of the new RACC began to be selected or appointed by denominational officials or bodies, representation on the board began to reflect more strongly the affluent suburban churches. In retrospect, we can see that policies that grew out of changes in the selection of the RACC board were among the first steps leading to events that are now of national concern. The experience of the inner-city churches clashed with the growing importance of the suburban churches, and these tensions preceded the RACC’s calling of Mr. Alinsky to do the work many citizens and inner-city churches felt could be done most effectively through local resources and leadership.
No one knows what the present controversy will ultimately mean for the inner-city churches, nor even how long progressively minded inner-city congregations can survive. But at least one thing is certain. The inner-city church does not control its own future. It has not been considered important in the present controversy, and it is now in the unfortunate and unnecessary position of a drowning man crying for help.
The withdrawal of financial support from the RACC by churches and churchmen has forced upon church leaders the belated recognition that the inner city has long been a mission field. The RACC’s calling of Saul Alinsky forced the entire community to consider city problems. Now the RACC’s financial predicament has spotlighted the plight of the inner-city churches.
Those who have never experienced the effect of social upheavals upon the mind and spirit find it easy to judge the reactions of innocent people who have suffered and are still suffering from the Rochester “riot” and the aftermath of events resulting from RACC decisions. Our school teachers and our schools, our industry and its leaders and workers, our courts (especially our judges), our churches and church members—or aspects of community life are now feeling the soul-searing pain involved in accelerated social change. Socially minded real estate brokers in our immediate community are crying, “Why doesn’t someone consult our experience in the attempt to find answers to these complex problems?” Public morale suffers because people directly involved in the problems—the classroom teacher, the community real estate dealer, the policeman on the beat, the minister in the inner-city church, and many others—are not consulted as individuals. Like the child who instinctively knows whether an adult’s interest in him is real or feigned, victims of social pressures are vitally concerned about the motives behind proposals and actions leaders make without consulting them.
The frightening events in Rochester have left behind two tragic consequences: (1) a growing lack of confidence in churches and church leaders, not excluding inner-city ministers whose motivation and actions over the years were hardly open to question; and (2) a growing fear of what the future may hold in view of the reckless threats of members of the FIGHT organization at the Kodak annual meeting in Flemington, New Jersey. Even more important is the apprehensiveness and concern of the courts over recent Supreme Court judgments and their far-reaching effects upon problem-ridden, socially convulsed communities.
Part of the soul-searching on the part of ministers, particularly those working within the city, centers on how long they can physically and mentally stand the pressures that stem from the difference in attitudes and professional experiences between the suburban congregation and the mission-oriented inner-city congregation.
What has most evoked immediate and violent local reaction is FIGHT’s appeal to American churches to “vote” the Kodak stock they may hold in order to register protest against the company’s board of directors. Many discerning ministers from distant places have questioned the wisdom of this procedure. Churchmen must resist efforts to undermine public confidence in the leadership of a responsible American business concern that continues to provide jobs for people of all races, whose experience led to the establishment of the American social security system, whose philanthropy is known world-wide, and whose influence has been vital even to the function and life of the RACC. At the least, Kodak deserves honest scrutiny and careful assessment. So also does the philosophy of churches that are attempting to restructure themselves as agents of social justice.
If it is true that, as some church leaders allege, survival of the Church is linked to the investment of time, talents, and dollars in social change, is it not equally true that responsible knowledge and judgment is required of churches in their stewardship of invested assets that they obtained through the generosity and love of church members? For churches to “vote” their stock in protest against a company that has established an excellent record as an ethically responsible firm undermines confidence in the economic system that has nurtured American life and contributed to the tradition of free churches.
The former Rochester City Comptroller has expressed deep concern that irresponsible action by churches in regard to Kodak stock might have opened a Pandora’s box. What began in one city as church concern over civil rights and other local problems may turn out to be the opening gun in a larger, longer battle that may ultimately destroy confidence in spiritual and moral values and even threaten the future of the church as a creative agent in America’s religious, social, economic, and moral life.
What stance should the churches assume and what actions should they avoid in bringing the Gospel to bear in such times of travail? A good place to begin is to study and restudy our Lord’s temptations, particularly his rejection of earthly power. Christians must also ask whether the objectives of Christian love can be served by the conscious use of fear, frustration, and controversy. For the Church, or those to whom the Church has delegated responsibility for constructive social action, to use these as tools may dull the tools of the Spirit of which Paul speaks so eloquently. Paul’s description of love in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians applies to the human situation in the twentieth century as surely as it did in the first.
What other communities ought to avoid can be seen in Rochester’s unfortunate experiences. To base church policy or a cooperative church effort upon one segment of society to the exclusion or neglect of other social segments in similar straits is costly and possibly fatal for future confidence and morale. The loudest condemnation of the actions of the RACC now comes from inner-city citizens of all races.
Certainly other Christians throughout our nation ought to search their souls as we here in Rochester are searching ours. If the time should come when people no longer support religious institutions because of lack of confidence in their leaders, we can be sure that the death of the churches may have been hastened by accidental oversight and by hasty actions based on social pressures. If the churches do not discriminatingly resist social pressures, they are only courting disaster. Public pressures often are agents of hate and fear; love, trust, understanding, and sacrifice are agents of creative tensions.
