A small group of anti-American black revolutionaries began a campaign of open persecution this month against white churches and synagogues. In a 2,500-word “Black Manifesto” they vowed church seizures, disruptions, and demonstrations and demanded half a billion dollars in “reparations” from the American Christian-Jewish community.
“To win our demands we will have to declare war on the white Christian churches and synagogues and this means we may have to fight the total government structure of this country,” the manifesto said.
The initial confrontation came May 4 when James Forman, reputed author of the manifesto, stopped a Sunday-morning worship service at New York’s fashionable Riverside Church. Forman stood in the altar area after the opening hymn and began to read a series of demands. The Rev. Ernest T. Campbell led the choir out, and the service never did resume.
The same day, the manifesto’s demands were read during a similar disruption by blacks at the First United Presbyterian Church of San Francisco.
Two days earlier, Forman had appeared before the General Board of the National Council of Churches to air the manifesto. The board had expressed its thanks to Forman and agreed to send the document to its constituent denominations for “study.” The NCC General Secretary was instructed to submit relevant recommendations to a June 23 meeting of the council’s executive committee, which was given special broad powers to act.
The “Black Manifesto” came out of a “National Black Economic Development Conference” held on the Detroit campus of Wayne State University April 25–27. The conference, which drew about 600, was co-sponsored by a number of agencies, including some from the NCC, the Episcopal Church, and the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization. A United Presbyterian Office of Information employee was in charge of the press room, from which all white reporters were barred.
Forman’s manifesto was adopted by a vote of 187–63. In an introduction, he called the United States “the most barbaric country in the world,” adding flatly that “we have a chance to help bring this government down.”
Forman has been the director of international affairs for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in Atlanta. His introduction also declared that “our fight is against racism, capitalism and imperialism and we are dedicated to building a socialist society inside the United States where the total means of production and distribution are in the hands of the state.… We work the chief industries in this country and we could cripple the economy while the brothers fought guerrilla warfare in the streets.”
The manifesto confined itself to overturning churches. The $500 million to be gleaned from the churches has already been budgeted: $200,000,000 for a Southern land bank to establish cooperative farms; $10,000,000 each to set up publishing industries in Detroit, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York; $10,000,000 each to “audio-visual networks” in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, and Washington, D. C.; $30,000,000 for a black research skills center; $10,000,000 for a communications training center; $10,000,000 for the already existing National Welfare Rights Organization, a lobby for welfare recipients; $20,000,000 for a black labor strike fund; $20,000,000 for an International Black Appeal to produce more capital; and $130,000,000 for a black university.
The money is demanded as “only a beginning of the reparations due us as people who have been exploited and degraded, brutalized, killed, and persecuted.” To extract the funds the manifesto calls for “total disruption of selected church sponsored agencies.… Black workers, black women, black students and the black unemployed are encouraged to seize the offices, telephones, and printing apparatus of all church-sponsored agencies and to hold these in trusteeship until our demands are met.
“On May 4, 1969, or a date thereafter, depending on local conditions, we call upon black people to commence the disruption of the racist churches and synagogues throughout the United States.”
The manifesto concluded: “Our objective in issuing this manifesto is to force the racist white Christian church to begin the payment of reparations which are due to all black people, not only by the church but also by private business and the U. S. government. We see this focus on the Christian church as an effort around which all black people can unite. Our demands are negotiable, but they cannot be minimized.”
Two Episcopal bishops met newsmen in New York after issuance of the demands. They said they agreed that their denomination and others were racist, and that the demands for money were just. “You’re not wrong in asking,” said the Right Rev. J. Brooke Mosley, “you’re asking the wrong people.”
At the headquarters of the Lutheran Church in America in New York, Forman posted the demands on the front door. He said he did so “in the spirit of Martin Luther.”
Black, Biblical, And Broke
A heart-warming blend of biblical dramatizations and gospel music lasted for five nights on Broadway. Despite generous reviews, Trumpets of the Lord failed to attract enough theater-goers to make the financial grade. It was an especially hard-to-take defeat for the producers who had brought back the 1963 off-Broadway show hoping to make a contribution to current emphasis on black culture. Advertisements in local papers (see illustration on page 29) echoed the producers’ bitterness. Across the street, “Hair” was attracting capacity crowds.
“Trumpets” is an adaptation of James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones. It is, quite literally and simply, the depiction of a typical Negro church service. There are three preachers, two men and a woman, whose messages are interspersed with lively choir numbers. The lines are commendably biblical and the music rousing and authentic. The climax had the audience spontaneously clapping with the all-black cast as they sang, “God Be with You Till We Meet Again.”
DAVID E. KUCHARSKY
Sour Note In ’Frisco
Campus ministers of San Francisco State’s controversial Ecumenical House (see January 17 issue, page 44) scorched jazz musician Duke Ellington for accepting a college concert invitation this month from his close friend Acting President S. I. Hayakawa. Suggesting he was “a political pawn of the entire minority community,” the ministers denounced Ellington’s appearance as “unethical and immoral.” Hayakawa shot back that the ministers were “again trying to stir up dissension,” and that Ecumenical House has been used to promote violence, revolution—and the closing down of the university.
The Gospel In Black
Jesus was the Black Messiah and the Apostle Paul was an “Uncle Tom.” The Rev. Albert B. Cleage, militant pastor of the Shrine of the Black Madonna in Detroit, was dead serious as he expounded his views on what he called the “emerging new black theology.”
Cleage—whose skin is light for a Negro—is said to be the first Christian minister to become a leading black nationalist in this country. He spoke this month at a “Black Church/Black Theology” interdenominational conference at Jesuit-run Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Christ was really “black,” he claimed (“the ‘Black Messiah’ is my bag”), because the Israelites, during their 430-year bondage in Egypt, intermarried with their Egyptian captors. Cleage’s theological history blames Paul for distorting the views of Christ, whose teachings were intended to unite the divided “black nation” of Israel. He maintains Pauline tradition wrongly made salvation individual instead of corporate.
Asked about Christ’s inviting all men to come to him, the former social worker replied: “We [black people] want to be separate in a spiritual sense from the Western world and its decadence.… I really don’t worry about how a black Jesus now is going to affect white people.…”
Africa Hails A President, Prepares For Pope
One African country not trying to catch up with the rest of the world is Tanzania. Instead, it is determined to make its own contribution to the progress of mankind, and to suggest its own solutions to contemporary African problems.
Tanzania’s policy of socio-cultural, economic, and political development is based on traditional African practices and concepts, although some of these—notably work, economic justice, and self-reliance—have been clearly updated.
Three years ago Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the Christian socialist president of Tanzania, made his famous Arusha Declaration, which was immediately hailed around the world as the most original piece of political thought ever to come out of Africa. Nyerere created a ministry of culture to promote the African way of life and Swahili; he radically reorganized the educational system and reduced the country’s dependence on foreign aid to the barest minimum.
The president is now accorded a measure of esteem in world capitals, is envied by neighboring leaders, and enjoys genuine support among his people. After only three years of this bold experiment, people are beginning to suspect that “Nyerere might just be right.”
Christian leaders and scholars of Tanzania also now strongly support him. But the editor of the East African Christian monthly, Target, has given the Tanzanian Christians an appropriate warning: “One aspect of national life which will soon need to be brought into focus is the air of perfectionism which seems to have permeated the country. Christians have known for ages that man is a sinner and that there must always be room for error, either in the life of an individual or in the life of the society.”
This summer, Pope Paul is expected to visit Tanzania, where the Catholic Church, headed by the only African cardinal in the hierarchy, is celebrating its centenary. It is rumored the Pope also may visit Nigeria and Biafra during his trip.
July 31 he will consecrate several shrines in Kampala, Uganda, in honor of the twenty-two African martyrs he canonized in 1964. The martyrs were court officials, page boys, and soldiers of Kabaka (priest-king) Mwanga, who in 1884 succeeded his Christian father, Kabaka Mutesa I (who became a Christian through Sir Henry Morton Stanley), to the throne of Buganda. The youthful Kabaka, then 18, had strong Muslim inclinations and set out immediately to clear his palace and his kingdom of Christians.
After two years of brutal persecutions, twenty-two youthful members of his household—including the son of his prime minister and the son of his chief executioner—came forward to testify publicly that they were still Christians. They were burnt at the stake. Five years ago, the martyrs became Africa’s only saints.
The Pope also will open the first meeting of the Chairmen of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, called to discuss coordination of Catholic work throughout the continent. The group will be the largest episcopal organization within the church, and will be a major step towards moving power away from Rome into the hands of the bishops.
ODHIAMBO OKITE
THE ABM DEBATE: LIBERAL CHURCHMEN LAUNCH THEIR OWN MISSILE
Liberal churchmen had their defenses ready against the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) long before President Richard M. Nixon said he was contemplating construction of at least a “thin” system for enhancing national security. They had done their homework carefully, well in advance of the big test. As a reward, they are emerging as one of the more formidable, vocal forces in the hotly debated national issue.
For months, in fact, the missile question has been a religious preoccupation. Cost, implications for world peace, student sentiment, and a desire to limit a “military spiral” have been key concerns.
Some sources of their study are well documented, mustering, as the National Council of Churches said in a resolution against the missile, support from “knowledgeable persons including many of the nation’s leading scientists, experts on Soviet and Chinese affairs, many members of the Congress, and former high government officials.”
The NCC heard other voices coming from the churches, but did not listen. The resolution spoke of “wide diversity of opinion and controversy in our churches”—but then went on to give a number of reasons for opposition, ending on a request that churchmen let government officials know where they stand.
An April poll by the Friends Committee on National Legislation showed 204 congressmen still are publicly uncommitted on the ABM, 85 have spoken publicly against development of the system, and 28 others have expressed strong doubts about its military, economic, or diplomatic values.
Meanwhile, a Harris Poll April 30 found that 47 per cent of U. S. adults support the Nixon ABM endorsement.
The NCC wasn’t stealing all the show, however. Before the debate got started at the NCC’s New York meeting, twenty-seven Catholic, Methodist, and Episcopal bishops, theologians, and other churchmen, along with Jewish leaders, had upstaged the NCC. A few days earlier in the same city they had formed the National Religious Committee Opposing ABM. They, too, had some reasonably convincing arguments.
Some of the committeemen (including such notables as Reinhold Niebuhr of New York’s Union Theological Seminary, who is chairman of the committee’s board, and President John Bennett of Union) fired a salvo at the White House. They questioned Nixon’s brand of religion, with Bennett saying: “The kind of religion to which the President gives official sanction is somewhat on the escapist side.”
Suddenly a smoldering matter that had been bothering them since January 26 was fanned into open flame. They didn’t like it that only conservative Protestant clergymen were filling the pulpit at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Catholic theologian-author Michael Novak said he is convinced clergymen of his persuasion will never conduct one of the White House services: “The President will invite only those who will bless what is going on.”
There had been rumblings about the services, with one Protestant clergyman saying (anonymously) that they “have in them more than a suggestion that the President is trying to have God on his own terms.” Now it was out in the open. The next Sunday, however, the Rev. R. H. Edwin Espy, general secretary of the NCC, was the White House-chosen pulpit guest for the East Room service.
Rabbi Abraham Heschel of Jewish Theological Seminary linked the ABM fuss and the “irrelevancy” of Nixon’s religion even more closely, asserting that if he would just reverse his position on the ABM, he would make clear to all the world his quoted belief that religion has relevance in national life. At least it would bring him in line with the rabbi’s idea of religious relevance.
WILLIAM WILLOUGHBY
Reducing Tax Privileges
Leading American churchmen issued a joint call this month for a reduction in the tax privileges enjoyed by clergymen, churches, and other religious organizations. Their words are expected to encourage immediate government action to curtail exemption.
“That’s fine that they did that,” said Chairman Wilbur Mills of the House Ways and Means Committee. “That’s my line of thinking and we intended to have that.”
The call came in the form of a policy statement adopted by the General Board of the National Council of Churches and a joint statement sent to Mills by the NCC and the United States Catholic Conference. The first and most likely effect probably will be to close the so-called Clay-Brown loophole, which enables tax-exempt organizations to use debt financing to acquire commercial income property and to realize handsome profits in ways not open to secular corporations.
The joint statement recommends that Congress eliminate the special exemption of churches from taxation of unrelated business income. It asks, however, that the government continue to exempt churches from paying taxes on income derived from rents, dividends and interest from commercial investment securities, and property sales.
The NCC policy statement (adopted by a 77–8 vote with 6 abstentions), goes considerably further than the joint statement with the Catholics. It says that “employees or other functionaries of religious organizations—lay or clergy—should not enjoy any special privilege in regard to any type of taxation.” It calls upon churches to pay a “just share” of such municipal services as fire, police, and sanitation services. It also says churches “should not begrudge paying taxes on auxiliary properties to help defray the costs of civil government. Certainly no exemption from property taxes should be sought for property owned by religious organizations which is not used primarily for religious (or other properly exempt) purposes.” “Auxiliary properties” might be construed as including parsonages and parking lots.
Turning to individual taxation, the policy statement declared that if a clergyman receives a cash allowance for housing, “that amount should be taxed as part of his income, as it is for laymen. Likewise, if he owns his own home, he should not enjoy any reduction of property taxes which is not equally available to his unordained neighbor. In case of a cash allowance, only the non-recoverable costs, which do not include payments on principal, should be included; if property taxes and interest are included in the allowance, they should not also be claimed as deductions.”
The statement added:
“Whether the value of housing provided a clergyman by his church should be taxed is a question that should be resolved as part of the broader category of all employees who occupy residences furnished for their employer’s convenience. Equity might be better served if the dollar equivalent of all such housing was taxed as income. In localities where parsonages are exempt from school taxes, provisions should be made by local churches for payment of tuition or the equivalent. Whatever the solution, churches should compensate their employees for any losses incurred through the elimination of special privileges from the tax laws. We favor legislation requiring payment by churches and church agencies of the employer’s contribution to social security tax for both lay and clerical personnel (except those bound by a vow of poverty).”
Concern over demands of black militants, and to a lesser extent over tax-exemption questions, overshadowed the NCC General Board’s adoption for the first time of a policy statement on the Mideast situation. The statement was approved by a vote of 72–18 shortly before a call for quorum ended the two-day meeting in New York. Only 69 of the board’s 250 members were counted; 85 were said to be needed for a quorum.
