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Second Urban Bishops Hearing in Newark

Episcopal News Service. January 5, 1978 [78005]

Martha Blacklock

NEWARK, N.J. -- "The church wouldn't cheat nobody," a young, black man told the panel at the Urban Bishops Coalition Newark Hearing on December 1.

"What makes you so sure?" asked panelist Magdalia de Jesus Garcia, a law student and community college teacher from New York City.

"Well, you know, the church is representing God. And I believe in God. And I believe God wouldn't cheat me. So I'm saying I have faith in you. So don't do me wrong."

A long, long silence followed Donnie Days' reply.

Days, Philip Williams, and Derek Gaters, members of Trinity Cathedral's youth group, were being questioned by the panel after their presentation, which might be summarized: Newark -- it's the pits.

The panel, chaired by John Burt, Bishop of Ohio, included Francisco Reus-Froylan, Bishop of Puerto Rico; Paul Moore, Jr., Bishop of New York; Ms. Garcia; Kathryn Yatrakis, PhD candidate in political science at Columbia University; Rebecca Andrade, Executive Director of Tri-Citizens Union for Progress in Newark; Dillard Robinson III, Dean of Trinity Cathedral, Newark; Malcolm Talbott, President of the Rutgers University Foundation; and Marjorie Christie, President of the Episcopal Churchwomen of the Diocese of Newark.

Ten hours of testimony from 25 individuals and organizations raised up some familiar urban problems -- housing, unemployment, education, racism, sexism, addiction, poverty, crime.

Neighborhood organizations emerged as one significant approach to these problems. Ted Hargrove, representing the Unified Vailsberg Service Organization, pointed out, "If you can't get the local neighborhoods to do something in terms of themselves and their own needs it's foolish for government and/or the church to try to impose that upon people. " Representatives from over a half dozen neighborhood organizations spoke of their groups' activities. A possible role for the church in facilitating a coalition of the groups was suggested.

One innovative approach to city ministry was presented by James Parrott of the South Park Calvary-Lighthouse Temple, and Charles Lebert, a Presbyterian minister. The building in which Calvary-Lighthouse Temple functions once housed a moribund Presbyterian congregation. Now the Presbyterian Church and the Pentecostal congregation are involved in a partnership; the Presbyterians contribute the building and endowment, the Pentecostals their working knowledge of city ministry.

Livingston Goodman, of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., one of a group of men speaking for the business community, suggested that one source of Newark's problem, "is the fact that it's 24 square miles, compared to normal cities which would be 5, 6, 7 times that.... And suburbia has built barriers that say, 'You keep your poor. You provide the educational institutions. You provide the transportation network.' It isn't the citizen of Newark who is using the Newark airport. It's his suburban counterpart.... Close to two-thirds of this tiny land mass is tax exempt because it's providing services that extend beyond its borders."

Testimony returned repeatedly to the relationship between the city and its suburbs. George Rath, Bishop of Newark, was the last testifier. He was asked, "What would you say has been the chief obstacle to the church under your leadership responding effectivBishop Rath answered, "I don't want to make this sound judgmental, but it's the lack of concern on the part of the majority of the people of the diocese simply because they don't know or believe that things are as they are. And they don't know that they are as they are because if they ever admitted it, they couldn't bear it. "ely in this long list of concerns?"

The Newark hearing, second in the Urban Bishops' Coalition series around the country, was preceded in the diocese by three other hearings in Morristown, Jersey City, and Passaic. According to Anne Scheibner, Hearings Coordinator, it is hoped that the model will be used in other communities, not all of them urban, to help the church discover and address its role in today's society.