Episcopal Press and News
Black Clergy Challenge Resistance to Change in Power Structures
Episcopal News Service. November 18, 1992 [92231]
A hundred black clergy emerged from a four-day meeting at Kanuga Conference Center in North Carolina "determined to transform the Episcopal Church into that family of God which affirms the full personhood of our ebony grace, our blackness, without compromise or patronage."
In a statement released after the meeting, participants said that they are "increasingly aware of the trends affecting the growth and development of our respective communities, of the rigid resistance to positive change which the structures of power in our nation and in our Episcopal Church still portent, and of the urgent need for radical transformations in our own patterns of ministry...."
Black congregations should not only be "dynamic centers of worship and spiritual and cultural sustenance," but also "be promoted as centers of learning for our people, while becoming corporate instruments of social and structural change for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus."
Contending that blacks "have been strengthened in our resolute determination not to become instruments of our own oppression, either in the church or the wider society," the conference statement added that the participants are determined to "affirm our past, envision our future and accurately define and courageously face up to the harsh reality of our contemporary situation."
Included in the document were resolutions that
- called on all diocesan bishops and deployment officers to include at least one ethnic/racial minority person on lists of those considered for employment;
- called on black churches to be "more diligently responsive to the challenges and opportunities for ministry" in their communities;
- called on seminaries to train clergy for more effective ministry in racial/ethnic minority congregations and neighborhoods and for congregations to support candidates for the ministry;
- called for educational resources that affirm the faith and the cultural heritage of black Episcopalians;
- called for a conference of black clergy to address issues related to deployment, gender relationship, pastoral collegiality and mutual empowerment; and
- expressed "dismay and deep concern" at the recent termination of six black male clergy.