We all know about the critics who say the Christian churches are not sufficiently “involved” these days -- not involved enough in the inner city, not involved enough in interracial work, not involved enough in helping poor nations.
Sometimes I think they are too involved. The first and only Congressman ever to call upon President Johnson to “fire Shriver” was a minister -- Adam Clayton Powell. The first organization ever accused of running a school with anti-poverty money where Negroes are taught to hate whites is St. Anselm’s Episcopal Church. The first group ever to buy a full page ad in the New York Times denouncing me personally were some northern Presbyterians supporting a Head Start program in Mississippi. The first black power conference in the country was held in an Episcopalian chapter house. And, when the Mexican-Americans on the Rio Grande Valley wanted to protest sweat-shop wages on the farm, they were led in a protest march by a Catholic priest!
So, there’s no doubt about it. The churches are involved in the War on Poverty.
The only question is this -- can the politicians survive your help? As the old prayer says: ‘“May the Lord deliver me from my friends -- I’ll take care of my enemies myself.”
Truthfully, our country cannot win the War on. Poverty without your help, without the help of the churches and churchmen. Happily, hundreds of ministers and priests are practicing their theology on the street.
The National Council of Churches runs migrant labor programs. Churches are running programs for the mentally retarded who are poor. Ministers and priests are on Community Action boards. Four Presbyterian colleges are running Upward Bound programs enrolling more than 300 students. But there are 46 presbyterian colleges in America and we want more of them in Upward Bound.
Despite all this involvement by the churches, America is at a desperate point in her history. Paraphrasing a famous writer, the country is “is off on a ride which will end – is it God or the devil who knows where?”
The first fact is this -- America is bewildered by the riots! We look at a city like Detroit where since 1960 Congress has given $100 million for urban renewal, and ask, why Detroit?
OEO bragged that Detroit had a model antipoverty program – but we never said it was an adequate program. Because it wasn’t. Right now, OEO funding in Detroit represents only 14% of the expressed need. In Hartford, we are spending only 6% of that city’s need. New York gets 10% and Atlanta, 21%.
The money spent in Community Action in Hartford is equal to one helicopter lost in Vietnam. Four F-111s lost in Vietnam equals one Detroit. Only one F-4 fighter bomber lost in Vietnam costs about the same as one year’s CAP for Newark.
The same comparisons can be applied to money spent at home -- not on the tools of war, but the luxuries of the good life.
- People in Detroit will spend more than $43 million on jewelry this year, while the national expenditure for OEO’s Legal Services amounts to $30 million.
- People in Chicago will spend an estimated $622 million on liquor this year, while our entire Head Start program gets only $350 million.
- More than $10 million will be spent this year in pet shops in New York. OEO spends $5 and one half million this year on its national Foster Grandparents program.
- Florists in New York will do a $77 million business this year, but OEO can give only $50 million to its 39 Health Centers.
These statistics are frightening. Have we become paralyzed by the variety of life only to forget sacredness of life itself? “Is our country extraordinary or accursed, a junkyard where even the minnows give caviar in the filthy pond in the fierce electric American night?”
Another issue on the mind of America is this: are anti-poverty workers encouraging or joining the riots? Despite what you may have read -- the answer is no.
In city after city, the opposite is happening. Poverty workers have tried to prevent, not cause riots. When riots did break out, they tried to smother, not fan, the flames. They worked with, not against, the police.
Said Mayor Jerome Cavanagh of Detroit to a Life reporter while touring the riots: “We have local anti-poverty centers all up and down here and they weren’t hit. Of the 5,000 people arrested, only three or four were in the anti-poverty program. Some of the best work out here during the riots was done by our anti-poverty aides. Without this program, it would have been much worse.”
These are the facts: In 27 cities, 12,128 persons are direct employees of OEO funded agencies -- neighborhood workers, clerical staff, health aides, community organizers. Most live in or near the ghetto neighborhoods. In these 27 cities, 6,733 persons were arrested. Six of the 12,128 paid poverty workers were arrested -- and none have yet been tried or convicted.
In 27 cities, estimated damage to buildings in the ghettos is $273,652,800. OEO rents 491 facilities in these 27 cities. Not one was burned. Not one was looted. The total damage was a few broken plate glass windows.
Why? Because like buildings displaying the Red Cross in time of war, the ghetto people recognized that the facilities were among the few places they could find refuge and aid.
In Detroit alone, 3,783 persons were arrested. There are 1,547 paid anti-poverty workers in that City. But not a single one is under arrest.
Two Detroit policemen have been indicted for murder during the riots. Not one anti-poverty worker has been so charged.
In the early stages of Newark’s riot, the anti-poverty workers went through the ghetto trying to calm the crowds. After the riots began, they provided what they could by way of food, shelter and clothing. In Newark, on the first night of the riot, members of the community action staff tried to break up the crowd in front of the police station, but were unsuccessful. Throughout the riot, the same CAP staff continued to get people off the streets.
Thirty Neighborhood Youth Corps police worked 12 hour shifts. “They were magnificent,” said Police Commissioner Dominick Spina. Two hundred NYC enrollees working for the Housing Authority hauled in emergency food. To the best of our knowledge, not one of the 2,560 enrollees was part of the rioting or looting.
The recent headlines from Nashville that OEO was paying its employees to teach the Negroes to hate whites is false. Not one cent of Federal money is in that program.
As for the cities that have not rioted, much of the credit goes to anti-poverty workers. In Elizabeth, New Jersey, for example, the Director of the Community Action agency -- after a night of tension and some violence -- brought the Negro community together. They got up a list of requests and sat down with the mayor. Most of the requests were agreed to. A group called “Peace Keepers” walked the streets and calmed the people. As a result, Elizabeth has had no riot.
During the disturbances in early July in Atlanta, the West Central Neighborhood Service Center was neutral territory. It was headquarters for residents, police, city officials, the press and even the mayor. Though most other buildings suffered smashed windows, not one was broken at the center.
Let me make my position unmistakably clear. When I became Director of OEO, I took an oath – to defend this country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I consider those who would mock our laws, shatter our peace, burn our homes and kill our people to be enemies of our country. To promote or excuse violence is against every intention I have had since coming to Washington seven years ago.
That we have had riots this summer is an American tragedy -- and we are all actors in it. Even if there were no riots, the conditions of life for 32 million Americans are still wrong. They were wrong socially, politically and morally. And they must be corrected wherever they exist.
The issue today in America is clear: in the words of America’s founders, the issue is and the problem is to assure “domestic tranquility.”
We want peace in our cities and peace in our hearts. We want guns and butter, not guns and guns. As Theodore White said: “History can signal its changes to wise men without violence -- but for those who ignore its message, it then raps with gunfire to call attention.” This summer we have had the gunfire.
But how do we establish this “domestic tranquility” the founding fathers spoke of?
First, it can’t be done with money alone. Riots can’t be bought off with dollars. America does not have a financial problem -- we have a moral problem. It is a problem that makes urgent demands, both to correct the disorders within each of us and the disorder outside of us.
- We must meet the needs of the poor in the same manner and speed that the appetites of the affluent are satisfied.
- We must look on the riots and see them not as a warning of death, but as a crisis of birth.
- As Christians, we cannot ignore St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians when he says, “We are all members of one another.”
We are going through the dark night of the American soul -- do we want to be members of one another. Robert Frost said, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” He was right. Human beings in ghettos don’t like to be caged in like beasts. They don’t like phony barriers to life. They don’t like to be locked into a death-hole.
And as keepers of the slums and guardians of the ghetto, we are growing weary. Eugene Carson Blake said at New York’s Riverside Church 2 years ago:
“I am weary of comfortable Americans using partisan political and economic arguments as excuses why nothing should be done (about poverty), am even wearier of Christians using spiritual excuses that life is more than food, clothing and shelter to justify themselves for voting selfishly and in fear of losing their own economic security or advantage.”
Pope Paul said the same in his recent encyclical, Populorum Progresso. “Development is the new name for peace.” Human development is what he means. That is exactly what we are trying to do in the poverty program. We are getting help from business, labor, volunteers, the private sector in developing the talents of all Americans who are poor.
But after everyone is involved and the programs are operating, one question remains: in the face of the riots, after taking these body blows to America -- what is it to be a practitioner of Christianity? And how can you -- Protestant Ministers--help us laymen?
First, there is not much left in the social welfare realm for the churches that the Government is not doing already. The United States Government, which began in 1789 by making and operating the laws, now makes and operates schools, hospitals, orphanages, Community Action Centers. The Government cares for the aged and even feeds the poor.
I am not congratulating Government -- it is not providing a service but is fulfilling an obligation. And despite all its programs and progress, the Government can’t replace the Church. The dollar is not dead and neither is God.
The Government can’t replace the Church because the Government must worry about success. It operates on a success ideology. Politicians can’t get elected unless they are popular. And popularity in America is the soul brother of success. Even Winston Churchill was unable to be elected in the face of failure.
This success ideology is what weakens Christianity today. Too many churches are trying to spread a religion of success, instead of a religion of love. Victories are more important than values.
We prefer the Hollywood version of Christianity: pretty green lawns, station wagons, air conditioned Sunday school classrooms, comfortable parsonages and civic clubs. That is not theology, but mythology. It has little to do with Christianity. It is a refusal to accept failure. Yet Christianity is a religion that says we must risk failure in our lives. The way Christ did. The way he was defeated and rejected. The way he was crucified.
We need ministers and priests to do what the Government can’t do: to tell us what Christianity is all about. That it is a religion of love and that it holds out the risk of failure to everyone daring enough to commit himself wholly to the service of the poor.
Politicians can’t tell America these things -- they must be successful. They have to win. They have to look good. They can’t fail.
We need ministers today who can exhort Christians that failure and defeat are not the worst things that can happen to a person. We have to stand ready to be forsaken -- the way Christ was forsaken. We have to take our failures and defeats and extract the good from them -- the way St. Paul said that good can come from evil.
To preach this fact of Christianity -- the crucifixion -- is the unique mission of the minister or priest. America needs to be told what religion is, not religiosity -- the kind where you feel good instead of do good.
This is the witness you can make at this point in American history. To remind us that Christ was forsaken, kicked on, spit on and hung. Just as that moment on the cross was the most important moment in Christ’s life, so today can be the most important moment in America’s life.
As the French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin wrote:
“In spite of the apparent enthusiasm with which large sections of mankind go along with the political and social currents of the day, the mass of mankind remains dissatisfied.
“It is impossible to find -- either on the right or the left -- a truly progressive mind which does not confess to at least a partial disillusionment with all existing movements. A man joins one party or the other, because if he wishes to act he must make a choice. But having taken his stand, everyone feels to some extent hampered, thwarted, even revolted.
“Everyone wants something larger, finer, better for mankind! Scattered throughout the apparently hostile masses which are fighting each other, there are elements everywhere which are waiting for a shock in order to re-orientate themselves and unite.”
This summer America has had the shock. Now we must unite and eliminate poverty. We must seek not a unity that stifles, but a new creation and a new style -- a unity in which there is breathing space for differences and degrees -- for all religions and no religions, for all races and for all mixtures.
The poor watch. As Jesuit poet Daniel Berrigan wrote: “We stand there -- American, white, Christian with the keys of the world in our pocket. Everything about us says: Be like me! I’ve got it made. But the poor sees the emperor -- naked. Like the look of Christ, the poor man strips us down to the bone...the poor have it hard, the saying goes. Well, we’re the hardest thing they have.”
