Church People in the Struggle: The National Council of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement, 1950-1970 by James F. Findlay, Jr. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS125 It's all there from Triumph to Ramparts, the apocalyptic anticommunist and convinced monarchist, Frederick Wilhelmsen, and the American version of the red-bereted Spanish Carlists, to the balanced John T. Noonan, Jr., commenting on the difficulties of the natural-law tradition and writing his penetrating historical analyses of the great moral problems of the day. There are, unfortunately, a number of instances where the author indicates his unsure hold on the history ofAmerican Catholicism which is his context. They range from garbled identifications (CardinalJoseph Mundelein, Cardinal Maclntyre, "George Wiegel [sic], S.J.," in a seeming conflation of two rather different people) to misreading of events, as in the case of the Land o' Lakes meeting (1967) or the supposed "exile" of Daniel Berrigan to Mexico, which was actually orchestrated by his editor and patron, Patrick Cotter. Another is described as "a former Roman Catholic who had adopted eastern-rite Catholicism ," and the great breakthrough which involved Protestant and Orthodox leaders in the Second Vatican Council is reduced to the pope permitting "Protestant observers to witness some sessions." James Hennesey Jesuit Center St. Peter's College Jersey City, NewJersey Church People in the Struggle: The National Council of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement, 1950—1970. By James F. Findlay, Jr. [Religion in America Series.] (New York: Oxford University Press. 1993. Pp. xii, 255. «35.00.) The "Church People" in the title are the mainline Protestant churches and especially the National Council of Churches. The "Struggle" was the Civil Rights movement in the United States during the turbulent 1960's. Findlay describes the first hesitant steps taken by the National Council of Churches (NCC) and the major Protestant denominations to become involved in the cause of racial justice, first by the passing of resolutions and the issuance of statements which finally led to decisive action in 1963· Beginning with its major participation in the August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King March, the NCC through its Commission on Religion and Race began to play an important role in lobbying for the passage of President Kennedy's Civil Rights Bill. In a sense this moved the mainline Protestant churches to a concerted effort to bring moral pressure to bear on members of Congress. Such efforts led to new directions in social action. The step-by-step involvement is described in Chapter 3, " 1ViSItOrS in Hell': Church Involvement in the Movement in Mississippi," and Chapter 4, " 'Servanthood ' in Mississippi: The Delta Ministry, 1964—1966." In the summer of 1 26BOOK REVIEWS 1964 the Commission on Religion and Race of the NCC began its campaign to bring ministers and other professional people, such as lawyers, nurses, doctors, and social workers to go to the South to act as counselors with the young white and black students who were working with the members of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in voter registration. That same year there began the Delta Ministry located in the Delta region of Mississippi and composed of ministers working under the NCC. It was a ministry to the poor Blacks of the area co-ordinated with the SNCC. As a model for missionary work in the world outside the church, the Delta Ministry clearly broke with tradition. Heavy-handed missionary paternalism . . . and the desire to preach and convert those being helped was never a part of the ministry's work. Instead . . . these church persons lived with and learned about the aspirations of poor African Americans in the Delta and elsewhere, and then put together programs, (pp. 120—121) The contours of the struggle against racism by the NCC changed, however, with the advent of the "Black Power Movement" after 1966. The involvement of the NCC was changed radically as many black clergymen began to call for more black leadership within the mainline Protestant churches. It reached its climax with the famous Black Manifesto delivered by James Forman, the head of the SNCC, in 1969 calling for five hundred million dollars in reparation from the churches. Findlay describes in the final chapter the massive reaction on the part of many white churches and the resulting crisis in the NCC. This is an important book because it is the first...