This Far by Faith: Tradition and Change in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania

Chapter 9: Social Justice, the Church, and the Counterculture, 1963–1979

Bishop Robert L. DeWitt looked out at the delegates to the diocesan convention in May 1965 and intoned, “We live in apocalyptic times.” When he made that statement, it was metaphorically true in two senses. At the personal level, it must have seemed like the end time had arrived. After only three weeks on the job as bishop coadjutor, DeWitt was forced to assume the chair of the diocesan bishop when Bishop Gillespie Armstrong died unexpectedly in his sleep on April 24, 1964. DeWitt was superbly prepared by training and experience to grapple with the challenges of the Philadelphia metropolitan area, but he had barely begun to explore the contours of his new diocese when he found himself shouldering the full responsibility. On a broader level, these were particularly testing times for Philadelphia and the nation. The “second Reconstruction” known as the civil rights movement was expanding out of the South and igniting the tinder box of resentments among African Americans in northern urban centers. The second wave of feminism was just gathering momentum, having been given voice by Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique in 1963, and was to be given form by the founding of the National Organization for Women in 1966. The war in Vietnam was on the verge of being widened by President Lyndon Johnson after his election in 1964, leading to the “teachins ” of the spring of 1965 and an expanding antiwar movement that would soon spill over into the streets and public squares of the nation. At an even more fundamental level, society was being reshaped by the suburbanization made possible by the postwar, federally funded interstate highway system, and by the parallel migration of poor blacks and whites out of the South and into the smoldering cauldron of northern urban centers. Religious denominations therefore were wrestling with demographic problems of great magnitude—thinning and increasingly poor populations in cities where many churches were underpopulated, while the more affluent 9 Social Justice, the Church, and the Counterculture, 1963–1979 sheldon hackney social justice, the church, and the counterculture   299 members were moving to culturally homogeneous suburbs, where there were not enough congregations to satisfy the need. Bishop Robert L. DeWitt Robert L. DeWitt (1916–2003) was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, attended high school in Auburn, New York, and received his undergraduate education at Amherst College, graduating in 1937 in the midst of the Great Depression. His was hardly a rags-to-riches story. After earning his bachelor of divinity degree from Episcopal Theological Seminary in 1940, he went to the Diocese of Michigan, where he rose from curate in 1940 to suffragan bishop in 1960. Then, on December 12, 1963, on the sixth ballot, he was elected coadjutor of the Diocese of Pennsylvania.1 That he Figure 9.1 Bishop Robert L. DeWitt 300   this far by faith was committed to the quest for social justice was already well known from his record in a diocese that was experimenting with innovative programs to bring urban and suburban parishes into supportive contact with one another. It may have been this combination of genteel upbringing and experience in the trenches that made him attractive to a diocese that was struggling to come to terms with the changing realities of modern metropolitan life. DeWitt had already attracted attention nationally, as one can infer from his being named to membership on the Chapter, the governing board of the National Cathedral in Washington, where Dean Frank Sayre was busy building an influential institution. DeWitt was also elected by the General Convention in October 1964 to the Executive Council, and then was quickly elevated to the chairmanship of that group.2 The big news of that convention was the election of Bishop John Hines of Texas to become presiding bishop of the national church. Hines was thought to be “liberal” on matters of race. On the other hand, he was born, raised, and educated in the South; therefore he came under some suspicion. Possibly to dispel that suspicion, but certainly because race was a burning question in the public arena, Bishop Hines told the 1964 convention that the church should endorse the goal of racial justice. Although there were vigorous efforts in the House of Deputies by delegates from the South to condemn civil disobedience, the chief tool of the civil rights movement, a resolution was brought forward by the appropriate committee declaring that acts of...