Transcript
I am delighted that Cliff Kirkpatrick could be here for a short time. He came in last evening very tired from a very busy schedule. He has now had to leave for a meeting of the General Assembly Council. But he is the present stated clerk of the General Assembly and it's only appropriate that he preside for the very impressive morning that we experienced together. I have several announcements. Some of you have inquired about the possibility of car
pools to the Newark Airport on tomorrow afternoon. If there are people who have cars going to the Newark after the adjournment of this event, please sign a paper at the registration desk. Assuming that some people will sign, those of you who would like rides should go and indicate on the same paper that you wish to do that. Is that clear? Thank you. The second event. One of the former moderators here today is Clinton Marsh. As some
of you know, Clinton has been working on a book regarding evangelism. That book has just come from the addresses and I would like him to say a word or two about it now. Thank you, Bill. When I spoke to Bill and asked if a word could be said about this, I didn't expect to make my own commercial. I just was hoping that it could be said there was such a book. It was actually completed in 1993,
but the press said that evangelism didn't fit into their publishing cycle. So with two efforts, they didn't look at it, but then with the help of two moderators, one here, Bob Bowe and Namus Skaseman right now, who was head of the evangelism unit, who read it and thought it should be published, a little push got in. They looked at it and I understand got excited about it, at least enough so it's now published, and reached me
about ten days ago. So I took the liberty of bringing some copies in the hope that I would have this privilege. There might be somebody here interested evangelism is with some dots after it, and with the exception of the first chapter, which tells something about our history in the Presbyterian Church in this area, each of the other chapters completes a sentence as to what evangelism is. Now oddly enough, it's all based on the conversation of Jesus
with the woman at the well, and if you're curious as to how I got that much out of that conversation, you'll have to buy the book. It is $15, which I guess is not exorbitant for a book these days. There are copies on the back, so I've set up the money changes in the temple in case some of you want to take a look at it, and thanks Bill for this privilege. Who could have done the
commercial better? Finally, I want to say a word about what we are going to do after dinner this evening. Some of you know that we are going to have an opportunity to hear people who had personal experiences with Jean Blake. We will listen to one or two that will be alerted in advance, and then the floor will be open for any of you who wish to recount your experiences with Jean Blake. That meeting will occur in
room six of Stuart Hall. For those of this campus, you have been at Miller Chapel for worship this morning. If you continue walking beyond Miller Chapel on the right, the only building that you will encounter is Stuart Hall. There is an elevator there. The particular room where we will meet is room six, which is on the second floor. If you get off the elevator, you go to your right and you can't miss it. So I urge
you to come at the appointed hour, and we'll learn more about Jean Blake as he was encountered by people who are here. It is now my pleasure to introduce to you the presenter of the afternoon. Her name is Deborah Mullen. Mullen without an S. People try to make her plural all the time, but there is no S on the end. Since 1989, she has been assistant professor of ministry and historical studies at McCormick Theological Seminary in
Chicago. She is the associate dean of the master's level programs at that institution. She is also a doctoral student at the University of Chicago in the field of the history of modern Christianity. She did not tell me what I'm going to say now, but I am told that the chairman of her committee is Marvin Marty. Martin Marty is, as you know, an internationally known scholar who is going to retire at the end of this year, this
school year. He has been pressing her to complete her dissertation. For a while it appeared that she might not be able to come here today because of that urgency, but somehow Martin Marty discovered at his own effort that she was going to be here today and learned what she was going to talk about, and he told her that she could include that in the thesis. We're delighted that she could be here with us. In addition to
the things that I have mentioned, Deborah is also the vice chair of the Faith and Order Commission of the National Council of Churches. She will be presenting for our consideration a presentation regarding Jean Blake as a witness to public issues. I believe that perhaps the principal emphasis will be on the issue of racial justice. I am delighted to present to you Professor Deborah Mullen. Thank you. I was saying to some friends at lunch, you know, everybody's
told a joke. I don't know any jokes, and so my friend Eileen started thinking, well, let me think. I said, and I don't remember them. She said, well, maybe you shouldn't tell one. And so I don't start with a lighthearted anecdote or anything to much make us chuckle. I would say that this is an enormous honor to be a part of this day. It really has been a learning experience for me. I was one years old
when Dr. Blake became state clerk of the Presbyterian Church, and when he offered his COCU proposal, I was 10. He was not someone who was part of our family discussion. I was also living in a Baptist home. But Eugene Carson Blake has become one of the great cloud of witness for me. As I have begun to work on the project for today, greatly, greatly assisted in that by our colleague Doug Brackenridge, without whose biography my work
certainly would have been a poor relation in this conference. And so thanks to him and to the conference planners, to those of you who have had the vision, and to whom the legacy has fallen to continue what Dr. Blake began in terms of the enlistment of leadership, the enlistment of passion for the movement, the kind of witness that Dr. Blake represented. I give you thanks for that. I, too, have a manuscript, and I'm going to stick
to it because if I don't, we'll be here for much longer than my time is allotted. So I'd like to begin. We are gathered here to remember the Reverend Dr. Eugene Carson Blake and to learn from his contributions to church and society. Gene Blake is the topic of this paper. But this paper is about much more than one person's distinguished career. This paper is also about the vocation and moral leadership of the church. It is about
our own calling as public witnesses for the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is about God's passion for justice and our power as people of faith to change the course of history when personal convictions are combined with corporate action in the struggle for social justice. This paper is about courage to stand as Blake did, citizen and Christian, and to confess and redress the personal and public sin of racial injustice. Finally, it is about the urgent need for
the church living at the horizons of faith in every age to speak a prophetic word into the daily lives of its people and to act with integrity. There's that word again. To transform attitudes and conditions and structures that support racism and injustice. And finally, it is about the courage and the integrity of that church living at the horizons of faith in every age to stop the hatred destroying the body of Christ's beloved community and destroying the
world. Gene Blake, as we have heard, was born as the century began. His birth signaled unawares the coming of a new era in the encounter between church and society, and I believe a kind of new church leader. Blake's vocation of Christian ministry began in his senior year at Princeton University, where he was claimed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I think that Blake went on to become what I would like to call a pragmatic visionary
within the life of the Presbyterian Church and the ecumenical movement. A pragmatic visionary. We've heard a lot about his prophetic witness, and we've heard a lot about how practical he is, and I want to pull those things together in that kind of image for us today. From the Presbyterian Church and into the ecumenical movement, his service would extend to the wider world, and Blake would be remembered by many as a modern-day prophet. Now perhaps there
are others for whom this conference might have been named, but Gene Blake's contributions as citizen, as pastor, as evangelist on public issues, and ecumenist stand out above all, marking us, I believe, indelibly as 20th century American Presbyterians and as members of Christ's holy Catholic and apostolic church. And so it is that we remember Blake as one whose faithful and exemplary witness for the gospel has earned him a particular place in modern church history, owing to the
clarity of his conviction that in the mission of the church living at the horizons of faith, the pursuit of unity and justice always go hand in hand. As a historian and practical theologian, my assignment is to Blake's public witness on racial equality within the context of the church's mission of social justice. So I'm taking just a piece of all that we know he was so powerfully a witness for. A sampling of Blake's activities as an evangelist
for social justice and advocate of racial equality only partially reveals the magnitude of his contributions to church and society. He worked to improve the status of women and racial minorities in the church, to expose discriminatory public policies in society, to guarantee the passage of civil rights. He joined the fight against the twin evils of hunger and homelessness in the rest of the world, even before they were discovered in America. He protested attempts to weaken the lines
of separation between church and state. He rallied support against American involvement in Vietnam, despite attacks on his own personal integrity and allegations that he was communist. And all of this kept Blake and the church before the public's eye. Now this brief review of Blake's involvement in the ongoing struggle for racial equality and social justice is only meant to be suggestive of the landmark decisions and public events that led to his recognition as one of the most
prominent religious leaders in America from 1950 to 1970. Of course we as Presbyterians think he was, well with Martin Luther King, probably the most prominent of American mainline clergymen of the time. As I've said, much of what I have come with has been drawn from Professor Brackenridge's biography, but I also want to challenge others and encourage others. There is a wealth of material, much of which is lying in boxes in the archives of the Presbyterian Historical
Society in Philadelphia, and also waiting to be indexed at the World Council of Churches Library in Geneva, Switzerland, from which to gather a more complete story on the impact of Blake's years in shaping the church's witness and on racial justice. Fortunately for us, Douglas Brackenridge has written a very, very helpful biography on Jean Blake. We know that it's now called Eugene Carson Blake, Prophet with Portfolio, and in that biography is a whole chapter on Blake as
Doug calls it, spokesman for civil rights. We would say spokesperson for civil rights, I think at this time. The map that Brackenridge has provided for us is a beginning from which to suggest, for me, three reasons Blake's career was distinctive among his peers. The first is based on his reform Presbyterian understanding of leadership and office. The second is based on his commitment to serve God's mission of justice in the world and to advance the movement of
unity within Christ's church. The third is based on his belief in the inextricable relation of Christian discipleship and public witness, or Christian discipleship and social action as reciprocal responsibilities of Christians engaged in public ministry. I think those three characteristics distinguish Blake as a person of his time and someone whose legacy is something that we have inherited. Now something else is noteworthy in this connection. Whether admired or scorned for his action on behalf of the church, Gene
Blake never lost touch with his theological underpinnings as guidance for his public witness. His absolute belief in a transcendent and sovereign God, his total reliance on Calvinist teachings concerning the Holy Spirit, namely that God's will may be best known through the disciplined and prayerful actions of an ordered body or its representatives rather than expressed by actions of, in Blake's words, God intoxicated individuals. Thirdly, he never lost sight of the unshakable resolve that the fight for freedom
and justice in church and society must be rooted in faith in the God of the Holy Scriptures to be a God of freedom and justice for all. Now we've heard a lot about Gene Blake being an organizational man, that's the way he referred to himself, and he may have been a self-acknowledged organizational man, but his commitments to justice would push the envelope with respect to the limits of his office and actions in which he would
become involved on behalf of the church, testing the very principles upon which he relied. Guided by his faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ as a gospel of freedom, Blake would skillfully garner the support of the wider religious community, Christians and Jews, and carefully, carefully wager all that his church had invested on him on the fundamental belief that the quest for freedom and justice was worthy of social action and public witness, even when it meant submitting
testimony before Congress of the United States. Blake would not be cowered into an action or silence, though frequently targeted by members of his denomination, disaffected with the direction of his leadership on racial justice to the point of threatening the withdrawal of financial support from the church. When Gene Blake acted as stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church, he acted resolutely as its evangelist and as the embodiment of its public witness, whatever the consequences. Many churches chose the
path of non-involvement, hiding behind a false credo, either discipleship or social justice. Many others labored in the vineyards of a safe and popularly sanctioned conservatism of the day, preaching good feelings rather than good news to the fearful and faint-hearted, saying, if not time, then surely prayer alone. But Gene Blake would not passively wait for such a time. He knew surely it would never come, as long as mainline white churches remained in denial about their
own racism and unresponsive to violations of civil rights being borne by African American sisters and brothers in Christ. Surely that time would never come. This is the social context of the Blake years. Gene Blake stepped forward in time to test the faith of the body of Christ and the conscience of America. Both were flagging, sadly though not surprisingly, under the weight of race and class divisions century old. The failure of the church to act courageously on
behalf of justice and to forever strike down legal and social customs that served as barriers to racial equality troubled Blake profoundly. This was not, however, the angst shared by all Presbyterians north or south. I have heard it said that Gene Blake moved too fast for the majority of white Christians, including many of his fellow Presbyterians. I have also heard it said that his public actions as stated clerk led the church against its will in ways contrary
to the conventional wisdom of the day and against what should have been in some people's minds the better judgment of his office. And a cursory reading of Blake's correspondence provides sufficient evidence to verify reports that many who lost confidence in his leadership did so due to his efforts to combat racism. And there's some nasty letters there. The movement to combat racism in church and society became Gene Blake's personal and public crucible. Always the organizational man, he
would not face the fiery furnace alone, knowing that racism was one of the greatest evils threatening the life of the church on his watch, Blake would fight fire with fire. And to his credit in due course, the fire of faith would prevail. In the skirmishes he faced as the war against injustice continued. But were Blake present here today, Blake, I believe, would agree. The battle for justice is not won. And this fact, of course, is part
of the legacy and the challenge with which we live into the 21st century. In looking back on his upbringing in racially segregated St. Louis, a mature Gene Blake would confess that his own awareness of racism was almost nil as a child growing up in the Midwest. He was reared a child of a Christian home and strongly influenced by a devoutly religious Presbyterian family and system of values. But Blake said this gave him little more than a
quote theoretical understanding of quote the wrongness of social prejudice growing up white and male and middle class in the 1920s. Somehow it seems Gene Blake was protected from the seamier of a national experience called America in the 1920s where white Americans were hopeful and took full advantage of the unearned privileges of their race while feeding on their unrestrained optimism characteristic of the progressive era. At the same time, the experience of most African Americans was like that
of living in another country. Publicly accepted legal sanctions permitted the institutionalization of Jim Crowism. White Christians, both leaders and rank-and-file members tolerated the Christian witness of Ku Klux Klan cross burnings and murders atrocities. Time and again mainline churches failed to mobilize themselves to stop the licentious practice of lynching scores of African American citizens fellow Christians. This was the social and the political and the cultural milieu in which Gene Blake began his journey. This is
part of his journey and I contend to you would take years of living and learning from others neither as privileged nor protected by their white maleness before Gene Blake would become the person about whom many accolades have been written. Now how illuminating it would be to be able to point to an event or a constellation of events that served as a catalyst for what might be called Blake's conversion or calling to champion racial justice and so
far I have not been able to find evidence that Blake was aware of such a turning point in his life one single event. However, according to Brackenridge's biography it was early in Blake's ministry that he began to preach on the evils of racial prejudice and its inconsistency with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Gene Blake considered himself Nibirian enough not to be a romantic and as a young pastor realist set as his goal to seek proximate justice
proximate justice. He also believed this to be the mission of the church and of the church's members. An excerpt from a sermon preached in 1943 reveals a glimpse of Blake's straightforward style that challenged others to reject racism as incompatible with the gospel. He said this he said I don't foolishly think that the problems of race across the world are easy to solve but I know that if in passion I decide that N****, Hindu, Chinese or Jew
is to be treated less than a child of God I am no longer walking on the road of Jesus Christ. The decision to devote himself to a life of ecclesiastical service allowed Gene Blake to pursue proximate justice as a personal goal while simultaneously leading mainline Christians to become involved in public ministries of social change as supporters of racial equality and racial reconciliation. Again Brackett Ridge reports that when the Blakes moved to Pasadena in 1940 they were
expected to sign a racially restrictive neighborhood covenant which of course they would not do. But Gene Blake did not stop there. As chairperson of the Presbyterian social education and action committee he initiated a vote within presbytery that prohibited all members of presbytery from benefiting in any way from racially restricted property covenants further strengthening an already existing policy which applied to purchases or sales made by the presbytery itself. During Blake's past tenure as pastor of the Presbyterian
Pasadena Presbyterian Church he regularly urged his congregation the Presbyteria and other mainline churches to end socially sanctioned and publicly enforced racial segregation. He became known there as an aggressive and persuasive leader in the community a reputation which led to the interracial commission of the Pasadena council of social agencies to enlist his leadership in their mission. That commission and the experience that he had while a part of that commission would figure formatively in Blake's experience especially in
the development of his social justice consciousness and commitment to the church's public witness. But as an interview conducted in 1948 shows, Gene Blake was either more optimistic, idealistic, or naive about the possibility of ridding church and society of racial injustice than the man he would mature to be a stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church. And I draw those conclusions or raise that question from this statement. It is not I believe a matter of legislation because the
feelings and sympathies of the people cannot be too far behind the law or there will be thus induced merely disregard for the law and an attempt to get around it. The problems of minority consideration and privileges must be voluntarily self-instigated must be I'm sorry must be voluntary and self-instigated. Those were Blake's words. Ironically it would not be long before Blake would come to a very different set of conclusions and invoke the authority of his
office to in effect legislate change in the executive offices of the General Assembly. Some of you will remember this. It was 1954, three years into his term as stated clerk and eight years since the General Assembly had taken in what appears to be its first action supporting a non-segregated church in a non-segregated society that Eugene Carson Blake issued the first executive office order to integrate the office of the General Assembly. This was a clear
sign to the church laggard in enacting and enforcing its own racial justice pronouncements that along with the Blake years the time had come to practice what it preached. Blake's bold vision of leadership for the church's public witness would be widely felt as a consequence of the social justice issues which commanded his attention while serving as stated clerk, president of the National Council of Churches and chairman of its commission on religion and race during the socially turbulent
'50s and '60s. When Blake publicly joined the national debate over school desegregation in the aftermath of Brown versus the Board of Education in 1954, it was with the full weight of the 1956 General Assembly behind him owing to years of letter writing and issuing statements imploring federal for fellow Christians to support the court's ruling on integration for the good of church and society. He had been working behind the scenes. By 1957 many of us will remember
the lines were sharply drawn between the segregationists and supporters of integration. The attention of the nation was focused on Governor Orval Faubus of Little Rock Arkansas and President Dwight Eisenhower in the standoff between the National Guard and federal troops over the integration of Central High School by nine black students. Outraged by the gravity of the situation in places like Little Rock, stated clerk Blake and moderator Theophilus Taylor issued a joint statement on September 10, 1958 entitled
Our Role in the Integration Crisis in which they persuasively argued the case for integration as a matter of faith and Christian responsibility in the struggle for freedom and justice. These are their words. As Christians we cannot accept such abuses without protest nor can we avoid the responsibility of working to correct them. There is no segregation at the foot of the cross and the church through its assemblies has repeatedly taken action on the stand that segregation of
peoples on the grounds of race has no place in a church or society that calls itself Christian. Furthermore Blake and Taylor denounced the kind of massive resistance being witnessed in Little Rock as the work of political opportunists and racial extremists and then some of you will remember this vividly in a paragraph for which they would be severely criticized and censured by many for years. They carefully outlined their position. We are faced in practical terms with a
choice between two evils. We believe that enforcing the law of the land as set forth in the supreme court decision desegregation decision and enforcing it with troops and tanks if necessary is a lesser evil however undesirable than the alternative of buying temporary peace at the price of one continuing denial of rights to Negro American citizens, second increasing the pressure for integration thus compounding the difficulties of transition, third setting a pattern of resistance that would be emulated
elsewhere again at the price of greater difficulty and pain and fourth damaging the fabric of our democracy by permitting local extremists not only to contravene the law but to hold sway over the mass of law-abiding local citizens. Blake's staff in the aftermath of this statement judiciously monitored painstakingly tallied the initial written responses to the statement received by his office and of the 87 letters received from 33 states the disapprovals which were clustered in the southern
states of Florida Arkansas and Tennessee outnumbered the approvals from 11 states the majority of which came from New York and New Jersey by three to one disapprovals to approvals 1958 whereas the letters received directly by the Presbyterian life were evenly divided among three categories of complete approval mildly disapproving and complete disapproval the ones that 87 that were sent to Blake's office took seven different categories to respond to seven different form letters seven different ways of responding
to the diverse witness from we really stand for what you're doing and glad you stood for us to what has been characterized as obscene and very abusive rhetoric. Blake replied personally to all of those letters in a form letter and included a text of the statement for those who may have misunderstood exactly what the statement said or may have responded without having read the statement. It is evident having studied the record of events including Blake's replies
to the substance and tone of those letters that the Blake Taylor statement had struck a nerve in its unqualified support of federal intervention to enforce the supreme court's landmark decision under the segregation of schools as the law of the land. It is also clear at least to this writer that the authority of the statement to represent the public witness for justice was in question among American Presbyterians. Nevertheless, Jean Blake continued to be highly visible in pressing
the church and the nation to live up to its ideals about freedom and justice. Upon further consideration of what undoubtedly was a major turning point in Eugene Carson Blake's career as an evangelist for the church's public witness on racial justice, two questions persist. Had Blake indeed miscalculated the currency of mean-spirited Christians, many of whom were members of his own denomination, to derail his and the church's pursuit of proximate justice? Was the Blake Taylor statement our
role in the integration crisis a defining moment for American Presbyterians north and south? In terms of its irrefutable witness to the long-standing divisions among white Christians over whether African American sisters and brothers in Christ and fellow citizens deserved, deserved the unequivocal support of civil and church governing bodies in their struggle for freedom and justice? And my answer to both of those questions is yes. Although Jean Blake never considered himself a militant or radical, the public
positions he took on behalf of the church would cause him to be viewed as a liberal and labeled an activist for racial justice in many quarters and in the eyes of African American church leaders like the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. The point being with the mainline white church so divided among themselves over civil rights and integration, it was the historically black churches leading the way in the civil rights struggle. Make no mistake about that. Blake
fell in line on the side of those for whom the struggle was real and integral a part of life, integrally a part of daily life, no matter how ugly and how vicious it became for them. His choice was to choose to stand with those for whom there was no choice but to struggle. Little Rock had outraged Blake and Taylor and the silent many whose voices they represented in 58. Birmingham, Alabama made Blake and the United Presbyterian
Church angry in 1963. Furthermore, according to Professor Brackenridge, the events in Birmingham went far beyond behavior Blake could countenance any longer. Because of Birmingham, Blake was able to discern the next steps the church would have to take in the struggle for racial justice as what he called the dividing line between moral support and direct action came more clearly into view. Blake's influence as stated clerk helping to shape the course of the church's internal debate on racial
justice and represent the church's public witness in the wider social discourse was a determinative factor in the unprecedented decision of the 175th General Assembly held in Des Moines in 1963 to establish, fund, and staff the Commission on Religion and Race, CO-RAR. The Reverend Dr. Elder G. Hawkins, an African American clergy person who would be elected moderator of the UPC USA in the following year, 1964, was present at that historic meeting and many years later former
moderator Hawkins recalled the events leading up to that assembly's vote for that commission on religion and race including what he described to the critical role played by black leaders within the Presbyterian Interracial Council. And I want to now share some of Edler's words. He says there was no question of who was calling the shots at that point. The black leadership had come together around a new kind of insistence that there could be no further delay in
moving into the mainstream of both the church and the nation. Their cry was now, now, now is the time. He goes on to say the early part of that week and I cannot help but feel that something of the stamp of God was upon it. The General Assembly voted the strongest commitment to race that any assembly or any church had ever done up to that time. With a $5,000 fund as a beginning, we set up
our first commission on religion and race. Needless to say, following that action in May, every other denomination began to develop some kind of commission or council on church and race. In July of that same year, the National Council of Churches voted into being its commission on religion and race. 1964. I mean, yeah, I'm sorry, 1963. Important to get that date right for the segue. Two months later, Blake was arrested in a march planned by the Congress
on racial equality to integrate a music park in Baltimore, Maryland. We've heard a lot about that. That's probably the most prominent image we think of when we think of Blake and his witness for racial justice. At the time, Blake was acting chairperson of the new NCC commission on religion and race. At the time, Blake had scheduled a press conference to announce this new organization. When word reached his office that CORE was pulling together a demonstration to
protest the parks exclusion of blacks. That protest was based on a state trespassing law. All that to say, the timing couldn't have been more perfect for this new organization to prove its intent to be an action-focused organization. Then for Eugene Carson Blake, at that time, spontaneously, for what the record shows, to announce at this press conference that this commission would consider participating in this demonstration. Professor Brackenridge then says, well, after he made that statement and
the press picked it up, he then went back to his staff and said, this better be good. It better be authentic. Now, the details of that Independence Day demonstration are really worth reading in Doug's book. But once again, Gene Blake's action, his unequivocal public witness against segregation and racial injustice had invoked a range of admiring to vehemently angry expressions from fellow Presbyterians and others around the world. The demonstration and arrests of prominent church and civic leaders
like Eugene Carson Blake were just another sign that the struggle for racial justice had entered a new phase. And although bail was posted and charges were dropped and there was no record, criminal record left for those who had participated in that demonstration, this event certainly seemed to represent a turning point in Blake's consciousness of the lengths to which he and the church would have to be willing to go to defend and advocate the quest for approximate
justice. In ten short years, from the mid-'50s to the mid-'60s, some of the most extraordinary years in recent history, Blake would find himself on both sides of the law he so loved to defend for freedom and justice. Because of Baltimore, Blake was obliged to make his own experience of civil disobedience a case study on the legitimate exercise of Christian moral authority over injustice. Blake then preached a called law and order and Christian duty based
on Acts 5:29 in which he made a clear statement of his thinking at the time when much of what he believed and what he practiced was in conflict with the law itself. Blake's witness and word and deed were grounded in the biblical witness of the gospel. His argument and conclusions defended the church's responsibility to risk whatever it must rather than weaken its witness to the Christian importance of racial equality and justice. Blake's bottom line, whenever deciding
the right course between the laws of the land and obeying God, above all, Gene Blake believed God must be obeyed. When Blake addressed the March on Washington on August 28th, 1963, it was as its vice chairman, it was as vice chairman of the National Council of Councils Commission on Race and Religion, it was as state clerk of the denomination and as it was as one of the co-chair persons of the March. He had been intimately
involved in the strategic plans leading up to the event, an event which would transform what was essentially for many a black cause, the black cause for equality into a social justice movement of blacks and whites demanding civil rights and justice for all Americans. Blake's words on the day of that March likely forgotten by most, maybe many of us in the wake of Dr. King's I have a dream speech, revealed the depths of both his and the
church's moral and public responsibility to witness and work for justice. In that short time he had, he exposed the failure of American churches to put their own house in order, his words, and to face the racial crisis. Then in an eloquence that may be described as simply sermonic, Blake delivered his urgent message concerning faith and justice. Likely remembered, I believe, if at all, for its homiletical trope, we come, late we come. And I think it's important
to say those words in this place today, it'll take me just a minute to do that, but I think it's important for us to hear those words. We come, late we come, but we come to present ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our reasonable service in the kind of tangible and visible sacrament which alone in times like these can manifest to a troubled world the grace
available at communion table or high altar. We come in prayer that we in our time may be more worthy to bear the name our tongues so fluently profess. We come in faith that the God who made us and gave us his son for us and for our salvation will override the fears and hatreds that so far have prevented the establishment of full racial justice in our beloved country. We come in hope that those who have marched
today are but a token of a new and massive high determination of all men of religion and patriotism to win in this nation under God, liberty and justice for all. We come that love revealed in Jesus Christ which reconciles into community all men of every color, race and nation who respond in faith and obedience to him. Blake's witness for social justice would continue never again perhaps on the scale of the march on Washington. When a coalition
of three sponsoring agencies comprised of Protestants, Catholics and Jews announced plans for the first national inter-religious convocation on civil rights held in April 1964. Gene Blake was one of three distinguished signatories on that letter. That convocation was held and drew in attendance over surpassing 6,500 people according to the 1964 congressional record. The next day after the convocation, members of Congress who had attended that convocation were asked to ask that portions of the speeches from
that historic moment be reprinted in the record and Blake's entire speech which was called Human Dignity Have We All Not One Father was printed in the congressional record. He talked about those who threatened the search for racial justice and he characterized those folks into two kinds of opponents, both of which threaten national security but one of which was much more problematic and worrisome to him because they tended to be those Americans who had not been able
to assume a place of witness or make a moral statement of consciousness and so he was concerned that those were the Americans that must be won to the side of justice and reminded Congress that even once the legislative battles are over, the churches and the synagogues still have a mission and that is a mission of unity, a mission to unite the community and the communities of the whole nation. Quickly, I want to move then to what
I think is integral to Gene Blake's witness and that is the way in which he was able to hold together unity and justice. I know and we will await Dr. Reiser's presentation tonight but I want to say that one cannot talk about civil rights and the struggle for civil rights in a religious context in this place, in this nation without understanding it as a deeply, deeply important issue of unity for the church of Jesus Christ. Gene
Blake's concern for national unity and equal justice earned him much respect outside of the church during the '50s and '60s but Blake is more likely to be remembered within the wider religious community for his historic 1960 proposal on church union then for his public witness and contributions to the civil rights struggle. The kind of unity that Blake talked about, Christian unity and the kind of unity that racial justice represents were not always talked about in the
same places, in the same venue, in the same milieu, with the same intensity and I'll say a little bit more about that in just a minute but I want to say something about the divisions out of which any concern for church unity must also have concern and passion and those are the deepest divisions in church and society that go well beyond our theological differences. Those are the deepest divisions among most Americans that have to do with
who they are or who they are perceived to be because of race, because of gender, because of class, because of sexual orientation. We have learned my friends to live as victims of each other's isms. We have learned that behavior. Our divisions reflect the brokenness of human community and in that sense there is a connection between the two kinds of unity. The unity of Christ's body for which the church longs and the experience of belonging or unity
with others for which the human community longs are related. Yet we become polarized and isolated in camps of struggle found both in our churches and in society. The connection between unity and justice must not be forgotten and must not be treated lightly or denied. Church unity like national unity requires that people of faith and moral responsibility honestly recognize, acknowledge, confess and address injustice and that begins with us. I believe that Blake's life as the church's evangelist
on public issues bridged a fairly wide gap between what we understood to be the missions of unity and the missions of justice. I believe Blake's passion for the unity of God's beloved community and his commitment to racial justice were in fact two sides of the same coin and in fact much of Gene Blake's leadership and witness for racial justice actually took place in the wider context of his ecumenical associations and this pattern would continue during his
tenure as general secretary of the world council of churches. Blake's move from the national spotlight spotlight into the international world of the world council seems to have coincided with major shifts taking place within the ecumenical movement. The early period of ecumenism in which faith and order and life and work were neatly divided into separate agendas was slowly giving way to an emerging awareness that church divisions are much deeper than theological divisions differences can alone explain. It
was in the mid-60s virtually everywhere in the world was experiencing some form of political, social and or cultural upheaval related to nationalism or class struggle or racial injustice. Virtually every issue in the world that was dividing the church was dividing the world was dividing the church in the ecumenical movement and while Blake was no stranger to issues that divide church and society he would find the so called non-theological factors like race and class and
gender to be among the most formidable opponents of the two things for which he worked tirelessly and those two things were unity and the pursuit of justice so-called non-theological factors. Gene Blake was elected general secretary of the world council of churches on February 11th, 1966 owing in large part to his public witness as the mainline church's leading evangelist on racial justice in America. By the time Blake arrived in Geneva plans were well underway for
the fourth assembly of the world council of churches the Uppsala assembly in Sweden that would be held during the summer of 1968 and so Blake was immediately engaged in final arrangements for that assembly. He was aware that there was much for him to learn and one of the things that we understand is that he went to the Geneva conference in 1966 a conference which he had no major responsibilities in planning or organizing but a conference that
really helped him to be much more aware on the world scheme of what was going on in terms of the divisions across the world east west north south. So although Blake took note of what was going on at that conference what he learned was about the self-determinism and legitimacy of liberationist and revolutionary action that he believes or is attributed to his beliefs did help prepare him for for Uppsala what he was more or less prepared
for that by his experience in the American context and being just on the cusp of what would later become the black theology movement and the liberation the real thick of the liberation black American liberation movement here in the U.S. But what he was not prepared for was how ill-prepared his American and European colleagues were to listen to persons who were or had been subjects of western colonialism. Blake really drew the card in that assignment
in terms of things that led up to that assembly in 1968. Right prior to the assembly we remember were the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. Robert Kennedy. Those became signals for Gene Blake signals that would perhaps portend what would go on in his council at the assembly and to his credit Blake knew that Uppsala was not going to be business as usual. But whether Uppsala and its vision quest for unity of the church and the
life of the ecumenical movement remained to be seen. Among the reasons Uppsala proved to be pivotal in the life of the WCC was the emergence of a new understanding of the church's role as public witness for unity and justice during times of struggle. The urgent concern of persons from developing countries a carryover from the Geneva conference had been heard for racial minorities in America and others in similar situations whose race, class, gender, culture, or religion rendered
them victims of injustice or second-class citizens. Uppsala reflected the state of the world in which they lived. But above all Uppsala proved to be a defining moment in the ecumenical debate surrounding racism because it was at that assembly that Uppsala was it was at that assembly that Blake admitted that there was more radical than anything he had been involved in going on and it had to do with the energy and momentum around efforts to combat
racism. Without the Geneva conference and the findings of the assembly committee on church and society in 1968 on the definition of white racism which eventually would lead the central committee to the vote to establish a program to combat racism, it is unlikely that Uppsala would hold a distinction of being pivotal among WCC conferences in that period. Although the assembly was unable to take the strong action on racism that Blake had hoped for, the cause for racial
justice was far from lost. Following that assembly Blake became the chairperson of the staff coordinating committee on racism giving racism priority among the many issues dominating the ecumenical agenda and guaranteeing that the campaign to combat racism would receive the personal attention of the general secretary. In 1969 the international consultation on racism was convened at Notting Hill, London. It was a controversial and contentious meeting remembered for the stir created when black power leaders from Asia and America
seized the microphones during the plenary session to read the declaration of revolution. Blake was challenged at that time to respond. He said, I cannot respond. He said to do so would be, he said essentially his response was not, I cannot respond. But he actually rejected the demands of the declaration of revolution as unrealistic and productive to the cause of social justice and explained the structure of the WCC and promised therefore at the time to take their
declaration and what would come out of Notting Hill to the next meeting of the central committee, which he did later that summer. And it was at the Notting Hill consultation nevertheless that the plan...