I'm speaking with the Reverend Brian George, chairman of the Special Committee on Religion and Race of the Board of National Missions of the United Presbyterian Church.
Reverend George, it seems that you and your fellow church leaders have been quite active in recent months in the civil rights movement.
In fact, the stated clerk of your own Presbyterian Church was among those arrested at a recent Baltimore demonstration.
To what do you attribute this heightened concern the church has always been involved in securing the rights of men in society where the church has been found in the United States.
Our own church has been responsible in this field for a long time in the abolitionist movement and the days of reconstruction where our church was providing a good part of the backbone of public education for Negroes in the South.
Many of our colleges and parochial schools of that day made all the difference between whether or not a Negro went to school at all.
In the 40s, the United States government still segregated by policy in agencies like the FHA.
They had a manual in which it was laid out that a mortgage could not be given to Negro and FHA in a white community.
This was in the manual.
Our church spoke out against this type of thing and spoke out again in relation to the rights of men in Congress, in the country, and everywhere.
I think that we helped to bring about the pressure in race relations that we now have.
Just why would you say that it's the business of the church to be involved in the civil rights movement and other social problems anyway? It is the church's business to be involved in justice.
The church exists for the purpose of witnessing to the reconciliation between men that is made possible in Jesus Christ.
But reconciliation is made up of love and justice.
Too frequently in our society, we have heard people say, I love the Negro.
They do have reference to a specific Negro for whom they have a great deal of affection, maybe even esteem.
But there is no justice in that relationship when it segregates out one Negro, an old colored mammy or something like this, that they love and eliminate in category all the rest of the Negroes.
The church is interested in reconciliation, which is made up in part of justice.
Would you describe some of the ways in which the various churches are now involved in this struggle for racial equality? Well, I think the most significant thing that the churches are doing now are that they are calling upon that churchmen, laymen and clergymen, to join in demonstrations led by Negroes, wherever Negroes are fighting for their rights.
Good case you cited, the Glen Oak Amusement Park outside of Baltimore, where our churchmen did not go down to lead the demonstration, but went down to follow the responsible leadership in that area.
This, I think, is the major contribution that the church can make to the broader civil rights picture right now.
Your board of national commissions, I understand, has recently made some recommendations to the United Presbyterian Church Commission on Religion and Race on areas in which the church might become involved in the future.
Would you care to mention some of these ideas? Our special committee on race of the board of national missions proposed to our commission and proposes to other Protestant denominations several things.
I think one or two can be mentioned.
The first is, last year there were probably about 3 ,000 units of construction put up by Protestant denominations.
The total value of these is in excess of a billion dollars.
In most of this construction, there were a few, if any, grows involved in the skilled work, sheet metal, plumbing, electricians, carpenters, and this kind of thing.
We're calling upon our denomination to insist upon the inclusion of a fair employment practices clause in every contract for building that is given and a demonstration of good faith by the contractors and subcontractors.
This means that there will have to be not only a contract where you're constructing a new church building that they will hire without regard to race, but there must also be a demonstration that they have tried to do this, and a demonstration will obviously mean there'll be some Negroes employed in almost every building that any Protestant denomination build.
Now where there is a billion dollars worth of money going into this thing, this will vastly increase the earning power of the Negro.
It will vastly increase its opportunities for education, for better housing, and a whole lot of other things.
I think the church has got this contribution to make and must make it.
I think that the church has got to secure integration of staff and facilities of all denominationally owned or controlled home for aging, orphanages, and hospitals, and I think that the record has not been good in this country as regards these things.
There's been a lot of talk, but very little demonstration that these facilities are truly integrated.
I think that the Protestant denominations have got to enter a crash program of recruitment of Negroes for church vocations.
Last year in 1962, the United Presbyterian Church had only 24 young men studying for the BB degree in all the seminaries in this country who were Negroes.
Well, we simply cannot continue at that level.
We've got to get more young men to church vocations.
In the same line of thought as the FEP clauses in contracts, I think that we've got to insist that whether Protestant churches are renting space for offices, that this rental of space be done only in buildings that are willing to rent space in that building on a non -discriminatory basis.
The United States government now does this, and if we do this, this will open Class A building, office building space in places like the Loop of Chicago, in the downtown area of New York, and a number of other places to Negroes who have the money who desire to rent office space and presently cannot rent office space simply because of discrimination.
I think that we've got to be at work in areas of intense slum and deprivation.
I think we've got to work with people to organize them to fight slum laws, to fight poor school conditions, and a lot of other things that exist in these slum situations.
I think that it means a great deal of controversy for the church and perhaps a loss of revenue for some parts of the church, but I think that it is something we've got to do.
Dr.
Martin Luther King, himself a Protestant clergyman, has described 11 o 'clock Sunday morning as the most segregated hour of the week.
Do you feel this statement is accurate, and if so, does it not cast a long shadow on the activities which you have just described? I think this is probably true.
I think that the Sunday schools, Sunday church schools in America, are probably more segregated than the public schools, and I think that it is a responsibility of the church to apply itself and all of its resources immediately to this problem.
I think that it's got to be attacked in a number of ways.
One, by integrating all churches where integration is possible.
I think it's foolishness to talk about integrating a church in the middle of an Indian reservation where there's nothing but Indians, and I think it's equally foolish to talk about integrating a small parish church in some remote rural community where there are no Negroes or Indians or Puerto Ricans or what have you, but I think that we have got to move immediately to integration of all of our churches, all of our church schools, where this is possible.
What would you say then for Christians in an area where there are no Negroes? Do they have a responsibility? I certainly believe they do have a responsibility.
One of the reasons why a community in this country has no Negroes is because in many cases the residents of that community are fault becoming of Negroes, either covertly, overtly, by gentleman's agreements, or what have you.
But one of the reasons why it's segregated is that companies who have it as their policy to move their executives around cannot move Negroes into certain communities because they feel the community consensus would be against it, the company would be hurt.
I think that local church people can be leaders here, can develop community consensus where acceptance of Negroes is easily possible.
This I don't think is a long drawn out procedure, but something they can apply themselves to immediately.
Then they can say to these companies, in your rotation practices for your executives, if you want to rotate a Negro to our community, that is fine with us.
We will support you and him.
Reverend George, you must have numerous motives yourself for wanting to work in the civil rights movement and to awaken interest in this movement among the churches.
Do you feel that there is any difference between the motivation of the Christian and the non -Christian, say as they are walking along in a picket line side by side? Well I must confess that it does not particularly concern me what the motives of the non -Christian are so long as they are consistent with the foundations of our democracy.
I think that I'm more concerned that the motivations of the Christian are based on the gospel and it seems to me that there's quite sufficient motivation there for any Christian now to be in a picket line seeking racial justice or any Christian to be out demonstrating or whatever other activity seems called for in the circumstance that she is given.
What do you see as the future of the church's relation to the civil rights movement? Where do we go from now once the question of jobs and voting are settled? Well when the question of jobs are settled, you and I probably will not be around having died of old age a long time ago.
The question of voting will probably be settled considerably sooner.
I think that the church will have a responsibility to continue to point out injustice and to seek justice whether it be racial or class or whatever the circumstance.
I hope that the church will be able to restore enough confidence among Negroes in the church that Negroes will be working as churchmen in our society to bring about justice for everyone.
I have been speaking with the Reverend Bryant George, chairman of the special committee on religion and race of the board of national missions of the United Presbyterian Church.
