The United Church of Christ has not been one of the major newsmaker denominations until this year when it came into view as Barack Obama’s spiritual home.
The Cleveland-based church of 1.2 million souls was the first mainline denomination to endorse same-sex marriage in 2005. About 140 churches (out of 5,770) left in protest.
It made headlines thanks to incendiary remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. of Trinity UCC in Chicago. Now, every UCC church within 5 miles of the White House is under scrutiny as a possible home church for the Obamas.
One is the 733-member Plymouth Congressional UCC in Northeast, pastored by the Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler. He has taken a leading role in the UCC’s “sacred conversation on race” that mandated UCC pastors nationwide to preach on race relations last spring. Ethnic minorities constitute about 15 percent of the denomination.
“It was difficult for a predominantly white denomination to call for this,” Mr. Hagler said. “There is a public veneer in the UCC that does not reflect reality. Our churches tend to be monolithic — all black, all white or all Hispanic. Chasms between whites and people of color still exist.”
Several dozen local clergy gathered to discuss race, but the group soon dwindled to seven.
“Folks wanted to talk about how liberal they were or the person of color they knew in their childhood,” he said. “Much liberalism doesn’t run deep at all. It is very shallow. It is self-congratulatory liberalism, but liberalism that does not change the world.”
The seven clergy organized lectures, including one on immigration; one with Cain Hope Felder, author of “The Original African Heritage Study Bible”; and a third with University of Maryland professor Ronald Walters on racism and poverty.
While local interest in eradicating racism has revved up, Mr. Hagler, who sits on the UCC’s executive council, is in a national debate over the UCC’s governing boards.
Until now, he said, the boards have had generous representations from blacks, Asians, Hispanics and American Indians solely from civil rights groups named in the UCC constitution. The denomination wants to combine the boards into one 85-person United Church Board (UCB). Although 39 seats are reserved for minorities, this move disenfranchises the civil rights groups, which will lose their power to nominate members.
“One board member at our last meeting in Cleveland said that he wanted people that were loyal to the UCC but not to their racial and ethnic constituencies,” Mr. Hagler said. “Well, part of the history of the United States is that people can be who they are without an apology. To deliberately reduce the voices of people of color thumbs its nose at the history and struggle that has put us in this place.”
Gregg Brekke, the UCC spokesman, says the restructuring would guarantee that 50 percent of UCB positions go to women and the other 50 percent go to people of color. There would be some overlap - there would be some women of color seated - and “whatever’s left over,” he added, would go to white males.
However this power struggle is resolved, the UCC sees America’s future as multiracial, meaning their leadership must reflect it now. When I questioned Mr. Brekke about this ecclesiastical engineering, “We believe it is radical,” he agreed, “but it is leading and prophetic.”
• Julia Duin’s Stairway to Heaven column runs Thursdays and Sundays. Contact her at jduin@washington times.com.
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