Beyond Lip Service

"Whenever we try to achieve something here," complained the Rev. James Laird of Detroit, a leader of the integration-minded Methodists for Church Renewal, "we are told, 'all right--but not now.' " By the end of the Methodist Church's quadrennial General Conference in Pittsburgh last week, the 858 delegates had given more than lip service to civil rights, but had not forced integration on white-only congregations.

The pursuit of compromise made the conference sometimes seem more like a political convention than a church meeting, as delegates caucused in hotel corridors and committee rooms to work out approvable resolutions. In the end, conference moderates, led by such powerful Methodist figures as Lawyer Charles Parlin and the Rev. Harold Bosley of Manhattan's Christ Church, devised a number of carefully hedged stands that satisfied the South without totally alienating the North's firebrand integrationists.

The all-Negro Central Jurisdiction was voted out of existence--on a gradual, voluntary basis. The delegates went on to pass a resolution that said: "All persons, without regard to race, color, national origin or economic condition, shall be eligible to attend worship services, and be admitted into membership anywhere in this connection." But some Southern clergy argued that the resolution did not really bind white churches to accept Negroes, and the delegates shelved a proposal to make refusing anyone admission to worship an ecclesiastical crime.

But the conference did pass a resolution approving orderly civil rights demonstrations "in rare instances where legal recourse is unavailable." When one Southern delegate complained that the statement was an incitement to anarchy, Bosley answered: "We won't give an inch on this principle." In other mood-showing votes, the conference set up a fund to help Methodist ministers who may have suffered "economic deprivation" by joining in civil rights activities, and forbade church agencies to discriminate in their hiring practices.

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