Episcopalians at the Barricades

For most of its history, the U.S. Episcopal Church seemed willing to let other denominations set the pace in social action. Now, the Episcopal Church is a pacesetter--and in turmoil as a result. The division was nowhere more evident than during the past two weeks in Houston, where the laity and clergy of the Episcopal Church met for their triennial General Convention.

Core of the crisis was a special program approved at the 1967 Seattle convention--an openhanded, openminded plan to channel substantial cash to minority groups and projects, with the exception of those that advocate violence. Thus the most controversial grant approved by the church's Executive Council was an award of $40,000 last year to the Alianza de los Pueblos Libres, a militant group of Mexican-Americans in New Mexico. The Alianza came to national attention in 1967 when its head, Reies Lopez Tijerina, led a raid on a county courthouse in which a jailer and a state policeman were shot. Recently, the Alianza has been seeking to form an independent state based on land grants allegedly guaranteed by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, and the contribution infuriated New Mexican Episcopalians. Bishop C.J. Kinsolving III of Albuquerque led his diocese in an act of retaliation, cutting the annual pledge to the national Episcopal budget from $80,000 to $1.

Pocketbook Rebellion. Elsewhere, less obviously inflammatory grants have provoked similar reactions. A 1968 grant to the Black Unity League in Louisville ran into resistance after three leaders of the group were charged with conspiracy to blow up oil storage tanks during a riot. Louisville Bishop C. Gresham Marmion asked that the grant be deferred until the three had been tried, but Leon Modeste, the black layman who directs the Special Program, made the grant on schedule. In North Carolina, a $30,000 grant to the Malcolm X Liberation University created a furor when the local bishop was denied a voice in passing on the grant. Episcopalians in his diocese cut their contributions by one-third.

Even in states and cities where there is no major disagreement about specific grants, the pocketbook rebellion has been sharp. Gaps between diocesan pledges and quotas for 1970 set by the last General Convention were impressive even on a local scale: $425,000 below quota in New York City, $239,000 in Los Angeles, $146,000 in Dallas. In all, the pledges were more than $3.5 million below the national budget quota of $14.7 million. Modeste was undisturbed. In his official report last March, he had written that "the Church, the temporal, institutional body of Christ, must be willing to suffer and die."

Delegates in Houston were not quite so ready to give up the spirit, and many had come ready to tighten up procedures for the Special Program grants. In fact, two of the staunchest supporters of the program had some of the most pointed criticisms. Florida Layman Clifford Morehouse, a past president of the House of Deputies, praised the program, but resolutely opposed any equivocation about violence. "We have been told that acts are not violence but counterviolence, and therefore justifiable," he noted. "Too bad our Lord didn't think of that sophistry when one of his disciples cut off the ear of the soldier who seized him after Judas' betrayal." Layman John Morsell, who is also assistant executive director of the N.A.A.C.P., attacked the idea of "no strings attached" grants. "Only children are dealt with on the theory that they are not accountable for their actions," Morsell declared. "White people who cater to such a notion are guiltier of a denial of black manhood than are the George Wallaces."

In the end, the delegates voted to change the Special Program rules. The Special Program screening committee, which shares Modeste's views, may hereafter award grants without higher approval, but the opposition of a local bishop will now send a grant into the Executive Council, where it will need an absolute majority to override his veto. On the other hand, the language governing the grants actually seems to provide new loopholes. The only groups now apparently banned are those that actually make violence a specific part of their program.

Another question drew less attention, though it, too, caused noticeable change. For the first time, women delegates were officially seated as voting members of the laity in the bicameral convention's House of Deputies. Later, the deputies and the House of Bishops approved the ordaining of women as deacons, giving them the right to preach and distribute Communion, though not to perform the actual consecration rite. A move to approve ordination of women priests, however, fared less well. Proposed in the House of Deputies, it was narrowly defeated.

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