c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is embroiled in a race-relations controversy following a decision last fall by a Georgia regional body to reject an African-American candidate for its top post.

A national black clergy group in the largely white, mainline denomination issued a statement March 5 calling on the Georgia body to halt its search for a job candidate until its officials have taken anti-racism sensitivity training.”In a time wherein the issue of race should have been well behind us, and a place wherein so many of the strides toward equity and parity have been made, we find it reprehensible that a region of our church would still manifest and exhibit the actions and behavior which our country has worked so hard to overcome,”the Black Ministers’ Fellowship said in the statement.

The fellowship’s concerns stem from a decision made in November by the denomination’s Georgia Regional Board to reject the Rev. William H. Edwards, a former denominational official, as a candidate for regional minister, the area jurisdiction’s top executive post.

Although the regional board approved Edwards’ nomination by an 8-7 vote, a two-thirds majority, or 10 votes, was required to pass his name along for consideration by the full Georgia Regional Assembly.

On Thursday (March 12), the Rev. Clinton Wolf, the Disciples’ interim Georgia regional minister, said in an interview that he believed Edwards’ race was”one of several factors”in the decision to reject him. Wolf declined to elaborate.

He said the current regional board _ which includes only some of the same members as the board that rejected Edwards _ will discuss the black clergy fellowship’s statement when it meets March 31.”The current board is recognizing what took place and trying to respond to do something to help us grow in that area,”Wolf said.

The Rev. Richard Hamm, Disciples’ denominational president and general secretary, said he was not surprised by the black clergy’s statement. But he also said he believed they were unaware that Georgia church officials have already issued a statement of apology for the incident.

The statement, which appeared in the March issue of”The Christian Messenger,”a regional Disciples newsletter, said in part:”The Regional Board of 1998 confesses with (the 1997) Board that the decision was impacted by many factors, attitudes and beliefs … the current Board wishes to acknowledge and apologize for the hurt, anger, astonishment, and misunderstanding that has resulted.” Because the statement was only distributed within the region,”Georgia was therefore perceived as being silent (by the Black Ministers’ Fellowship),”Hamm said.

The Indianapolis-based Disciples has about 910,000 members in 4,000 congregations across North America. Hamm described its members _ 94 percent of whom are white _ as theological and social moderates.

Hamm said that like other mainline denominations, Disciples clergy”tend to be more liberal than our laity.” Hamm said he met with the Georgia board members in January to discuss the controversy.”They voted unanimously to ask to be among the first in the church to participate in anti-racism training that’s being offered throughout our church through our process of discernment on racism,”said Hamm.

The training is not likely to begin until the spring or summer, but the African-American clergy have demanded that it occur before the search for a new regional executive is completed.”I don’t see the Georgia region as `the problem,'”Hamm said.”I think the whole church has to face up to this and the same thing could have happened, actually, in any region.” Hamm said Disciples voted at their national meeting last summer to begin the”discernment process”concerning racism.”We’ve voted against racism for years but it hasn’t had the impact of eradicating racism either from the church or from the country,”he said.”It seemed to me that we needed to develop a new approach to these issues.” He expected the process to take six to eight years.”We know that racism is a sin. What we need to discern is how it manifests itself among us and how to eliminate it,”Hamm said.”In the (next) six to eight years, one of the things we’ll be doing is offering anti-racism training throughout the life of the church.” Despite the Georgia controversy, the denomination recently appointed an African-American executive in another part of the country.

The Rev. Jack Sullivan Jr. has been appointed as the Disciples’ Northwest regional minister based in Seattle and covering northern Idaho, Washington and Alaska. He is the second African-American to serve as a regional minister. The first, the Rev. John R. Compton Sr., led the Indiana region from 1979 to 1982.

Also, Hamm said, the Rev. Ed Wheeler became the first African-American president of a Disciples seminary last fall. Wheeler is president of Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, one of the denomination’s four seminaries.”I think that’s another indication that the church is making some effort in its various expressions to face up to these issues,”said Hamm.”We’ve got a long way to go. You celebrate success whenever you can find it.”

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