Word: clergymen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Churches have, of course, been condemning segregation for decades. But clergymen acknowledge that more often than not these declarations were given lip service approval by local churches, and then forgotten. "Love thy neighbor" was the parish rule-if the neighbor happened to be white...
Hundreds of clergymen took part in the August civil rights march on Washington, including two Roman Catholic archbishops, at least ten Episcopal bishops, about 50 rabbis. So far in 1963, more than 200 clergymen have been arrested for taking part in picket lines and demonstrations, including the nation's No. 1 Presbyterian, the Rev. Eugene Carson Blake, in Maryland...
Where the clergy has decided on open action, it has often achieved small but significant victories. In Seattle, clergymen helped win a fair share of jobs for Negroes at the Bon Marche, the city's largest department store, by organizing a buyers' boycott and a freedom march on the store, then negotiating with the management. In Boston, one local baking company agreed to hire more Negroes after ministers backed a "selected patronage" campaign from their pulpits, helped dent the company's bread sales...
...many clergymen believe that the job of the priest is to be a prophet rather than a provocateur, and that his divine calling involves much more than helping Negroes win equality. They argue that Christianity should persuade rather than make peremptory demands since, says one New Orleans Protestant minister, "unless you win men by love, you never really win them...
...white churches of the U.S. seem to have been followers rather than leaders in the civil rights struggle-a condition that many clergymen wonder if even time will correct. "When the tide turns at Jackson, Mississippi," says one Southerner, "it will be because of business people acting for business reasons rather than church people acting for religious reasons...