Word: thurman
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...Dumping Ground. The church's first congregation numbered a scant 25 souls and was located in a section crammed with Negro war workers. Thurman persuaded them to move. "Until we became strong enough to have a character of our own, I thought we'd better get out of the atmosphere," he explains. The last thing he wanted was for the experiment to develop a settlement-house aura or become "a dumping ground for do-gooders who would get an uplift once a week by coming into the Negro community and helping a struggling interracial activity. I wanted people...
...yearly budget is contributed by the congregation, the rest by friends and 185 "national associates" (who include such kindly lights as Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mrs. Harper Sibley, president of the United Council of Church Women). In addition to his white Co-Pastor Robert Meyners, Thurman is assisted by a Nisei Methodist who preaches once a month...
Last winter, Thurman feels, the experiment really came of age. With some misgivings he had gone to serve as visiting lecturer in philosophy and religion at the University of Iowa. When he returned he found that the congregation had stopped calling it "Fellowship Church" or "the church" and had begun to call it "our church." Says he: "Now comes the temptation to say, 'We have a very nice atmosphere here-let's freeze...
...Buttons. Busy Dr. Thurman works night & day to keep it thawed out. He spends half his time in counseling, has conducted ten seven-week study groups during the past four years-mostly on mysticism as a dynamic source of action...
...hardest job," he says, "has been to keep our church from becoming a social whip. The radicals bear down, saying we are not in there fighting. Others want us to become an organization, a placement bureau, a mission that gets people jobs and gives away shoes." Thurman recently approved the decision of a member not to wear his Wallace button while welcoming people to church. "We are a religious group," he insists. "It is important that we give strength to people working on interracial problems, but the interracial character of our own group is becoming the least significant part...