Going Along and Getting Along

“You can’t fight city hall.” my friend said. After I shared efforts to keep several inner-city schools open, he gave this response.  My children attended one school on the docket to be closed – Culver Elementary, in Evansville, Indiana. It was the late 1970s. The Federal Court desegregation orders were being enforced.  School busing was underway across the nation. In places like South Boston, there was angry, even violent, resistance.  In Evansville folks were uneasy.  My friend was also my supervisor.[i]  His counsel was appreciated, well-intentioned. In fact, it was considered “progressive” as a support for desegregation efforts.

Public schools in the city were to “adjust” and “comply.” Our children’s school was naturally racially integrated. Along with others, all children could walk to school from home.  No school bus needed, thank you. There was a natural racial mix. School desegregation orders, although imperfect, were a response to the prevailing patterns of separation and providing unequal resources based on race. The evil of systemic racism has plagued our nation from its founding, shaping the ecology of our cities. In the wake of this, white flight left thousands of formerly predominantly white urban congregations struggling to survive.[ii]

How to best respond to the effort to “desegregate” schools in my community?  On the one hand, my children already attended a racially integrated school; on the other, there were deep systemic problems in cities across the land. In many places – no, in most places – the church lived by the notion “you can’t fight city hall.” It might be called a Go Along and Get Along theology.  In earlier posts, I noted the multiplicity of ways congregational life was reshaped, distorted really, by racist activities, after WWII.  Housing, transportation, education, and economics were woven together on a loom shaped by deeply racist social designs.

THAT WAS THEN. Alternative voices were also emerging. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. represented the best known of such an alternative vision.

In upcoming posts we will look at Dr. King’s prescription for change and how mainline denominations responded. We will also suggest some ideas for a more hopefilled furture. Perhaps Christendom as it has existed in recent generations in the United States is passing — and, perhaps, there are ways Christianity will flower in surprising new manifestations.

Next: Dr. M.L. King’s Nonconforming Transformationalism.

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[i] Clergy supervisors in the Methodist tradition are known as district superintendents and bishops. My district superintendent was a good man and the urban ministry work we were doing at Patchwork Ministries in Evansville was made possible through his connectional support.  This support was not primarily money; mostly it was permission for a group of young idealistic pastors to attempt something different in terms of urban ministry.

[ii] Tragically the current US Supreme Court is attacking legislation intended to secure voting rights, affirmative action and equal justice that accompanied these desegregation efforts.