wfn.org | NCC Matches Leona Helmsley's Promised $500,000 for Burned Churches

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

4-February-1998 
98038 
 
    NCC Matches Leona Helmsley's Promised 
    $500,000 for Burned Churches 
 
    by Wendy S. McDowell 
    National Council of Churches 
 
NEW YORK-The National Council of Churches (NCC) has raised the $500,000 
needed to receive the promised $500,000 matching gift from Leona Helmsley, 
prominent New York real estate owner and philanthropist. 
 
    The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, NCC general secretary, and Luther 
Gatling, president of One Hundred Black Men, who represented Leona 
Helmsley, deposited a check for $1 million at the Carver Federal Savings 
Bank in Harlem on Jan. 15 - Martin Luther King Jr.'s actual birthday. 
 
    On May 28, 1997, Helmsley promised a check for $1 million to the NCC 
for its Burned Churches Fund and promised an additional matching grant of 
$500,000. Her contribution, now totaling $1.5 million, is the largest the 
Fund has received from any individual donor since it was established in May 
1996. 
 
    "The church burnings are symptomatic of the sickness in our country," 
Campbell said, "exemplifying both the racial prejudice and the lack of 
economic opportunity. A society should worry greatly if its churches are 
being burned. And unfortunately, our churches continue to be burned." 
 
    Between June 1996 and December 1997, 233 church burnings in 18 states 
have come to the attention of the NCC. Most are African American and a 
majority, if not all, are in the Southeast. Of  these, the NCC has helped 
more than 100 congregations in some way, either with grants, in-kind 
(material) donations, volunteers or technical assistance. 
 
    Yet 130 churches remain on the NCC's list, Campbell reported, and the 
NCC estimates it would need $19 million to completely rebuild those 
churches. "We have to keep telling the story because many more churches 
need help," she said. "More burned churches keep coming to our attention, 
including five burned in Maryland in recent months. 
 
    "Churches are still meeting in temporary worship spaces," Campbell 
said. "I heard a story of one pastor who is counseling people in her car 
because she has no place else to do it." 
 
    Campbell thanked Helmsley for her $500,000 donation, of which 25 
percent will go toward the racial justice and reconciliation part of the 
program to take aim at the root causes of racism. 
 
    The NCC's $500,000 came both from individuals across the country, whose 
initial contributions to the appeal total $25,100, and from 10 of the NCC's 
member communions, including major amounts from the Presbyterian Church 
(U.S.A.), the Episcopal Church and American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. 
Other supporting member communions were Christian Church (Disciples of 
Christ), Progressive National Baptist Convention, Evangelical Lutheran 
Church in America, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Moravian Reformed 
Church in America, United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church. 

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