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Note #7966 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Sorry in Seattle
03428
October 3, 2003

Sorry in Seattle

Congregations acknowledge racist past, bury 50-year-old hatchet

by John Filiatreau

LOUISVILLE - A half-century of anger and alienation will end on Sunday, Oct.
5, when two churches in the Seattle Presbytery - one large and white, the
other small and black - join in a service of reconciliation.

The rites will mark the long-delayed keeping of a promise made in 1953.

That's when the presbytery - then affiliated with the United Presbyterian
Church in the United States of America (UPCUSA), the so-called northern
church - merged two neighboring, segregated downtown churches: virtually
all-white Madrona Presbyterian Church and virtually all-black Grace
Presbyterian Church, then the only majority-African-American Presbyterian
congregation in Washington state.

The congregations were combined with just two weeks' notice, and the
presbytery offered nothing in the way of training or preparation. Officials
promised that the resulting congregation - which was given the name and
sanctuary of the previous white church, Madrona - would be the main
beneficiary when the Grace Church building was sold.

But when that property was sold for $6,000, the money was used to buy land
for a new, predominantly white, suburban church - Mercer Island Presbyterian,
which has prospered ever since and now has about 1,200 members.

Meanwhile, Madrona's white members found other church homes. Membership
plummeted, and income plummeted even faster. The building, and the
congregation, fell into disrepair.

Relations between Seattle Presbytery and Madrona Church, sour from the start,
worsened steadily. The presbytery mostly neglected the dwindling
congregation, but from time to time tried to assert control, appointing a
series of pastors, most of whom failed to one degree or another. Three times
the presbytery created disciplinary commissions to look into alleged
malfeasance at Madrona. No wrongdoing was ever proved, but the investigations
reinforced Madrona's standing as the presbytery's "problem" church.

Three years ago, during a routine visit to Madrona, now a congregation of
about 50 members, Executive Presbyter Boyd Stockdale found himself in an
unexpectedly "hostile environment." When he sought an explanation, he was
told about the decades-old injustice that started with the forced merger.

The resulting series of conversations with Madrona members over more than a
year confirmed, in Stockdale's words, that "this congregation had been
treated in a very racist way for 50 years."

He decided that something had to be done. Call it reparations. Or call it
repentance.

The result is a grant of about $30,000 from the still-predominantly white
Mercer Island congregation for a new roof for Madrona's 92-year-old building.
In addition, Mercer Island has committed another $50,000 over five years for
other repairs and renovations, and has put together a construction crew to do
much of the work free of charge. The presbytery has pitched in money for a
new furnace. The work has already begun.

A "barn-raising"-style fix-up weekend is scheduled for later in October. The
Mercer Island workers will be assisted by Madrona congregants and fed by
Madrona cooks and servers.

"We could easily say, 'We didn't know, so we're innocent,'" says the Rev.
Dale Sewall, Mercer Island's pastor. "But there was damage done to the
Madrona congregation, and we benefited. ... They continued to struggle, and
we blossomed.

"That's the way racism works in America right now. White people don't have to
know anything about what's going on - and we still benefit."

Stockdale says Madrona's history demonstrates that "racism lives, even amid
good intentions."

"They were trying to integrate a segregated church, because Martin Luther
King said it was a good thing," he says of his predecessors of five decades
ago. "This just shows that we sometimes do racist things, even when we think
we're doing something anti-racist. That's why I think it's so instructive.
... It shows how racism works in white America."

The 2 p.m. reconciliation service will be led by the Rev. Flora Bridges, who
became Madrona's pastor in July; Sewall, the Mercer Island pastor; Stockdale,
the presbytery executive; and Charity Kamau and Steven Maina, co-pastors of
Seattle's Kenyan Community Fellowship. The public is welcome.

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