Methodist social action tied to 20th century history
May. 18, 2007
NOTE: Photographs and audio available at http://umns.umc.org.
A UMNS Report By Linda Bloom*
To consider the path of Methodist social activism in the United States during the 20th century, one need only pick up a history book.
In 1907, the first official business of what originally was called the Methodist Federation for Social Service was to be presented to President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House.
During World War I, the independent federation supported the rights of conscientious objectors and political dissenters. During the steel strike of 1919, it supported the rights of labor, working toward decent wages, humane working conditions and collective bargaining. The 1920s and '30s brought further concerns about workers' rights and unchecked capitalism, leading to charges of Bolshevism and Communism and even an appearance before the House Un-American Affairs Committee in the 1950s.
In the latter half of the century, the Methodist Federation for Social Action endorsed lunch counter sit-ins, freedom rides and all other actions promoting civil rights and racial integration; opposed the nuclear arms race and Vietnam War; demanded the denomination's pension agency divest from South Africa during apartheid; and supported gay and lesbian rights, both inside and outside the church.
"We really are an organization which responds to the current context," said the Rev. Kathryn Johnson, the executive director of MFSA since 1998. "Over the past 100 years, we are continuing that tradition."
The federation is an unofficial part of The United Methodist Church and acknowledged its founding, history and future during an April 13-15 conference in the Washington area. A capital campaign called "Faithful Witness for a New Century" has been launched to raise money for organizing and outreach, upgrading communications and building a modest endowment.
As its membership in about 30 chapters ages along with the rest of the church, MFSA hopes to do more organizing and leadership training with young adults.
Small but influential
Throughout its history, the federation's official membership always has been small - roughly 5,000 - especially in relation to the millions of U.S. church members. But often it has been able to expand its influence in the denomination.
At the 2004 General Conference, the church's top legislative body, one in 10 delegates was an MFSA member, Johnson pointed out. "Frequently, it is MFSA members who are most active in the process of submitting, tracking and amending legislation," she added.
The Rev. Jeanne Knepper of Portland, Ore., believes the federation "is still timely and effective and necessary."
After Knepper became active in MFSA in the 1980s, she became curious about the influence of such a small organization. Her interest led her to write her doctoral thesis on "Thy Kingdom Come: Methodist Federation for Social Service and Human Rights 1907-1948," completed in 1996.
From an activist point of view, she said, she wanted to learn what was
effective and not effective in the federation. As a historian, she wanted to be as truthful as possible.
The research "gave me a lot more respect for what the federation could do and was doing" - and an awareness that people who had denigrated the organization over the years often did so because of "half-knowledge and partial understanding and dismissing things that were too radical."
Knepper's research included three boxes of declassified FBI files obtained by the Rev. George McClain, the MFSA executive director from 1974-98 who has catalogued much of its history. Those files showed her that "we, as a culture, really didn't get how thoroughly the government was involved in getting the Methodist church to repudiate the federation."
A year after its founding, the federation gained recognition from the 1908 Methodist General Conference and convinced that body to adopt the first denominational Social Creed. The legislative assembly will mark the 100th anniversary of the creed when it meets next year in Fort Worth, Texas.
The partnership of the Rev. Harry Ward, brought on as federation executive in 1911, and Bishop Francis J. McConnell, chosen as its president in 1912, proved significant to the organization over the next 32 years as it fought the social sins of labor exploitation, profit motivation, militarism, racism and imperialism.
Monitored by the FBI
Some were affronted by the federation's attacks on capitalism, and the organization became a target of accusations about Communist leanings or "red-baiting," both inside and outside the denomination. Based on actions during the steel strike, for example, J. Edgar Hoover had the FBI make reports on Ward for years. "The FBI report on Ward's 90th birthday was an inch thick," Knepper reported.
Another FBI target was the Rev. Jack McMichael, who succeeded Ward as the federation's executive secretary in the 1940s. In 1951, he was called before the House Un-American Affairs Committee to testify about accusations by paid informants that he was second-in-command in a Communist cell in New York. The charges were easy to refute, she said, because McMichael was a 16-year-old high school student in Georgia at the time.
Still, the FBI effectively blacklisted him. McMichael's widow told Knepper that the harassment continued "for a long time" after he had returned to serving congregations in the California-Nevada Conference.
Picking up on accusations against the federation, the 1952 General Conference officially expressed disapproval of "many of its statements and policies" and voted to evict the organization from its rented office space at the Methodist Building in New York. At the same time, it approved a federation-backed proposal to create an official Board of Christian Social Concerns, which later became the Board of Church and Society.
That MFSA survived the 1950s at all was due to "dogged perseverance," according to McClain. "We were nearly killed and had no money for national staff," he said. "It was held together by volunteers alone for nearly eight years."
Finally, the Rev. Lee Ball was hired as executive secretary in 1960 and led a revival through the continued publication of the Social Questions Bulletin, "plus a lot of knocking on doors of Methodist clergy around the country," he added.
Social activism
When McClain, who lives in Staten Island, N.Y., became the MFSA executive in 1974, "the mandate was to start new chapters and be active in the church." One of his first actions was to send two interns to support striking workers at a Methodist hospital in Pikesville, Ky. The hospital was refusing to negotiate. "A serious witness was made and that reassured us that we did have an important role to play," he recalled.
Other labor-related actions followed, along with attention to gay and lesbian concerns, corporate exploitation, the Vietnam and Gulf wars and the Palestine/Israel crisis. "I was always looking for issues ... where the church was either lagging behind and needed to catch up or was taking the lead," McClain said.
One such issue was apartheid in South Africa. The focus was on convincing the United Methodist Board of Pension and Health Benefits to join the ecumenical movement encouraging U.S. corporations to divest from South Africa. Actions included dialogue and demonstrations at pension board meetings and resolutions at annual conference and General Conference sessions.
"We had a number of allies on the board, which at one point included the president of the board," McClain noted. "I think we really enabled the church's larger voice to be heard."
Under new leadership, he added, the pensions board "steadily moved to taking a role among church-related shareholders, which they have to this day."
MFSA has long supported same-sex unions and ordination for gays and lesbians and was active around the church trials of the Revs. Jimmy Creech, Greg Dell and Beth Stroud. "We so vehemently disagree with the stance of the church (on homosexuality) and are so very aware of the pain and anguish that it causes," Johnson said.
In today's post-9/11 world, issues of security, war, civil rights and racism also are in the forefront of MFSA's concerns, she added.
But while the federation continues to be a justice movement rooted within the denomination's local churches and annual conferences, it tries to maintain its independence.
"We want to impact the church, on the one hand," Johnson said. "On the other hand, we try hard not to have the institutional church define us."
*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.
News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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United Methodist News Service Photos and stories also available at: http://umns.umc.org
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