wfn.org | New Leadership Growth Endowment

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

7-January-1998 
98004 
 
                New Leadership Growth Endowment Is 
                  Named after Eugene Carson Blake 
 
                          by Julian Shipp 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.-Presbyterians now have the opportunity to uphold the legacy 
of one of the denomination's outstanding leaders through the "Eugene Carson 
Blake Endowment for Ecumenical Leadership Development," a new fund named in 
honor of Blake's accomplishments. 
 
    A noted Presbyterian ecumenist and pastor who championed peace and 
civil rights, the Rev. Eugene Carson Blake died in 1985. He was stated 
clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America 
(UPCUSA) and later general secretary of the World Council of Churches 
(WCC). Blake was a leading Presbyterian in the civil rights struggles of 
the 1950s and 1960s. 
 
    After her husband's death, Jean Ware Blake wanted to perpetuate his 
memory through an ecumenical fellowship program that would enable 
generations of young Presbyterian Church leaders to continue Blake's 
heritage of leadership. Mrs. Blake died in 1997 but lived to see her dream 
realized. With the establishment of the endowment, a fellowship program 
will be inaugurated to assure regular ecumenical leadership development. 
 
    The Blake Endowment will be administered by the National Council of the 
Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (NCC).  According to the Rev. John 
Lindner, director of the endowment, the program will have as its focus a 
one-year intensive program to assist individuals in developing their 
expertise, skills, and abilities for leadership within the ecumenical 
movement. 
 
    Lindner said the initial goal of the fund is $800,000, and at press 
time approximately $125,000 had been committed. He said the endowment is 
managed by the Ecumenical Trust, a joint trust of the World and National 
Councils of Churches. At least two students will be selected annually to 
serve as Blake Fellows and have the opportunity to gain extensive 
experience with the ecumenical movement at the world, national and local 
levels and to study the history, theology and praxis of contemporary 
ecumenism. 
 
    Participants will begin their year enrolled in the Graduate School of 
Ecumenics, an annual four-month intensive program (September through 
December) of the Ecumenical Institute of the WCC at Bossey, Switzerland. 
Upon return from Bossey, participants will be actively engaged in the life 
and work of the NCC, its member communions and related movements. 
 
    Participation in the program is open to persons preparing for Christian 
vocation who are endorsed by their communions. Selection is based upon 
promise for ecumenical leadership and will seek to be broadly inclusive of 
persons of diverse communions, racial/ethnic backgrounds, and gender. 
 
    "Our hope is this program might grow over the coming years," Lindner 
told the Presbyterian News Service. "A number of congregations are choosing 
to give to the fund each year for three years. We hope that at least half 
the money will come from congregational gifts as a sign of ecumenical 
encouragement and commitment to a new generation of church leadership from 
the bodies of our church." 
 
    Presbyterians who wish to give to the endowment should make their 
checks payable to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and mail them to Central 
Receiving Service, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, KY 40202-1396. Be 
sure checks include a designation for project #049976, identifying them as 
gifts to the Eugene Carson Blake Endowment for Ecumenical Leadership 
Development. 
 
                  Another honoring of Blake's legacy 
 
    Blake's legacy will also be honored Feb. 8-10 during a conference at 
Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, N.J.  Titled "The Legacy of 
Eugene Carson Blake: Implications for Church Leadership in the 21st 
Century," the conference will invite participants to not only consider 
Blake's legacy, but also to reflect on that legacy as it points toward the 
kind of leadership required for the church in the upcoming millennium. 
 
    While Blake began his theological education at New College, the 
University of Edinburgh, in 1929, he returned to the United States to 
complete his degree at Princeton. According to Douglas Brackenridge, 
Blake's biographer, as a student Blake engaged his professors in heated 
theological dialogue, attempting to show how great theologians always tried 
to express theological concepts in new terms. 
 
    Brackenridge wrote in his book "Eugene Carson Blake" that Blake was not 
comfortable with either theological liberalism or theological 
fundamentalism, but rather "searched for a theological position that would 
enable him to take Scripture and doctrine seriously, but not necessarily 
literally, and provide an ethical framework sufficient to cope with the 
complexities of modern society." 
 
    According to Barbara Chaapel, director of communications/publications 
at Princeton Theological Seminary, it is Blake's search for a theological 
framework that conference planners hope will "shed light on the 
increasingly diverse and complex religious life in North America in a new 
century, and on the kind of pastoral leadership needed to meet that 
complexity and diversity." 
 
    Honoring Blake with a leadership conference brings to fruition the 
vision of William P. Thompson, a trustee emeritus of Princeton Seminary and 
a retired attorney who, like Blake, was both stated clerk of the 
Presbyterian Church and president of the National Council of Churches. 
"Gene Blake was my friend and mentor," Thompson said. "He set a standard 
for church leadership that was exemplary." 
 
    Speakers at the conference will include Brackenridge, a professor at 
Trinity College as well as Blake's biographer; the Rev. John Buchanan, 
former moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and pastor of Fourth 
Presbyterian Church in Chicago; Deborah Mullen, vice chair of the NCC's 
Faith and Order Commission and a professor at McCormick Theological 
Seminary; the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, NCC general secretary; the Rev. 
Konrad Raiser, WCC general secretary; and the Rev. Robert Bohl, former 
moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and pastor of Prairie Village 
Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village, Kan. 
 
    For more information about the conference or to register, contact the 
Rev. John Lindner at 1-888-212-2920. 

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