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4-March-1998 
98076 
 
    Church Leadership Is Focus of Conference 
    on the Legacy of Eugene Carson Blake 
 
    by Sarah Cunningham 
 
PRINCETON, N.J.-"Why is it that `the Blake years' have been etched into our 
memory?"  asked Deborah Mullen, a major presenter at a Feb. 8-10 event at 
Princeton Theological Seminary celebrating the legacy of  former 
Presbyterian stated clerk and world ecumenical leader Eugene Carson Blake. 
 
    Confident that the answer to that question is key to the church's 
calling in the 21st century, the seminary, along with the World and 
National Councils of Churches, called together speakers, preachers and 
panelists to reflect on the life and ministry of Blake, who served as 
stated clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church 
(1951-1966), as general secretary of the World Council of Churches 
(1966-1972) and as president of the National Council of Churches 
(1954-1957). 
 
    Titled "The Legacy of Eugene Carson Blake: Implications for Church 
Leadership in the 21st Century," the conference focused on Blake's ministry 
from three major perspectives: Blake as pastor, as public witness and as 
advocate for the visible unity of Christ's church. 
 
                         Blake as pastor 
 
    For former General Assembly moderator the Rev. John Buchanan, pastor of 
Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, Blake's legacy as pastor hinged on 
several very basic practices: his biblically based preaching, his belief in 
the Calvinist understanding of the church - "reformed, always reforming," 
his openness to his parishioners, his ability to take advice from his 
predecessors, his accessibility, his attention to children and youth and 
his ability to respond to "a time of enormous social and cultural change - 
the Great Depression, World War II, postwar economic and demographic 
change, McCarthyism, Korea, civil rights and Vietnam." 
 
    Buchanan noted that at the beginning of his ministry in New York City, 
"Blake was fortunate to work with a distinguished pastor, Malcolm James 
MacLeod.  "He taught young Blake how to do it," Buchanan said.  "MacLeod 
also taught him how to be a counselor - a listener - long before anybody 
was talking about pastoral theology as an academic discipline. 
 
    "`Be able to call on some of the best homes on Fifth Avenue,' advised 
MacLeod, `and also to walk up a five-floor tenement and always to conduct 
yourself as a minister of Jesus Christ.'" 
 
                   Blake as public witness 
 
    It was his arrest in Baltimore in the civil rights struggle of 1963 
that first brought nationwide attention to Blake as a public figure.  With 
other church leaders and members of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), 
he protested the opening of Gywnn Oak Amusement Park as a segregated park 
that excluded blacks and was taken into custody by the police. 
 
    Former General Assembly moderator the Rev. Clinton Marsh, a participant 
at the Princeton event, described the immediate response of black church 
members when they saw newspaper and television coverage: "If the stated 
clerk, this white man in clerical collar and straw hat, could stand with us 
in our call for racial justice and be arrested for his action, then this 
meant it must be all right."  For Marsh and others, Blake gave authenticity 
and visibility to the church's decision to get involved in the civil rights 
struggle. 
 
    Mullen, a professor at McCormick Theological Seminary, outlined Blake's 
legacy of public witness, focusing on "socially sanctioned and publicly 
enforced racial segregation," the status of women, labor issues, the twin 
evils of hunger and homelessness, and American involvement in Vietnam, 
among others. "All this," explained Mullen "kept Blake and the church 
before the public eye. ... Yet he never lost touch with his theological 
underpinnings as guidance for his public witness. 
 
    "Gene Blake stepped forward to test the faith of the body of Christ and 
the conscience of America," said Mullen. "Both were flagging - sadly, 
though not surprisingly - under the weight of race and class divisions 
centuries old.  The failure of the church to act courageously on behalf of 
justice ... troubled Blake profoundly." 
 
                       Blake on Christian unity 
 
    Calling for a 21st-century move toward "a conciliar approach to visible 
church unity," World Council of Churches general secretary Konrad Raiser 
praised Blake as the ecumenical leader who first sought church unity 
because "he became convinced that the churches in their divided existence 
cannot be trusted to bring to the American people an objective and 
authentic word of God on a political issue." 
 
    Blake historian Douglas Brackenridge pointed out that the formation of 
the Consultation on Church Union (COCU) can be traced to Blake's pivotal 
sermon in Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco in 1960. 
 
    What surprised many church leaders was the attention this proposal got 
from the secular press, so that again Blake's public witness was reflected 
in his ability to capture the imagination of a wider audience in the 
significance of an ancient prayer, which he had used for his sermon text, 
"May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in 
harmony with one another.  ..." (Romans 15:5ff.). 
 
    As his ecumenical involvement expanded, Raiser said, Blake "seized the 
moment of fundamental change in church and society and with great courage 
reshaped the structure and the agenda of the WCC to become more responsive 
to the challenges of his time."  New initiatives inspired by Blake, Raiser 
said, "have shaped the profile of the WCC for more than one generation - 
the establishment of the Program to Combat Racism, the creation of the 
Commission of the Churches' Participation in Development, the initiation of 
a Program on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies and the 
inauguration of the Office of Education." 
 
    In both worship - with sermons by former General Assembly moderator the 
Rev. Robert Bohl of Prairie Village, Kan., and National Council of Churches 
general secretary Joan Brown Campbell - and in responses from pastors, 
professors and students, the gathering was challenged to seek again the 
involvement of the church in the public life of the wider community, to 
make the church's witness known and to seek "the right spirit that church 
union will require." 
 
    Plans are under way to publish all the major presentations at the 
conference. For more information, contact the Rev. John Lindner of the 
Office for Ecumenical Development of the World Council of Churches, 475 
Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10027; telephone (212) 870-3260; fax (212) 
870-3261. 

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