wfn.org | Ambassador Andrew Young recalls early role of NCC in his life

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	50th Anniversary Newsroom - Nov. 8-12, 1999 call 216-696-8490

NCC11/11/99				 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

INTERVIEW: IN NCC PRESIDENCY, AMBASSADOR ANDREW YOUNG
GOES BACK AND GIVES BACK TO CHURCHES
Ending Poverty, Responding to Youth, Broadening NCC Membership are Priorities

	November 11, 1999, CLEVELAND, Ohio ---- By accepting the National Council 
of Churches (NCC) presidency for 2000-2001, Ambassador Andrew Young is 
going back and giving back to the churches and the ecumenical movement so 
critical to his formation.  Gifts he will bring to the post include an 
emphasis on ending poverty, a focus on youth and a desire to broaden the 
Council's base of membership.

Andrew Young, born March 12, 1932, was ordained a United Church of Christ 
(UCC) minister and worked on the NCC staff before serving as a civil rights 
leader, mayor, congressman and ambassador.  His history with the NCC 
stretches back to its beginning years.

Ambassador Young explicitly credited NCC-sponsored youth events and his 
tenure with the NCC's Youth Division of Christian Education in the 1950s 
with "laying a wonderful foundation for me.  It not only prepared me for 
the civil rights movement, but my involvement in Congress and the United 
Nations essentially came from my experience in ecumenical Christianity."

In a recent interview, Ambassador Young reflected on the past and the 
future as he looks forward to his Nov. 11 installation in Cleveland's Roman 
Catholic Cathedral.   The service will be attended by his friends and 
colleagues, a veritable "who's who" of civil rights and ecumenical leaders 
whose presence also attests to the intermingled history of the two movements.

"Because the NCC shaped my ministry, I think of the passage, 'to those to 
whom much has been given, of them much is required,' Ambassador Young 
explained.  "All of the gifts of the churches to my life now require me to 
make an effort to share those gifts, testify about those gifts, and to 
remind the churches that the gifts of God are still there if we seek them 
together."

NCC Enables Andrew Young to Encounter Global Church

	In 1951, at the age of 19, Andrew Young attended an NCC-sponsored 
conference of the United Christian Youth Movement in Lake Brownwood, Texas, 
with his pastor, the Rev. Nicholas Hood.  He was one of only two African 
Americans there.  In his book An Easy Burden, Ambassador Young looks back 
on this interdenominational retreat as "one of the pivotal experiences of 
my life."

	He explained in his interview, "at that conference, young people were 
questioning their family traditions and the basic value structure of their 
communities because of their realization that
the Bible and the Spirit of Christ were different from what they were being 
taught.  I had never
before met any white people whose personal faith made a difference in their 
actions on the question of race.  This experience made me examine my own 
faith.  It also led me to seminary."

After receiving his B.Div. from Hartford Seminary in 1955 and his 
ordination in the United Church of Christ (UCC), the then Rev. Young served 
a UCC congregation in Thomasville, Ga.  He spearheaded a voter registration 
drive in Thomasville, foreshadowing his future leadership in the civil 
rights movement.

In 1957, 25-year-old Rev. Young was handpicked by NCC leadership to work 
for the Youth Division of Christian Education.  There, he said, "I was 
introduced to the global church, and I learned to appreciate the church as 
an institution with enormous political influence as well as personal 
significance."

	During his three years of service with the NCC, Ambassador Young said, "I 
learned to transcend my Southern roots and prejudices and see religion as a 
global force.  This would get me into trouble later, because my view of the 
world was from the perspective of the Christian mission, putting me into 
conflict with the Cold War analysis being advocated by our government in 
those years.  But I saw people on the other side of the Iron Curtain as 
brothers in Christ, because I had met youth from the Russian Orthodox 
Church and I went to Eastern Europe on the way to the ecumenical youth 
assembly in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1960."

	Ambassador Young said he had also come to see "members of liberation 
movements in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America as products of a 
century of missionary education."  He therefore saw them "not as enemies to 
be destroyed but as brothers and sisters to be redeemed."  Because of these 
"ecumenical perspectives," Ambassador Young said, "I believe I was later 
able to bring a new perspective to a lot of our nation's policies.  I saw 
that our government was ruled by our fears of communism rather than wisdom 
and understanding about the world in which we live."

While at the NCC, Ambassador Young was intimately involved with the CBS 
Sunday morning program "Look Up and Live."  In his book, he attributes that 
experience with helping him to understand how to work with media as the 
civil rights movement unfolded.

In 1961, Ambassador Young left the NCC and joined the Citizenship School 
Program housed at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, 
though he continued to have strong ties with the UCC, which helped secure 
funding for his program.

Ambassador Young served the SCLC until 1970, when he entered the race for 
Atlanta's Fifth Congressional District.  Although he lost that first race, 
in 1972, Ambassador Young became the first black U.S. Representative from 
Georgia since Reconstruction.  He served three terms until President Jimmy 
Carter named him Ambassador to the United Nations in 1977.  He was elected 
to two terms as Mayor of Atlanta and was co-chair of the Centennial Olympic 
Games in 1996.

Ending Poverty, Reinvigorating Youth are Presidency Priorities

Ambassador Young now brings his uncompromisingly inclusive view ingrained 
by his ecumenical training, as well as his media savvy, to the NCC 
presidency, a position akin to being
  "chairman of the board" of a company.  An NCC president must be capable 
of communicating with all 35 member communions and be able to interpret 
their common witness to the public.

If Ambassador Young has his way, that membership number of 35 will increase 
by the time his tenure has ended.  "I would like to broaden the base of the 
Council's membership, to possibly include churches like the Church of God 
in Christ and other charismatic denominations," he said.

Ambassador Young said he looks forward to "working together to realize a 
vision" for the
NCC and the ecumenical movement.  To that end, he brings "an experience of 
the church in several powerful and meaningful times in our history the last 
50 years."

"One of the big challenges to our denominational life was overcoming the 
racial separation which reigned from the Civil War to the 1960s, and 
institutionally and legally, we have done so," he said.  "But in the 
process, there are wounds that need healing.  Church burnings are a clear 
indication that with all the progress we've made, there are still some 
loose ends to be tied up."

	These days, Ambassador Young said he "tends to talk less and less about 
racism" and more and more about poverty because "racism is one of the 
symptoms of poverty and insecurity."  In fact, he said, "most of the 
problems we face in America, whether crime or education problems or hate 
groups, are derived from what Martin Luther King used to call 'the lonely 
islands of poverty in the midst of this ocean of material wealth.'"

	Thus, "ending poverty" will be one of Ambassador Young's clarion calls 
during his two-year presidency and he hopes "the forgotten Black and 
Hispanic underclass as well as the poor whites in our small towns and rural 
communities" will "become the focus of our attention."

"America has the wealth, the wisdom and the faith to eliminate poverty," 
Ambassador Young commented.  "It's not only morally right, it's good 
politics and economics."

	Another of his priorities involves reinvigorating a faith-based youth 
movement.  "We have abandoned our youth to the secular youth culture.  The 
church didn't feel as though it had the power to compete for the time of 
young people.  I don't think that's true."

	"I think we have a very clear opportunity to respond to the needs of youth 
and young adults in the 21st century.  I'm not quite sure how we do that, 
but we need a clear intention to bring them into the institutional life of 
the church.  The form of youth ministry is not as relevant as the fact that 
we consciously minister to young people in what I called 'the Jesus 
years.'"  Ambassador Young pointed out that "we hear about the Jesus in the 
Bible at 12 and don't hear any more until he is 30 years old" and 
speculates, "it took Jesus from 12 to 30 to realize he was God's child."

	One of the keys to the Jesus years, Ambassador Young explained, is that 
"we're saved in action and mission" during those years.  The civil rights 
movement "was church" for him and the other young people involved, he 
said.  At the same time, "the ecumenism of the civil rights movement was 
absolutely essential to its success."

Today, Ambassador Young brings important lessons from the civil rights 
movement to his newest ecumenical post.  Regarding the financial strains 
and internal struggles of the Council, Ambassador Young is unfazed.  "My 
own experience during the civil rights movement was that if we stayed on 
the mission, the money would come.  When the mission and message were not 
clear, the management and money were always inadequate."

"I have seen that when the church gets a clear vision, it is empowered by 
the Holy Spirit to change the world and help make all things new," 
Ambassador Young stressed.  "I remember the work of the churches in the 
1950s in helping to deal with the problems of post-war Europe and I saw how 
powerful the church became in race relations in the 1960s.  The most 
powerful witness of the church in the 1990s was racial reconciliation in 
South Africa."

"The strains of the Council have all come from attempting to live up to the 
call of Jesus Christ in the last half of the 20th century," Ambassador 
Young said.  "The challenge is to hear the call of Christ for the 21st 
century."

Ambassador Young will begin serving as NCC president effective January 1, 2000.

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