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Privilege and Prophecy: Social activism in the post-war Episcopal Church by Robert Tobin

30 September 2022

Episcopalians played a key role in the struggle for justice, Lyle Dennen finds

THIS book is an exhaustive study of social activism in the Episcopal Church in the United States (Anglican) in the dramatic period from the end of the Second World War to the end of the 1970s: the time of the struggle against segregation, protests and great marches against racial injustice, and a deep concern and involvement to empower the urban poor, and a commitment to industrial mission to ordinary workers and the search for social inclusivity.

The Episcopal Church played a significant part in all of these. Robert Tobin does a masterful, detailed research of the archival material in order to let the American bishops, clergy, and laity speak for themselves about their motivation, concerns, successes, and failures.

The irony and unresolved ambiguity was that the Episcopal Church was the religion of preference for the American elite. Its ranks and leadership came from wealth, social rank, and elite education. It was out of this privileged background that the leaders of the Episcopal Church wholeheartedly committed themselves to a progressive, liberal agenda to not only change power and opportunity in American society, but also to profoundly change the Church itself.

As an Establishment Church, Episcopalians had seen the Church’s prime function as offering comfort through pastoral care, good theological teaching, spiritual guidance, and growth through devotion to the sacraments. In this period, the clergy and bishops now focused on the challenge to change the Church to be a prophetic force, critical of American consumerism and power structures and also disparaging their own Church as woven into those structures.

Educated, vigorous, and well supported, the liberal leadership pursued imaginative programs of education, ministry, and social action for equality in order to shift the Episcopal Church from guardian of tradition to advocate of liberation theology. There developed an acute tension between the local churches and dioceses and the National Church and its centralised officers. The fights were not only about principles and timing; but, of course money — the transfer of funding from traditional projects and programmes to the new prophetic concerns for equality, urban mission, and inclusion.

The battles were often fashioned between supporting the parishes, the life-blood of the Church, or supporting new mission projects inspired by the prophetic challenge. Tobin clearly brings out how ambiguities darkened this challenge. The liberal leaders came from the elite backgrounds, and took for granted their privileged position. They were frequently autocratic. They were comfortable doing things for the poor, but not with the poor. This is something not completely unfamiliar to British Anglicans. Tobin shows how the church social activists had a deep, sincere compassion for poor, vulnerable Black people, but seemed unable to listen to Black clergy in their own Church.

In spite of the ambiguities, the achievements of the Episcopal Church in the US in justice, equality, and inclusion for the poor in city and countryside, the urban vulnerable and homeless, racial minorities, women and gays, is outstanding. Some of the laity and clergy were heroic, remarkable, and even lost their lives for this struggle. In reading this excellent book, one learns much about the Church in the United States, but privilege and prophecy deeply helps us to ask hard questions about the Church here in Britain.

What became of our commitments to our urban centres and the poor of our country after the Brixton riots, and our Church’s outstanding response in Faith in the City and Church Urban Fund? The 2020s in Great Britain is radically different from the 1960s in the US. But, after the drama of Covid-19 and the horrors of the terrible war in Ukraine, surely we can learn from the American Church something about the difficulties, ambiguities, and importance of holding together in the Church a commitment to both comfort and challenge.


The Ven. Dr Lyle Dennen is a former Archdeacon of Hackney.

 

Privilege and Prophecy: Social activism in the post-war Episcopal Church
Robert Tobin
OUP £22.99
(978-0-19-090614-6)
Church Times Bookshop £20.69

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