I wanted to start with naming the factor of racism in our common life simply and directly. There is room for plenty of nuance, and lots of other factors which have caused breakdowns in the last couple of decades in our common life as the Christian Church in Ohio, but I believe we need to put that factor front and center, first and last.
In the Special Investigative Task Force report to the Regional Church Council*, and in my later posts leading to this narrative account, I’ve referenced racism and heard pushback over a concern that my placement of this issue at this point in the story implies that the blame for events rests . . . well, with everyone.
Guilty as charged. I agree I’m guilty of exactly that, just as I’d agree if someone suggested I am not without racism in my own makeup and reactions to people and situations. Doubtless true. And my assessment is complicated by the fact that what I think the historical record shows is that Ohio would have faced a fiscal and institutional reckoning whether we’d hired Bill Edwards at the end of 2004 or anyone else as Regional Pastor and President. But I do indeed believe that the particular reckoning we crashed into came sooner and was profoundly complicated by the legacy and active presence of racism in our narrative. Ohio Disciples like to think of ourselves as civil rights pioneers and progressive Christians, and there are many of both in our number, laity and clergy alike. But our institutional DNA is profoundly conservative, and even at times reactionary. We have avoided conflict around racism more than we’ve ever truly confronted and talked across differences as a regional church body on the subject of our institutional racism.
For instance, here’s a flyer from our regional (well, OCMS) Christian Youth Fellowship program in 1935. These are a proto-version of what in the recent past was our conference based Midwinter Youth Retreats. Read the scheduled dates down to the bottom, please.
If your first reaction is defensive, thinking of a number of practical reasons why the events would have been divided out thusly, thank you. You’re making my point. Those reasons occur to me, too, but if you don’t think white racism in a northern state plays a significant role here, you have other reading to do, and you can skip the rest of my 24 chapters here.
I have been told, verbally, that Herald Monroe wanted Ohio Disciples to be more accepting of the Civil Rights movement than they were, but he knew many congregations could not accept that, so he wove his appeal into Camp Christian, making it integrated from the start, and using the phrase “the Beloved Community” often there . . . a phrase closely associated with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from the mid-1950s forward. I hope that’s true, and have reasons to believe it is. He’s documented to have been very firm against anti-Semitism, at least on an individual level, from the late 1940s forward; his homophobia in letters and memos is breathtakingly harsh, again something one can rationalize for the time and place, but even in context he could be brutal.
The reality is that in general Ohio, as a region, handled racism as indirectly as it could. In a wider Disciples context, that’s exactly what you’d expect, from Alexander Campbell supporting abolition and emancipation personally, but insisting on not taking a side in print, right down through our nuanced approach to instrumental music, cooperative missions, World War I, and Unified Promotion. If we could avoid a direct conflict, we would; if we could postpone confrontations, we always have. As Disciples of Christ, and as Ohio Disciples.
In late 2004, we hired as our Regional Pastor and President an African American male. This we knew, we were even pleased to be proud of it, as a pathbreaking step in the Disciples of Christ for a majority “white” region, but my suspicion is that as a region we did too little to acknowledge the internal realities and challenges of having done so.
In the last chapters, we had a chance to step back and realize that it was no small step to go from 1899 (or really from 1870) to 2002 with every Ohio Region leader having been from Ohio, raised up in ministry in Ohio, and coming from a position already serving on the state society staff upwards into the chief executive role. It was all part of “The Ohio Way.” Was there some sexism in how Ohio responded to Suzanne Webb’s interim years? No doubt, and there was also the wrenching transition from literally over a century of “how it’s always been done” to an outsider coming in and exerting authority over life-long Ohio pastors (let alone the regional staff).
Bill Edwards had Ohio roots, which may have helped a bit at first. And there was a firm resolve on the part of regional leadership on the council and search committee to push Ohio into an embrace of diversity and inclusion that had long been discussed but infrequently honored. Hiring Dr. Edwards was indeed a visible sign of this commitment. But in terms of changing “how we did business” was a higher reach, a tougher lift, a bigger challenge than we were really ready to take on.
And again, the underlying problem was that we still had not come to grips with a fiscal and demographic reality in the Buckeye State, of declining congregations (let alone departing ones), reduced income practically speaking, and shrinking registrations and enrollments – at men’s and women’s rallies, at camp & conference, in seminary and ordination process numbers of students.
Commissioned (formerly licensed) ministers were becoming more common as sole pastor for shrinking congregations, and pressure from many quarters to adopt the new apprentice-track model for ordination also created anxieties among the existing members of the Order of Ministry – a subject for which I could write another small book.
These contractions were squeezing all kinds of aspects of regional life; even as the number of congregations became smaller, it seemed as if the frequency of major issues within local churches calling for regional involvement was becoming greater. Meanwhile, the income side of the regional budget ticked inexorably down.
2008 was a “bent knee” in the downward curve; how much of it was due to Rev. Jeremiah Wright being scheduled for the regional assembly in October, or caused by upset from some when he was “un-invited” just beforehand, or the election of Barack Obama in November – I’m not sure how we could ever know for sure. But the correlation is there. And Bill Edwards had the unenviable task of brokering a mix of “if you have him there my church will stop giving” and “if you don’t let him speak we’ll stop giving” and the fact that both sides got upset in how it all turned out (Rev. Wright cancelled). My distinct impression – which could be wrong! – was that Bill didn’t even have anything to do with the initial invitation. But he worked to support the choice; I recall talking to him at camp that summer, and I told him “I wouldn’t have invited him, but if he comes, I want to hear what he has to say; I would hate to only hear assembly speakers who agree with me!” His response was probably one of the biggest smiles I ever saw from him. We agreed it was a tough situation, and left it at that.
And as it turned out, Wright didn’t come, but that outcome managed to leave both sides angry . . . and I think left Bill with a sense that he was never going to win with this region. He did a fair amount of shuttle diplomacy that summer, appearing in front of groups, taking his lumps, trying to articulate a position of mediation, and like most peacemakers got reviled by both sides.
2009 was the largest single year deficit I see in my horseback assessment of the year-end reports from 2000 to the present. And I suspect that’s when two things happened: we started drawing very heavily on our invested funds to cover losses, hoping they’d turn around the next year after everyone settled down . . . and that to some degree, Bill quit trying to convince people to come together as a region, let alone as a church, and just eased himself back into a posture of managing the decline. By cuts. As had been done before him.
I’ve said about each regional leader from Gaines Cook forward what my quick take would be as to what I read/infer/observe as their greatest strength, and the implicit weaknesses in their style of leadership. For Bill Edwards, I’d say I caught from him a clear passion for insisting on diversity and inclusion even (especially) when it wasn’t easy, and he maintained that insistence right to the end; he also struggled to maintain an expectation of high expectations for ministry even as it has become clear that the future belongs to some very different forms of ministry preparation than either of us came up through.
His weakness? I believe Bill found it very hard to ask for help. And looking back with a wide view, I’m not surprised. It’s a problem many leaders face (he said, looking in the mirror!), and for a first person of color in the top leadership role in Ohio, who found that all was not well in paradise from his earliest days, but also ran into entrenched opposition to change from that very outset – would you be quick to ask for aid and comfort, to admit fears and vulnerabilities? So if those before you had stood pat, kept their own counsel, and quietly drawn on the “vast” reserves held against a rainy day that had surely come, well . . .
And keep in mind that there’s this whole “the Ohio way” mindset, reinforced by forty-plus years of non-stop growth and increased vitality, followed by an uncertain period that in retrospect signaled a period of decline coming, if not under way -- and then the deluge. We ALL didn’t know how to ask for help. I think back to the c. 1990 confrontation with the wider church, and Ohio’s choice to deal with financial contraction by standing on our right to take our share first . . . without realizing that as a region, we were not just making a statement of defiance to the rest of the regions: we were modeling behavior to our congregations, who would then continue to do the same thing with their giving to the region.
Then let me note, sadly but surely, that a majority Anglo-white-middle-ish-class region of shrinking congregations came to regard African American staff as not understanding or sympathetic to their concerns (concerns which I acknowledge are real, by the way), nor did the mostly mainstream, middlebrow, median-plus-age clergy of Ohio feel that the staff was pastoral to and for them in the ways they expected from regional ministers . . . and it is not hard to see where institutional and systemic racism makes the divisions deeper, harder to bridge, and ultimately self-justifying.
Not long before the end of his tenure, I had an occasion to talk one on one with Dr. William Edwards as my regional minister, and I hope and trust I break no confidences to say I asked him directly: “Bill, what’s your vision for the region? Tell me what you want to do and where you want us to go as Ohio Disciples, and I believe I’d want to help you get there – but I’m not sure what that is.” I could be wrong, but it seemed he was sincerely startled by my question. I don’t think it’s one he got asked often by clergy of the region. He thanked me, and said “that’s a good question; let me think about how I want to answer it, and we should have lunch sometime and talk about it in more detail.” I will always be sorry we didn’t have that lunch.
It's just too easy to say he didn’t have a vision to share; it’s too painful to reflect on what it would mean if the truth was he didn’t feel entirely safe sharing what vision he did have with someone like me. The truth may well rest somewhere between those two foul lines.
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* https://www.ccinoh.com/media/177357/sitf_rcc_report_201.pdf