“The Church is Never More the Church Than When…”
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
To better understand the history of the Diocese of Newark, some of my clergy colleagues and I have spent time studying the journals of each diocesan convention, stretching all the way back to 1875. I really lucked out because I was assigned 1948 to 1971, a particularly fascinating and eventful period in history, both diocesan and American. During the late 1940s and early 1950s the Church began to face the enormous changes wrought by World War II and the postwar economic and population boom. There was a lot of attention given to the menace of communism and also the excesses of the Red Scare. There was a flurry of fundraising and construction, as the Church rushed to expand older churches and build new ones in the rapidly growing suburbs. There was concern about the decline of many urban congregations, emptied by changing demographics. And, thankfully, during the turbulent 1960s, there was increasing awareness and acknowledgment that our country, state, and diocese were all falling far short of offering equal opportunity to Black people.
Back then, just like today, some people thought the Church should stay out of politics and not concern itself with the issues of the day. Several bishops pushed back against that point of view, but none more powerfully or eloquently than The Rt. Rev. George Rath, who served the Diocese of Newark as Suffragan Bishop from 1964 to 1970, Bishop Coadjutor from 1970 to 1974, and then finally as Bishop from 1974 to his retirement in 1978. Until I started digging in the archives, Bishop Rath was just a name to me, but now I’ve added him to my pantheon of spiritual heroes. I bet you’ll feel the same way after you read this, from his address to the 1965 Diocesan Convention:
“A Church that is founded upon the faith that God sent his own Son into the world to redeem the world cannot refrain from entering into the politics, and the economy, and the social mores of the age in which it finds itself. To some, the saying, ‘Let the Church be the Church,’ means, ‘Let the Church look after its services of worship, run its Sunday Schools, minister to the sick, and the dying, the poor and the bereaved, but let it keep its nose out of the realms of business, industry, commerce, and politics.’ On the other hand, the Church is never more the Church than when it acts as the conscience of the nation. The Church is never more the Church than when it acts in protest against injustice or the miscarriage of justice. The Church is never more the Church than when it speaks for the unorganized and voiceless poor. The Church is never more the Church than when it takes its stand beside the American Negro in his protest against his economic oppression, his educational deprivation, his political disenfranchisement, his social disadvantage. The Church is never more the Church than when it seeks to act as mediator between hostile groups and hostile nations. The Church is never more the Church than when it stands ready to spend its life for the sake of the world, imitating the Lord’s example.”
These are such powerful, wise, and challenging words from Bishop Rath. Now here we are, 55 years later, in our own turbulent time, when a deadly virus lurks in the air around us, when so many have lost their jobs or worry that they’re next out the door, when political differences seem to have driven an unbridgeable chasm between us. Plus, the Church is much smaller and weaker than it was during Bishop Rath’s day, and thanks to these long months of exile from our sanctuaries, the Church is likely to shrink even more. So, given all that, today it is tempting for the Church to merely look after itself, to think somehow that all we should do – or, all we can do right now, anyway – is care for our own people, avoiding controversy at all cost, doing our best to keep the institution going during these most difficult days.
Yet, as Bishop Rath understood well and expressed so clearly, the Church is never more the Church than when we link arms with the poor and the oppressed, when we speak truth to power, especially when power really doesn’t want to hear it. And, the Church is never more the Church than when we roll up our sleeves and get to work, doing our part to heal the world so loved by God, building a world more like what God has always intended for us all.
Your brother in Christ,
Tom
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