The Chicago Memoirs:
Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, 1967-1972

Chicago, South Side, 1967 (Part One)
“I remember walking into the church building for the first time. It was seductive in its size and beauty, for once inside you were unaware of the poor ghetto community outside. On its walls in gold letters were the words: ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.’ All what things?”

— Joel Nickel, The Chicago Memoirs

We received the pastoral call from Our Redeemer, Chicago, in June of 1967. Susan and I had completed a busy two years in Detroit at Riverside Lutheran Church where I was assistant pastor to Dave Eberhard, learning the ropes of urban ministry from the master. However you can only be assistant so long before wanting to take up your own charge. My father had died the previous fall and it seemed good to move closer to both of our families in Chicago. Riverside had been a good training ground. The “black power movement” had begun prior to the Watts riot, and it was an obvious challenge to see if a white pastor could effectively minister in a changing community.

Friendly advice: Don’t come!
It was a case of “out of the pot and into the fire.” Susan, Philip and Joel arrived in Chicago’s Englewood community ahead of the moving van.

Before accepting the call to Our Redeemer we visited the parish and met with Milt Gunderman, who had accepted a call to Hawaii where he would serve a multiracial congregation. His advice was, “Don’t come!” I detected a defeated spirit which had struggled against overwhelming odds and a change-resistant congregation. Milt and his wife showed us the parsonage, built in 1901 — a huge home separated from the church by an asphalt parking lot. Before the church was built in 1923 this manse belonged to a wealthy lawyer. It had 18-inch thick brick walls; its first-story windows were all covered with metal security bars. It had a beautiful grand staircase to the second floor plus a back stairway to what we called the “maid’s room,” which even had its own bathroom. There was a full basement (with a boxing bag hanging from the ceiling on which to work out pastoral frustrations) and a full unheated attic where I eventually set up my art studio. Its peagreen carpet (I was convinced it was woven with steel wool) had curious brown spots, the result of the Gundermans’ Doberman pinscher having free run of the place without being house broken.

Milt exercised the dog next door inside the church, having it chase a softball down one of the long slate-tiled aisles. The huge dog would grab the ball in its mouth and then slide 20 feet before coming to a stop. At the time it seemed a bit irreverent, but outdoor exercise was unwise. The Gundermans had tried hard — with special summer programs staffed by young people trained for urban work through Valparaiso University (a program started by Walt Reiner called “Prince of Peace Volunteers” — a church “peace corps”). Transfers out of the congregation still outnumbered accessions.

I remember walking into the church building for the first time. It was seductive in its size and beauty, for once inside you were unaware of the poor ghetto community outside. On its walls in gold letters were the words: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” All what things? If one confused the “kingdom of God” with the church building, it amounted to a cruel statement. This “holy space” invited visions of liturgical pageantry, ego-trip homiletics and the further development of liturgical art to match the mosaic reredos, wood carved panels on balcony fronts, the huge wood-carved gothic cover over the baptismal font, and, of course, the marvelous stained glass windows. The unanswered question that kept crossing my mind was, why build such an edifice on a side street? Why not at least on a corner lot along a main thoroughfare? Why in mid-block on a one-way street?

Cathedral of Gospel
One could easily take refuge inside this cathedral of Gospel art and ignore the reality on the street outside. And I could understand why the members of the congregation wished to protect this building from the changes and chances of urban blight.

The founding pastor Guido Schuessler, his son Luther, and grandson Paul (all Our Redeemer pastors) called this “the Cathedral of Gospel Art.” This magnificent church was memorialized in the congregation’s 50th anniversary book. Luther Schuessler matched Our Redeemer on the South Side in importance with St. Luke Lutheran Church on the North Side (A.R. Kretzmann, pastor) and Grace Lutheran Church on the west side in River Forest (O.A. Geiseman, pastor). On the railing posts leading up to the raised pulpit were three statues, satirized by Hilmar Sieving as “Martin Luther with an open Bible, Walther with a closed Bible, and Schuessler with no Bible at all.” Hilmar claimed the church had “an edifice complex.” As Charlie Klebenow, one of the capable, concerned elders later told me, “If Our Redeemer has one abiding sin, it is the sin of pride.” To which I answered, “Unfortunately pride is always fatal — it goes before a fall.”

One could easily take refuge inside this cathedral of Gospel art and ignore the reality on the street outside. And I could understand why the members of the congregation wished to protect this building from the changes and chances of urban blight. Save the church! But that is a misguided impulse in a church that already has a Savior.

The reality of what was happening on the streets hit home before we even left Detroit. Two weeks before the movers arrived at our little bungalow on Harding Street, we took a quick vacation to Montreal and Maine where we camped, out of touch with the rest of the world. On our way home we stopped at a motel in Boston where I bought a newspaper. The headlines were large: RIOT IN DETROIT. There on the front page was a photo of a National Guard tank guarding the fifth precinct police station at St. Jean and Jefferson, eight blocks from our home. We drove back to Detroit as fast as we could with the radio tuned in to whatever station we could dial up. When we arrived the next day, most of the action had already quieted down. The National Guard troops were still patrolling Harding Street, rifles slung over their shoulders. This was a shock for most Detroit citizens because there was a collective confidence that the city had made progress in race relations. Black families had moved into the middle class thanks to employment opportunities in the auto industry. But the poor still had been neglected and their anger spilled over in arson and looting. A few days later the moving van came and the white preacher and his family moved out of the inner city of Detroit.

It was a case of “out of the pot and into the fire.” Susan, Philip and I arrived in Chicago’s Englewood community ahead of the moving van. Hilmar Sieving met us at 6418 South Harvard with the keys to the parsonage and made us feel welcome. Hilmar worked as a librarian at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park and lived with his daughter Cathy in Woodlawn, another inner-city community east of Englewood. His wife had died a few years earlier, and their son John, who through a medical accident at birth was mentally disabled, was living in a care facility outside of Chicago. Hilmar knew Sue’s mother, Olga, from St. Luke Church and School (where Sue completed grade school under the tutelage of her grandfather Henry Waldschmidt and where Hilmar’s sister-in-law, Gert Doederlein, also taught). Hilmar was extremely helpful to us, interpreting both congregation and community to the new arrivals. We felt rather conspicuous living in the biggest house in a neighborhood made up primarily of apartment buildings. There were many uncovered windows in the parsonage. Before Hilmar took us out for supper, Bob Griffen and his family, among the first black members of Our Redeemer, came to wash all the parsonage windows, even the glass windows covering the study bookshelves. Though I didn’t realize it that night, I would replace many of those panes of glass over the next five years.

The congregation was amazed that they had found a pastor so fast. Their last vacancy had lasted 18 months. Dr. Luther Schuessler had died suddenly in 1962. To that point there had been little lay leadership, and the parish was still living under their Cathedral of Gospel art myth. The congregation had been slow to integrate when the first racial changes started in the mid-1950s. I was told how ushers would position themselves at the front door and indicate to any black person coming to worship that “there was a church for them in Woodlawn.” The Statistical Yearbook of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod lists no membership statistics for Our Redeemer in the late ’50s and early ’60s, which indicates a reluctance to show the decline in numbers to the rest of the denomination.

Englewood had been the scene of some of the worst “block busting” in Chicago, victimized by unscrupulous real estate speculators who were never restrained by law or conscience. Racial fears were the power that permitted them to operate with such impunity, which they did with community-ruining efficiency. Both white and black families suffered and blamed each other for their unwanted circumstances. Whites sold their homes at low prices once a speculator moved a black family onto their block and then moved out in fear, raging against all Afro-Americans; blacks bought those homes at inflated prices, often on contract, trying to move into a better neighborhood, cursing the white exploiters. As black comedian, Dick Gregory, reminded us: “Down South we can live close to whites as long as we don’t get ‘uppity’; up North we can get uppity as long as we don’t get close.” The change of race meant also a reduction in city services — like garbage pickup, street cleaning, street and curb repair, the services being transferred to precincts with more aldermanic clout. Chicago was at the time the most segregated city in the United States.

There were schemes to keep Englewood white, or at least under white control. The Dan Ryan Expressway was supposed to be a barrier to keep the black community in Woodlawn from moving westward. The 63rd and Halsted shopping center, once the largest mercantile center outside of the Loop, spent $9 million to retain its white clientele. The plan rerouted all streets around the entire mall to isolate it from the community with a ring of circular well-lit parking lots around the department stores. Stores within the mall were spruced up. The Green Street Organization opposed the destruction of many of the best homes in Englewood which stood in the way of this development, taking their case all the way to the Supreme Court with the argument that public funds were being spent for private gain. The court refused to hear their case. Whites were leaving Englewood and Our Redeemer too.

The voting members of Our Redeemer finally approved a statement calling for an “open door policy” toward the community. Milt Gunderman put up a sign: “This is an integrated church.” But finding a common cultural denominator between the races was difficult; the demonstrative styles of worship in black churches were so different from the orderly, cerebral liturgies of white churches. The unspoken understanding was that you can come in as long as you don’t expect us to change. Since God is unchangeable. His “house” must be unchangeable: “The Lord is in His temple, all within keep silence.” The transient nature of the community clashed with the myth of cultural permanence. Most staff workers and volunteers at Our Redeemer were white. But many white members of the congregation volunteered to serve as baptismal sponsors for black children and became connected to their families in the process. Baptism, which is the sacrament of a new Christian identity, became the glue of some deep, lasting relationships which transcended race. Slowly black members moved into leadership roles, but the Men’s Club folded rather than integrate. The first black members to join Our Redeemer were in leadership positions by the time we arrived on the scene.

A new perspective: Our Redeemer from an alley
Though not roundly applauded, the new sketch was on the bulletin cover for the new minister’s installation service.

Since the congregation hadn’t expected to get a pastor so soon, they had arranged for guest speakers. I used the “free” time to paint and repair the parsonage and parish hall. I felt my way around Englewood and made contacts with other pastors and community leaders. There was a spirit of adventure, exploring the sights, sounds and smells of the neighborhood — the bakery on 63rd Street with its fresh doughnuts, the fish market next door, the rumble of the Englewood “L” and the sounds of the Dan Ryan; buildings in various stages of disrepair and the patterns of color and missing beams left on the sides of buildings when a connected building was torn down. Then there was the smell of urine in the hallways of tenement buildings and the smell of chittlins in the kitchen. It was a neighborhood in which people were visible on the curb, on the doorstep, in the window, gathered on the street corner or in the cafe with the open door — people coming and going sharing conversation, catcalls, “grooving” in the present because tomorrow might not come.

The summer heat made the afternoons stand still. The parsonage backyard was the littered church parking lot — and it was also the neighborhood playground, frequently filled with a hundred children who often had three baseball games going on the same piece of pavement. I regularly swept up broken glass. There were no neighborhood parks in walking distance, and one didn’t want to walk too far or you might be on another gang’s turf. The walls of buildings were tagged with large D’s painted with spray cans. It didn’t take long for me to find out that “D’s Run It” meant that the area was part of the turf of the “Devil’s Disciples,” a confederation of smaller gangs in Englewood.

My home pastor Dean Lueking (Grace, River Forest) preached for my installation. His message was that people will know of the faith through our proclamation, integrity, consistency, and persistence. Pastor Bill Griffen, black pastor from Christ the King Lutheran Church on the near south side, was the officiant. He borrowed Pastor Wayne Saffen’s bright red cope (Saffen was at the time campus pastor at the University of Chicago and a house church, St. Gregory of Nyssa). Bill was the unofficial picture of the “black bishop”, encouraging us whitey pastors in our labors. I drew a quick sketch for the cover of the installation bulletin, picturing the church edifice from the vantage point of an alley a block to the east, indicating the point of view which the community had of the building. There were no extent photographs of the church indicating its surrounding community. Do not fear — the mundane will not contaminate the sacred. This view was a new perspective, though not roundly applauded.

Next:  The Chicago Memoirs of 1967 (Part Two)