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

Chicago, South Side, 1967 (Part Three)
“We joined the students who were shouting the usual civil rights slogans and sang the usual songs: “We shall overcome” was fine with me, but I became a bit uneasy when the chant turned to “The devil is a white man.” It was touch and go.”

— Joel Nickel, The Chicago Memoirs

Our Redeemer can seat 1,700 people, and years ago it used to be full. As a large parish some people were marked by their anonymity, content to be spectators in worship. There were people who attended Our Redeemer for 30 years and didn’t know each other. So establishing a sense of community was not easy, given the current division between an elderly white group and a young black group. I always had an affection for these elderly members whose children had moved to the suburbs but who still attended Our Redeemer out of loyalty and increasingly because of an opportunity to be of service. It was stimulating to be part of an active caring community of believers, even at some personal cost, and do what was possible to overcome racism.

Where two or three are gathered together
Filling a church with room for 1,700 worshippers had last been possible more than a decade earlier. Now a remnant made a space for itself, turning a few pews sideways and making a transcept of the side aisle.

Early in my ministry at Our Redeemer I learned that when the first black member was set to join the parish, an anonymous donor gave the church a set of silver-plated communion cup trays for individual glass cups. Before this the church used only a “common cup.” The gift wasn’t a secret kept from the new black members, and the reasons behind it amounted to a grave offense. In the deep South there were separate drinking fountains for whites and blacks, labeled “for whites only.” And now, here in the North, there was also a reticence to drink out of the same cup, even a common communion cup (which in Lutheran usage symbolizes the unity of the body of Christ, I Corinthians 10:16). So we started using a little ritual when coming to the communion rail — communicants would turn to each other, shake hands and say, “The love of Christ unites us.” Then people would kneel to receive the sacrament. If we are the body of Christ, then it must be acknowledged between us, black and white, young and old, middle class and poor. In this latter category it should be noted that there were quite a few middle-class black families in the congregation, and sometimes this socio-economic category was a barrier between people even within a given race, among whites as well. What helped this little ritual along was a liturgical shift from understanding the Lord’s Supper in a strictly penitential and individualist manner to a style that emphasized celebration and thanksgiving — a truly communal “eucharist.”

By opening the church doors to the community, we also invited the problems and issues that came in with the people. When we arrived in Englewood, there were about 55 members who lived within walking distance of the church (a number that would change drastically within a year). All the others were commuters. It was unrealistic of some to expect the pastor, who lived in the neighborhood of the church and daily came under its influence, to maintain the ethos of suburbia. For us Englewood was a reality shock: The world here is not inherently benevolent and its authorities are not necessarily “public servants.” The Chicago Police label their squad car doors with an insignia and the words “We serve and protect.” That begged the question of just who was being served and protected.

Sometimes the Advent vespers were just two of us
The moveable pulpit-altar designed by Hilmar Sieving and built by Les Armstrong. A crucifix on the wall behind had a crown of thorns fashioned from barbed wire which once kept children out of the parking lot.

One day there was a disturbance outside Englewood High School as students were leaving class — rock and bottle throwing, touched off by the dismissal of a popular teacher and the students’ ire at what they considered an insult to their just needs. A quick consultation with three other clergymen determined that the next morning we would position ourselves in clerical garb outside the school to provide some kind of mediating presence. All four of us (Norm Theiss from St. Stephen Lutheran Church, Sherwood Nelson from Bethel Lutheran Church, and John Porter, black Methodist pastor) showed up at 7:30 a.m. and not much was going on. Fifteen students were picketing in a circle outside the main entrance. At eight o’clock we thought things would go smoothly as only a few more students joined the picket line. But then a dozen police cars showed up and the police got out wearing their baby blue riot helmets with night sticks in hand. Shotguns were visible on the rear ledge of the squad cars. In a matter of minutes the picket line swelled to over five hundred students. Someone inside the school pulled the fire alarm and soon three fire engines with sirens blaring and lights flashing joined the crowded street, providing a good lesson on how to heat up an incident.

We joined the students who were shouting the usual civil rights slogans and singing the usual songs: “We shall overcome” was fine with me, but I became a bit uneasy when the chant turned to “The devil is a white man.” It was touch and go. The white principal, failing to corral the students back into the school building, unilaterally canceled school for that day with a bull horn announcement. Most of the students dispersed; others went to a nearby church for their “freedom school.” This was to be a sign of things to come. The upshot of the demonstration was that the teacher’s dismissal stuck, but at year’s end the principal was transferred to another school. Englewood High School returned to its normality: a 45-percent drop-out rate and a collegebound rate of 8 percent of those who graduate. Much of what passes for education in the ghetto reinforces the failure syndrome of children from poor, splintered families. Englewood High School at one time was the top scholastic high school in Chicago; now it’s dead last. There was no mistaking who the police were there to serve and protect as the principal stood at his office window surrounded by blue.

How does one interpret this scene to a commuter congregation? I quote from Kenneth Clark in his book, Dark Ghetto:

The Negro intellectual tends to reject the church altogether as a multiple symbol of fantasy. He tends to regard the church as basically irrelevant to the hard and difficult realities of race. He tends to emphasize the fact that the church has historically compromised on moral social issues, obscuring them by abstruse theological debate. In his view the churches have, in a sense, sought to have the cake of moral leadership and eat it too, refusing to come in conflict with those power groups that support racial injustice, determined to hold on to their major contributors, who are usually conservative, fearing to offend them by commitment to social change. It has seldom dared to question the validity of the uses of power by the princes of power. This looks like hypocrisy to the Negro intellectual, and as a result he often rejects not only the church as an institution, but religion itself.

I often attended the Saturday morning meetings of Operation Breadbasket, the Jesse Jackson organization, at a South-Side movie theater. Inspiration had to come from somewhere, and this organization (which later became “Operation Push”) seldom disappointed me. Martin Luther King, who after all was a black intellectual, offered a different perspective, speaking about how the black church was a refuge that helped black people survive the violent forces of racism, combat a negative self image, and initiate some rebellion against involuntary economic slavery. The message of the spirituals has a lot more to do with freedom than heaven, and the black preacher was not handing out an opiate but rather instilling some courage to go back out and face “the man.” Hilmar Sieving invited me to attend a breakfast meeting at the University of Chicago at which Jesse and Martin spoke about the civil rights movement and the economic pressures it brought to bear on white businesses and institutions. Jesse talked about local plans in Chicago, about “grabbing the powerful by their vitals” with an economic boycott to choke off profits.

The ghetto can be profitable. The crime syndicate and their numbers racket (forerunner of the Oregon lottery), real estate developers, housing inspectors on the take, aldermen selling feather-bedded jobs, tavern owners (there are more taverns than storefront churches in Englewood), drug pushers, insurance company claim adjustors, food chains which dump spoiled produce at inflated prices into their ghetto stores, loan sharks, and even some preachers can line their pockets of they play it right. The poor pay more, and because they are defenseless they are easy prey. We call the church a sanctuary; that’s not just a word for holy space — it means a haven, a refuge from harm.

“And take they our life, goods, fame ... they yet have nothing won, the kingdom ours remaineth.” But “they” can’t have my “child or wife!” I believe my family comes first in life and love. Susan is pregnant again, and in the midst of much stress she looks lovely. But in Luther’s “battle hymn of the Reformation,” who is the “they?” Martin Luther was obviously thinking of the Pope Leo X and his minions who were arraigned against him and the reform of the Church. Instead of thinking only of the local parish — Our Redeemer, Englewood, and all the local problems, there is a bigger picture in which we are implicated. At Reformation time (the 450th anniversary coming up in 1968) Our Redeemer was host for the “Lutheran Conference on War and Race.” This conference drew primarily clergy from all over the United States and was the beginning of the Lutheran Action Committee (LAC). No one shall long remember what was said there, but ethical opposition to the Viet Nam War was seen as not incidental to the civil rights movement and the conference was a catalyst for those who attended, who went home strengthened to deal with the complex issues of the day.

I began to think and preach about what was happening in Southeast Asia, recalling a seminar that Paul Schroeder, my history professor at Concordia Senior College, sponsored in 1961. It was a part of the world few knew anything about, except that Vietnam was supposed to be a domino in the Cold War chess match. In observing how public opinion is influenced, it seems like fear is a stronger motivating factor than faith and love. I was learning how reactive Lutherans can be in following the political status quo and how unquestioning they are of authority. Still, ethics cannot avoid politics, even in the pulpit. Jesus wasn’t crucified for being a nice guy. Will engagement with social problems dilute the “pure gospel?” About two years later I learned that there was a group within the congregation that met to figure out how they could divest themselves of this young preacher who was “not for us.” This wasn’t the only time the “divinity of the call” saved me.

Another side issue raised by the morass in Vietnam and the church’s stance with regard to war and race was how to join in conversation with people and groups who were not always “angels” in the community. My “honeymoon” with the congregation was over after only seven months. In December we held a marathon five-hour voters meeting. Issues were beginning to come out into the open and for once a voters meeting was dealing with the issues and implications of Lutheran theology. As painful as the discussion was, the frank and honest dialogue was paving the way for the development of a caring community within the congregation.

Patricia Joseph’s baby boy died in his crib from a virus infection. I learned of the tragedy when I met her brother, Glenn, carrying the baby’s corpse wrapped up in a blanket over to St. Bernard Hospital where it was handled as just another DOA. I sat with Patricia’s mother through the grilling of a policeman trying to prove criminal neglect. The Josephs were members of Our Redeemer. The crib death was sorrow enough, but to be assumed guilty by an insensitive officer was almost beyond the coping skills which black people had learned by much practice. It was Christmas. The Christ-child was born ... and died ... for Englewood ... and for Patricia’s infant son.

Next:  The Chicago Memoirs of 1968 (Part One)