A Face of the Struggle

The involvement of the black church as a social institution (as well as its clergy) in the activities of the modern civil rights movement is well-documented: Most people are familiar with such congregations as Ebenezer Baptist Church, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Abyssinian Baptist Church, Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church; and pastors like Leon H. Sullivan, Ralph Abernathy, Joseph Lowery, and Martin L. King Jr.

We have heard relatively little, however, from or about those African-American clergy who were active within predominantly white ecclesiastic structures. Paul Washington is/was just such a clergyperson, and his denomination, the Episcopal Church, is most definitely acknowledged to be a white organization.

Nevertheless, the Episcopal Church - specifically the congregation of the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia - served as the place of strategy and shelter for such civil rights activist groups as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Power Movement, the Black Panther Party, the Black Economic Development Conference, the Congress of Racial Equality, Philadelphians for Equal Justice, and a host of others challenging the social inequities of our nation. It was also from the Church of the Advocate that Right Rev. Barbara Harris was called to become the first African-American female bishop of the Episcopal Church U.S.A., and the first in the history of the Anglican Communion. This book, Father Paul Washington of the Church of the Advocate: An Autobiography reveals the story of an African-American man who, born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, served as pastor of the Advocate for 25 years.

The quiet strength of this autobiography magnetically draws the reader into the reflective thinking of a man deeply devoted to his faith and unabashedly committed to a Christian ministry for social justice. His choice of the Episcopal clergy, rather than the Baptist tradition of his family, was conscious: It was within the Episcopal tradition that he found a match for his personality and his mother's long-standing dedication of her son to the clergy.

Although never sheltered from individual race prejudices nor white racism, inside and outside of his communion, Washington's return from his first pastoral assignment in Liberia brought him face to face with the embedded and vicious racism of the Episcopal tradition. He was denied an upgrading appointment in Philadelphia because a delegation of laypeople from the congregation visited the presiding bishop and proclaimed, "We know Father Washington and we like him, but as our vicar he would have to be our pastor, and 'we have daughters.'" This experience left its mark, and the author claims still to possess "the feeling that whites whom I consider to be friends can come to that line of race which they cannot cross."

The reader gleans a sense of Washington's honesty and deep theological devotion in the recounting of such incidents. It is fascinating to note the increased theological clarity Washington acquires as he becomes more deeply involved with the struggles of the community surrounding the Advocate and the larger African-American community.

FROM each of the ministries of the Advocate - a day-care center for children, an evening community center for young people, an Alcoholics Anonymous group, a citywide boycott effort directed at Tasty Baking Company - Paul Washington hears the experiences of the surrounding community and allows these to instruct his ministry. He also uses these guide points to expand and clarify his own theological thinking.

This clarity would be needed as the Advocate and Washington became focal points for local civil protest in 1963. The church and the pastor, in fact, became a beacon for strategic planning for the national civil rights movement, wherein theological clarity would be a prerequisite foundation for difficult and complex political decisions.

Too often we're only familiar with outcomes of decisions and have little appreciation for how individuals - leaders or otherwise - struggle with deciding. Father Washington reconnects the reader with the difficulty of decision making when one chooses to ground one's life work in faith.

Paul Washington recounts his many involvements with social actions for civil rights from 1964 through 1971. The narrative is a firsthand description of his work with the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations; his encounters with Philadelphia police and the violent rebellions that ensued as he worked with North Philadelphia residents; his participation in civil demonstrations demanding racial integration of Girard College - a school founded specifically for "poor, white, male orphans," but which by 1965 was located in the center of black North Philadelphia; his relationship to Black Unity and his role as an "apologist for Black Power"; and his association with such persons as Mattie Humphrey, John Churchville, William Strickland, Stokely Carmichael, Julian Bond, Mary Richardson, Walter Palmer, James Forman, Alice Walker, Jack Levine, William Akers, and many others. In his tole as "peacekeeper" and supporter of the demands from the militant attendants at the Third Black Power Conference in 1968, Father Washington describes his intent to fight for freedom as well as for the wholeness of the black community. To achieve this he reflects with the reader that "the power the omnipotent God had breathed into our black beings had to be released." The persistent connecting of real-life political situations with theological understandings of his faith occurs throughout the book, making it an appealing read.

Father Paul Washington of the Church of the Advocate is easy, enjoyable, and provocative reading with a perspective not often revealed. Unlike many others who have written about the turbulent times of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, Washington offers insight into the experiences of an African-American pastor whose ministry emanated from within the structures of a white church. The distinctive characteristics of Father Paul Washington, and the insights collected from his experience, should be sufficient to attract even the unacquainted.

Jualynne E. Dodson is associate professor of religious and African-American studies at the University of Colorado's Center for Ethnicity and Race in America in Boulder, Colorado.