Document Type
Newsletter
Publication Year
1961
Excerpt
A mark of great shame has come upon the church, evident even to the casual onlooker. We are referring to the fact that many congregations sell their property and move out without even making a serious effort in their communities to win the newcomers -- those of a different racial or ethnic background than that of the congregation. They sell their property to some other church denomination, some business firm, or even to a mission board of their own denomination; and some, with a gesture of magnanimity, "give" the property to the mission board and then move out. They move to greener pastures. They reestablish their congregational activity in another community, perhaps a new suburb, among people of similar racial or ethnic background, among people who like themselves can avoid for themselves and their children, because of a certain economic standard arrived at, the uncomfortable inconveniences of juvenile delinquency and other social misbehavior that almost inevitably find a fertile breeding ground in an overcrowded community. Churches move out and leave the newcomers in the community to their own fate. -- As this paper has reported previously, in one city twenty-three Lutheran churches alone have forsaken their inner city areas by moving out.
Recommended Citation
Lutheran Human Relations Association of America, "The Vanguard (Vol. 8, No. 2), Mar 1961" (1961). The Vanguard. 58.
https://scholar.valpo.edu/vanguard/58
