EPILOGUE
At the benchmark of one hundred years, the Community Renewal Society looks back on a spiritual pilgrimage that has moved from charity to compassion, from food baskets at Christmas to questions of structural unemployment. It is a pilgrimage which, in many ways, has mirrored the life of the city. Out of the dreams inherent in burgeoning industrial expansion, there has emerged an urban society of massive bureaucratic and technological structures. The simple economy which could depend on unskilled immigrants has become complex and sophisticated, demanding the skills of high technology.
Throughout this century of rapid social change the Society has found its balance in the “Congregational Way.” For all of its history the Society has tried to act with compassion; now its justice and mercy find a different focus in a complicated world.
In the early days the Society asked little of the predominately Catholic immigrant population for whom it turned its Protestant church sanctuaries into settlement house gyms. The only cost of membership was need itself. It developed Sunday schools, religious curricula and retreats and, during the depression, many churches and even the regional body of the Congregational denomination leaned heavily on Society resources when bankruptcy threatened. Yet the Society was not in the business of building a loyal constituency through direct service programs. Rather it looked to the church to continue the nurture of those who responded.
A steadfast element in the Society’s history has been its relation to the church, in particular the Congregational-Christian church and its descendant, the United Church of Christ. In fact, the Society, with its voluntary, covenant relationship with the United Church of Christ, is distinctive among the few church-related missionary societies in the country. The New York City Missionary Society has no specific denominational ties; a similar agency in San Francisco, the Glide Foundation, operates quite freely, but is ecclesiastically linked to United Methodist structures; the Boston City Missionary Society, though most like the Community Renewal Society, receives yearly allocations from the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ, but, nevertheless, has remained more independent of the denomination.
Historically, the Society’s relation to the church, while consistent, has often been tense and ambiguous. For an independent agency there is the temptation to ignore roots in the church. At the same time, too close a relationship brings control by ecclesiastical structures and the possible political constraint of creativity and prophetic witness. The Community Renewal Society’s relationship to the church has a unique advantage for both bodies; it depends on mutual trust.
Of course, it is through the church that the Society has been able to develop another of its unique strengths, the faithful participation of church-related business people. Dedicated volunteers on the Society’s board continue to be pragmatic and practical without letting that stand in the way of witnessing to the Gospel story. It is this combination of good business practice with a longer term view of results that has made it possible for the Society to take risks and be creative.
Another factor enabling that risk and creativity has been the Lawson endowment. Sometimes an assured income can be a mixed blessing leading to deadly conservatism, but it is this Trust which has allowed the development of programs impossible to consider without unencumbered income.
The Society then begins its second century aware of unique strengths: its voluntary church relationship, strong leadership from committed volunteers, an income allowing creative risk in programming, and commitment to the “Congregational Way.”
Those strengths continue to be pitted against the apparently intractable problems of race and poverty. The Society understands that the plight of the poor is related both to sinful human nature and unjust systems of society; that racial discrimination is not only a product of individual attitudes, but is embedded in the structures of society. It is this awareness that has led CRS from the direct service programs of its early years to today’s battles with urban systems, the “principalities and powers” as Paul has described them.
With the growing interdependencies within modern culture, public policy will become more and more crucial in determining questions of social justice. How to provide for the basic needs of all segments of the population while dealing with the problem of incentives remains a complicated, ethical question.
Confronting this question while continuing the struggle to eradicate the deep roots of racism in our culture will absorb the attention of this agency of the church far into the future. There is much work to be done. One only hopes that the “Congregational Way” of doing justice without seeking immediate rewards will continue to characterize the work of the Community Renewal Society.
Donald L. Benedict Executive Director 1960-1982