Eugene Carson Blake’s Social Creed: Leadership and Content

View and print as PDF

Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy Meets with Lead­ers (includ­ing Blake) of the March on Wash­ing­ton, 1963

Sev­eral years ago, in 2006, we cel­e­brated the one-hundredth anniver­sary of Eugene Car­son Blake’s birth (Nov. 7, 1906). In 2008, we hon­ored another Cen­ten­nial, that of the Social Creed of the Churches, born in 1908 at the found­ing of the Fed­eral Coun­cil of Churches (see Appen­dix A). I link these two events because of Blake’s dual com­mit­ment to ecu­menism and to social progress, espe­cially in race rela­tions. To remem­ber Blake is to remem­ber his for­mal lead­er­ship as Pres­i­dent of the National Coun­cil of Churches (suc­ces­sor of the Fed­eral Coun­cil) and, later, Gen­eral Sec­re­tary of the World Coun­cil of Churches, and his lead­er­ship by vision, as in the Decem­ber 1960 pro­posal for church union among the four most “main­line” Protes­tant churches. To remem­ber the Social Creed of 1908, and cre­ate a new Social Creed for the 21st Cen­tury, is to strengthen ecu­meni­cal Chris­t­ian wit­ness and action today.

___________________________________________

“Trea­son and dis­sent are being con­fused. The shrine of con­science and pri­vate judg­ment, which God alone has a right to enter, is being invaded.” — from Let­ter to Pres­by­te­ri­ans,
refer­ring to McCarthy­ism
___________________________________________

Blake was an elected, elec­tive, and enor­mously effec­tive ecu­meni­cal leader. Per­son­ally attrac­tive in dynamic and char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally “Amer­i­can” ways, the core of his lead­er­ship was its eth­i­cal Chris­t­ian wit­ness. To be a Chris­t­ian was to stand for jus­tice, which meant in prac­tice, to sup­port social progress. In this, he embod­ied the the­o­log­i­cal con­sen­sus of neo-orthodoxy, gen­er­ally con­sis­tent with both Karl Barth and Rein­hold Niebuhr, though his ear­li­est views were formed by his socially con­scious, yet the­o­log­i­cally con­ser­v­a­tive, Repub­li­can par­ents. R. Dou­glas Brack­en­ridge, in his biog­ra­phy, cites Blake’s motto: “min­is­ters must risk being wrong rather than to be silent and safe.” Blake applied this to the whole church and was found, from the 1930s to the 1970s, to be right, at least among a solid major­ity of Pres­by­te­ri­ans and other ecu­meni­cal Chris­tians. Because Blake had the con­tent, char­ac­ter, and clear Chris­t­ian con­vic­tion, he was able to move the church to meet God’s Spirit in the world. And in the World Coun­cil, he was able to main­tain a high degree of con­sen­sus even as lib­er­a­tion the­ol­ogy came to chal­lenge neo-orthodoxy’s approach to Chris­t­ian social involvement.

Oth­ers can speak to addi­tional aspects of Blake’s lead­er­ship as pas­tor, Stated Clerk of the Pres­by­ter­ian Church, and Gen­eral Sec­re­tary of the World Coun­cil of Churches. That he could preach and had some­thing to say is clear. What I will argue here is that his lead­er­ship power was based not only in per­sonal charisma, but in the prophetic claim that res­onates in every con­victed Chris­t­ian heart. In terms of the three tra­di­tional offices of Jesus Christ—Prophet, Priest, and King—this man, known often as the “Protes­tant pope,” may remind us how cru­cial the prophetic dimen­sion is to any “kingly” lead­er­ship in the church. Plat­forms like the Social Creed express that prophetic ele­ment: vision­ary lead­ers like Blake find and make oppor­tu­ni­ties to call the plays, rally their teams, and move the ball.

___________________________________________

“Accord­ing to the new phi­los­o­phy, if what is true ‘gives aid and com­fort’ to our ene­mies, it must be sup­pressed. Truth is thus a cap­tive in the land of the free. At the same time, and for the same rea­son, great words like ‘love,’ ‘peace,’ ‘jus­tice,’ and ‘mercy,’ and the ideas which under­lie them, are becom­ing sus­pect.” — from Let­ter to Pres­by­te­ri­ans
___________________________________________

False prophets may mobi­lize the “war­rior” energy—which Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity foot­ball player Blake always had—but do not com­bine it with the order­ing and bless­ing func­tions of mature (kingly or queenly) lead­er­ship. The order­ing func­tion is larger than giv­ing orders, and needs the prophet’s vision of a bet­ter divine order. I would go so far as to say that Blake suc­ceeded because he was a “min­is­ter in full” (to adapt Tom Wolfe’s “man in full” phrase): he served as a priest, embody­ing God’s love and sac­ri­fice as a pas­tor; he was always a wise teacher (this rab­binic func­tion was also Jesus’ base); he had the prophet’s courage to chal­lenge the pow­ers (of McCarthy­ism as well as racial, reli­gious, and eco­nomic big­otry); and then he had the con­fi­dence and com­pe­tence to carry the rep­re­sen­ta­tive work of lead­er­ship, express­ing the hopes and pur­poses of a whole com­mu­nity. In terms of the Jun­gian Chris­t­ian psy­chol­ogy of Robert (not Thomas) Moore, Blake had the four quad­rants: War­rior (for jus­tice, prophetic vision), Magi­cian (teacher-making tra­di­tion come alive), Lover (pas­tor, up-builder, con­nec­tor), and King (pre-eminent rep­re­sen­ta­tive, orderer, orches­tra­tor of pub­lic bless­ing events).

In sum­ma­riz­ing Blake’s lead­er­ship strengths, I do not mean to deify or beat­ify him. When I met him a cou­ple of times in the Prince­ton Sem­i­nary chapel in the late 1970s, when he came down from Con­necti­cut for the board meet­ings, I saw a kindly, older man, some­what stooped. Princeton’s Pres­i­dent, James McCord, intro­duced me to him, per­haps assum­ing I knew more of their back­ground together than I did. Blake was at that time still on the Bread for the World mast­head, hav­ing led that Chris­t­ian cit­i­zens’ orga­ni­za­tion after his defeat for Mod­er­a­tor of the Pres­by­ter­ian Church upon his return from the WCC Gen­eral Sec­re­tary post. I may have known about that mis­cal­cu­la­tion, but I did not know until read­ing Brackenridge’s Eugene Car­son Blake: Prophet with Port­fo­lio (Seabury, 1978), that Blake had checked his famous Church Union ser­mon with Jim McCord prior to its deliv­ery. This is to say, Blake made mis­takes, was not always a per­fect admin­is­tra­tor (accord­ing to Brack­en­ridge), but gen­er­ally knew who to work with and depend upon within the larger church.

___________________________________________

“A still greater oblig­a­tion is to make sure that what we mean by secu­rity, and the meth­ods we employ to achieve it, are in accor­dance with the will of God. Oth­er­wise, any human attempt to estab­lish a form of world order which does no more than exalt the inter­est of a class, a cul­ture, a race, or a nation, above God and the inter­ests of the whole human fam­ily, is fore­doomed to dis­as­ter.” — from Let­ter to Pres­by­te­ri­ans
___________________________________________

In terms of the con­tent of Blake’s “social creed,” I would again stress that he and his fam­ily were not part of the “Social Gospel” move­ment that inspired the 1908 social creed. The recent efforts that cre­ated an ecu­meni­cal Social Creed for the 21st Cen­tury broad­ened the orig­i­nal creed’s pri­mar­ily eco­nomic focus to include the peace and racial jus­tice issues for which Blake is justly known. But in an address Blake deliv­ered in 1966, “Mil­i­tant Faith—A Word to Con­ser­v­a­tives,” see how much eco­nomic and social awareness—and what we now call “globalization”—inform his list of key issues:

Pop­u­la­tion explo­sion—all over the world. What do we do to feed, house, and orga­nize the life of [humans] whose num­bers are grow­ing by geo­met­ric progression?

Urban­iza­tion. How do we keep human life human and humane, when [we] are more and more packed into high-rise apart­ments in big­ger and big­ger cities?

Tech­no­log­i­cal Unem­ploy­ment. How do we find jobs for every­body when pro­grammed machines do so many things bet­ter? And how do we use the leisure that machines make possible?

Deper­son­al­iza­tion. How do we avoid becom­ing merely num­bers in a machine?

Cyber­net­ics. Who is to pro­gram the machines and with what values?

Nuclear war. How do we pre­vent it and how can we find ways to pro­mote peace­ful change?

The shrink­ing world. What does it mean that on radio we can hear and on tele­vi­sion we can see imme­di­ately any­thing of impor­tance wher­ever it happens?

Inter­de­pen­dence. What does it mean to be depen­dent for life itself on elec­tric­ity or rapid tran­sit or good labor relations?

Plu­ral­ism. How can you rec­on­cile nec­es­sary tol­er­ance with vital convictions?”

What Blake goes on to pro­vide are sev­eral “aspects of our Amer­i­can her­itage that I believe all Chris­tians ought to join in defend­ing [greatly edited here]:

• Equal­ity, espe­cially equal­ity of opportunity…
• …respon­si­ble indi­vid­ual freedom….
• …indi­vid­ual enterprise…voluntarism in busi­ness, in social con­cern, and in government….
• …gov­ern­ment of, by, and for the peo­ple …(and its)…institutions of free­dom…”
  (Blake, The Church in the Next Decade, New York: Macmil­lan, 1966, p. 22, 25)

A much longer treat­ment of Blake’s work on racial issues, from his arrest inte­grat­ing an amuse­ment park in Bal­ti­more to his inte­grat­ing the Office of the Gen­eral Assem­bly, might be given. Sim­i­larly, an assess­ment of his views on church and state, from his fight with McCarthy­ism to his state­ments on Roman Catholi­cism in pub­lic life, could be very help­ful. He dealt forth­rightly with what he called the “total­i­tar­ian” offi­cially Com­mu­nist regimes of the Soviet Union and China, push­ing for the inclu­sion of East­ern Ortho­dox Church rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the World Coun­cil (which also wel­comed many Third World churches dur­ing his tenure as Gen­eral Sec­re­tary). He con­fronted South African apartheid and addressed poverty as a more gen­eral chal­lenge to faith (Brackenridge’s book does not deal much with Blake’s encour­age­ment of the Con­fes­sion of 1967’s prepa­ra­tion).

___________________________________________

“There should be no reluc­tance to employ the con­fer­ence method to the full in the set­tling of dis­putes with our country’s ene­mies. Let us beware of the cyn­i­cal atti­tude which pre­vails in cer­tain offi­cial cir­cles to regard as a for­lorn hope any nego­ti­ated solu­tion of the major issues which divide [hu]mankind. Direct per­sonal con­fer­ence has been God’s way with [human­ity] from the begin­ning. ‘Come, now, and let us rea­son together,’ was the word of God to Israel through the Prophet Isa­iah.” — from Let­ter to Pres­by­te­ri­ans
___________________________________________

Over­all, a key to Blake’s wit­ness was its forward-looking char­ac­ter: his orches­trat­ing themes of the Upp­sala Assem­bly in 1968 (motto: “Behold, I make all things new”), like his help­ing orches­trate many cre­ative Gen­eral Assem­blies, showed his shrewd sense of emerg­ing needs and ways the church should address them. In a way, this reflects what Brack­en­ridge indi­cated was Blake’s sense in mov­ing from the influ­en­tial Albany, NY pul­pit to grow­ing Pasadena, CA, that he was mov­ing to where the future was more present.

Dur­ing Blake’s years as Stated Clerk (1951–1966), he repeat­edly stood for mea­sures to put into prac­tice the social teach­ings and social wit­ness pol­icy of the church in what he took to be a rev­o­lu­tion­ary time. Again, this could be a much longer paper to deal with that topic. For per­haps the clear­est state­ment of the church’s own lead­er­ship in soci­ety, how­ever, the first four para­graphs of the 1953 Let­ter to Pres­by­te­ri­ans, issued by the Gen­eral Assem­bly Coun­cil, should be read care­fully. Here Blake’s co-author of most of the rest of the doc­u­ment, Pres­i­dent John Mackay of Prince­ton Sem­i­nary, had been directly attacked by one of Sen­a­tor McCarthy’s asso­ciates as a “com­mu­nist.” This was on top of repeated far-right claims that the Protes­tant clergy included hun­dreds of Com­mu­nists and “fellow-travelers,” and on top of much craven­ness among elected offi­cials, includ­ing Pres­i­dent Eisen­hower. So Blake and Mackay decided to act on their Chris­t­ian con­vic­tions to help clear an entire culture’s air. And they led first within a Coun­cil of the Church, call­ing on it to be a true Coun­cil, guid­ing the whole church in its wit­ness. This was a moment when the abil­ity to enun­ci­ate a vision and the capac­ity to lead a com­mu­nity came together. May we see more of this in the daunt­ing days ahead!

Appen­dix A
The Social Creed of 1908
Fed­eral Coun­cil of Churches 
(Now, National Coun­cil of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.)

We deem it the duty of all Chris­t­ian peo­ple to con­cern them­selves directly with cer­tain prac­ti­cal indus­trial prob­lems. To us it seems that the Churches must stand—

For equal rights and com­plete jus­tice for all men in all sta­tions of life.

For the right of all men to the oppor­tu­nity for self-maintenance, a right ever to be wisely and strongly safe-guarded against encroach­ments of every kind.

For the right of work­ers to some pro­tec­tion against the hard­ships often result­ing from the swift cri­sis of indus­trial change.

For the prin­ci­ple of con­cil­i­a­tion and arbi­tra­tion in indus­trial dissensions.

For the pro­tec­tion of the worker from dan­ger­ous machin­ery, occu­pa­tional dis­ease, injuries and mortality.

For the abo­li­tion of child labor.

For such reg­u­la­tion of the con­di­tions of toil for women as shall safe­guard the phys­i­cal and moral health of the community.

For the sup­pres­sion of the “sweat­ing system.”

For the grad­ual and rea­son­able reduc­tion of the hours of labor to the low­est prac­ti­cal point, and for that degree of leisure for all which is a con­di­tion of the high­est human life.

For a release from employ­ment one day in seven.

For a liv­ing wage as a min­i­mum in every indus­try, and for the high­est wage that each indus­try can afford.

For the most equi­table divi­sion of the prod­ucts of indus­try that can ulti­mately be devised.

For suit­able pro­vi­sion for the old age of the work­ers and for those inca­pac­i­tated by injury.

For the abate­ment of poverty.

To the toil­ers of Amer­ica and to those who by orga­nized effort are seek­ing to lift the crush­ing bur­dens of the poor, and to reduce the hard­ships and uphold the dig­nity of labor, this coun­cil sends the greet­ing of human broth­er­hood and the pledge of sym­pa­thy and of help in a cause which belongs to all who fol­low Christ.

 

Back to Table of Contents