Churches Challenged to Combat World Racism

Delegates to a World Council of Churches conference on racism challenged American churches Friday to battle racial injustice, saying that “to keep silent at such a time as this is to invite despair and death for the People of God.”

Among the issues cited as evidence of racism were legal attacks on American Indian rights, a drop in the percentage of black college students, English-only campaigns directed against immigrants and the pesticide contamination of farm workers.

“We are deeply pained,” the 160 delegates said in a statement issued after a four-day conference held in downtown Los Angeles. “The response of the churches has been a deafening silence.”

The conference brought together delegates representing racial and ethnic groups from around the nation and the 30 men and women from 20 countries who make up the Program to Combat Racism Commission of the World Council of Churches. They toured the Los Angeles area to acquaint themselves with the living conditions of local minority groups.

In their statement, they said that churches in the United States should use the upcoming 500th anniversary of Columbus’ landing in America as a rallying point to protest “the imperial/colonial robbery of indigenous peoples’ land and the establishing of a dehumanizing slavery.”

They said Christian churches should restructure themselves “to include the values and experiences of racially oppressed groups.”

They also said that American churches should increase their total contribution to the Special Fund to Combat Racism of the World Council of Churches from less than $3,000 to $150,000 a year.

The fund has come in for criticism because of no-questions-asked grants issued to guerrilla groups fighting white-dominated governments in southern Africa.