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A Model to Combat Racism
By Gary L. Chamberlain

"In this discussion, I will begin with the apparent confirmation . . . between Christian belief and racist behavior and explore one possible strategy which the Christian churches can use to overcome the gap between belief and behavior. The model under study here combines laboratory training methods with the content of the Christian faith as a way of developing a community of people equipped with the tools and analysis necessary to deal with personal, institutional, and cultural racism."

IN official pronouncements, Christian churches have often opposed segregation as "unchristian." For example, in 1958, a statement of Catholic Bishops said:

The heart of the race question is moral and religious. It concerns the rights of man and our attitudes toward our fellow man. If our attitude is governed by the great Christian law of love of neighbor and respect for his rights, then we can work out harmoniously the techniques for making legal, educational, economic, and social adjustments.¹

But a year earlier, in 1957, commenting upon the role of American churches in the struggle for racial justice, Liston Pope of Yale Divinity School, stated:

The church is the most segregated major institution in American society. It has lagged behind the Supreme Court as the conscience of the nation on questions of race, and it has fallen far behind trade unions, factories, schools, department stores, athletic gatherings, and most other areas of human association as far as the achievement of integration in its own life is concerned.²

Gary L. Chamberlain is Assistant Professor of Religion at Webster College, St. Louis, Missouri. He received his doctorate from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California, and he has also taught at St. Benedict's College, Atchison, Kansas, and at Holy Names College, Oakland, California. In addition to the community project described in this article, Dr. Chamberlain has been directly involved in several other "town and gown" experiments. He is the author of several articles that have appeared in The Christian Century, New Catholic World, America, and Encounter.
¹ "Discrimination and the Christian Conscience," Statement of the Catholic Bishops of the United States, November 14, 1958.
² Liston Pope, The Kingdom Beyond Caste (New York: Friendship Press, 1957), p. 105.

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And by 1968, Joseph Hough, Jr. wrote: "There is ample evidence that the majority of local white churches have not made any real effort to include Negroes in their membership, and in fact, many of them have stubbornly refused to admit them at all ."³

Equally disturbing is the evidence that there is a definite relation between church people and racial prejudice. Studies by T. W. Adorno, Gordon Allport, Charles Glock and Rodney Stark, Milton Rokeach, and others show that religious devotedness is related to bigotry, authoritarianism, dogmatism, and anti-humanitarianism.⁴ Gordon Allport reported that "on the average, churchgoers in our country harbor more racial, ethnic and religious prejudice than do nonchurchgoers."⁵ A recent study of American Lutherans supports this thesis, relating prejudice to "the ancient heresy of separating the two natures of Jesus Christ … Those who most emphatically deemphasized the humanity of Jesus tended to be more generally resistant to change, more authoritarian, and more prejudicial in their attitudes towards others."⁶

I

In this discussion, I will begin with the apparent confirmation we have just noted between Christian belief and racist behavior and explore one possible strategy which the Christian churches can use to overcome the gap between belief and behavior. The model under study here combines laboratory training methods with the content of the Christian faith as a way of developing a community of people equipped with the tools and analysis necessary to deal with personal, institutional, and cultural racism. From a combination of my own experience with the model, its validation in the data of the behavioral sciences, and its theological justifications and implications, I hope to show that the use of the lab-training-approach in the context of an explicit value system can bring about a decrease of personal racism, an understanding of institutional racism, and a commitment to work for social change. Thus I will indicate briefly the general structure of the model but I will focus in particular upon the effectiveness and validity of the process in the relationship between belief system and practical behavior. Based on the premise that the norms of the group are mediating factors in the relation between belief and behavior, the model utilizes the group structure to develop and reinforce norms of behavior in accordance with Christian conceptions of racial justice, equality, and freedom.

There are two premises underlying the thesis that this model can

³ Joseph C. Hough, Jr., Black Power and White Protestants (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 178.
⁴ For the references to the many studies involved see Milton Rokeach, "Value Systems in Religion," The Review of Religion Research, X(Fall, 1969),38-39.
⁵ Gordon Allport, "The Religious Context of Prejudice," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, V (I 966), p. 451.
⁶ Merton P. Strommen, et al., A Study of Generations (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972).

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serve as a strategy for social change in the struggle for racial justice. In the first place, in order to understand the depth of racism in American society and among practicing Christians, to grasp its persistence in spite of all rational arguments against it, racism is viewed as a substitute religion, a "white folk religion" as Joseph Washington analyzes it.⁷ In this sense, racism is a symbol-system which functions as an unconscious, unreflective meaning system resting upon symbols of color and sex which are deeply embedded in the fears and anxieties of white Americans. The terms white, black, mixing, mingling, blood, take on symbolic meanings and identity functions which reflect a world-view as strong or stronger than the Christian symbols of cross, bread, wine, resurrection, brotherhood, family of man.

As a false religion, racism in American history has answered questions of meaning and identity for a people engaged in a constant struggle to determine who they were and why they existed as they did. Since 1619, there have always been threats against this search for identity and meaning, whether from Indians, immigrants, or international communism. But throughout American history there has been one group, black people, upon whom white Americans could project their fears and aggressive desires.

As a natural outcome of the juxtaposition of two divergent ethnic groups, white people have sharply distinguished themselves from black people. In fact one may speak of the Negro as a "contrast conception" . . . The black man and his appurtenances stand as the antithesis of the character and properties of the white man. The conception makes of the Negro a counterrace. The black race serves as a foil for the white race, by which the character of the latter is made all the more impressive.⁸

Blacks historically have told whites who they are not and what their place is not, a counter-identity. Racist symbols, institutionally expressed, gave meaning, motivation, and identity to whites' American existence. These have been the ingredients of racism as a white folk religion.⁹

In its relation to Christianity, racism has shown all the strength of another faith. In the words of George Kelsey:

Racism is a faith. It is a form of idolatry. It is an abortive search for meaning … It arose as an ideological justification for the constellations of political and economic power which were expressed in colonialism and slavery. But gradually the idea of the superior race was heightened and deepened in meaning and value so that it pointed beyond the historical

⁷ Joseph R. Washington, Jr., The Politics of God (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. 27.
⁸ Lewis C. Copeland, "The Negro as a Contrast Conception," Race Relations and the Race Problem, Edgar T. Thompson, ed. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1939).
⁹ For further elaboration of this theme see Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black (Baltimore: Penguin books, 1969); Gary B. Nash and Richard Weiss, eds., The Great Fear: Race in the Mind of America (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1970); George Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind (New York: Harper & Row, 1971); and Oscar Handlin, Race and Nationality in American Life (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1957).

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structures of relation, in which it emerged, to human existence itself. The alleged superior race became and now persists as a center of values and an object of devotion.¹⁰

The second premise of the model studied here is that Christianity has both the theological-symbolic tools and the organizational skills to deal with racism at its roots. Precisely as a religion, Christianity offers a counter-identity in the person of Jesus Christ and a meaning system which rests upon the equality of all before God. Yet often in the past, Christianity has been used to lend legitimation to racist doctrine and practices. Even now, as social institutions concerned with problems of preservation and maintenance, churches reflect the racial attitudes of the larger American society. In a society in which racism is deeply rooted in group norms, conscious and unconscious attitudes, beliefs, practices and values, the practices and attitudes of Christian people accurately reflect that racism and subvert the formally religious doctrines of Christianity. Practically, this means that on the local level, "the practices of the church with respect to segregation and integration are greatly determined by the prevailing group norms in the area where the church is located."¹¹

Past efforts of the churches to deal with racism have been impeded by numerous misunderstandings. Generally racism was viewed as nothing more than prejudice. Thus appeals have been directed to individuals on a level of rational understanding. But racism is an irrational, preconscious element in American society and culture, impervious to rational efforts to root it out.¹² Furthermore, the churches' inadequate approaches to racism rest upon a false understanding of the cause of the problem. As Will Campbell pointed out thirteen years ago, and as white churches are realizing today, the sinfulness of racism lies in the separation of the racist from the love of God. Thus the churches' efforts to alleviate the suffering of the oppressed, as needed as they are, divert attention from the core of the problem, the oppressing agents, whether individuals or institutions, in white society.¹³

In reaching an adequate approach to the many dimensions of racism, then, a strategy must be devised which allows the individual to understand his or her own racism and to change racist attitudes, which allows for positive identification of the self, which creates a supporting environment for those working to change racist institutions and cultural values supporting racism, and which offers a vision of a just society from which an adequate critique of existing institutions

¹⁰ George Kelsey, Racism and the Christian Understanding of Man (New York: Scribner's, 1965), p. 9.
¹¹ Hough, op. cit., p. 180.
¹² Washington, op. cit., Chaps. IV and V, for an analysis of racism as an irrational, preconscious religion.
¹³ Will D. Campbell, Race and the Renewal of the Church (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), pp. 3,40-42.

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and values can emerge. Through the processes of the model we will examine here, these critical elements, we think, are met.

II

The model itself has been used extensively from March, 1970, to the present. I have chosen to examine the time period from March, 1970, to June, 1971, when I was directly associated with the Community Organization for Urban Progress (COUP), in Oakland, California.¹⁴ During that period, the model was used by thirteen church groups in the metropolitan area around San Francisco. Of the thirteen teams which entered the training, ten completed the entire program. The training population from these teams numbered approximately 100 and, with the exception of one black man recently married to a white woman, the entire population was white, generally middleclass, and of college education background.

The COUP model operates upon the premises that racism is a white problem, that white people are imprisoned in racism and need liberation from that racism, and that cultural and institutional forms of racism are as dangerous or more so than the personal, attitudinal racism of individuals. In brief, the model is a training program designed to bring about personal and institutional change in the area of racism within the church. Recognizing the difficulties many people working against white racism encounter through lack of adequate problem analysis, lack of knowledge of strategy, the ineffectiveness of individual efforts, and the inability to work effectively in groups, the research and training model hopes to "take those individuals with personal commitment and develop in them effective means of analyzing and researching a problem, developing correct strategy and tactics to deal with it, and acting against the problem with other individuals."¹⁵

The COUP model focuses upon racism and change with three tasks in mind:

First, a core of persons must be discovered who hold significant positions of power and control within the institution, who are committed to social change at least on a personal level, and who have an interest in discovering ways to bring about changes with respect to racism within their institutions. Second, this core of persons forms a team, learns to understand institutional racism, discovers and analyzes the structures, policies, and practices of their institutions which result in racism, and defines the changes which are required. Third, the team must develop the means by which these changes can be implemented.¹⁶

¹⁴ In late 197 1, the Community Organization for Urban Progress changed its name to the Center for Social Change. Partly because of a drop in funding, staff was reduced and correspondingly programs were curtailed. In September, 1972, the Center received a grant from the Irwin-Sweeney-Miller Foundation to conduct an educational and change program entitled "Project Understanding," similar to one conducted in southern California in 1970-71.
¹⁵ "Draft Summary of the Institutional Training Program," COUP Research and Training Program, August 1969, p. 1.
¹⁶ Ibid., P. 6.

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To implement this program, the model has developed a set of criteria for recruiting the core team, a pretraining introductory process and a three-phase training program. The first phase is centered around the goals of team building, problem definition, and racism analysis. During this time, team members enlarge their personal understanding and awareness within a conceptual framework of racism analysis, and they make a preliminary application of the analysis to their institution. In the interval between the first and second phases, from two weeks to a month, team members may elect to meet and discuss readings or problems related to the analysis.

At the second phase, the team is equipped to research and analyze their institution. In addition to learning how to discover structure, policies, and practices which result in racism, the team evaluates the areas of the institution where resistance to change is strongest and where flexibility and openness to change are located. The team then decides where it needs more information and spends the time between phases two and three in research and analysis of its own institution. Finally, in phase three the information and analysis gathered in the interval, usually from two to five months, is used as a basis for developing goals, strategies, and tactics for change. The team also makes arrangements for additional training and consultation as is necessary.

Since the model builds upon the workings of group interaction, the maximum effectiveness of each phase dictates the requirements of time and place. Thus, ideally, the phases involve a period of two and a half days and nights together. This is due not only to the amount of content to be dealt with but also to the evolutionary dynamics of the team-building process. Secondly, as much as possible the training takes place in an isolated surrounding. Not only is a quiet atmosphere necessary for the study of the content involved, but the psychological break from the world of everyday life is important in enabling team members to develop their own attitudes and norms of behavior which may even contradict those expected of them in the institution. Part of the individual and team growth expected in the process takes place only in such an isolated and "norm-free" environment. During that time and in that location, the staff enables team members to establish new norms, attitudes, and values in relation to the goals of a more human institution expressive of peace and justice in society at large.

Periodically during the training, the research planning task is interrupted by the staff or a team member to reflect upon the processes of interaction which have taken place. Thus the team reflects upon how the leadership function is handled in the group and whether all feel satisfied with it, whether anyone feels his or her contribution is not being heeded, whether conflict is being creatively dealt with and what the processes of openness and defense revealed during the conflict are, how members show a willingness to deal with feelings, how sensitive

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and supportive of others team members are. The team also assesses its ability to identify the main task and the goals of the church, its effectiveness in working together, how clearly the issues are analyzed, how freely it explores alternatives, how confident the team feels in its analysis, and how reflective and self-critical the members are as a team.

In this hearing, analysis, and feedback aspect, the staff enables the team to perceive its own working assumptions and values in the concrete interaction of the team. The discovery and exploration of these assumptions and values are an essential part of the team-building process and serves as part of the content and context of training. The patterns which the team develops in its own interaction are related to the style and patterns the team develops in its interaction with the institutional church. Periodically, the staff allows different teams to observe one another's communication process, with each team being the "center of attention" at some time during the phase. Once again the techniques of hearing, critical analysis, and feedback are employed. But the very pluralism which each team adopts as a value for its internal and external operations also allows the teams to recognize that each has its unique way of dealing with group interaction and that the sole criterion is whether the process is conducive to the growth of each team.

Throughout the three-phase process, conflict among team members allows for an analysis of conflict in general. The staff elaborates on its assumption that no change will take place in the individual, in the church, or in the larger society without conflict of some sort. Conditions must be brought about so that there is an opportunity for choosing alternatives. A crisis often provides just the occasion for deciding whether past patterns and attitudes will be changed or not. But in addition to recognizing the legitimacy of conflict, the team explores the relationship between conflict and reconciliation in anticipation of the roles they will play as change-agents in the church.

In many ways, the model described here gets support and validation in the findings of laboratory training methods as presented in the behavioral sciences. It has been shown, for example, that the group process facilitates change of individuals toward more openness and trust, and that conflict, sensitively managed, can lead to greater creativity and awareness of others. In particular, a 1967 study by Irwin Rubin of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Management revealed that increases in self-acceptance, resulting from sensitivity training, have the direct effect of reducing an individual's ethnic prejudice. Rubin also pointed to a "sleeper effect," namely, that significant shifts in decreasing prejudice took place several weeks after the sessions.¹⁷

¹⁷ Irwin Rubin, "The Reduction of Prejudice through Laboratory Training," Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, III (1967), pp. 27-47. In addition, Bruno Bettelheim

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III

When tested by its successes and failures, the model emerges as an effective strategy for personal and institutional change. The results were obtained from responses to four evaluation instruments used at different times, phone interviews, and meetings with team representatives and church staffs. The evidence shows that seven of the ten teams which completed the training achieved the initial goal of the model, that is, the creation of a group equipped with the values, commitments, attitudes, and analytical and action skills necessary to confront racism and bring about change.

All participants reported that the training had a great impact upon their awareness of their own feelings and reactions and the feelings and reactions of others, their awareness of the dynamics of group action, respect for, tolerance for, and faith in self, others and groups, and interpersonal competence in handling relationships. One trainee stated, "For myself, I discovered a greater sense of leadership." Another participant said, "The training was successful in opening up my thinking to a problem I didn't know existed." In particular, the results of evaluation revealed significant perception of change on the part of team members with respect to awareness of one's own racism, articulation of the problem of racism, ability to deal with conflict, self-confidence in dealing with others, awareness of racism as oppressing whites as well as Blacks, and a willingness to accept feedback and criticism. Thus the training had a significant impact on the trainees both in the awareness of racism and in terms of other personal changes. In almost every respect the trainees perceived some change in spite of the numerous variables involved, such as previous awareness of racism, openness, or readiness to change.

In terms of team cohesiveness, nine of the ten teams which completed the training reported a strong sense of cohesion immediately after the training, but that number had been reduced to seven functioning teams some months later. A key factor in the success of the seven teams was the presence of a minister, an assistant, and important church leadership. Also pre-training orientations were used with these teams to screen out people highly resistant to change. The teams that failed also decided to operate without official recognition and in one instance without any knowledge of the minister or the congregation. Follow-up by the trainers or by trained church staff was an important factor in holding the teams together and maintaining their focus.

By January, 1973 (the last time I had any extensive contact with the teams), only four teams were still working together as teams. These

concluded from his studies that group work dealing with conflict and hostility could significantly aid in the decrease of prejudice, (Bettelheim and Morris Janowitz, Social Change and Prejudice, New York: Free Press, 1964, pp. 72-73).

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were working entirely on their own. In the cases of the other three teams, the fact that for various reasons the minister left the team was seen as a key factor in their failures. Nonetheless, individual members of the teams pointed to some significant progress achieved before the teams broke up, such as change in liturgy forms, the formation of social action components of the congregation, the adoption of antiracist criteria in the choice of ministers, efforts at church renewal, and so on. Furthermore, many of the individual trainees also pointed to their own continuing efforts to put into effect the skills and knowledge gained during the training program.

The four remaining teams had involved themselves in both community and church issues. For example, one team based in a community rather than the church itself centered its strategy around improving the quality of life of the area in which members lived. Thus they decided to work for the election of people sympathetic to their own critical views. Although unsuccessful as far as the first election results, the process and involvement proved successful in building a wide support group of people committed to similar goals. Two other teams from the same area chose to work jointly in a community organization project. The effort was so successful that within a year and a half the organization was the main force in the election of two new supervisors to the county board and helped in the election of a third, altering the power structure of the board to secure a majority vote. In addition, the community organization increased its network of involvement and became highly successful in the life of the area. The fourth team focused upon the life of the congregation and is responsible for considerable reorganization of the church and a strengthened fellowship.

Many of the seven teams completing training and meeting with some success also were of the same denomination. Here an important element in the development of the teams was the support of regional leaders who themselves took part in the training at one time or another and were desirous of expanding the training to as many congregations as possible. By 1973, some effort had been made in that direction at least by offering a modified form of training. However, as one church executive noted, the preliminary problems of the local pastors, the time needed for the entire design, and the cost involved are prohibitive.

As far as its strengths are concerned, the model has many. In the first place, the racism analysis offers a conceptual design within which team members are enabled to interpret the current racial situation within the United States, its connection with other problem areas of society, and the direction in which to proceed. Furthermore, the goal of a racially just society is a constant value which provides a critique of all goals, strategies, and tactics related to the institution. And the content of the racism analysis also seems to be a helpful factor in bringing about an "unfreezing" of emotions and a sense of liberation

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to the participants, releasing them from the burden of the guilt they feel when discussing their own racist attitudes and behavior.

As important as the content is, the strength of the model lies in the process involved. In the first place, the process of "unfreezing" and sharing which takes place results from the combination of the explorations in personal racism in conjunction with the general racism analysis. Secondly, there is a built-in methodology which takes the concepts of the training and engages the participants in their use. The team members use in the training process the skills of group process, the analytical tools, and the concepts they will need and use in the home environment. Finally, the model builds a strong support for the team members. The team serves as support for the individual or individuals who take risks in the organization, provides a strength for those who are in need of personal growth, sustains and develops friendships, reinforces the values, attitudes, and behavior learned or attempted in the training process, and in general becomes a group of people concerned with one another and the social and personal problems in which they are involved. The team also becomes a self-critical instrument for change, bringing the necessary feedback to the analytical and action tasks. Self-criticism also functions to keep the team or members from assuming a self-righteous stance in their attempts at change. And finally, the model does equip the team with the tools it needs for the analysis of institutions and planning for change.

In spite of these strengths, the model contains certain built-in limitations. Thus the model is intended for a white audience of fairly well-educated, middle-class, liberal background. The model assumes some understanding of the civil rights movement, some sense of dissatisfaction with the present status quo yet enough investment in the institution to believe that changes can be made. And, of course, the participants should be in some position of power or influence within the church. In many ways, then, the model acts more as a catalyst than as a cause of change. While the participants indicated many personal changes, the training for many merely facilitated and speeded changes already begun, giving them a direction.

Other problems involve the relation between racism in its various forms and other issues, political, social, and economic. Similarly the relation between personal growth, the institutional social system, and cultural values needs greater development. Thus a question which needs careful examination is how the norms of the institution, such as the church, affect the individual and the group. And the model could be strengthened by more extensive analysis of the operations of institutions, since churches after World War II have increasingly taken on the form and structure of business organizations.

As has been shown in the examples of the teams completing training, one of the weaknesses of the program is the need for continued follow-up with teams over a longer period of time after they "come down from the mountain." The enthusiasm of the training

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process is not sustained in the field unless the team continues to rely on broad support systems. An outside agent may also be helpful in enabling a team to drop an unattainable goal to which it had become inflexibly tied.

There is also a possible danger in the model which arises from the relation between various forms of racism and questions of identity and status. Since the training does call into question the participants' status, role, and identity in the "unfreezing" process, anxiety is often created about the way in which the individual presently identifies himself or herself. In addition, the model asks team members to raise critical questions about their style of life and about "the American way of life." To a certain extent the training process does help individuals to search for new and healthier patterns of behavior and attitudes as they become members of a healthy group, invest themselves in the group, and receive acceptance from the group. In addition, the Christian perspective involved in working toward a just society helps center personal identity as well.

IV

We began this discussion with the assumption that racism functions in America as a white folk religion, in opposition to Christianity, but used by Christians in need of meaning, identity, and status. More than a decade ago, Gunnar Myrdal wrote:

In this magical sphere of the white man's mind, the Negro is inferior, totally independent of rational proofs or disproofs. And he is inferior in a deep and mystical sense … This is a manifestation of the most primitive form of religion. There is fear of the unknown in this feeling, which is "superstition" in the literal sense of the word … So the Negro becomes a "contrast conception." He is "the opposite race"--an inner enemy, "antithesis of character and properties of the white man." His name is the antonym of white."¹⁸

Because this view of racism has not been adequately understood, church attempts to deal with racism have left untouched the actual imprisonment of church members in their racism. But a complementary understanding suggests that the church can become the arena in which people work toward the liberation of all social structures and value systems which impede the realization of a just and loving society.

In context of the model, the understanding that individuals are made racists, the explorations of the ways in which each individual developed racist feelings and attitudes, the openness, trust and sharing which allow feelings and attitudes to be discussed-all lead to a personal liberation from the burdens of racism for those involved. Working with the input of Christian theology, the trainer is able to provide a powerful reality of the gospel message of liberation. Only

¹⁸ Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 100.

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inasmuch as the trainees begin to understand and confess their own imprisonment and need for liberation from racism are they able to be freed from racism and to identify with the person of Jesus Christ. This approach must be intimately related to the church's sense of mission to free us from whatever bondage we suffer.

Throughout this discussion our purpose has not been to explain how a Christian believer can also exhibit racist behavior. Rather we have attempted to show that when racism is understood as a functionally religious system, answering questions of meaning and identity for white Americans, then, through the social-psychological mediation of the specific norms of the group, Christian theological doctrines about the nature of the person are easily subverted. In view, however, of the liberating message of the gospel and the dynamic person of Jesus Christ, we believe that a model for dealing with racism can be developed. By combining an analysis of the ways in which people are made racist with the dynamic processes of group interaction, the model we have analyzed provides Christians with a personal sense of liberation from past patterns of attitudes and behavior which releases them for identification with the mission of Jesus Christ in liberating idolatrous and oppressive human structures of racism.

In conclusion, the model stands as an effective and valid means for bridging the gap between Christian belief and behavior. Through its combination of process and content, the model unites individual conversion and structural change, recognizing that the two are inseparable. And by developing a team or community of Christians critical of their own attitudes and of the social structures and values of the larger society, the model provides the support group necessary for individual Christians to express in their behavior the gospel truths of love, freedom, hope, and justice.