Pettigrew Notes Church's Failure In Rights Stand

"Christian churches are failing in race relations, but none so enormously as our Episcopal Church," Thomas F. Pettigrew, associate professor of Social Psychology, told 120 Episcopalians last night.

Speaking at Christ Church's midwinter dinner, Pettigrew stressed the dilemma within the Church. Rectors who support the Church integrationist idelogy, he said, risk losing money and members. If they moderate their positiins, however, they sacrifice ideals, he added.

"There is a point at which pastoral norms of saving the flock must be abandoned," Pettigrew concluded. "The Church must be prepared to lose money and members, and to be ridiculed by the press."

Pettigrew, himself an Episcopalian, noted his Church was going to an extreme in promoting "the counter ideology" of moderation. "There are not many racists in the Episcopal Church," he said. "That is not its problem. The problem is the prevailing assumption that the Church should be a bastion between dangerous extremists--racists and impatient integrationists." What the Church needs, Pettigrew suggested, is direct social action. Interracial barriers can be broken down only if Negro families are invited into all-white parishes, he maintained. The Episcopal and other churches should not wait until a consensus of opinion favors variations from old patterns, he continued. Changes in attitude will come only after a change in behavior, he asserted.

Most Episcopalians, Pettigrew said, are white, middle-class, and suburban. Therefore they tend to separate themselves from people of different race and background.

Because of the setup of society, he observed, many Southern integrationists discriminate unconsciously. "Ideology and action are not one in the same. For example, the use of only de-segragated hotels and institutions should be practiced, even at the cost of losing powerful church supporters.