The Church and the City: Detroit's Open Housing Movement.

Abstract

The church is an integrating feature of the city, and both are important for each other. The withdrawal of white congregations from Detroit’s racially changing neighborhoods following W.W. II created a moral crisis. Detroit’s post WWI population growth had created new demands for housing and intensified the practice of racial discrimination against African Americans in the sale and purchase of housing. With open occupancy initially included with New Deal Housing Programs, opposition to public housing programs spawned attention to the extensive practice of racial discrimination and segregated housing. Having been silent against racial discrimination Detroit’s religious community and Detroit’s Commission of Community Relations joined together in hosting the Metropolitan Conference on Open Occupancy: A Challenge to Conscience in 1963 to address the issue of racial discrimination Without the Conference creating a joint program to continue attention and action, the Detroit Council of Churches combined the conference recommendations with their ongoing programs, and sought additional funding for additional staff and program support from its member denominations. Unable to secure additional funding or achieve an institutional ecumenical consensus, member denominations combined conference recommendations with their own and sought to make them operative within their member congregations. The net effect of the church and city engagement against racial discrimination was the assignation of continued action to denominational member congregations in their neighborhoods. The issue was to be addressed by congregation and neighborhood. A parish organized by and for Danish immigrant to serve the Danish immigrant population in Detroit, St. Peter’s was a city-wide parish with a scattered membership through-out metro Detroit. Failing in its attempt to reach out and engage the neighborhood surrounding its facility on Pembroke and Greenfield, congregational opposition to racial discrimination was channeled through the activities of the clergy with the approval of the congregation. The clerical and denominational emphasis on a prophetic ministry for social justice contrasted with the congregational priority for a pastoral and educational ministry to the widely scattered second and third generation membership. Neither was rejected, but in 1982 St. Peter’s left Detroit to merge with a Scandinavian parish in suburban Berkley.