Closing an ugly chapter in Seattle church history
They're two simple words, spoken endlessly every Sunday by churchgoers around the world but rarely with as much emotion as yesterday at Seattle's Madrona Presbyterian Church, where they were uttered not only by church parishioners but by an entire church establishment.
Daisy Tibbs Dawson, 79, had been waiting to hear them for much of her life.
"Today is a satisfying day," Dawson said with a warm smile as she exited Madrona Presbyterian, where a long-overdue "reconciliation service" had just let out after two hours of prayer, song and tears shared by black and white churchgoers.
Dawson, a lifetime Presbyterian, is one of only four surviving members of a church the local church administration now acknowledges was nearly snuffed out for a simple, albeit painful, reason: Its parishioners were black.
The ugly chapter in local church history dates back five decades.
In the spring of 1953, members of Grace Presbyterian Church in Seattle's Central Area were abruptly informed that their church was to be closed, the land sold. Under the guise of racial "integration," the local Presbytery directed Grace members to migrate to nearby Madrona, an all-white congregation.
When Grace church members arrived on their first Sunday to sing in the Madrona choir, "they were told, 'No, we don't want your black faces in front of our church,' " recalled the Rev. Boyd Stockdale, current head of the Presbytery of Seattle.
"We weren't welcomed," Dawson recalls, being polite. "They didn't want us."
The Grace parishioners, not willing to give up the religion most of them had been born into, kept coming to church anyway. Within two weeks, all the white parishioners left.
"What do they call it? White flight," Dawson recalled. "That's what they did."
It wasn't new to Dawson, an Alabama native. She was one of the first African-American graduates of the University of Washington, which she attended from 1944 to 1948.
"There were 55 of us," she said. "When we saw each other, we'd just about go up and hug each other."
She showed the same mettle in her church, which became a small, African-American congregation when the other members fled.
"We were just determined to stay," she said.
This in spite of the best efforts of the Presbytery, which had taken the $6,000 it made by selling the Grace church land — money that had been promised to the new Madrona worshippers — and sunk it into an all-new church on Mercer Island.
Madrona's black congregation protested, to little avail. Over the years, the Presbytery not only neglected Madrona financially, it tried to make it go away, says Stockdale, who took over the local office about eight years ago.
"The good news is, they're still here," he said, somewhat amazed himself. "They're a great gift, because we can learn about racism from them. This has been a journey for us — a painful one."
Stockdale uncovered the story by reviewing church records. He spoke to the handful of surviving Madrona church elders, most of whom were reluctant to stir up old feelings. Elders who were too shy or unwilling to speak publicly about it finally did so on videotape, for a production about the church and racism. Eventually, plans emerged for a reconciliation service — a long-overdue public apology.
Key to that effort were parishioners from Mercer Island, who apparently never were informed that the seed money for their church had been pilfered from the Madrona congregation.
Once informed, they immediately set out to help, donating $30,000 for a long-needed roof at Madrona and pledging an additional $50,000 over five years to improve the stately but sagging 90-year-old building.
That's the easy part, suggested the Mercer Island church's co-pastor, Dale Sewall. He told parishioners at yesterday's overflow service that anyone thinking they are without the sin of racism, simply because they weren't there at the time, is in denial in the eyes of God.
"To say that overlooks a reality," he said in his sermon. "The reality was that the congregation of Grace Presbyterian Church was done a great injustice, and Mercer Island benefited. We are not innocent."
Which is why, on a gray Sunday in Seattle, white and black parishioners came together to sing, pray, take Communion — and watch an ugly history unfold on a video screen, while a narrator described a "pattern of deceit, neglect and dictatorial control that crippled Madrona (Presbyterian) for five decades."
Pretty strong language for a church — any church — to use about itself. But only a small first step in reconciliation, Stockdale said.
Exiting parishioners said the service offered something Madrona Presbyterian was running short of after 50 years: hope.
"It was wonderful," said Dawson, one of those long-suffering elders once shunned by church leadership but now considered heroes.
They stayed because leaving simply wasn't part of their constitution, she said.
"It's just the stubbornness you have," Dawson said. "Being black, you go through a lot, anyway. And we've gone through an awful lot to keep this church open."
Can they really forgive?
Dawson paused.
"I think you have to," she said, breaking into a warm smile. "Why hold on to it? Why let it fester? Life's too short. I don't like to hold on. I like to forgive."
Ron C. Judd: 206-464-8280