Interfaith Cooperative Ministries Laid to Rest

“We’re being recorded, Ralph. Be careful what you say,” said Judith Shea, narrowing her eyes at Ralph Jones, her fellow archivist and co-president of Interfaith Cooperative Ministries.

Jones, a member of First Presbyterian Church, Shea, a member of The Friends of New Haven, and four other former leaders of ICM gathered in Center Church in downtown New Haven to speak about the organization — in the past tense. They had a lot to say.

After 45 years of existence, ICM has been ​“laid to rest,” as they quietly announced earlier this year. ​“In dialogue with local clergy,” they wrote, ​“it is clear that the energy and light that once guided the way for ICM is no longer accessible.”

ICM leaves an impressive legacy. It started the first homeless shelter in Greater New Haven in the early 1980s; that shelter would become Columbus House. It pioneered social service and justice initiatives in the Greater New Haven area, from elderly care services to budget watchdog committees. A yearly Martin Luther King, Jr. Day service brought Muslim, Christian, Jewish and other faith communities together in a local church, then a synagogue.

By this year, though, the group had lost momentum and connections with the broader community, its leaders concluded in a frank assessment in archives they have now prepared about the group’s history.

“Issues of economics and race remain;” reads Shea and Jones’ preface to the archives, ​“how and if communities of faith will again seek to cooperatively address them remains unknown.”

Social Turmoil, Disconnection, & A Shared Ethic of Justice

ICM began its life as the Downtown Cooperative Ministries (DCM), a smaller organization of five mainline churches in downtown New Haven.

“The New Haven Council of Churches was in disarray” in the mid-1960s, Jones said, ​“facilitating the creation of DCM. … The vision of DCM/ICM came out of the Civil Rights/Vietnam War struggle, and the theology that motivated religious involvement in those struggles.”

“This was [at the time of] the first of the renewals,” said former ICM President Herb Brockman, rabbi of Mishkan Israel synagogue. ​“So a lot of the downtown area was torn down. The connector was put in at the time. There was a dislocation in the communities. Then there was the famous trial … the Black Panther trials in downtown New Haven. So there was a lot of social turmoil. … There were tanks in the streets. The churches stepped in to say, ​‘How can we, the churches, help?’ The churches opened their doors to people that came for the trial; [they] were fed and slept in the churches on the Green and in Hamden.”

The mainline churches came together with the purpose of addressing poverty and disempowerment in New Haven, Shea said. They created Downtown Cooperative Ministries (DCM) in 1970 with the mission ​“to be agents of human empowerment to the disenfranchised in the New Haven area under a theological discipline.”

“[T]here was a shared sense of a justice ethic among these Abrahamic faiths,” said another former ICM president, Bill Goettler, pastor of First Presbyterian Church. ​“That led to a common understanding of how to live in a society together and what needed to be done for those who were hurting. …We shared a sense of the ways that we should be behaving as a community and that we had the resources to live into it.”

Downtown Cooperative Ministries developed three main approaches to its mission, according to Jones and Shea: ​“to build relationships between the several churches, participation and support of the development of social service agencies and programs, and direct involvement in local, state and national justice issues.”

A Pattern of Service

The most significant of DCM’s early initiatives was its leadership in recognizing and meeting the growing need for shelter for the homeless. Rev. John Kitagawa, DCM’s second coordinator, led this effort. ​“John brought us a vision of working at the frontier of the really poorest people, the street people, those who had nothing,” the Rev. Sam Slie (pictured), former ICM president, said of Kitagawa’s leadership in a 1999 interview.

Homelessness, widely thought to have been eradicated after the Depression, was on the rise again. Individual churches made efforts to provide aid. But it soon became clear that a more coordinated response was needed.

Sacred Heart Church in Trowbridge Square, a DCM member, volunteered an unoccupied convent for a dedicated shelter. Kitagawa worked with the ICM board and Jack Hasegawa of Yale’s Dwight Hall to develop a shelter organization. Despite a lack of funding, DCM hired an executive director, Cynthia DeLouise, to run the initiative. 

Around the same time, the federal government began identifying homelessness as a major latent problem in America.

“All of a sudden the City of New Haven,” Slie noted, ​“that had not admitted that it had any major problems in this area, said, ​‘We have to do something.’ … And so you get this marvelous falling together” of DCM’s vision and leadership, Sacred Heart’s space and public funds available to support the endeavor.

“At the time when it first started, congregations would bring dinner,” Scott Morrow said of the shelter. ​“It was [then] called ​‘Three Hots and a Cot.” Just the basics, in other words: three meals and place to sleep.”

“But now [Columbus House] is very large,” Shea said of the independent 501c3 organization. ​“It’s an awesome organization.”

Kip Borgeson, former secretary of ICM, added, ​“They don’t like to be called a shelter anymore, because they’re really in the business of transitioning homeless people into being housed.”

DCM continued this ​“pattern of service,” becoming an ​“incubator,” as Borgeson put it, for social service organizations: fundraising, helping to form boards and to incorporate.

“[T]he homeless, the hungry, the poor, the left out, the disenfranchised were often the initial burden of the churches, temples and synagogues,” Slie said. ​“The DCM established a pattern … of sticking its neck out where there is a need, asking the churches to help fund an outreach into that need. … So the DCM pioneered constantly for things that the larger community needed. Each of these programs has its own story – the Community Soup Kitchen, Columbus House, the Greater New Haven Community Loan Fund.”

Shea listed ICM spin-offs: SAGE Services of Connecticut, Citizens for Humanizing Criminal Justice, Religious Ministries at Yale New Haven Hospital, Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen, Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers. ​“All the organizations that ICM started spun off into independent 501c3s and are still functioning quite successfully today,” she said.

“You know it strikes me that this could well become a history of social service in New Haven,” Bill Goettler said, ​“because ICM has had its hands in the start of lots of different organizations.”

Agreeing, Morrow said, ​“I think what’s interesting is a lot of these organizations then sort of began to coordinate wider efforts in their area of social service. So Columbus House has worked with a lot of other housing and shelter programs that have sprung up. The Downtown Union Soup Kitchen now works for the coordination of organizations that provide food: soup kitchens, food pantries of greater New Haven,” said Morrow.

“It’s almost like the professionalization of this…network of care,” Goettler added.

This professionalization is part of what led to the organization’s end, several people speculated. Social services are more commonly handled by government and not-for-profit agencies, leaving fewer opportunities for meaningful involvement for the churches and their members. Abraham’s Tent, an ecumenical program started cooperatively with Columbus House in 2009, is one exception. Members of different congregations host small groups of homeless people who show promise to transition into permanent housing for 12 weeks at a time. It continues to this day and has been successful, Jones said.

A“Really Committed Interfaith Organization”

When Rabbi Herb Brockman introduced himself at the beginning of an interview, he said that he hadn’t technically been a member of Downtown Cooperative Ministries, because it ​“defined itself as Christian” in its early years. Sam Slie wanted to change that. ​“Sam felt strongly that we didn’t know enough about each other,” he said. “[So] he would have these luncheons” called ​“Shalom People,” wherein ​“people from different faith communities would brown bag it and share a bit about their religious traditions.”

Soon, the board decided to become ​“interfaith” as well as to seek participation from suburban churches.

There were really two eras, Shea explained, to ICM’s history. The Shalom People luncheons began in the mid-1980s. But it wasn’t until late in the decade that suburban churches and non-Christian faith communities were admitted. In 1995, Downtown Cooperative Ministries became Interfaith Cooperative Ministries, acknowledging its expanded vision. 

“It wasn’t exactly a smooth transition,” Brockman said. ​“There was pushback. People did not want non-Christian groups to participate. … It wasn’t an easy sell.”

Shea commented: ​“Sam was very sly.” Brockman agreed: ​“Sam was very sly.”

Slie’s strategy, Brockman said, was to get people comfortable enough with each other that the transition would feel natural. ​“He had had so much exposure to both interracial and interfaith [work] – as a pastor of Battel Chapel.” One reason Slie wanted to include more faith communities in the group, Brockman said, was related to his recognition of the interconnectedness of social issues in the broader social landscape in New Haven. ​“Sam, who grew up in a community with African Americans and Jews and Italians — and that was his experience in this community — all of that broke down.”

In Slie’s own words, ​“I think it’s more apparent now that a lot of the problems we always thought of as the city’s replicate themselves, even though they are not always admitted or identified, in all the communities, suburban as well as urban.”

Under Slie’s leadership, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Baha’i communities joined ICM, as did Quakers and other Christian groups. So did suburban communities of all faiths.

One program that emerged from this was called In Faith Camps for Children. ​“Every day another faith tradition would come into the camp, and would teach the kids,” said Brockman. ​“So if it was a Buddhist, [they might] come in and talk about meditation, or we would come in and talk about tzedakah — ​‘charity,’ or from the Catholic community a bishop would come in and speak about Catholicism. … Someone from [the Quaker] community would come, she would bring her harp, she would play for the kids. … But we weren’t professionals. … We were kind of flying – by faith, and not by instrument.”

“The undergirding of all is this is that good came out, for the City of New Haven, because of the people – the churches, the synagogues, the mosques – who put all this together,” Shea said. ​“It was faith that made this happen…”

“And another word for that faith is theological reflection,” Goettler added. ​“From [the ICM’s] original mission statement.”

“The shift to becoming a really committed interfaith organization was [a] really important stage in [ICM’s] life,” Scott Morrow said. ​“It was just a blossoming of opportunity for connection and learning and understanding… And certainly, you know, to recognize…that there was a justice ethic and commitment that allowed us to be involved together.”

“They Love Clergy Who Fast”

ICM tackled its justice ethic with advocacy as well as social service. Clergy from across the state fasted at the State House of Representatives as part of a Budget Watch initiative.

“They love clergy who fast, for some reason,” Brockman said.

Under the Clinton Administration, Congress altered how welfare money was dispersed, giving it directly to states as grants. Some states began using that money for roads or infrastructure, rather than welfare.

“So a group of people from ICM reached out to clergy across the rest of the state,” Brockman recalled. ​“About 250 clergy paid money — themselves — to get a page in the Hartford Courant to say, We are going to watch the budget.”

The clergy members also went to the State House each year when budget talks were happening to make sure that the state was ​“fair and honest” with the federal welfare money. 

“The budget is not just an economic document, it’s a moral document,” Brockman argued. ​“A hundred years from now, people will want to know: What did the state stand for? What are the values of the state? One place to go is its budget.”

They also took on criminal justice, with Citizens for Humanizing Criminal Justice, which became an independent organization.

“It was a long, major study of [the] criminal justice system, punitive sentencing, all the stuff we’re talking about today,” said Ralph Jones. ​“They produced the Prison Ministry. They produced editorials in the paper. They did lobbying. It took on a life of its own.”

“No Center To The Center”

So why has ICM been dissolved? Ralph Jones (pictured) shed some light on the question, which goes back to the original mission: ​“I pointed to three things: ​‘build relationships between the several faith communities, support social service agencies, and direct involvement in social justice issues.’ Those are three full-time jobs. And that tends to pull an agency, a group, apart. And there’s a huge amount of debate – ​‘Are we neglecting this? Which one are we forgetting?’ — through these records.”

Periodic surveys, Jones said, suggested that regular attendance at each of the five of the founding churches exceeded 500. ​”We probably don’t have 500 at all five of those churches on a typical Sunday today. That change in demographics is a very important part of the laying-down part.”

“There’s no center to the center,” someone murmured.

But shifting demographics have done more than that. ​“There is a piece that we haven’t mentioned that perhaps goes to the struggles that we came to at the end. … New Haven developed from an entirely English, very single-minded theology into an expanding community of all sorts of different faiths,” Jones said. There have always been tensions among these different groups, he said. ​“Sam Slie was African American. We have, in the last years, pretty much lost contact with the African American churches. And that was a divide in our community that was essential to meeting our goals that I’ve just mentioned.”

“But not in the beginning,” Goettler said.

“No,” Jones agreed. ​“In the’ 60s, the ​‘70s, the ​‘80s – everybody thought that working together was essential. And, somehow, that became less possible. I think that probably Sam was a big piece of holding it together as long as it stayed together.”

The split was gradual, but tensions crackled under the surface. ​“The minister at Immanuel Baptist,” a historically black church, ​“was president of ICM,” Brockman said, and it was he who ultimately decided to cancel their traditional interfaith Martin Luther King, Jr. Day service.

The late Rev. Curtis Cofield, the Immanuel Baptist minister, ​“wrote a letter at a certain point when the organization was developing a new plan of action,” Jones said, ​“in which he said, ​‘I will not support this. It does not include the voices of the black community.’ And it’s a powerfully articulate statement that says that the black church exists so that people will have a place where they have their own voice.

“Churches with 300 years of history coming along and saying, ​‘Well this is how we do it,’ doesn’t work. [T]hose tensions between communities – and it isn’t just a matter of race – are very real. And they’re very hard to talk about. ”

There was a long pause. An Interfaith group, it was suggested, seems like a good place to talk about those tensions.

“Well,” said Brockman (pictured), ​“for 35 or 40 years it worked. Just like the Civil Rights movement. And [it] began to fray. And it did fray. And we see it today, in our politics. The lack of the ability for people with different opinions to come and sit down and try and work things out. And I think it’s sad. And Curtis Cofield of all people, who was very involved … knew how important it was to work with the white community, with white churches. It became very difficult …

“Also the increase of the Hispanic and Latino community… [T]the mayor of New Haven has a clergy group. I remember I went to the first one and at least a quarter of the clergy that were there needed translators. … It’s a very interesting dynamic that we are struggling with as a community. And the community is so much more diverse, so much more pulled apart. And that’s [the problem] – how to put it back together, sort of [like] Humpty Dumpty.”

“So the overall organization of ICM just was not – able – to engage those new questions very effectively,” Goettler said. ​“So that same work is just going to be structured in a different way. It’s not going to stop. It’s just – it needs a new structure and a new vision. …”

“[And] I’m not sure that it’s the appropriate role for the kind of traditional white, mainline Protestant — and white congregations of other faiths – to be the leader in the kinds of community-wide conversation and relationship-building that needs to take place right now. I think that we need to be – and long to be – parts of those conversations, active in those conversations, but I think when it’s historically white congregations trying to do that leadership, that’s no longer a successful model.”

“Right,” Brockman said. ​“White privilege is simply not effective today.”

“And we don’t want to try to continue to build on that,” Goettler finished. ​“Or make those assumptions. I think that’s the bottom line.”

“That’s one of the true truths about what challenges ICM,” Shea said.

Goettler nodded. “[W]e were not willing to close down our vision in that way, without the participation – really without the leadership of – the broader religious communities. And we were not making those connections. It’s time for white people to follow.”

“The world is changing,” Brockman said. ​“And that’s ok. But we need to find a role…”

“We don’t get to check out,” Goettler agreed.

“We don’t get to do that,” Brockman continued. ​“These values still hold. But we need to find a way that we can, as you said, ​‘live the values’.”

“I would guess that the next way this kind of approach is gonna – take life – is when some structure is built that’s gonna be multi-racial, cross religious bounds,” Goettlersaid.

“But it won’t be smooth,” Brockman said. ​“It’s gonna be very bumpy. I mean, look at the mayor of New York City. There’s some real challenges to trying to bring together a diverse city like that, and we will probably experience that as well. It’ll take leadership.”