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8 GEORGIA BULLETIN, THURSDAY, MAY 9, 1968
The ‘Underground’ Church
——— Is Becoming More
Visible
By Religious News Service
The “underground church,” a
phenomenon that has been
growing in both Roman
Catholicism and Protestantism, is
becoming less and less
underground, more visible and
vocal.
Some of its members are now
calling attention to the
movement with public
statements, demonstrations,
books and conferences.
The Underground Church is
the title of a new book, edited by
the Rev. Malcolm Boyd,
Episcopal clergyman and
well-known author. Its
contributors, all involved in the
movement or favorable to it,
include an Episcopal bishop,
Catholic and Protestant clergy, a
nun, college students and social
workers.
Boston College, a Jesuit
institution, was recently the site
of a three-day conference on the
underground church.
LITURGICAL experiments are a prominent feature of the “underground church," a growing movement Which
dissociates itself from traditional parish and diocesan structure and forms small communities meeting in private
homes. The underground is reported to be particularly strong in the United States and in the Netherlands, where
this photo was taken. The original publication of this photo, showing a Dutch boy taking the Communion host
in his hand, shocked Catholics in many parts of Europe, particularly at the Vatican. (RNS PHOTO).
College conference that he finds
part of the underground’s
program unrealistic.
In a statement from the floor,
he' said that he perceived a
movement, a trend but “I don’t
know whether we’re moving here
toward the Epiphany or toward
the Apocalypse,” that is, toward
a new mainfestation of God’s
presence or toward a sudden,
catastrophic change.
The “nostalgia for fellowship”
which he perceived at the
institute is “something we ought
to look into,” Father Fichter
said. He associated it with fond,
ancestral memories of life in
small villages of Europe or of the
American past and indicated that
he found it unrealistic in
contemporary society.
“LARGE-SCALE secondary
associations are now the thing,”
he said. A less sociological
synonym for “secondary
association” might be
“bureaucracy,” one of the
epithets most often used by the
underground.
Reaction to the movement has
been mixed. Auxiliary Bishop
James P. Shannon of
Minneapolis-St. Paul, considered
one of the most liberal Catholic
bishops in the United States, has
severely criticized the
underground.
IT ii IS, TO some extent, a
clandestine movement and
unknown to outsiders. But
enough data has emerged to give
a fair view of it and sociologists
are already beginning to probe its
meaning.
Many of its members object to
the term, “underground.” One
alternative frequently suggested is
“the Resistance.” Both terms,
perhaps significantly, referred to
the activity of patriots in
Nazi-occupied territory during
World War II.
Other terms coming into
growing use are “freedom
churches” or, simply, “the
movement.” Some scholars are
referring to “group churches” or
“house churches.”
Whatever they may be called,
and whatever individual
differences may be found among
them, the small groups which
generally make up the
underground have a number of
common characteristics.
Their members feel alienated
from authority or from the
mainstream of their nominal
Churches. They find little
satisfaction or personal meaning
in the usual activities of these
Churches and generally seek a
sense of community in small,
informal groups which meet in
private homes rather than large
church buildings. '
They are dedicated, to some
degree, to a quest for change
both in the church and in secular
society. Some, though it is hard
to determine what proportion,
are prepared to engage in direct
action (which authorities would
consider rebellious) to promote
these changes.
THE LARGEST and most
widespread religious underground
in the United States seems to be
arising within the Catholic
Church, but other Churches are
experiencing similar
developments. Generally, the
movement (at least what we
know about it) is forming in the
oldest and most successful
Churches, those with the largest
membership and the most highly
developed administrative
machinery.
From the available data, most
(though by no means, all)
members of the underground are
sociologically rather typical
Church members, except that
they have higher-than-average
income and educational levels. At
the Boston College conference, it
was clear that the attendance was
overwhelmingly Catholic, white,
middle-class, suburban and
college-educated. Perhaps these
people represented only that
portion of the underground
which would attend an institute
on a Catholic campus.
Nonetheless they are the types
who usually predominate when
an underground activity catches
public attention or comes under
sociological scrutiny.
The issues on which the
underground disagrees with the
mainstream include questions of
Church authority and structure,
doctrine, ethics, liturgy and
modes and orientation of social
action. Not all groups, of course,
are equally involved in all of
these concerns. Groups emerging
from the Catholic Church
generally stress issues of
authority and liturgy. The
Protestant underground (while
often sharing these concerns) is
most vocal on such questions as
peace and racial justice.
FREQUENTLY (though by
no means always) the
disagreement between the
underground and the mainstream
is one of degree rather than total
opposition. The underground
assumes a position in line with
that of its Church but further out
and more intense. Bishops make
statements deploring the horrors
of war; underground clergy go to
jail for their peace activities. The
Church revises a liturgy which
had been virtually unchanged for
over 1,000 years. Underground
groups, finding the formal
changes insufficient, make radical
experiments with improvised
liturgy. The Churches enter into
ecumenical dialogue. The
underground virtually dissolves
denominational distinctions and
accepts intercommunion as a
matter of course.
In general, underground
groups tend to view the
mainstream Churches, to which
they are more or less affiliated, as
too large, impersonal, cautious
and slow-moving, rigidly
structured institutions, oriented
toward the past, exclusive and
unduly concerned with their own
power and prestige.
They seek to establish instead
small, loosely organized groups
where every member can know
all the others. Freedom,
spontaneity, awareness of the
rapidly-changing present and
openness to the future are among
the qualities they emphasize.
Some observers and critics of
the underground, including
members of it, find dangers in the
movement. Ironically, one of the
dangers most frequently cited
(and apparently, according to the
available information, with
justification) is a key point in the
underground’s indictment of the
mainstream: exclusivism and
homogeneity.
Although many of the
movement’s members are aware
pf this difficulty, they don’t
know what to do about it.
Membership tends to be
homogeneous because a fairly
well-defined type of person is
most often attracted to the
underground.
AN EVEN MORE serious
charge, divisiveness, was leveled
at the movement by Bishop
Shannon. This is probably the
basic indictment of the
underground by the mainstream.
“Unity of Christians” is not
being promoted by the
underground, Bishop Shannon
said. “People gather together at
liturgical services to join in acts
of worship as a symbol of their
unity. The underground church,
on the other hand, results in a
small coterie or clique, cut off
from the main body of the
Christian community.
“I do not say that it
necessarily has a snob appeal, but
it has the result of drawing
together exclusive groups of
similar and somewhat narrow
view.
“In this it is divisive, rather
than cohesive, and until it
surfaces and integrates into the
total Christian community, it will
continue to be so.”
Underground spokesmen
maintain that, in some cases at
least, it is impossible for them to
become public and integrate with
the mainstream. One result that
many members fear is opposition
and disciplinary action from the
Church structure. An alternate
threat is loss of their special
group identity and function,
submergence once again in what
they call the faceless mass (or, in
a Catholic liturgical sense, “the
faceless Mass”) of a large
congregation. Underground
priests have frequently said that
their liturgy cannot be. effective
with a large congregation.
Varying maximum numbers are
given, ranging from 50 down to
about 20. Most groups lean
toward the smaller figure.
Father Joseph Fichter, a
Jesuit socilogist at Harvard
University whose public
statements and writings indicate
sympathy for at least some
aspects and objectives of the
underground, told the Boston
The danger of the eventual
establishment of an underground
bureaucracy, virtually a
contradiction in terms but
perhaps a necessity in our
culture, was mentioned several
times at the Boston Catholic
institute.
Father George Hafner,
founder of the Christian
Layman’s Experimental
Organization in New Jersey,
alluded to such a danger when he
announced the establishment of a
communication center for the
underground at Emmaus House
in New York City.
The establishment of this
center was not intended to “build
another organization or a new
sect,” Father Hafner stressed, but
some sociologists at the institute
felt that eventual
bureaucratization is inevitable.
One of them, Father Rocco
Caporale, S.J., of the University
of California, Berkeley, said the
underground could not survive
“unless it is upgraded into
structures that permit its
coordination and consolidation.”
THE SEEDS of such
coordination may lie in Emmaus
House, which is already
internationally affiliated with the
“Shalom” movement in the
Netherlands, one of the world’s
most successful, visible and
ecumenical underground
establishments.
While the overall orientation
of the underground is
“progressive,” the Jesuit
sociologist pointed out, its
alienation from the mainstream
and its structures are closely
parallel to aspects of the Catholic
Traditionalist Movement, an
“underground” that seeks to
preserve the past virtually
unchanged.
Meanwhile, the large majority
of Christians continues to follow
its own course, moving with