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B: When you were thinking of this statement that eventually came out in the paper (and I don't know if it's been published elsewhere?)

G: No, it hasn't.

B: How did you view that? What was it's purpose?

G: Uh, part of the purpose was to signal the 11^th Hour Messenger folks and the Aryan Nations or the Christian identity people – I don't know if it's fair to mix all of those terms in together but it seems like their kind of joined at the hip if not organizationally, organically and ideologically, I think they are. We wanted to signal to them that the churches were not just sitting by and letting them do what ever they wanted. We wanted to let them know that there was a group of people who also claimed to be Christian who had a much different message than what they had. We also wanted the community to know that. The task force in the fall, after the first mailings came out, did a good job of stating that that wasn't the message that our society really was based on and in a couple private conversations I was hearing how come the churches haven't said anything. Well, there were probably a lot of reasons for that, not the least of which is that there is no organized group of churches. There's no ministerial organization that embodies all the churches and there probably won't be for some time so we have some division within the Christian community, which I find sad and ironic. But, and eventually that's . . . we had a community meeting in early November – mid-November, I guess it was – that was sponsored by the task force. A good, open meeting but it was filled with some fear on the part of some people because members of the Aryan Nations and the Eleventh Hour folks showed up and made some statements and, you know, they weren't threatening statements. They were just sharing what they believed but it was obvious, at least in that forum, that they were severely outnumbered and I decided that night that the churches needed to say something so I called the clergy together and we put that out as a just as a signal to community that the churches were aware of the Christian identity presence and that we felt it was not representative of the real Christian message.

B: You noted that there's some division among clergy members. I'm wondering, um, how did you go about sitting people at the same table? Ho do you hammer out a statement that is satisfying to those people sitting there?

G: Actually, it wasn't as hard as I anticipated. There were … most of the representatives there who kind of stayed through the thing were representative of the mainline denominations: Presbyterian, Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Catholics. But, there were other clergy from other denomination who moved in and out. Both independent churches as well as evangelical or some fundamentalist denominations and, actually, as I remember the first thing I did was give them a copy of a statement from the Montana Association of Churches just as it had been given to me. It had been sent to the Human Rights Task Force and I had a copy of it. It had five affirmations. You saw four of them in that … basically, the bulk of the statement we put out – those four affirmations – came directly, with some adaptation, came from that Montana statement. To my surprise, all of the clergy that were present at the first two meetings that we had were saying, yeah, that fits. I think that what happened was that within the Montana association it covers a wide range of denominations. Often times, state associations of churches are represented primarily with mainstream or mainline denominations because they're the ones that historically have felt the need for cooperative effort denominationally. They're the ones that support a national council of churches or world council and they're a lot of denominations who feel as though those two organizations are from anywhere from benign to evil. It runs quite a gamete. But the Montana Association does represent a wide range. And so when they hammered … my guess is that they probably had hammering out their statement than we did adapting that statement. If we'd tried to put something together from the very beginning it would have been a much longer process, so I was very glad to see that.

B: How long did it end up taking?

G: Actually, adopting the statement, it only took two meetings … hour plus. It really wasn't very hard. The difficulty that we had was in the process of convincing pastors to sign that in a public way and, uh, those who did, all of them, with the exception of two, are part of the mainline denominations represented. The other two pastors who signed were a very pleasant surprise to me because I really didn't expect any of the others to sign. Subsequently, one of the men who signed … he was at the forum on compassionate community that the task force sponsored last week. He has a real genuine interest in seeing that something good happens and I was very pleased to see that.

B: How did you decide to publicize the statement? How did you decide that printing it in the newspaper was the best way to publicize it?

G: Well, it seemed as though … we wanted to get it out to the community in the simplest way. We actually had anticipated doing it right up to the very end as a paid advertisement, quarter page advertisement. I still think that it would have been more visible. It was the Daily Bee's decision to print it as it was. Interestingly, there must be some legal restrictions. They felt if we put it in a paid advertisement that if the Eleventh Hour Remnant folks wanted to counter it in any way they would have to give them the same amount of space for nothing. It was partly a legal decision but I think mostly it was an economic decision. And, uh, then I thought it was going to be, as I talked with the people at the newspaper, I thought it was going to be simply an opinion that was going to be set apart. And until it came out as a letter to the editor, in effect, I thought it was going to be that opinion. But, again, I would have preferred that it was simply because it would have stood out a bit more but it didn't. As it's turned out, I don't really have a clue as to how effective it was because I really didn't get very much feedback so, um, little by little I have heard from people, predominately within the mainline churches that they're, that members of those congregations did read it and were thankful for it. I did hear one second – or actually probably, well, second-hand – that a member of one of the churches that did not have a pastor sign it, "how come we didn't do that?' Well, I don't know. Those pastors who didn't sign it said that they would put it, you know, present it to their congregations and wanted to deal with it basically in house. I hope they did. I really don't know whether they did or not. They have not shared any of that.

B: Do you have any future plans for the statement, for disseminating it?

G: At this point, no. My guess is that we will probably wait and respond or if the Eleventh Hour Remnant folks decide to put out another mailing or someone else puts out another mailing … One the one hand, in fact one of the serious questions that we discussed among the clergy was how much publicity should we give to these folks. If we make a big splash with this statement is that giving them more publicity than they deserve? And that's a legitimate question. We didn't come down hard on one side or the other. We did, those folks that really wanted to get it in there decided we would go ahead. But I honestly can't say whether it helped one way or the other.

B: Did it help as far as having a group of people come together and make decisions on this issue?

G: Oh, I think so, yes I think it did, Katy. The clergy who came together had not been together like that since, well, in fact maybe – I'm trying to remember the time – it may have been around the time of that initial rally in May of '91. Because some of us tried to get the same clergy together to write something. We did put something in the paper but it was just a letter to the editor, a very small one and that was met with a great deal of resistance. We had not gotten together since that time, as a group. In effect, there were two sets of clergy in the community, one mainline and one independent or evangelical or whatever they call themselves and so the mere fact that we were sitting down in the same room talking about something that we did have in common I thought was a good step. We've taken a step backward. No, we haven't taken a step backward as much as we just haven't taken another step forward. And, I'm looking for the right time to make another invitation for the clergy to get together because I really do see that as a sad statement to the community that the clergy are not able to consistently cooperate with each other, that there is suspicion. And there is, one both sides. It's not … I don't know that it's necessarily heavier on one side or the other but the fact that it's just there is sad.

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