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A History of the Presbytery of the Western Reserve: Organizing Churches, Addressing Mission Needs, Speaking for Justice (Page 2 of 2)
The influx of non-English speaking, non-Protestant, and frequently unskilled, immigrants and later of rural Blacks presented new opportunities for ministry. In 1896 Mrs. Flora Stone Mather enabled the Old Stone Church to expand its activities by establishing Goodrich Settlement House. The House quickly became involved in providing volunteer legal help, campaigning for cleaner streets, and for separation of juvenile offenders. In 1898 it started a vacation school and camp program.
In contrast to many presbyteries in which the office of Executive Presbyter is an extension of the Stated Clerk, in Cleveland the Executive Presbyter began as the administrator of the mission program. In January, 1900, with the financial help of Mrs. Mather, the Home Mission Committee employed the Rev. Frank N. Riale as Home Missions Presbyterial Pastor to work among the foreign born population. The First Presbyterian Church of Lorain was organized in October of that year as a result of his work. After Dr. Riale left in 1904, various efforts were made to continue the work and to coordinate it with the work of the Presbyterian Union.
The Centennial of the First Presbyterian Church of East Cleveland was promoted to inspire enthusiasm and raise a fund to refinance the work of the Presbyterian Union and change from project by project fund-raising to annual solicitation for a general fund.
In December 1911, Dr. Charles L. Zorbaugh became both Presbyterial Superintendent and Financial Secretary for the Presbyterian Union. The Presbyterian Headquarters was opened in March 1912 at 1225 Schofield Building, East Ninth and Euclid, on a corridor with six other denominational and community agency offices. In 1913, the reports of the first two years show a program of seven Vacation Church Schools with thirty paid teachers (part of 18 interdenominationally planned schools), seven on-going worship and service ministries, two suburban and four outlying churches needing special attention. Cleveland hosted a national conference with Magyar pastors and city superintendents.
Churches organized as a result of this work were First Magyar, St. Mark's, St. John's Beckwith, Church of the Redeemer (W. 69th St.) and Church of the Savior (Collinwood). The policy was to work from existing churches where possible. Immanuel, Wickliffe, Mayflower, North, and Woodland Avenue were especially active centers. Calvin Church was a Slovak congregation of the UPCNA organized in 1921.
A new gymnasium, given by Elder Louis H. Severance, was opened in 1913 in the Woodland Avenue Church to provide for a seven day program of neighborhood services. When the congregation merged with the Woodland Hills Congregational Church in 1925, the program was reorganized and opened in 1928 as Woodland Center Neighborhood House, the predecessor of Garden Valley Neighborhood House.
The Playhouse Settlement at East 38 Street and Central Avenue, now Karamu House, began in 1915 through the interest of Dr. Paul F. Sutphen, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church (then at East 30th and Prospect), Dr. Dudley P. Allen and the Men's Club of the Church.
The Harkness Farm Fresh Air Camp opened in 1919 at a lake-front estate in Willoughby loaned by the Harkness family. The Presbyterian Union purchased a part of the property in 1941 to operate as a Presbyterian Center, as well as a summer camp. Operation of the camp was the major interest of the Union until its consolidation in 1948 with the Church Extension Committee and the Trustees of the Endowment Fund into a single corporation. The present camp, The Highlands, in Mesopotamia was bought in June 1955.
On March 31, 1931, the first woman elder, Emma Raymond, was elected at Old Stone Presbyterian Church. The Women's Auxiliary of the Woodland Center was organized in 1931 and continues its strong interest in the successor Garden Valley Neighborhood House.
In the 1930's the mission concerns of the Presbytery were directed towards the maintenance of congregations and ministers in the midst of the Depression and to the social issues of the day. At the September meeting of 1937, resolutions were adopted in support of liquor controls, on the location of taverns, in opposition to gambling, and in opposition to enlistment methods of the state militia "which lure young men through appeals to recreation, fellowship, and camping, when, in fact, the militia is increasingly being used for police duty in industrial disputes." In December 1938 a resolution on Jews in Germany expressed Presbytery's "deep conviction that such cruel treatment of an innocent race is contrary to the teachings of Christ, reverts back to a pagan nationalism, outrages the feelings of all decent men, and tears up by the roots the possibility of international goodwill."
In 1938 the Presbytery elected a committee on Ministerial Relations, evidently for the primary purpose of counseling since calls continued to be reported by the Committee on Bills and Overtures. The minutes refer to considerable concern for churches having difficulty paying mortgages on their property, and in April 1939 the Presbytery wholeheartedly joined in the Debt Liquidation Campaign of the Church Extension Committee of the Board of National Missions.
Following World War II the Presbytery shared the national experience of rapid growth. From 1948 through 1962 fifteen churches now on the roll were established in addition to several now in Eastminster Presbytery, slightly more than one per year. In 1958, the Rev. Marideen Visscher joined the staff of the Forest Hill Church as Assistant Pastor and became the first woman pastor to become a member of the Presbytery of Cleveland.
Projects of the Presbyterial Association in this period included the complete furnishings of two furlough homes for foreign missionaries in East Cleveland in 1955 and the establishment in 1966 of Project Friendship for teenage girls referred by the Juvenile Court.
Other recent mission activities include cooperation with the Board of National Missions in the work of the inner City Protestant Parish which began in 1955, and the dissolution and re-establishment of the Glenville Church and Neighborhood Center in 1960. Cleveland was the first presbytery to establish an Office of Religion and Race in cooperation with the Interchurch Commission on Religion and Race in June 1963 with the Rev. Charles W. Rawlings as director. In 1972, the Presbytery elected its first woman moderator, Elder Mary Scott, of Parma-South Church. The Hunger Program was established in April 1976 with funding by the National Hunger Program. Karen Patterson was the first Hunger Enabler. The Peacemaking Program, Swords Into Plowshares, was created in February 1980 with the Rev. Richard Watts as Coordinator. The project on Churches in Transition was begun in March 1981.
Last
Updated May 16, 2001
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