Former moderator lambastes Layman
By John H. Adams, Layman, June 28, 1999
FORT WORTH – Pat Brown, who served as moderator of the General Assembly in 1997-98, railed against racism and the Presbyterian Lay Committee during a speech that was part of the report by the Committee on National and Social Issues.
Lamenting the fact that the Presbyterian Church (USA) is 93-percent white, she used a personal experience to criticize “white privilege” within the denomination.
She and a white man were on the highway when a tractor-trailer created a “life-threatening” situation, that forced the two of them off the road. The truck driver showed no respect for the fact that she was the moderator of the PCUSA and her companion was a PCUSA minister, she said.
‘He didn’t like it’
“What he saw was a black woman and a white man, and he didn’t like it,” she said. “I served as moderator of the 209th General Assembly, but racism has no respect for honored elected positions, or wealth, or education or status.”
She did not explain how the truck driver should have known that she was the moderator.
“To understand the notion of white privilege is to understand the continuing challenge of membership in a denomination that is 93 percent white,” she said.
Without directly accusing the Presbyterian Lay Committee of racism, she criticized The Presbyterian Layman in the middle of her anti-racism speech.
Layman coverage criticized
She said The Layman slammed the opening worship service that she planned, with her as the preacher, at the 1998 General Assembly. She was angered that The Layman’s coverage criticized Scripture reading in Spanish without providing a translation.
This is how The Layman reported that part of the service in its July/August 1998 edition: “Fulfilling her promise to produce ‘a truly multi-cultural celebration,’ outgoing Moderator Patricia Brown designed every aspect of the ceremony to be so inclusive of all possible constituencies that the vast majority of the worshipers (English-speaking Presbyterians) was at various times excluded. Never was this more in evidence than when Rev. Ana Loyda Lugo read a long biblical passage in Spanish that was never translated into or re-read in English, and was not signed for the hearing impaired, unlike the rest of the service.”
While telling the 1999 General Assembly that it was unfortunate that the English translation of the Spanish was inadvertently omitted from program for the worship service, Brown nonetheless continued to imply that The Layman was guilty of racism in her next sentence: “Racism is a word large enough to include major hate, as well as everyday put downs that challenge people in this country and around the world.”
She urged commissioners to conduct anti-racism training in their churches.