Harbingers of a Dream: Faith and The City's Congregational Exchange Program

By Acacia Bamberg Salatti
Faith And The City E-Letter
Volume 2 Issue 3
February 20, 2003

On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King looked out over a sea of humanity in our nation's capital and proclaimed his dream of a new society. His impassioned oratory envisioned a day when on "the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood." He envisioned a diverse community "where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers." Nearly 40 years after King's stirring speech on the steps of the Lincoln Monument during the historic March on Washington, his own native Atlanta still struggles to fulfill his egalitarian aspiration.

Ironically, the struggle for racial camaraderie is carried on perhaps most visibly in the congregations of Atlanta's faith communities. It has been said countless times that the most segregated period in America is not Monday through Friday, but Sunday mornings. In other words, African Americans and European Americans frequently interact with each other in the workplace. However, when it comes to occasional religious or social gatherings--for example, even when congregations of the same denomination but different races come together--blacks and whites often shy away from one another or, at best, share decidedly superficial conversation. How, then, can ties of friendship and reconciliation be formed and sustained? How can the races establish a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood together if they do not even worship or eat meals together?

Faith And The City's Congregational Exchange Program asks those same questions of Atlanta's faith community--serving, at the same time, as a model for how congregations can partner to foster close interpersonal relationships founded on spirituality, trust, and sincerity. The program was established in 1998 under the leadership of Jan Swanson, who continues to serve as executive director. Funded by the Woodruff Foundation, the Congregational Exchange Program initially operated under the auspices of the Christian Council of Metropolitan Atlanta. Since fall 2002, the program has been housed with Faith And The City.

For Swanson, the reason behind the Congregational Exchange Program is simple. "Atlanta living is parallel living when it comes to black and white," she said. "Socially, blacks and whites stay in their respective little groups." Through her project, however, congregations of diverse social, cultural, racial, and religious backgrounds come together with the purpose of becoming personal, intimate friends. "We are mandated by God to love and care for the stranger. This is not a Christian doctrine. It's a faith doctrine," Swanson added.

Swanson and her partner Debra A. Walters, an African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) pastor, match congregations that are balanced economically--and then start the process of having those communities get to know each other. About 150 congregations are participants in the program, all with varying degrees of involvement. Swanson, however, is reluctant for congregations to limit their activities to mission projects. In her opinion, such activities allow people to stay in their comfort zones, making it harder to build open acquaintances. In order for intimate relationships to emerge, she and Walters press program participants to dig deeper--past the obligatory social niceties. "People have to work intentionally at simply getting to know each other rather than focusing only on a joint project," Swanson explained. "When you really get to know someone, you have to drop the mask."

Perhaps that sentiment is why the program's Friend-to-Friend encounters stand as such an integral part of the initiative. The concept is straightforward. A family in one congregation hosts a family from another congregation. Afterwards, hosting duties are reciprocated and the former hosts become the guests in the other family's home. This approach stems from collaboration between the Congregational Exchange Program and the Friendship Force, an organization that has enabled almost 1 million people to travel to other countries and develop lasting friendships. In the same way, the Friend-to-Friend exchange works for people in Atlanta.

The initiative certainly operated that way for Juanita Vasser and Virginia Mayer, members respectively of predominantly black Cascade United Methodist Church and predominantly white Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church. The two women not only spearheaded the Friend-to-Friend exchanges between their congregations, they also hosted each other's families for the weekend.

"We were able to break down barriers more so [by] meeting together [inside our homes] than outside of our homes," said Mayer. She described the experience as "wonderful" and added that she and Vasser have become very close friends.

Vasser echoed that sentiment. "Our friendship grew from the inside to the outside," she said. "We worked at it, stayed in touch, and became genuine friends." When Vasser had surgery, she recalled, Mayer was there for her--bringing both food and friendship.

After all, as the remarkable successes of the Congregational Exchange Program underscore, it is from the simple minutiae of life that true community and lasting friendship emerge. When racially diverse families gather together in a house of worship, when they share personal anecdotes, when they sit down and partake of a meal in one another's homes--such actions connote what King described as the "beloved community." They are the marrow of the dream he shared with the nation.

And the Atlanta congregations committed to the work of the Congregational Exchange Program clearly are harbingers of that dream.

For more information on the Congregational Exchange Program, contact Jan Swanson at jswanson@faithandthecity.org or 404-523-5554.

Acacia Bamberg Salatti, a freelance writer in Atlanta, can be reached at AbambergA@netscape.net.