Clergy: Grapes of Wrath

A Cessna 180 piloted by Roman Catholic Priest Keith Kenny swooped low over the San Joaquin valley vineyards outside Delano, Calif. Through a bullhorn another priest, the Rev. Arnold Meagher, shouted to the cluster of Mexican grape pickers below: “Huelga! Strike! Respect the picket lines. Don’t be strikebreakers.”

Landing a bit later in Delano, they were met by two priests representing the local bishop, Aloysius Willinger of Monterey-Fresno. They told the flying fathers to stop inciting the strike: “The bishop feels that this is none of your business and asks that you go back to your own diocese.” Protested Kenny, later on: “Where the poor are, Christ should be.”

Living the Gospel. Whether the three-month-old strike, staged to get union recognition for grape pickers, is the Christian churches’ business has become a dominant issue around Delano. Protagonist for involvement is the 20-year-old California Migrant Ministry, an interdenominational group supported by many local congregations and councils of churches, and until lately a welfare organization. United Presbyterian Minister Wayne C. Hartmire, 33, is the director of the ministry. He argues that “the job of the church is to make Christian love real and powerful in the lives of men. You cannot live the Gospel without getting involved in the dirty business of politics, economics, and social issues, because this is where men live their lives.”

As Hartmire sees it, the plight of the grape pickers cries out to heaven. They are mostly illiterate Mexicans and Filipinos. Among them, for example, is Marcos Munoz, who lives in a squalid shack that he calls “something you would not let a dog enter.” Another, Manuel Rivera, 52, the father of seven, works ten hours a day when he is not on strike, for the minimum wage of $1.25 an hour. He is a grim man whose only hope is for his children; he feels that the vineyard owners “make an animal out of me. They might as well put a leash on me.”

Corkscrew Soul. Hartmire and eight other Protestant ministers have lately been in jail for “unlawful assembly” while picketing. Another minister, David Havens, 29, of the Disciples of Christ, was arrested for “disturbing the peace” by reading aloud to imported strikebreakers a vivid definition by Jack London: “A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a waterlogged brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.” Strike leaders estimate that a third of the grape harvest will rot on the vines, and Harry Bridges’ strike-sympathizing longshoremen have caused tons of grapes to rot on the docks by refusing to have anything to do with them. Inevitably, the strike has attracted some Berkeley students—coeds in college sweaters and wool stockings, boys in Zapata-style mustaches. “Do you find this a meaningful experience?” they ask one another.

The sight of priests and ministers abetting a strike repels the Delano Ministerial Association. It disapproves of “any ecclesiastical demonstration or interference in the farm labor situation”; they hold that the concern of the clergy must be “in the spiritual area.” The grape growers are even more disgusted. WHERE ARE WE LETTING THE LEADERS OF THE CHURCH TAKE us? asked Allan Grant, president of the California Farm Bureau, in an article in the organization’s monthly. The question inspired the First Presbyterian Church of Fresno, which is north of Delano in the San Joaquin valley, to sponsor a forum on the issues of church involvement.

God Is There. Joe Brosmer, manager of a growers’ association, made the case against the strike-inciting ministers: “The church cannot maintain its position of representing the Lord and at the same time be union organizers. The basic duty of the church is to provide for the spiritual welfare of all of us. The church cannot take sides and still serve God.” Said Presbyterian Hartmire: “I don’t see how man can experience the message of the Gospel—God loves you and believes in you and hopes for the best for you—without experiencing that love for his brothers. God makes us responsible. In all the ways we treat our brothers, God is there.”

No minds were changed, of course. But in the act of bringing its struggle to the moral level, Delano has allowed Hartmire and his dedicated picket-line preachers to have their way: everybody is now involved.