Home Delivery

Civil rights advocate Rev. Ray Gibbons, 105, dies

Los Angeles Times

April 28, 2008

Article tools

E-mail

Share
- Digg
- Del.icio.us
- Facebook
- Fark
- Google
- Newsvine
- Reddit
- Yahoo

The Rev. Ray Gibbons, a minister who helped Protestant churches in the United States address major social and political issues as director of the Council for Christian Social Action from 1944 to 1968, died of natural causes March 18 at a retirement home in Claremont, Calif., his son David said last week. He was 105.

The council was an agency of the Congregational Christian Churches of America and, from 1957, the United Church of Christ. Soon after becoming director, he urged the denomination's 4,000 clergymen to address "racial relations, labor problems, peace treaties, management [and] economic questions," a 1944 Time magazine story said.

Gibbons worked out of the council's Manhattan offices but traveled extensively to lead congregations as they put their Christian faith into practice.

During World War II, he visited internment camps where Japanese-Americans were detained, offering encouragement and advocating their release. After the war, he helped churches reassimilate the interned citizens.

He spoke in Appalachia and other depressed areas while helping to develop better housing for low- and middle-income families. In the 1960s, he joined civil rights activists in marches in Selma, Ala., and helped monitor media coverage in Mississippi when activists successfully challenged the Federal Communications Commission's renewal of a Jackson, Miss., TV station's license.

Gibbons often encountered resistance. "A lot of people argued at that time that the church shouldn't get involved in social action," said David, of Oakhurst, N.J. "It took courage to do what he was doing."

Born Feb. 10, 1903, in Cleveland, Gibbons attended Oberlin College in Ohio and Union Theological Seminary in New York and did graduate work at Columbia University. He was a pastor in Massachusetts and Maine before leading the council. He served on the board of the National Council of Churches.

Gibbons and his wife, Marjorie, retired to Maine in 1969, then moved to Claremont in 1977. She died in 1999. He also is survived by son Paul, of Nelson, N.H.; and a daughter, Jane, of Sweden, Maine. All his children are ordained ministers.

Get breaking news alerts!

Would you recommend this?

Rate it: