The Glide Story

The Glide Story

Booklet published by Glide Foundation, circa 1967-68. Phyllis Lyon & Del Martin Papers.

Repository: GLBT Historical Society

Page 1: "Glide"

Page 2: "GLIDE IS A TRUST AGREEMENT. Farsighted Lizzie Glide established Glide Foundation in 1929 to serve the people of San
Francisco - especially in the Tenderloin.
The trust agreement provides for "an evangelistic center at the
corner of Taylor and Ellis" the name of which would include
"Glide Memorial" and "Church." Prior to 1962, Glide Memorial
Methodist Church fulfilled this trust requirement. That year
Glide Urban Center was established as the second part of the
Glide Foundation program. Soon thereafter new organizations
related to Glide Urban Center joined the Methodist congregation
in operating out of the Glide building at Taylor and Ellis.
New groups which gather at Glide include Citizens Alert which
deals with police harassment and brutality, Intersection which
is a meeting of artists and churchmen, and The Council on
Religion and the Homosexual.
Glide's trust agreement also requires Glide "to train Christian
workers." One of Glide's most effective training enterprises is
its intern program. Each year from five to ten laymen and seminarians train for innovative ministries.
Another purpose of Glide, as stated in the trust, is "to forward
Protestant Christianity in the city."
While the income from the Glide trust provides the basic income
for Glide's budget, contributions from members and friends
provide Glide with the financial latitude needed to free a staff
for service to urban people and for new forms of ministries to
new "congregations." Contributions by Glide's members also
support the worldwide mission program of The Methodist
Church."

Page 3: A photograph of a person in small heeled shin high boots walking past the corner of a building with the text, "Glide Memorial Evangelistic Center - A House of Prayer For All People - AD 1930" inscribed in a slab of the stone.

Page 4: "GLIDE IS A STAFF-AND A SMALL ARMY. Glide's trustees have chosen to employ a staff to formulate and administer program. The staff, headed by Lewis Durham, includes Donald Kuhn, Ted McIlvenna, Ed Peet, Lloyd Wake and Cecil Williams. Each has unusual educational credits and diverse experiences.
Members of Glide's staff have succeeded in identifying themselves with all sorts of minority groups and grass-roots urban populations - and from time to time have succeeded in helping overlooked people to participate in determining the directions the city will move. As a result, many people - including both church-goers and non-church-goers-identify with Glide, ask for help, offer to help, and become an integral part of the mysterious entity everyone finds easy to call simply, "Glide." Consequently the Glide staff regularly hears about people who have "represented Glide" in ways not specifically preferred by either Glide's trustees or staff.
Everywhere a person turns in San Francisco, there is someone
present from Glide. The small army sometimes openly says it
belongs to Glide. But often, without mentioning Glide, it quietly
works to attain justice, freedom and reconciliation in one of the
most bureaucratically entangled cities in the Western World.
While Glide Memorial Methodist Church has only 300 members,
Glide has thousands of important supporters-the unnamed
people who make San Francisco a great place to live-because
they live here."

Page 5: A photograph of four individuals talking to one another at a long table. Two men facing the viewer are wearing suits. Two other individuals have their backs facing the viewer and have short cropped hair.

Page 6: "GLIDE IS A MYSTIQUE. Ask anyone from Glide to explain what Glide is and he or she will smile in silence before trying.
Glide is many things to many people.
In the middle of the San Francisco race riots of 1966, Glide was
inside the riot area working with rioters and outside the riot
helping news media know where to obtain the latest news and
also interpreting the action to "the city fathers."
In the puzzling Haight-Ashbury scene, Glide championed the
"love generation" with police, park and health departments;"
To the right of the above text is a photograph that features a small group of people outside by a mid-sized wall surrounding a large pot of spaghetti.

Page 7: "Ted Mcllvenna dishes food with the Haight-Ashbury Diggers for anyone who wants lunch in front of San Francisco's City Hall." [Description for photo on page 6]
"opened its facilities for multi-media happenings and for free
dinners on Thursday nights.
Everywhere you turn Glide seems to be there, identifying with
creative change. Its strategies and tactics vary from situation to
situation but it is there.
Also Glide seems always beyond comprehension because it
changes so often and so much. Glide's trustees and staff members read their newspapers each morning with eager anticipation to find out what Glide has done. Each knows that behind at least one headline Glide is at work. For instance, Glide intern Ed Hansen and his associates broke into headlines to announce a large number of pill-heads and prostitutes - male and female - who gathered in the Tenderloin. This entire new sub-culture came as a surprise to many connected with Glide. Before long Glide was sponsoring Sunday evening meetings at Chuckers, an infamous hang-out nearby, and was providing a room for dances for the youth. All of this is accepted now. The Chuckers meetings have ended and the dances are no longer housed at Glide. Hundreds of similar stories of newsworthy breakthroughs could
be listed."

Page 8: "GLIDE IS A STATEMENT OF FAITH. In a thousand ways, Glide says the city belongs to God-and all who dwell therein. God
is at work in the events of the city - and God speaks to the city's
people through those events.
Glide is the church of Jesus Christ. The identification is clear.
The work of Glide is to claim the city for Christ-in the many
languages of the city.
Glide, firmly rooted on the Bible and church history, continues
the ministries of the church; struggles with the meaning of the
church-congregation and membership; offers the sacraments;
and works in most of the processes of city life- public education,
the arts, economic development, housing, the poverty program, and mental health.
Worshippers from the many Glide related congregations as well
as international visitors gather each Sunday for worship which
is a mixture of the contemporary and the traditional. Memorable
Sundays have featured community organizer Saul Alinsky as
preacher, the John Handy jazz ensemble, a local folk-rock group,
and local dance troops. Usually the preacher is Glide's own
A. Cecil Williams."

Page 9: A photograph of a Black man in a suit and glasses being interviewed by two white men in suits in front of a camera in the foreground and a crowd of people in the background.

Page 10: The Wall Street Journal. Monday, March 13, 1967 Vol. LXXVI. No. 49
Tenderloin Ministry: A 'Secularized' Church Pursues Its Mission In Unorthodox Causes: San Francisco Homosexuals Helped by Glide Methodist; Some Members Unhappy - Is Big City God's Creation?
By: Howard Merry, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
"SAN FRANCISCO — The church holds "soul jigs''-rock 'n' roll concerts-in its sanctuary. It sponsors a retreat for clergymen and homosexuals, a dance for male prostitutes. It hands out $1,000 to hire Negro gang leaders as "peace monitors" to help quell a race riot.
"We have to come to grips with the world the way it is," says the Rev. Cecil Williams,
one of the church's ministers. Another, the Rev. Lewis Durham, adds: "If we hide, deny,
or refuse to engage and be reborn into this new kind of world, then in fact we refuse
I to participate in God's work."
The church is San Francisco's Glide Memorial Methodist. Once it was a bulwark of
conservative, Southern-based Protestantism. Now it is in the vanguard of an often controversial movement to bridge the wide gap between respectable, church-going society and the rootless, sometimes angry folks who popu-late rundown big-city neighborhoods. Those include the destitute aged and wayward young-sters, hipsters and homosexuals, drug addicts and resentful minority groups.
The "Secularizatlon" Trend
This movement is part of a wider trend called "secularization," and few religious denominations have escaped its influence entirely. Even in well-to-do suburbs, ministers open basement expresso coffee houses to attract young people who otherwise wouldn't be caught dead in church. The clergy is a major source of recruits for the civil rights movement, and some of the most outspoken criticism of the Vietnam war comes from the pulpit.
At Glide, secularization has developed to an extraordinary extent. Few other churches
have so wholly committed themselves to invo1vement with the secular world, and few have so deeply focused on the specific ills of urban life. But Glide is especially suited to take on the job it has set out for itself.
Glide has a generous endowment from its now dead benefactor, the widow of a rich
businessman and owns a profitable San Francisco hotel. It has a broad charter that gives its trustees and ministers sweeping freedom of action. Its membership numbers only a few middle-class families (partly because of its controversial activities). On an average Sunday, three-quarters of the congregation consists of out-of-town guests from nearby San Francisco hotels.
In the Tenderloin
Finally, its pink Spanish-style building is strategically situated at the edge of San Francisco's Tenderloin. district, a neighborhood notorious for prostitution, drunkenness, drug addiction, and violent misbehavior. The Tenderloin's 20-odd blocks, glutted with dowdy hotels and apartments, musty stores, "gay" bars, sailors hangouts and cheap diners, offer an ample supply of human misery for Glide to deal with.
Not everyone connected with Glide has been happy with the direction the church has taken. Mr. Williams figures that between 20% and 40% of the members it had three years ago, when it started its programs, have departed. A former parishioner complains, "It has gotten into things the church has no business being involved with; it negates the religious experience you expect from your church.''
If spurned by some laymen, Glide's activities seem to have met with at least tacit
approval from the Methodist hierarchy. The bishop of California is one of Glide's trustees.
Glide's "mission" isn't easily labeled. Partly, the ministers say, it is "catalytic";
when they discover what they believe is an unfilled need, they try to interest and organize others in meeting it. Essentially, they"

Page 11: Article from page 10 continued.
"say, their job is to apply Christian ideals of charity to urban problems.
"In the cities today, the1se is a tremendous need to get people working together again," says Mr. Durham. "All the factions - unions, businesses, political parties, civil rights groups and those who resist them-have learned how to stand each other off, so we're at a standstill."
A Hand in Politics
Sometimes, Glide involves itself in politics. Last summer, along with other churches, it
used what influence it could muster to help secure the appointments of two members of the San Francisco Board of Education. The two, Laurel Glass and Alan Nichols, were
given Glide's support because they were committed to "quality and equality" in public education, says the Rev. Donald L. Kuhn, Glide's director of communications.
Glide's ministers are especially concerned about homosexuality. It is widespread in San Francisco. Police estimate that 80,000 to 90,000 San Franciscans, or more than 10% of the city's 790,000 people, are homosexuals.
Glide permitted the Vanguards, a group of young male prostitutes, to have a dance
in the church. Glide also has made office space available to the Vanguards, helped them secure a clubroom, and bought them furniture.
"We were the only ones who would respond to the needs of these people," says Mr.
Williams. "If you make yourself available to people, there's got to be a complete commitment. A commitment just to help those it's easy to help is hypocritical."
Glide ministers haven't tried to "reform" the homosexuals. But Mr. Durham says some
have responded to the sympathetic treatment they have received. "One fellow who was really struggling with his sexual identity has gotten married and found a job," he says. "Two or three have joined the church. Some who have gotten away from the kind of life they were leading have even come back to help those still caught up in it.''
Skeptics suggest that the homosexuals are taking advantage of Glide, an assertion that
Mr. Durham concedes is a "very real possibility." He adds, however: "We have to put
ourselves in a vulnerable position so that we can be used to meet people's needs." Whatever else may result from the aid to the Vanguards, it already has opened some communication between homosexuals and the police department. A policeman has been assigned to counsel the group.
Oddly, among those unhappy with the Glide-Vanguard relationship were leaders of several other homosexual organizations. "We thought the publicity (about dances and prostitution) would tend to perpetuate in the public mind a stereotype of the homosexual as irresponsible and sexually permissive," one says.
Glide also has worked with those organizations,whose ranks include reputable lawyer,
doctors, teachers, and entertainers. Ted McIlvenna, a Glide minister, organized a retreat for clergymen and homosexuals to discuss the problem. A group called the Council of Religion and the Homosexual grew out of the retreat. Its members have appeared on radio and television and have conferred with police and state liquor control officials to acquaint them with the homosexuals' efforts to avoid "persecution."
''No Longer Silent"
"At least we have reached out and are dealing with our situation in the broader community," says the head of one homosexual organization. "We no longer feel that we have to remain silent."
Glide has served as the catalyst for groups formed for widely different reason. In a retreat with members of the Young Men's Christian Association, it was decided that
San Francisco badly needed a "clearinghouse" for newcomers to the city to give them tips about jobs, social activities, and low-cost housing. Gateway, a downtown storefront information center. was established. Originally financed by Glide, it is now supported by a Ford Foundation grant.
Misunderstandings between police officers and Tender loin residents, and charges of
police brutality, led Glide to sponsor a meeting of concerned San Franciscans. They later started Citizens Alert, a group that maintains a 24-hour answering service to help people arrested by police.
''Police Brutality"
An important function of Citizens Alert is investigating and screening complaints of police brutality. If the group considers evidence of unnecessary force to be strong enough, it files a complaint with police officials.
Police insist not a single complaint has been justified, and some officers resent Citizens Alert's readiness to accept such complaints. One police official, however, says the group's efforts have made patrolmen more conscious of their duty to use only necessary force in making arrests. He adds: "We're getting a lot fewer complaints now than we used to.''
Glide's five ministers (four are white, and one, Mr. Williams, is a Negro) were quick to
act when Negroes in San Francisco's Hunters Point district rioted last September. Glide gave $1,000 to Youth for Service, an organization of former ghetto gang leaders. Youth for Service used the money to hire, at $15 a day, youthful gang leaders who served as "peace monitors" to help cool the tempers of rioters.
The police department said hiring the monitors definitely helped to hold down violence."

Page 12: On the left side of the page is the remainder of the article text from pages 10-11: "But Mr. Durham doesn't even try to justify the payout on religious grounds. "It was done on a functional, practical basis," he says. "We needed to stop the riot."
Abortion and Alinsky
Predictably, Glide's church services are unconventional by most standards. A recent sermon entitled The Therapeutic Abortion Controversy was given by an abortion defender—Dr. Edmund W. Overstreet, a medical school professor and chief of obstetrical and gynecological services at San Francisco General Hospital. Yesterday, Saul Alinsky, a radical organizer of the poor, gave the sermon.
During one recent communion service, the minister in charge asked whether anyone in the congregation wanted to talk. Six churchgoers rose to offer their thoughts on current issues.
If Glide's activities appear unorthodox, its ministers say, it is largely because of a strong "anti-urban" strain in American Protestant thinking. While most denominations have willingly, even eagerly, dispatched missionaries to primitive and sometimes savage foreign lands, many religious leaders have shied away from work In the domestic "jungles."
Heretofore. says Mr. Durham. "The role of the church in the city was somehow to save
people from the evils of the city and to remind them of the sanctity of their rural heritage." But no matter how "atheistic, Godless, immoral, demonic'' modern city life may seem to be, Mr. Durham says, God created it and loves it.
Glide's activities have intrigued many clergymen and religious laymen around the
country. Two writers for a Methodist magazine recently spent some time at Glide doing a series of articles. "We have seen the growing edge of Christianity," they jubilantly reported back to their editor."
On the right side of the page in a dark brown section is the text:
"BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE GLIDE FOUNDATION
Dr. Frank Webber, President
R. A. Young, Jr., Vice-President
Maurice H. Sumner, Secretary
Dr. D. Clifford Crummey
Dr. Joyce Wesley Farr
The Honorable Joseph G. Kennedy
Abel P. Machado
Dr. Laurel Glass W. E. Morris
The Reverend Robert D. Hill The Reverend Joseph H. Pritchard
Bishop Donald H. Tippett
Wilbur A. Jacoby—Assistant Secretary, Treasurer, and Business Manager"