Of Church and Change

Longtime Washingtonians describe his activism in city politics as subtle. He served under Mayor Walter E. Washington as director of the bicentennial in 1976 and as a member of the panel that nominates city judges. He was at the side of many candidates over the years.

"He has been a part of the fabric of Washington and its government but moved fairly quietly," said D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Inez Smith Reid, who met Stanley when both were at Yale. She is now active at Peoples.

Speakers at Stanley's last service Sunday sermonized about his quiet yet powerful demeanor.

"When he preaches, you can't hear his voice above a whisper. I used to think, what is wrong with him?" teased B. William Austin, a vice president at the University of the District of Columbia, where Stanley was once chairman of the board of trustees. "But then I realized, God speaks in a small voice."

Stanley led a church whose members were strongly influenced by the civil rights and black power movements. Peoples was a speaking stop for black civil rights icons such as Nobel Prize-winner Bishop Desmond Tutu and writer James Baldwin. In 1990, Stanley oversaw the installation of a new sanctuary marked with towering stained-glass windows showing Jesus as a black woman and as a black man.

Throughout his career, he has written about the plight of black people, once saying, "We can no longer go limping between two worlds -- one wishing to die, and one struggling to be born," Austin quoted him as writing.

Asked this week whether he continues to feel that black Americans are still limping, Stanley's answer was nuanced, and he made clear he could no longer answer only by referencing the black community.

He spoke about the importance of Americans claiming the entire kaleidoscope of cultures here as their own: Italians, Eastern Europeans, Central and South Americans like those who increasingly occupy the streets of Petworth. He spoke of his longing for that "beloved community" he thought was imminent in 1968. He spoke about his 18-year-old daughter and her "friends who look like the United Nations." She is pressing toward that new world, he said; she isn't limping.

Multiculturalism has long been a theme with Stanley, something his peers said set him apart. He pushed his very traditional, formal congregation to include gospel and jazz in their services. Under Stanley, Peoples has become more diverse, ethnically, racially and economically, Reid said.

"He's always been ahead of his time. Now everyone talks about being inclusive" to the gay and lesbian community, said the Rev. Susan Newman, but Stanley has done so since the 1960s.

"He has always broken down the wall between the sacred and the secular," said Newman, who co-officiated at Stanley's wedding to Andrea Young, daughter of former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young.

At that last service, Stanley read one of his favorite Psalms, the 27th, of which this is his favorite line: "I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."

It's an ambivalent expression, Stanley says, which is appropriate for how he feels. "I've suffered a lot," he said, "but I wouldn't have made it unless I had seen something very good and wonderful about all of this. I believe that about Washington."