Learning Our Manners: The Legacy of Katallagete

Abstract

This article traces the influence of Katallagete upon the ministry of the author when, as a young pastor in the early 1980s, he discovered archived issues of the journal going back to 1965. The writings and lives of Will Campbell, William Stringfellow, Thomas Merton, and Fannie Lou Hamer became central. Ms. Hamer’s image of the church as God’s welcome table to which everyone is invited to come and eat, even racists, although they might have to learn new manners, became a principal metaphor for all Childress’s pastoral ministry.