Congregational leader Ray Gibbons dies at 105

The Rev. Ray Gibbons, a minister with Maine ties who helped Congregational 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 last month, his son reported last week.

He was 105.

Gibbons and his wife, Marjorie, had retired to Maine in 1969, then moved to Claremont, Calif., in 1977. She died in 1999.

He died March 18 at Pilgrim Place retirement home in Claremont, Calif.

Starting in the 1920s, he became a pastor at churches in Massachusetts and Maine before leading the council. He also served on the board of the National Council of Churches.

Soon after taking over as director, Gibbons called on the denomination’s 4,000 clergy to address “racial relations, labor problems, peace treaties, management [and] economic questions,” according to a 1944 Time magazine article.

Gibbons worked out of the council’s New York 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 as they worked to reintegrate those citizens back into their communities.

He spoke out 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, saying management did not give fair coverage to civil rights issues.