Two teams of American church leaders, one dove and one hawk, went to Viet Nam last month with contrasting purposes.
A four-man team commissioned by the National Council of Churches was said to be making the trip to discover what meaning American policies and actions are having in that area. The group is headed by Executive Director Robert S. Bilheimer of the Department of International Affairs of the NCC.
The other team was dispatched by the American Council of Christian Churches. An ACCC news release said that “the purpose of this team going to Viet Nam at this time is to encourage out fighting men in Viet Nam to know that there are many churchmen in the United States who support them in this conflict against the atheistic Communist aggressors and to assure them of our prayers. Also this team wishes to make known to the public and to our elected leaders in Congress that we are for victory over Communism in Viet Nam.”
There was some speculation that at least one member of the NCC team might try to reach Hanoi. The announced itinerary included stops in Japan, Thailand, and Cambodia, as well as South Viet Nam. Traveling with Bilheimer were William Phelps Thompson, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.; Episcopal Bishop George Barrett of Rochester, New York; and Dr. Tracy K. Jones, Jr., associate general secretary of the World Division of the Methodist Board of Missions and chairman of the NCC’s advisory committee on peace. All lean heavily to a dove-like stance and have been associated with numerous statements critical of U. S. military policy in Viet Nam.
The ACCC party planned to visit, in addition to Viet Nam, Korea, Formosa, Thailand, and Laos. The group included Dr. Marion H. Reynolds, Jr., president of the ACCC; Dr. John E. Millheim, general secretary of the ACCC; the Rev. James T. Shaw, executive secretary of International Christian Relief; and the Rev. Donald L. Gorham, southern representative of the ACCC.
The ACCC release said the churchmen would be “preaching to our fighting men, distributing gospel tracts and Bibles, visiting hospitals and chaplains, encouraging them spiritually as well as morally in this conflict.”
Meanwhile, a church in New York City said it has sold its stock in Dow Chemical Company—primary producer of napalm used in Viet Nam, according to the church—as a protest against civilian casualties in Viet Nam.
The church made a $7,000 profit on sale of the stock, which will go to several organizations working in Viet Nam to alleviate human suffering.
In announcing the sale, Cornelius McDougald, chairman of the board of trustees of the Community Church of New York, said, “We are chagrined and ashamed at the large number of civilian casualties in this war. We have seen reports that at least 50,000 civilian casualties will be admitted for treatment into Viet Nam hospitals this year, 1967. It is estimated that at least twice this number do not survive to reach the hospitals.… Most of them are victims of indiscriminate use of napalm and anti-personnel bombs.”
Chaplain Casualties
Seven American chaplains, six from the Army and one from the Navy, have died as a result of the Viet Nam war, according to information given by the U. S. Defense Department June 19.
Three of the Army chaplain victims were killed in action: Captain Michael J. Quealy (Roman Catholic), Captain James L. Johnson (National Baptist Convention, U. S. A.), and Major William J. Barragy (Roman Catholic). Two others have died as a result of wounds: Captain William N. Feaster (United Church of Christ) and Captain Ambrosio S. Grandea (Methodist). Lieutenant Colonel Meir Engel (Jewish) died in Viet Nam of a heart attack.
The Navy chaplain died in a fire aboard the U. S. S. Oriskany while attached to the Seventh Fleet off Viet Nam. He was Lieutenant Commander W. J. Garrity (Roman Catholic).
No fatalities have been reported among Air Force chaplains.
Baptists Cancel Out
A Delaware pastor spearheading a Baptist unity movement says the group’s 1967 conference, which had been scheduled for July 15–22, has been canceled because of lack of interest.
The announcement came from the Rev. Howard R. Stewart, chairman of the unofficial movement. It said “that the number of registrations coming in did not warrant continued plans for it.”
The meeting was to have been held in Green Lake, Wisconsin.
Winifred Davies
Miss Winifred Davies, a missionary to the Congo since 1946, was killed May 28 in a clash between national army troops and rebels. She had been held hostage by the rebels since August, 1964.
Miss Davies, in her forties, was a native of England. She served under the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade.
James Ira Dickson
Formosa’s best known Protestant missionary, Dr. James Ira Dickson, died last month at the age of 67.
Dickson founded the Taiwan Theological College and served as its principal. His wife, Lillian, operates the famous “Mustard Seed Mission.” They have served under the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
Costly Apartheid
A Dutch Reformed theologian, Dr. Adrian D. Pont, will have to pay $27,777 to two leaders of the Christian Institute of South Africa, Dr. Albert Geyser and Dr. C. F. Beyers Naudé. A court in Johannesburg found Pont guilty of willful libel. In his church paper Die Hervormer he had, without mentioning the two men’s names, accused them of having united themselves with Communism to destroy white Christendom in South Africa.
The long-drawn-out court case drew international attention because Pont not only attacked the two churchmen but also argued that the World Council of Churches, the British Ecumenical Council, and the Netherlands Reformed Church had been infiltrated by Communism. Pont, in his defense, drew on material published in the United States by Edgar C. Bundy, Billy James Hargis, and Carl Mclntire.
Pont called Geyser and Beyers Naudé “persons of low morals who have sold their country, people, church, Protestant faith, Christendom, and God.” Their Christian Institute was organized by a group of South African pastors from several churches when three Boer churches refused to accept resolutions adopted by the controversial Cottesloe conference against apartheid. The institute fights for desegregation of South African church life and keeps contact with the ecumenical movement.
The court decision by Judge William Trollip is a book of 180 typewritten pages. Trollip concluded that Pont had indeed written about the two theologians who sued him for libel, even though their names had not been given. Trollip also said that Pont has never offered to apologize.
Pont has not had to break his piggy bank to pay the award. His church, smallest of the three Boer churches, has decided to pay it for him.
The verdict marks the second time the tiny denomination has had to pay out a major sum as the result of a court case. Five years ago it tried to dispose of Geyser, then teaching at the theological faculty of the church, calling him a heretic because he opposed apartheid. Geyser asked the highest court of South Africa to judge him. He was cleared of the accusation, and the church had to pay the costs of the case—almost $170,000 that time.
The church finally was able to rid itself of Geyser. After the first court case, its synod adopted a resolution forbidding its members to seek the aid of a worldly judge.
JAN J. VAN CAPELLEVEEN
Preaching To Communists
Evangelist Billy Graham planned to travel to Yugoslavia this week for services in Zagreb. It will be the first time he has preached in a Communist country.
Graham is to hold a press conference in his hotel in Zagreb, attend a reception for pastors, diplomatic guests, and government officials, and preach once on Saturday and twice on Sunday. Zagreb is the second-largest city in Yugoslavia, with 470,000 inhabitants.
Graham’s itinerary also called for a stop and his first preaching service in Italy—in Turin. The trip was to follow his All-Britain Crusade June 23-July 1, which with television and radio relays gave an unprecedented outreach to the 48-year-old evangelist.
On the way from his North Carolina home to Europe, Graham stopped in Washington to say that he was a convert to the government’s anti-poverty program. “Only by government action can we win the war on poverty,” he said. In a later radio address he criticized federal officials for lack of concern for law and order.
Communion And Health
The Communion chalice, sometimes criticized as a spreader of disease, gets a relatively clean bill of health in a report published in the old established British medical journal, The Lancet.
Three women scientists who conducted an investigation said the risk is slight. They wanted to find out to what extent bacteria are passed along with the common cup as it goes from person to person.
One important factor, they reported, is that it is wine that is drunk from the cup. The wine is about 14 per cent ethyl alcohol, they said, which is enough to kill some bacteria within two minutes and others within ten.
Furthermore, if the chalice is wiped with a clean cloth between communicants, the number of germs is usually reduced by about 90 per cent.
The study recalls the observations of the Apostle Paul, who warns against eating the bread and drinking the cup in an unworthy manner and notes with regard to violations, “That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died” (1 Cor. 11:30).
Fed Up With Liberals
One of Australia’s leading clinical psychologists, who made history as the first woman to be elected president of the West Australian Congregational Union, has resigned from that denomination to become a Baptist.
Mrs. Enid Cook, who had represented Australia at the International Congregational Council, left Congregationalism because she views it, in Western Australia, as “a dying church no longer sure it has a real witness in our community.” Moreover, she said that a proposed merger of Australian Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists seems “unattractive.” She characterized local Australian council of churches’ committee meetings as “among the most boring and useless I have ever attended.”
Mrs. Cook has a private practice in psychotherapy and holds degrees in theology as well as psychology. She says she has brought her professional services into a new integration with the conservative perspective, having seen afresh the power of personal conversion in clinical experience.
CRAIG SKINNER
