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Dean Lewis interviewed by R. W. Bauer, 1983, side 3.
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- speaker[Lewis] Engaged people around a lot of questions in terms they could, if not be comfortable with
- speakerat least. Now what were the other things that you
- speakerI guess you know Detroit was
- speakerprobably instinctively the thing for that
- speakerfor me the employment question. And, of course,
- speakerPhil Newell [Newell, Philip Rutherford, Jr.] , was trying to build
- speakeras much of his economic justice issue strategy around the
- speakerplant closing business [Bauer] Yes.
- speaker[Lewis] organizing protests around that business. [Bauer] that's not a bad idea.
- speaker[Lewis] Although it was kind of a hard
- speakerway to get the public policy.
- speakerat least, that's the instinct--to find a place within a community that has had a plant close.
- speakerAnd, you certainly have a way of talking to the
- speakerchurch about its relation to the
- speakercommunity and to a set of issues that you don't have
- speakerif you just come into a church generally and ask for its study of its structural economic change.
- speaker[Bauer] You'd get nowhere.] [Lewis] That was that.
- speaker[Bauer] You are also contrasting. You started to do
- speakerthat when you talked about the early days of CORAR.
- speakerYou're
- speakeralso contrasting the style of the Social Education and Action approach with more what overt sensitive to the church? Maybe
- speakerthe style of National Missions developed? [Lewis] Well. I think there
- speakerwas sometimes the National Missions earlier style was, let's say, a kind of
- speaker"Let's get it done. Get the
- speakerchurch committed." And, if they commit themselves to
- speakermore than they understand, that's fine.
- speakerI'm not sure whether it
- speakerwas the old S.E.A. [Department of Social Education and Action] I guess it has been. Yes, it always has
- speakerroots in education. [Bauer] And, it changed people's minds of. [Lewis] In the efficacy
- speakerof reasoned discourse and they thought that, you know, and all kinds of stuff.
- speakerSo that there probably
- speakeris or
- speakerwas. I don't know there is of either style
- speakerprobably any more,
- speakerbut there is
- speakerprobably
- speakerat the heart of the, what I
- speakerwould call the messianic instinct, whatever you want to call it
- speakerevangelistic or educational instinct.
- speakerThere was a desire to have people understand and commit themselves
- speakerto a point of view, and the activity or the program
- speakeror policy were to be designed to be done in a way
- speakerthat commends assent and support.
- speakerNot simply
- speakerlegislates it.
- speakerI may say that, not only
- speakerbecause it is a deep personal conviction of my own, but it does seem to me to have a stylistic reflection. The one I am thoroughly persuaded on a
- speakervoluntary basis in the church. Our survival, as well as our effectiveness, does not rest upon legislative jargon of General
- speakerAssembly. It rests
- speakerreally rests upon persuading constituencies, persuading them enough
- speakerand getting a large enough
- speakerpercentage and to a deep enough degree that supports the legislative. It may take some time to do that. Sit around and wait. Assure that everybody is
- speakergoing to get through, but ultimately, the institution that depends upon
- speakervoluntary commitments and support cannot survive if it does not have it. [Bauer] The reason that I bring it up is
- speakerstarkly, one of the reasons is that some of Don's recent interviews, folks who are now at retirement age or past it, have nothing to lose to speak with,
- speaker. . . which we. [Lewis] We have other ones. [Bauer] Well. Some of
- speakergotten deployed of all those naming it. And others have said, I will not say who I mean, but they mean to figure out which it was of the six or eight people
- speakerthe critical question from those folks who
- speakermany would consider liberal leaders of the previous generation was
- speakerthe degree to
- speakerwhich they took decisions and did not take the church seriously.
- speakerand, in a sense, violated the church.
- speaker[Lewis] And, they are asking this question about themself?
- speaker[Bauer] I don't know. About some of their colleagues. Some of their successors. It's real hostility.
- speakerSomething that I didn't really expect. In other words, rather
- speakerthan looking at some of that stuff as kind of the glory days, as a tremendous number of our colleagues do, those folks . . . as something we may
- speakerrecover from in another generation. [Lewis] Well, I would be interested to hear. . . . [Bauer]I reflected with Don and Don reflected with me.
- speaker[Lewis] Is he talking principally about attitudes toward Board of National Missions?
- speakerI think there is some truth probably in that.
- speakerI don't think it was cynical. There is a corollary added to the C.O.E.M.A.R. [Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations], however, that was different. But,
- speakerjust as disastrous in the long run, I think.
- speakerand I do believe this has affected
- speakerthe Program Agency's general approach to the church. The Program Agency is objective observer
- speakerto [Bauer] C.O.E.M.A.R. Right. [Lewis] Had its levels, and you mentioned
- speakerFor COEMAR, which was
- speakerreally
- speakerstill the Board of Foreign Missions through
- speakermuch of its life although it was trying to be something. other than COEMAR
- speakerThe mission of the
- speakerchurch as overseas. The
- speakerChurch in the United
- speakerStates existed to support
- speakermission. It existed to send people
- speakerout for mission. Things like that.
- speakerSo that the whole attitude towards the church
- speakerin the United States was not as contemptuous as I hear you say some people in
- speakerthe Board of National Missions may have had about it. I can see why. I have heard
- speakersome of those things as well. But, in the final
- speakeranalysis, was every bit
- speakeras destructive, I think, because it viewed the church cynically, simply as a pocket.
- speakera source of money to support
- speakermission, and not
- speakerreally as a partner in mission, doer of mission with a vocation
- speakerof mission. [Bauer] right. [Lewis] The church in
- speakermission. It was the church supporting mission. So that, in a different
- speakerway, COEMAR never took the church in the US seriously,
- speakerexcept as a place to get money. In
- speakera way, I suspect underneath this criticism, . . . is the same reality.
- speakerThe church is a place to go
- speakerget money to do what you want to
- speakerdo and
- speakernecessary
- speakerpolicy support when you have to. Otherwise you
- speaker[Bauer] And, at its worst, in a sense, to not
- speakerinform the church or make it clear what you are doing. [Lewis] COEMAR has played this game to the hilt.
- speakerCOEMAR, well one of the. I remember
- speakerone of the. Heck, I went down to South America
- speakerand came back with all this good stuff. And, had the
- speakertemerity to speak in a meeting that they had called up in 475 [475 Riverside Drive] to hear this wierd Church and Society type, that spent his own money to go
- speakerdown to South America and hadn't been sent by COEMAR, which made them suspicious
- speakerof it in the first place. [Bauer] Yes. [Lewis] of course. And, gave them some of my impressions of this
- speakerpitiful representation of the Reformed faith in Colombia. A church of twelve hundred people, nine hundred
- speakerof whom worked for the God damn schools that we had built down there. You know, practically
- speakerand rent by schism and dominated
- speakerby a fundamentalist piety that you wouldn't believe, you know. And this is
- speakerproud of the
- speakerfact that they are
- speakereducating, you know, the elite of this
- speakercountry, the top five pecent of the country's leaders send their children here
- speakerto our
- speakerProtestant schools. God, we are
- speakerturning out little dictators and petty bourgeois
- speakerand the rest all over the place and we're proud of it. I remember I turned to Bill Somplatsky-Jarman . . . light shining for a hundred years
- speakerHere in the midst of a dark whole, you know,
- speakerand all that kind of And, when I found out that some of missionaries were . . .
- speakerthe attitudes of the worst kind of paternalism toward the people they were trying
- speakerYou're right. In both instincts, there
- speakeris a. For different
- speakerreasons, you know, it a conspiracy to not tell the folk who are the church, and
- speakerfor the same reasons that ruined it. If we do it, they won't give us
- speakerthe money. [Bauer] Don challenged one of the people we are talking to about missionary compensation. The guy finally did admit.
- speakerI would think [Lewis] That still comes out once in a while. There was a big article in Monday Morning
- speakernot long ago over missionaries. They all get their
- speakerhousing paid. They all get their education supplements for their kids
- speakerin college, you know. [Bauer] The thing that really opened my eyes
- speakerthe first year I went visited Geneva . . . distributing money to all these projects at the World Council. When I found out the first time minister . . .
- speaker[Lewis] Well. Vernon Smith is [Smith, W. H. Vernon] [Bauer] Vernon Smith? Yeah?
- speakerThey just sat down like you or I are doing, and going down the list. Well, put five hundred in that one.
- speaker[Lewis] Yeah.
- speakerI was I was
- speakershocked and still am when I see.
- speakerWhat is even
- speakerworse is to watch the video
- speakerand bureaucratic pretense with which these staff people go
- speakerabout the task of deciding
- speakerwho gets $500 and who gets $700, something like that. But you know this already. And, a reminder of how an
- speakerinstitution goes about the strategic tasks of trying to identify its priorities, prioritize its resources and so on.
- speakera task that is necessary to do.
- speakerYou may not learn all that much out of the past, what guides the church
- speakerwill, You can use
- speakerthat so as a way of saying.
- speakerThe institution really wants to be able to do this sort of thing. Here is the project.
- speakerThe capacities it has to have
- speakerin terms of leadership, in terms of a coherent planning.
- speakerin terms of a
- speakerbuilding to recognize and legitimate. I think legitimization is one of the issues
- speakerI don't know how that happens. It happens.
- speakerIt happens in various ways. Somebody has got to recognize that is going on and take the responsibility
- speakerto manage the institution's process of
- speakersaying "Yes." got to see that as a priority.
- speakerbegin to do something about it or
- speakerso I suppose if there's any value to it at
- speakerall, and it is questionable at times
- speakerwhen the institution is up for grabs, is to
- speakerlay something in that is an
- speakerexercise in how an institution ought to conduct itself. How to
- speakermanage its
- speakerresources, the allocation of its . . .
- speakerBy the way, it. I thought the other day, there was a one
- speakersegment of this. Guess who is responsible for it all are you
- speakerto identify in the present
- speakerprograms criteria for allocation where [Bauer] Chuck sent me a whole packet of that stuff.
- speaker[Lewis] Are you going to? [Bauer] Somehow [Lewis] Analyze it. [Bauer] Look at it
- speakerand see what it is. It is a real hodgepodge of
- speaker[Bauer] Oh, boy. I went through it. [Lewis] I figured the best thing to do maybe was
- speakerto put a questionnaire out, but if he hasn't done that. It is a hodgepodge. You would have to pull out each one.
- speakerIf he has sent you the official
- speakercriteria, you ought to be able to pull out from each one
- speakeranything that says anything that can be
- speakerexplained as a potential
- speakerflexible response to criticism. [Bauer] Yeah. [Lewis] I guess all of them have some
- speaker[Bauer] always some. interesting that COWAC
- speakerofficially said they were no longer going to do that, which I could understand.
- speaker[Lewis] Yeah. They are not using theirs for
- speakerprogram grants. They are using it for . . . [Bauer] That's right.
- speaker[Lewis] which is probably . . . [Bauer] After a few years . . .
- speaker[Lewis] I don't suppose you . . . You could almost call COWAC
- speakerresponse to a . . . {bauer] right. [Lewis] It is their response to it. [Bauer] Absolutely. [Lewis] Never reached the . . .
- speaker[Lewis] We are going to hell. I guess you know we are going to
- speakerhave a conference call on Wednesday to validate the invitees to . . .
- speakerGail would know. She's
