Dean Lewis interviewed by R. W. Bauer, 1983, side 2.

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[Lewis] Actually
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being deployed by strategies
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that
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this
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whole refugee resettlement and emergency
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services, the Hunger Program, you know,
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the Self Development program.
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You can, you can argue that those
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represent continuing commitments of the church, and sure
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enough, they do. But, also social prison
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history, work with alcoholics. You know you
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can any number of things. You can
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interface work with the community organizations,
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metropolitan development and
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the combination
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of of a relatively
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protected source of institutional
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funding, with
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a program with bureaucratic interest build up
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was has in essence isolated
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a sum of money equal to
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to what
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[Bauer] A third of the
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programs? [Lewis] Oh, more than that. programs. A third at
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least of the Program Agency's total resources
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available, only about twelve and a half million for General Mission. They give us seven and a half million
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They have so many other things to do with it. That really
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isn't capable of being examined in the
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rational priority part of the system and can't
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be
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effectively re-ordered to meet situations that the church
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might want to define as more
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So you got a situation there where
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you either have to find a way. This is what I analyzed back in sixty eight
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already but you either had to find a way to get into one of those systems where money was already
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available
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somehow or operate it on a shoestring.
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Because I had not yet tumbled to the fact then that it
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was possible to expand
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that kitty. I tumbled to that in seventy-five
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when it came time to do hunger funding
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One Great Hour of Sharing. and Du Val [Du Val, William K.] screamed
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You're going to ruin the program and of
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course as I crossed my fingers and believed it
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would result in expansion because it
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already looked
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in the Self-Devlopment of People thing. [Bauer] Yes. [Lewis] that was the
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third interest but it just trippled the fund instead of doubling that because that
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was. i don't think you could do that again. [Bauer] No.
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[Lewis] But even if you could I'd
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be, I think, very sceptical
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about it because it does result in this
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So. You either your
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To deal with an emergency now, you've got to either find a
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way to divert a source of
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money somehow that's already in the
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system to get allocated to this.
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If your response is going to be anything other than
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rhetorical. OR you have got to try to identify
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some way of raising funds, which is what we try
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and it's not so far
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conspicuously successful in raising a little bit more
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as it goes along
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but it does appear that the Church's capacity
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and
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willingness to go in special
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appeals for things is, things other
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than dramatically visible, actual
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disasters. [Bauer] Can we go back to
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the
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beginning of the
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Emergency Ministry. In a sense what
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you are saying. This may be putting it negatively, but
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you are implying that you would have preferred that the Church do
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something more about the Vietnam War, but under
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the
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circumstances about all that one could expect
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was taking on this type of ministerial
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function and try to make it an official
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program but now. Was it the intention of the people
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behind the program to do, to be the rallying point for
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the anti-war movement? Or was that it just become that because of
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the only
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thing that ran?
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[Lewis] That's still some question. I think it's clear that
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the commitment of the people who were behind the program
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Bill Tilton in particular, who became the director was clearly, strongly
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anti-
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war at that time.
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[Bauer] Anti Vietnam War. [Lewis] Anti Vietnam War. And I
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was trying to remember the direction
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ofmy own stance on that matter. By sixty-nine, at
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least, I was
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also I think in the early part of sixty-
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eight it was fair
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to say of myself that I was at least still as concerned about the
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tension and
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suffering and disruption that it was causing. and therefore the churches need to deal with people.
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whatever reasons. I can't remember when
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I quit trying to argue that you got to see both sides at the end to
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say but dammit this is of the devil.
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It was, it was not the
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intention to design the ministry as a
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rallying point. That was not the case. I think it became pretty much
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that for two reasons. Partly
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because the same structure that was responsible
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for operating that. That is the Board of Christian
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Education was also the principal structure trying
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to deal
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with the other kinds of opposition programs: me as
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the department head of Church and Society in
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the Board of Christian Education so that there was a
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natural kind of continuity between
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the effort. And, they were all seen
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coming out of this one
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place on the Board. Plus the fact is Tilton was the one who was moving
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around the country holding
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training sessions for counselors and so
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on, getting grants and counselor
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training going and network built upand in touch
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with the other organisations in
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society that were dealing with the C.O.'s in Canada and the
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resisters underground
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and that included, of course, Presbyterian laity were concerned
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So, it came about that the ministry became
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connected with the antiwar movement, but not by intent,
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but it is clear that whatever
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else may have been in anybody's mind, I was
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persuaded that that kind of program was the only sort
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of institutional
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commitment of any
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consequence that one could get out of the
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church as distinct from a
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positional commitment. We got, beginning in sixty-nine, we began to.
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Seventy, we began to get fairly
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strong positional commitments, but that's
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different. [Bauer] That's different, from the program. [Lewis] Institutional response, yeah.
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[Bauer] I guess you could talk about evaluating
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the effectiveness of the thing in terms of church attitude
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and in terms of the number of people served, the impact of the counseling.
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Do you have any
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reflections on any one of those? [Lewis] We have some
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reports. Now, finding those files, Okay. There
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was was a wrap up report.
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I believe at the end there was a sizable amount of stuff.
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My own hunch.
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It's more than a hunch. By the way I'm got an
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unpublished senior thesis that Bill Galvin [Galvin, E. William] did.
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Bill is one of the interns at Princeton
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one of the Presbyterian churches involved with the Vietnam War. [Bauer] I'd be interested to see that.
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[Lewis] Yeah. It just occurred to me
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that
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I think
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it
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could be
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judged pretty effective on three
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grounds.
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statistically it did
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deliver counseling and assistance to a sizeable
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number of Presbyterian young people and their families.
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I can't give you the numbers. [Bauer] Yeah, but it. [Lewis] But it functioned effectively to
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create and train a
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network. It didn't just say it was going to do it, it
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did it of draft counselors and draft counseling [Bauer] Yeah. I know we had them
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in Detroit. Yeah. [Lewis] So that it followed through on that, and
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I think it would be fair to
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say that any
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United Presbyterian family or young
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person who wanted assistance from the church
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during those years probably both
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knew their pastor and where to get
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it. And, they could get
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it if they asked for it. So that is
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fairly high order.
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I believe also that
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it functioned
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to make the church credible
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to a fairly important
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generation of folk, who were
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already deep into mistrust of most
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institutions. And, the
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church may have
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bought an unmeasurable obviously
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amount of time with an important segment of that generation if it
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uses that
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time in an opportunity because it. It really
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did. And, not only the ones it helped, but
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others, of that generation who saw the church ready to more,
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particularly when it reached out to
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Canada and to the to the
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resisters, not just to the CEO'S, but the resisters, the ones who weren't
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registered. the ones who went underground. And, to see the church and to see the
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General Assembly
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affirming legitimacy of that kind of
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ministry, that kind of
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action with those people is an important witness.
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[Bauer] As you say that
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very, kind of philosophically, the picture in my mind
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was when George
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Coleman led the march to the middle of the bridge between
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Detroit and Windsor [Canada] and [Lewis] The N.C.C. [Bauer] handed the
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money and he was a member
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of my staff in
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Detroit, and it hit the
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fan at that point, yeah.
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[Lewis] And, third, I do believe
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that particularly the whole statement on conscience and war.
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What's it called, "War, Peace and Conscience." ["War, Peace and Conscience: Statement adopted by the 181st General Assembly, 1969"] A
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big study, head long part of that,
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which is still widely
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distributed by the folk at General Assembly
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level, functioned to give the church
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for somewhat of a long time, a relatively
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credible and fairly widely
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affirmed basis for each of
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evidence about participation in war.
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And, had
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sizable effect over years to
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to keep the
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church from the kind
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of easy descent into
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patriotic fervor that. Fighting became unpopular in society.
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Vietnam I think the struggle with those
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issues and the experience
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of legitimating and funding right out in the
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open the ministry to people who were breaking the law and having to struggle
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with issues about why they were,
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makes it infinitely easier
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today for the folk out there to talk about counseling with
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their high school kids about their choices in regard to the draft, that has now been
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reinstituted, in other words. The church
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got a kick along the
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way towards its current involvements in peacemaking and things. You can't measure that at all. But, I. I think it had some effect.
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[Bauer] When did. Let's see. Nixon came in in January of sixty-nine.
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Then peace was negotiated
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a
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seventy. [Lewis] It hadn't been negotiated by the time he was re-elected
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even. [Bauer] That was
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seventy-two. No.
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[Lewis] And, remember the seventy Assembly was done at the height of the Cambodia
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bombing. Multiple bombings
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It seemed like every time we'd meet in the
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Assembly, that they'd do some atrocity just so we could do it for. So that it
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[Bauer] I'm trying to put it
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[Lewis] It went up and down, you know.
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[Bauer] What I was trying to get to, like
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seventy, late seventy-one, into seventy-
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-two, and all of that. The antiwar movement
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was fairly well, was fairly
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widespread, but this thing had already
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It already had two and a half years or more under
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way [Lewis] And, by that
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time. Well, let's see, which Assembly was
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it when Heckel [Heckel, C. Willard, UPCUSA, Moderator of 1972 General Assembly] was
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elected at? [Bauer]
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Angela Davis Assembly then. Rochester [Lewis] seventy-one?
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Or was Rochester? I think.
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Yeah. Because that's when we had Flock and Hoopes [Hoopes, Townsend "Tim" Walter, II; Under Secretary of the Air Force] from the State Department.
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Well of course Townsend Hoopes was out then. He had been in Kennedy and
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Johnson's administration. And, Flock, from the State Department, argued and
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Heckel, remember at that point, answered the
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question about Bernie Stewart on the Vietnam War. [Bauer] Oh, That's
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right. That's right. [Lewis] By saying as a former military
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commander I think
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it's a military disaster. As a professor of constitutional law I believe it to
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be illegal. As a Christian, I think
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it is immoral. [Bauer] That strength was elected. [Lewis] That
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was seventy
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I think it was seventy one. Either seventy one there. Or
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seventy-two was the overhaul, wasn't it?
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It was at one of those two places. It
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may have been Omah in seventy-
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two, but by that
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point
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the General Assembly's
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debate had no need or the hope of being pumped
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up. There were plenty of folk, elders, ministers both willing to stand up
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on the floor. And say, I don't care what anybody says I think our country doing something
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wrong
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over there.
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Therefore,
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the church is being engaged from that point on as simply, as a part
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of the broad
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cultural societal resistance to the War.
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It really had no strong independent role other
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than caring for its own. so to continue
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the ministry, I think. [Bauer] Trying to put
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together in my head as I listen to this
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is that question of whether there is in the life of the church
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a necessity for some kind of a
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latent set of values or beliefs. And, it is clear from what you said in terms of
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the sixty seven and sixty eight statements that there isn't
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a traditional law that was at that point restated. The question
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becomes operative then at a particular level or in a small group
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of the church. What you've just described is that the antiwar sentiment never
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did in the church as a
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whole ever come down on the side of that theological
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ground. It was more the general social movement in the church
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in the society
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that informed the mass response of the church.
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[Lewis] Well. What I meant to say was
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that there did not seem at that point to me to be any
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need for special
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organization or church response.
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[Bauer] right. [Lewis] The society provided adequate avenues
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for that. But that [Lewis] Emergency at that point,as far as one could
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be said to exist just had to do still with the church's continuing need
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to minister to the people who were being chewed up by it.
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[Bauer] Right. [Lewis] the church's own people. But,
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I think it's generally
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true that the
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churches. Whatever you want to call it, philosophical, moral understanding,
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rarely
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receives very much
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That is. I am not sure that it is to any considerable degree autonomous from its society's.
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That certainly was not
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true in the race movement. The church was not ahead of society.
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Its theological. I mean some of its General Assembly statments
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it was, but in terms of the church's own standing and when it was to engage this
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issue relates to up there in August sixty-three and Blake says "Late we come,"
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he was absolutely right.
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I think it was true in the
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War. The church is a
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conservative institution. But, I don't think
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[Bauer] What you described in terms
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of the beginning of this
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ministry was a long way ahead of public sentiment in terms of the War.
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[Lewis] But, it was defined in terms of ministry. [Bauer] Right, bit
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it was still there, but only in
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a very small minority of the church was there?
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But it was there. [Lewis] Well as
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Well
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maybe. A minority willing to minister to its
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own in terms of their, whatever they saw it as, confusion, agony,
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sin, whatever. But still
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be doing. It was not a tiny minority. It was a fairly sizeable group of
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people, who said [Bauer] Once the ministry had started. I was thinking before. [Lewis] Getting started [Bauer] right.
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[Lewis] But, you know. Isn't it true, take the approach
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that the last General Assembly was asked to make by the overture,
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wasn't it from Detroit? which started about the unemployment fund?
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one billion dollars for the employment fund? the
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whole. Reagan is trashing the whole
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economy and most of the world with a
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combination of policies
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that would demand any
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sensible social organization in this country to be organizing up
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to the hilt to counter, not just this, that or the other thing, but the
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whole damn diabolical thrust of what the guy is trying
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to do in the world. But, what we do? We come in with an overture
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that asked the church to a million dollars to help deal
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with unemployment. The instinct to deal with
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big complex and controversial social issues through some avenue
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of service to the
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victims is deeply
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rooted in the church. Some people elevate that to
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a doctrine, you know. You get people started there, and then you can lead
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them in their consciousness is
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raised. You know, and so on. I'm not sure that's true of
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myself. I think it's probably more
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true that if the
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situation moves along. Because. You know. I don't think our
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people are still
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clear for the most part about growing links between the suffering of individuals
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and the big macro policies that are at stake. They can
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always find a number
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of quite quixotic reasons for
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saying well, you know, that this
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person had bad luck or wasn't well-prepared or the factory
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moved. Any kind of. Never mind. So I don't.
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I don't think that it is unique.
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The thing that is
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tricky to me of the the trick. The important thing is to try to figure
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out from time to time where the
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church can,
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in fact, make a particularly
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useful institutional entry into the
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situation in a way that's both true to its
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own nature as an
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institution, some integrity, but does
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provide some
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handle on what's going on.
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Some window that engages people's
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attention about it.
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and that's what I
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think happened in the Emergency Ministry.
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I think that happened to some
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considerable degree in the early days of
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CORAR [Commission on Religion and Race]. That was
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a mechanism that provided the church with
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the
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opportunity to be true to its own conviction.
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because it was essentially a response
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to a group of us getting
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to develop in the south. It was nonviolent. It was challenging through direct action a number
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of practices. And people were getting hurt already and needing some
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advocacy and some support. It lived with us. It met those requirements.
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I mean COCAR [Committee on Church and Race] got sidetracked a few years later.
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less helpful model. So
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that there's no way you can talk about COCAR in our church now being a response to
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crisis. [Bauer] Yeah. [Lewis] As CORAR clearly was. It was
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a
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commitment to put extra institutional resources behind the effort to deal with
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a clearly critical need in our
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society and to provide a means of
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marshalling the church's energies and
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attention and engaging them in that critical
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struggle. And, what has COCAR
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become out of that? [Bauer] Well.
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[Lewis] It ain't doing that, is
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it?
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[Bauer] Before we leave the Vietnam thing, I wanted to ask you, in terms of
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success, or you know,
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effectiveness. Do you have any reflection on the pastors generally
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across the
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church at large, because a lot of this. Or most. A lot of it was going on in
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churches. Some of it wasn't. So, I want to ask you about pastors.
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I want to ask you about ecumenicity and relationships both and.
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about.
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[Lewis] Well the pastors' attitude was clearly a
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function
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of one or two things.
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Their prior stance in regard to the issues of war and
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peace. If they were people who were already concerned about
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these
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matters, preaching about it and so forth. Part of this liberal establishment
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you know. They tuned into
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this. Or, it depended up
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on the experience of the C.O.
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or
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resistor attitude and activity
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within their
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congregation. If they had had a son
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a pastors had. Pastors did of course.
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Or some family or two or three in a church that was
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fairly central to his life. Then they
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were ready to go and do it and so on.
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That's what I'm really determined I say because of the early days.
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Otherwise they would cut out
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general issues if they were relatively conservative
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or suspicious of it. If they were relatively
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open liberally
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or tuned to denominational loyalty
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middle of the road, they would mark it
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down and say. Well, it is interesting. The church has a new
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ministry and be able to say something about it
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[Bauer] I look back on it. And, I really haven't thought about this before, but as I think about
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the pastors in Detroit, who
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were in a major sense, split wide apart.
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on all the issues of the crisis, race crises.
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There was a strange kind
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of sense of the
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usefulness of this small
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but significant ministry. The people didn't get wrought up
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about as
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much as a lot of other things. The antiwar movement was
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one thing. I mean. They were.That was
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That was as volatile as some of the other things. [Lewis] I think that's a good observation.
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It. it did
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not result
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generally well the opposition to it
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that arose to a vocal and visible level was
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really
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quite small and fairly
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well isolated. There was,
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in the early days particularly, there was
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suspicion of it and all. But there was not the kind of
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widespread still argument and bickering. It was it
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was isolated and insulated to some
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degree generally, from a lot, precisely because of its character.
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It was a ministry. It was oriented to people. It was oriented to helping
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people. And the fact that it helped
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them as they were dealing with
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issues around the Vietnam War was known, but
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the structure of the approach made it palatable.
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It is just like in a
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way the overture from a Presbytery raising the question
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about ordaining homosexuals,
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finally put the
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question of what is homosexuality in a form
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that the church with some
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care could talk
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about without blowing itself wide open,
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without having the question put in a
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way that made that
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accessible as an
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institutional or pastoral
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concern. Trying to put it both ways. You couldn't have
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laid out a task force to study homosexuality in the
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church, put out that kind of material,apart from such an occasion.
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Just like you couldn't have laid out in those early
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years a clear, you know, invective against the War in Vietnam
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still and
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that's that's an important insight.
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Some of these matters at
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least you do have to find angles. That's what. That's
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variation on this thing. The church has to find a way to get at these
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things that is recognized
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sufficiently by its members
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as having integrity within the
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church's own

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Title: Dean Lewis interviewed by R. W. Bauer, 1983, side 2.
Description: Interview conducted as part of Bauer's preparation of the report "An Historical Study of Past Denominational Responses to Social, Political and Economic Crises."
Creator: Lewis, Dean, 1926-2021. (interviewee)
Bauer, Richard Waldron, 1930- (interviewer)
Date: 1983
Type of resource: sound recording-nonmusical
Genre: interviews
Form: audiocassettes
Extent: 1 audio cassette, 1-7/8 ips
Language: English
Subject names: United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. General Assembly (194th : 1982 : Hartford, Conn.)
Topics: Vietnam War, 1961-1975.
Civil rights--United States.
Geographic subjects: United States.
North and Central America--United States
Rights status: Contact repository for more information
Rights status: IN COPYRIGHT - NON-COMMERCIAL USE PERMITTED; http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/
Physical location: ARCHIVES 85-0930; Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA
Related item: R. W. Bauer papers, 1977-1985.--http://prestohost68.inmagic.com/Presto/content/Detail.aspx?ctID=Y2RiNWNk...
Identifier (local): bauer_lewis_1983_side2
PID (Persistent Identifier): islandora:116205

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Dean Lewis interviewed by R. W. Bauer, 1983, side 2.

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