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Dean Lewis interviewed by R. W. Bauer, 1983, side 1.
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- speakerAnd therefore from the
- speakerfirst built it around a very special
- speakerkind of clear analysis of GA policy which we got through
- speakerin sixty
- speakereight
- speakerand moving into
- speakerthe institutional location
- speakerwhere emergency needs funding was supposed to be built. That was the first
- speakertime we ever
- speakertapped One Great Hour of
- speakerSharing for anything other than typhoons or orphans
- speakeror stuff like that. They'd always had this
- speakerlittle gimic in there about
- speakervictims of political or economic or something like that. But, it had never been used for
- speakeranything except to fund some ministries to service personnel
- speakeroverseas. And, for a long number of years since the second World War,
- speakercivilian visitors on military
- speakerbases here in this country. I don't know about
- speakerboth those programs, but they had been using One Great Hour of Sharing
- speakermoney for some time under that rubric. And,
- speakerthat's where I decided to look or fight for response
- speakerto
- speakerthis quote "emergency," which was confroning the nation and the
- speakerchurch. And, of course, the way to do it was
- speakerthe conscientious objector route,
- speakerthe emergency minister route.
- speakerand got the full Institutional legitimation out of that
- speakersource. So it did
- speakerbecome for all practical purposes the
- speakeronly the only plight that the Presbyterian Church had for responding to the issues of
- speakerthe Vietnam War period. We never had
- speakerother than the modest capacities that the Church and Society Department had.
- speakerWe never had any money for anything. We never had
- speakerin the church anything in response to that, other than the policy
- speakerstatement kind of thing. so that it did become a
- speakerrallying point for a lot of
- speakeractivity of cinema and
- speakerpeople A network of people who were concerned about that
- speakerfunction. [Bauer] Who were the key actors in getting this thing
- speakerput together? I don't mean the policy, but
- speakeras much as. [Lewis] Well, I designed the
- speakerstructure of it. In fact, I know where the file is, and I did
- speakerrun across the original memo i wrote to more or less about taking
- speakersomething to the General Council, designing the
- speakerstructure, approaching the first budget, and stuff like that. That would
- speakerbe needed. [Bauer]Was that before or after the policy? Well it
- speakerwas interesting because what happened was
- speakerthat in the sixty-eight policy statement that went to the Assembly.
- speakerThere was
- speakera there was a request for this sort of thing.
- speakerAnd the assembly asked that it be tabled for a year and a further
- speakerstudy. And, that further study was done. It was during that
- speakeryear appealing to this process that was going on, because Carey Joint
- speakercommittee was working at the same time. [Bauer] Who? [Lewis] Carey Joint. the General Assembly had also
- speakerup a special committee to
- speakerstudy to the church's response to Vietnam, and they produced a book
- speakerso that it actually came
- speakeralong with the policy and
- speakerthe validation was essentially on the basis
- speakerof the pastoral deed
- speakerwhich was emerging in the church which was also validated
- speakerby an earlier statement of the Assembly about sixty
- speakersix about ministering to the victims of the. I would have to look that up.
- speakerSo that it really came along that they, the General Assembly
- speakernever. The General Assembly did
- speakernot call in specific terms
- speakerfor this emergency ministry. That was a programmatic response that was framed on the basis of
- speakera general policy. And they reported, reported to
- speakerBut the big the big battle, of course, was
- speakerin committee
- speakerthat dealt with globaal emergency service funding. The General Council's
- speakercommittee. work committee.
- speakerthe terms of. John Thompson
- speakerPeters [Pastor, Toledo, OH, Collingwood Avenue Presbyterian Church] was on that.
- speakerAl Roberts [Roberts, Alcwyn Lloyd] was
- speakerstaffing it at that time. I can't remember
- speakerthis, but John Peters was
- speakerand it was, it was a sizable
- speakerstruggle [Bauer] Was the struggle ostensibly about
- speakerthe use of the funds but really about something else?
- speakerOr is it the usual pattern that we deal with substance by dealing with?
- speaker[Lewis] It was both. There
- speakerwas
- speakerBut I think I really think that the main
- speakerconcern both stated and implicit
- speakerwas the potentially controversial character
- speakerof the program and its potential effect on One Great Hour of Sharing
- speakergiving,
- speakerwhich was an
- speakerinstitutional defense against
- speakerdoing what seemed to be a useful thing to do. There
- speakerwas there was also a
- speakerlot of argument against the folk,
- speakerwho really had thought of the One Great Hour of Sharing all the time
- speakeras overseas relief operations.
- speakerThat line still runs very strong. [Bauer] Right. [Lewis] Bill Du Val [Du Val, William K.] still
- speakeris very
- speakervery jealous of those funds, in terms of anything that goes on in the U.S.
- speakerBy God, you got to have a typhoon that knocks the hell out of
- speakersixteen states before he begins
- speakerto see the possibility of doing anything. And that, of course, comes out
- speakerof images of
- speakerthe U.S. as being a great big place that can take care of its own. So that was part of it
- speakertoo and that was part of Du Val's struggle. Cause Du Val was
- speakerIn those days, you see, the One Great Hour of
- speakerSharing business had no
- speakerstaff. The committee that ran it
- speakerwas simply, that ran the allocations
- speakerprocess, was simply a committee
- speakerthat allocated funds
- speakerto programs in the agencies and there was
- speakerno there was no
- speakerstaff cost paid
- speakeranywhere out of One Great Hour of Sharing funds. [Bauer] But Al Roberts
- speakerwas the Associate on the General Council [Associate Secretary, General Council] or something?
- speaker[Lewis] But not for that purpose. he had that aberration
- speakerhere right and Du Val [Du Val, William K.] was functioning
- speakerfor COEMAR [Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations] in terms of
- speakersome kind of assignment, but none of those
- speakerthings were paid for out of One Great Hour of Sharing funds.
- speakerCOEMAR paid Du Val's salary to do what he
- speakerdid. General Council paid Al Roberts salary in
- speakerthe last of this
- speakerprocess so that also part of the
- speakerstruggle was
- speakerover the use of One Great Hous of Sharing funds to fund
- speakerstaff. And, of course, it was essential to establish to establish the concept that the staff
- speakeris the program. That is what you are talking about.
- speakerSo that was the argument that was used
- speakeragainst it. Now it has now become
- speakercommonplace, of course, And whether this precedent had anything to do with it, I don't know.
- speakerI think so. Of course, it has now become a commonplace for the agencies to
- speakercharge off staff
- speakercosts against the programs
- speakersharing some of
- speakerdevelopment. Resettlement. All those are now charged against the offering itself.
- speakerPart of that came in one of the first of the first cutbacks before the
- speakerreorganization. One of the people
- speakertargeted for, to be fired in COEMAR was
- speakerDu Val. And Du Val would have, would have been
- speakerlet go if Huff, Gene Huff [Huff, E. Eugene]
- speakerhad not gone in to the General
- speakerCouncil. And Du Val was not willing to do it. General
- speakerCouncil and pushed the line that Du Val
- speakerknowledge and
- speakerwork around questions of development, relief, and so forth was so critical to
- speakerthe operation of this church that his
- speakersalary needed to be picked up by the Fund itself
- speakeror a major part of it. [Bauer] This is around nineteen
- speakerseventy, perhaps? [Lewis] Sixty-nine, seventy.there somewhere. Because it was before
- speakerthe reorganization. In a pre-reorganization cutback.
- speaker[Bauer] It's interesting as you talked about
- speakerthis, you initially talked about
- speakerabout it in terms of, in contrast to the National Mission style.
- speakerThis was rather clean, open, above-board, straight shooter institution.
- speaker[Lewis] There's papers al the way. Right, with a lid on. And, you just went after a pile of
- speakermoney that was
- speakerthere and already had in it. that the majority vote finally. [Bauer] Right. But the
- speakerthe rationale in the funding agencies mandate
- speakerto some of the good. It just had to be the end they had to be convinced that they meant.
- speakerthis. [Bauer] All that seems to walk right past the question of
- speakerthe controversy over the Vietnam War and over conscientious, conscientious objection
- speakerthe
- speakerThat was not a big factor or do you think the church
- speakerwas convinced of
- speakerthat? [Lewis] Oh! No! The church was particularly
- speakerbut the fact that by that
- speakertime even, there were already a sufficient
- speakernumber of ruling elders' sons were [Bauer] In Canada or some place else.
- speakerwhat other did hurt I mean it
- speakerwas possible to say this in
- speakerthe Presbyterian young people and we of course pitched
- speakerit very strongly of the church's traditional
- speakersupport for the right of conscience and the need. in the end
- speakerwe had they were very
- speakerstrict very very
- speakerstrict rules that they tried to put on this. and in
- speakerfact some of the
- speakerstatements were very sharp, you know. We must
- speakernot use this program of counsel in any way
- speakerthat would try to persuade people about what choice they
- speakershould make. It was only to to guide their
- speakerconscience the way it's. When their
- speakerconscience which is somehow autonomously formed, you know. that's not
- speakerThen it is the responsibility of the church, you know, to support them in
- speakerthis and so
- speakerforth with that. And, that's when I first became interested
- speakerbecause it was so damn
- speakercurious doctrine that it was not any part of the responsibility of the church
- speakerto form conscience. Who the hell did people think
- speakerconscience came from?
- speakerAnd, the Christian Education. that's the first time I became aware
- speakerreally of why I was resisting so
- speakervehemently the approach that the damn Christian education professionals were
- speakertrying to write in the church's curriculum, the new church curriculum. What was it called? N.C.E.S. or
- speakerYes [Bauer] C.F.A. Christian Faith in Action. [Lewis] C.F.A. Yeah.
- speakerPerseids
- speakerbecause that basis
- speakerbasis of not trying to persuade people
- speakerto anything but simply giving them the tools with which they could make their own judgments
- speakerabout things and teaching
- speakerthem critical reasoning and giving them the resources that
- speakerwere available, and that kind of shit. I did there's something
- speakerwrong. And, that's where it became clear to me
- speakerpeople are at se without
- speakersome
- speakerinstitutions in society that are at least trying to shape values
- speakerand quite openly and quite deliberately say, "Here's the way we think you want to be thinking
- speakerabout these things. We can't force you to, or stake you if
- speakeryou don't or anything,
- speakerbut you know this institution
- speakerwhose function in society is supposed to be as a
- speakerdefiner and
- speakerverifier of values, says this and you should know
- speakerthat. [Bauer] But yet you kept some distance between this
- speakerand the anti-war movement in terms of
- speakerpublic. [Lewis] We had to. There was no
- speakerway that these
- speakerfunding agencies and folk like that were going to sit there and fund an
- speakeroperation that said up front we're going to out and try to convince
- speakerPresbyterian young people that they should not
- speakerfight in the Vietnam War. And, there was just no way they were going to do that.
- speakerSo we had to go at it peripherally, which we did. Then in the Council on Church
- speakerand Society in the later statement
- speakeron the church consicence and war. ["War, Peace, and Conscience: Statement of the 181st General Assembly, 1969"] Which lays
- speakerout the basis
- speakerof the church's opposition to war and selective conscientious objection. But
- speakerthe program all the way
- speakerthrough was defined as a
- speakerministry to conscientious objectors, US, Canada, Sweden, everywhere.
- speakeralthough, obviously, it spilled over into other kinds of
- speakerIt did, as I say,
- speakerfunction
- speakerIt was a kind of rallying point. Because. It was
- speakerinteresting. Another one of my problems during that era was trying to get the
- speakerPresbyterian Peace Fellowship.
- speakerinterested in being non-war
- speakerin any kind of useful way for the
- speakerchurch, cause they didn't function
- speakerand still don't too much. It is very interesting. [Bauer] They are for peace, but?
- speaker[Lewis] Well, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship was an outgrowth of the FOR.
- speakerOf course, it was organized in the thirties as a pacifist
- speakerorganization. And the. Their
- speakerwhole business was
- speakerreally to promote pacifism. A total
- speakeropposition to the war. At its root, it is really a
- speakerhaven for pacifists. and the issues of the Vietnam
- speakerWar, that kind selective
- speakerpacifism that was involved or just simply war
- speakerresistance
- speakerwas not the thing with them.
- speakerThe organization was
- speakerdominated by a group of older pacifists. John
- speaker[Bauer] The old liberal establishment of pacifists. [Lewis]
- speakerRight. The pacifist part
- speakerof
- speakerit and they just weren't
- speakerfunctioning very much at all. Adn they said to the church and the New York Times
- speakerin
- speakereither out of that movement
- speakerthe ways in which the Church and Society folk could mediate
- speakerchurch
- speakerand laity concern operation
- speaker[Bauer] Who carry the
- speakerfreight on this? I mean, you keep saying "we."
- speakerAre you talking about the Council?
- speakerstaff crew? [Lewis] I did most of it. It was
- speakerIt was not a ministry of the Council of Church and Society. It was a ministry of the Board of Christian
- speakerEducation. It was not run out of the Council.
- speakerI defined it. Of course, the Council
- speakerOf course, the Council at that point. [Bauer] At what point
- speakerdid the Council become? [Lewis] It became the Council on Church and Society in sixty-eight.
- speakerIt had been a
- speakercounseling committee of the Board of Christian
- speakerEducation up to that time. But it was a Board of Christian
- speakerEducation
- speakerministry essentially. [Bauer] not the Council of
- speakerChurch and Society operation.
- speaker[Lewis] The Board
- speakeruntil the reorganization
- speakersplit the relationship between the Council of
- speakerChurch and Society. And, the staff of the department was very
- speakerambiguous. It was the Board of Christian Education's department
- speakeron Church and
- speakerSociety, not the council's. The
- speakercouncil had something to say about the sort of
- speakerstuff that went on. Contrary to the opinion of the people who
- speakerre-organized the church of the council of Church and Society had never
- speakerbeen a programmatic body.
- speakerNever determined progam priorities. Never had passed on program. It had never adopted budgets or anything.
- speakerIt always kept in arrear as a kind of
- speakeradvisory on flaming G.A. pronouncements.
- speakerprogram budget stuff decisions
- speakerwere made at the Board of Christian Education regular process.
- speakerbut it was. I did most of it. And, of course, when Milton came on.
- speakerhe was responsible. We named
- speakeran advisory
- speakercommittee to run it after the very
- speakerfirst. Committee of what? I guess maybe ten people.
- speakerSensitive
- speakerchallenge. was one of those people.
- speakerI don't remember now who they were, but there was an advisory
- speakercommittee that ran it theoretically. It met from time to time to set
- speakerpolicy and direction, mission and program.
- speakerAnd then we got Yolten [Yolten, L. William] staff. Yolten had been in Australia.
- speakerHe had been a university pastor from Australia, visiting thing, and he came back and took this over. You know Bill first move
- speakerformidable energy. But unswerving
- speakerconcentration on general a fairly narrow range
- speakerof
- speakerpoints, which he pursues with
- speakergreat vigor and energy. I think for
- speakermost of the years he ran
- speakerthat with a good job of doing what needed to be done.
- speakerToward the end, it got
- speakermore and more
- speakershrill, I think, as his own. [Bauer] As the
- speakeranti war pitch grew. [Lewis] Yes. [Bauer] Well, when did Johnson resign?
- speaker[Lewis] Well, he. You mean Nixon? Johnson didn't
- speakerresign, he just didn't run again. [Bauer] Ah, year. That is what I mean.
- speaker[Lewis] It was sixty-six, sixty seven. [Bauer] He said he wasn't going to run.
- speakersixty six [Lewis] See, Nixon was elected in sixty
- speakereight and in seventy-two again [Bauer] So that the
- speakerfever pitch of the antiwar movement was pretty high when
- speakerthis first
- speakerpolicy statement came to the G.A.
- speaker[Lewis] Well it was. The antiwar movement went in
- speakercycles, as you know. When Johnson
- speakerstepped down and decided not to run again,
- speakerand conversations had
- speakerkind of tailed off. Then when Nixon came in and
- speakerrevived, they went up again.
- speakerThere had been a
- speakerclear statement about the war. It wasn't all that clear.
- speakerThe so-called Declaration of nineteen sixty-seven
- speakerat Portland
- speakerthat Robert McAfee
- speakerBrown did. declaration
- speakerof conscience it
- speakerwas called. up until that
- speakerpoint under
- speakerClifford's [Earle, Clifford John] kind of United Nations balance of
- speakerpower sort of
- speakerleadership and the General Assembly's
- speakerambivalence, I think,
- speakeras well as Clifford's not very crisp leadership
- speakerWell, the Vietnam War was a
- speakerbig problem. And some people feel one way and some people feel another,
- speakerThe church should study this, which was kind of what was said in sixty-
- speakersix. But you have got to remember that
- speakerthe big escalation of that war didn't come until late
- speakersixty-five sixty maybe early sixty-
- speakerfive, but it really didn't start building
- speakerup in the concern of some people. I remember
- speakerinterviewing a guy for a job
- speakerIt must have been about
- speakersixty, late
- speakersixty-four, or sixty-five, something like that, who had
- speakera big concern
- speakerabout the Vietnam War. Remember at that time, it was really not all that much.
- speakerall these elements and stuff like that.
- speakerTried to argue all kinds of balance of power stuff.
- speakerSo sixty seven declaration of conscience was the first statement. In sixty
- speakereight I was asked to take over the Church and Society
- speakerOffice the first of January sixty-eight.
- speakerI had been in South America.
- speakerMost of the first half of sixty
- speakerseven, February to August, really.
- speakerI had been in South America on a sabbatical. It was during that
- speakerperiod that the Board of National missions took over the
- speakerChurch and Race operation. I remember talking to
- speakerJim Gailey [Gailey, James R.] and Bill Morrison [Morrison, William A.], Bryant George
- speakerfrom Argentina, and then from Uruguay, as these guys were
- speakercalling in about. Bill calling
- speakerin, because that was what they were deciding to take
- speakercommission status away
- speakerfrom CORAR [Commission on Religion and Race] and increase
- speakerits effectiveness by incorporating it into the Board of National
- speakerMissions so that it would have a vital connection to
- speaker[Bauer] Yes. [Lewis] Yeah.
- speakerYou ought to read sometime, by the way the account of Charles
- speakerStelsley's work in the church, back in nineteen. [Bauer] Yeah,
- speakera little bit. [Lewis] It is
- speakerthe same kind of stuff. They finally
- speakerreorganized. [Bauer] That's right.
- speaker[Lewis] So that
- speakerwhen I got back the first of
- speakerSeptember that had all
- speakerbeen done pretty much.
- speakerand the Church and Society Department was sort of flailing
- speakeraround trying to figure out what they would do for the sixty
- speakereight General
- speakerAssembly and.
- speakerAnd I think already pretty well decided they would try to
- speakerfocus their efforts more. But, they left about October
- speakerI guess. About the
- speakerthe first of January, and we decided to go to the
- speakerAssembly with the Church and Society operation or even working with it,
- speakerwith two major foci: the crisis in the cities, the
- speakercrisis in the nation and the Vietnam War. And, that was the
- speakerfirst major statement
- speakerabout the Vietnam War, that sixty-eight one. And
- speakeras you say, the church and laity concern was already in
- speakerthe streets. The Vietnam War movement was
- speakeralready vigorous. Sixty-eight was the year we
- speakerstarted emergency ministry also.
- speakerthat
- speakerAnd got that moving.
- speakerbit because if you remember the sixty nine
- speakerAssembly was James Forman and the
- speakerwhole Black Manifesto
- speakerin the San Antonio. The Church and
- speakerSociety report that year
- speakerwas, figured mainly around Latin
- speakerAmerica issues documents, illusion of reality, stuff
- speakerlike that. Nixon had just
- speakertaken
- speakerover remember in January sixty-nine. Johnson
- speakerhad announced that he was not going
- speakerto be a candidate in the late spring sixty
- speakereight because he wanted to help unify and settle this war.
- speakerSo people were sitting there
- speakerwaiting. By seventy again,
- speakerremember, that was the Chicago
- speakerAssembly. You had the submarine
- speakerchurch, all that crap, but you also
- speakerhave a big debate on
- speakerthe Vietnam. The invitation to Nixon to come address the
- speakerAssembly. He sent Romney instead. George Romney came and addressed
- speakerthe assembly. So it was heating up
- speakeragain in sixty-nine.
- speaker[Bauer] nineteen seventy. [Lewis] Seventy.
- speakerAnd, it kept on putzing around until
- speakerseventy-two, seventy-three. The
- speakerprogram lasted how long? five
- speakeryears "Emergency Ministry."
- speakerleast I think so it was five
- speakeryears and we just went on to the next one, which
- speakerwas enough veterans. [Bauer] Vietnam veterans was
- speakerover by seventy-five.
- speakerHow long did that last? That's about right. [Lewis]
- speakerThey overlapped. They overlapped. [Bauer] They overlapped somewhat.
- speaker[Lewis] They overlapped. That's
- speakerright yes I think it was over by seventy-five.
- speaker[Bauer] That's what i wanted to. I think so.
- speakerI went to see
- speakerC.T.S. there was just a vestige of
- speakerthe thing around at that point. Maybe it went on a little
- speakerbit longer.
- speaker[Lewis] It seems to me it
- speakerwas seventy-seven. [Bauer] Could be.
- speaker[Lewis] Even the people in Louisville. We moved the operation to Louisville.
- speaker[Bauer] That's right that's right. [Lewis] There was not that much awareness of it
- speakerand took it more into community organization.
- speaker[Bauer] Pete [Lewis] Salerno [Salerno, Peter D., Jr.] [Bauer] Salerno. [Lewis] He took the board to community
- speakerorganization and to work with vets in
- speakerprison. He is the one who started
- speakerthe incarcerated vets business when he discovered that there
- speakerwas a vastly disproportionate number of Vietnam vets in prisons.
- speakerBut, I think it went on to seventy
- speakerseven. Maybe late seventy-seven. It was five years.
- speakerIt started in seventy-two. [Bauer] Where did the money for that come from?
- speaker[Lewis] Same place. [Bauer] Same place.
- speaker[Lewis] And in each instance
- speakerI must admit that the
- speakerterminal facility that was built into it was not
- speakeraltogether a matter of altruism,
- speakerinstitutional responsibility. I mean Du Val [Du Val, William K.] in particular
- speakerand some of the other people on
- speakerthe World Relief Committee were
- speakerjust adamant about getting those funds out of there. They were
- speakerattacking them all toward the end of each period. As they could
- speakerbecause they began to see
- speakerthere was a drain on these funds. And, my
- speakerarguments that they had been
- speakerfunding servicemen's centers overseas
- speakerfor twenty-five years, seemed the thing to
- speakerSo both of those were
- speakerterminated, which is an important point,
- speakeralthough the reasons for this termination are altogether
- speakerreally one of the things it does concern me about
- speakersome of these other operations. And, I think one has to be a prominent
- speakerconcern is when you hook the church institutionally into
- speakersome crisis response,
- speakerhow in the hell do you keep it from becoming institutionalized, bureaucratized
- speakerand built in as a kind of continuing
- speakercommitment of the church?
- speakerI am doing stuff like this, I know, but I'll tell you, I'm.