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Lamp unto my feet today.

New wine skins. Our host, Dr. George Crothers,

the observation that one doesn't put new wine into old wine skins across three different places in the New Testament. And I suppose the moral or the teaching is that one doesn't try to use old methods to solve new and contemporary problems. The thing that concerns us most immediately today is the effort on the part of churches to sell the newly recognized problems of the permanence of injustice in our society caused by race and poverty, and to discuss this subject. Our guests are on my left there, Reverend Dr. William H. Hudnut, the third the pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, and the Reverend Dr Ernest Kamau, pastor of the Riverside Church in New York City and a member of the Council on Mass Media for the Presbyterian Church. The Presbyterian Church in recent times has established a council on church and race, and in the past year they were allocated $100000 for the legal defense of poor people and blacks. During the course of the year, they this council gave $10000 to the Marion County Black Defense Fund for the benefit of Angela Davis and at the recent General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Rochester, New York, Dr. 100 that caused quite a stir.

And the repercussions thereof caused quite a stir, too

is still going on.

It's still going on. I guess. The denominational headquarters have received something over 7000 letters from Sessions Church adjudicators Individual Presbyterians who are upset or approve of the action that was taken and reported to the General Assembly. The General Assembly itself didn't take the action. The Council on Church and Race took it back in February, and the allocation was reported to the General Assembly,

and that's when the report of this council was asked to be approved. That's correct. And in the process of debating whether or not they should approve it, there were several objections to the action

that precipitated quite a debate. And the long and the short of it was that the report of the council was received and questions were raised and communicated to the Council on Church and raised relative to the propriety of the allocation of $10000 in this legal defense fund for Angela Davis.

Well, can you summarize what some of the objections were?

Well, I think I can, although it's a very complex issue and there are no simple answers. And one of the things that I think we have to be wary of is oversimplification or emotional reaction to the issue. But basically, I think that the vast majority of Presbyterian in the pew, I wouldn't be surprised. The majority of Presbyterian ministers, I wouldn't use the adjective vast, disapproved of the allocation, the specific allocation and not the concept in back of why did they do this? I think basically they did it because first of all, they don't feel that it is a valid assumption that Angela Davis will not receive a fair trial, which was one of the reasons for making the grant. It is true that being black and being a woman and being a communist, she suffers from double or triple trouble. But on the other hand, while the courts have not always treated blacks equally, I think that was the glare of national publicity on this and the history over the last decade of the emergence of minority groups and the defense of their rights and the treatment they've had in the courts that she will get fair treatment. And a lot of press attorneys don't feel that it's valid to say that she won't get a fair trial.

And then I cut in here point. It's my feeling that when people in minority groups say to us that the shoe hurts toward the little toe on the right foot, that it hardly behooves any of us in the so-called white establishment to say it really doesn't. It's not all that bad. And I think this is part of it, as I see it, that the black community sees this as a representative case. And they're looking at history and they're feeling history differently. And I don't quite understand how we in the establishment, if we really believe in trying to equalize power and not just talk about it, how we can say to them that there is no problem here when they are the ones who are aggrieved historically and presently feel that there is. And I would have to take their word over ours. I think we have so much going for us. I've been in smaller towns than New York, and if I had a parking ticket that was wrongly given me, there was an easy way to call somebody up and the cop was a friend and so forth. It's hard to know what it's like to be black and not to have that friend down there or to be able to call a lawyer. The whole bail program and so on. And I think part of what the Presbyterian did was actually to help bring some attention to this case so that the very thing that you spoke about Bill would come to pass, that there would be a national focus. And I think we as a church are partly responsible for the enlargement of the attention that will be given in the hopes that there will be justice in the courtroom.

One of the things, Dr. Crothers, that I tried to do in formulating my own opinions about this was to talk with several black Presbyterians of my acquaintance and ask them how they felt about it and to a man. They construed this whole thing in terms of race, which from where I sit as a member, if you please have the Wasp establishment is a mistake because I don't think the question of the allocation of ten thousand dollars to the Marin County Defense Fund for Angela Davis is a racial thing at all. I think it's more of a political thing, and I think it's very unfortunate that it's being turned into a racial thing so that it sounds on, I say, I suppose the gift I as a white man am opposed to the black person, which is not the case at all. And and I do think that in many instances, it's difficult for a black person to get this equal treatment. One of the black people that I spoke with said, Bill, have you ever had the experience of having your automobile insurance revoked? Because the salesman, the salesman has come to you and said, I'm sorry, but I know that if you had an accident, we couldn't get a fair judgment for you because of your color. Well, obviously I have not useable. I have. And that's part of the tragedy in being black in our society.

The whole bail process is the same way. If a man is on bail five thousand and his salary is two hundred thousand a year, that's just peanuts. And if a man is making forty two hundred a year and his bail is five thousand, this is prohibitive. I don't, you know, I don't take exception. Mean, I just feel that that if black churchmen and this this move was made predominantly by black churchmen in the United Presbyterian Church. If they make a judgment, I don't feel that we should try to to emasculate that leadership with a second guess and suggest that they were misguided or wrongly motivated. I mean, if we're going to give leadership, we have to abide by the judgments of the leadership.

Nobody would question the legality of the decision or the the fact that it was made through to Presbyterian process. But I do think that beyond the question of the from where I sit invalid valid assumption that she would have a fair trial, there are a couple of other considerations. First of all, the legal defense fund that was set up a year ago by the General Assembly, the amount of a hundred thousand dollars was predicated on the assumption that it would go to help people, poor brethren, whether they be black or white, who needed legal defense and couldn't afford it. And there are many people in the Presbyterian rank and file who sincerely believe that Angela Davis is not indigent and that she is not so poor that she will not get adequate legal defense without the Presbyterian Church using some of its money

to help her. Did you ever try to defend a suit, or did they ever try to defend a lawsuit on the salary of an instructor in a university?

Well, no man is an island. I'm doing self, and I'd hardly say that she was having to do this within her own means. She's been cut off. She was fired and she has no great income herself, I presume. I have an investigator, but the whole if you can trust what you read in the newspapers and so forth, the whole communist apparatus is behind her because she is a self-avowed communist. And on top of that, there's a National United committee for the liberation of Angela Davis that's been formed that has a vast network in at least 60 local communities that is raising money for. And there have been rallies for all around the world, and money is pouring in all the way from a salon where they had a do for her to California, where they had some kind of a benefit for it in New York, where they they had a birthday party for the proceeds to go to her defense and so forth. And I don't think she's indigent. And the fact that she's got six lawyers working for a full time and a whole cadre of research assistants seems to me to prove that somebody is bankrolling.

It proves that she needs help because it's costing eleven thousand dollars a month to pay for these attorneys and their investigators. I mean, I think it's a relative matter when you've got a case that's going to cost five thousand to defend and you give somebody one thousand, you're giving 20 percent. If this is going to cost eight hundred and fifty thousand and we give ten ten over eight hundred and fifty thousand is very small. I just feel happy in myself of the church from where I sit has come down on the right side for once. I don't want the Communist Party to feel that they have a monopoly on justice and the fact that she's a communist, I think, is extraneous to the purpose of the gift.

Well, it might very well be

highly extraneous to it. The point is that we want to be sure that she gets a fair trial. And you know, and I consider that Angela Davis was raised in Birmingham and was in the church when there was a shootout at night. I'm just wondering, let's say that everybody was after redheads in that fashion. And I, as a redhead, happened to be in a church and would shut up about it seems to me that you could almost make a case for the fact that we drive people to the left by some of our impositions of injustice. So I, you know, I just feel that the church should make a witness in this case and not allow the justice angle. Monopolized by the Communist Party or any other party?

Well, Ernie, I think you're right on the necessity for the church making a witness for social justice and political justice, and I don't think that anybody that I've talked with who is opposed to the allocation is is opposed to it on the grounds that she doesn't deserve a fair trial. Everybody agrees she deserves a fair trial. But I do think that it's quite relevant to bring up the question that she is a self avowed communist. How is it relevant? Well, because it's a question, and this gets into another more philosophical area of the discussion. It seems to me it's it's a question of the church's mission and how it's going to be fulfilled. And at least from where I sit, it seems to me that given the dollar crunch that's facing all the major denominations today and given the tremendous needs within our own denomination or within the rank of the church for financial help, that it is foolish to give $10000 of Presbyterian money to support a communist who has called the whole American system oppressive and called for its overthrow and is a radical revolutionary militant who, if she had her way, probably we wouldn't be free to practice the religion of our choice. In other words, a lot of people feel that we're just financing our own destruction and we give a gift like this. They're opposed to it quite

strongly or my my feeling is that the darker you might say Angela Davis, the more Christian than the act becomes. I had an experience in Ann Arbor with some very good friends, including Roger Haim's, who until recently was the chancellor of Berkeley, where following the assassination of President Kennedy, the widow of the assassin had expressed the desire to learn English and stay in this country, Marina Oswald. And so we brought Marina Oswald very quietly and without the glare of the press any more than we can talk to Ann Arbor for an intensive study of the English language. Now we got very, very heavy mail volume, perhaps as heavy proportionately to our size as a church, as the amount of mail that the denomination has received, and the letters came in 11 from California. Incidentally, people, I guess in the warm weather out there like to write. But they had a lot of things to say about that. What we had done was unpatriotic and it was un-American that it was unwise. It was unprofitable. And I chose to answer each one and gently and I tried to suggest that you have told us that it's unpatriotic, that it's unwise and so on. But what you haven't told us is that it's un-Christian. And that's really what motivated us to ask Mrs. Oswald to come. And incidentally, she had a happy experience there at a critical point in her life. So I think one can say, though, that the darker one page, the credentials of an individual, the more the mandate looms. Look up for the Christian to move in and help you know the role. You know the in the story.

Yeah, sure. The Samaritan story and on a one to one basis, I agree with you. But as a corporate institutional body for the church to do this, in a sense, put all three million Presbyterians behind the gift. And there are a lot of individual Christians in our churches who who don't feel that their money should go to help. A communist is just that simple. And they, I think, have a legitimate bone of contention here. My goodness. This year, our General Assembly tells us that the Board of Foreign Missions, what we call the Commission on Ecumenical Missions and Relations had to dip into its reserves the amount of $1.6 million to finance its mission overseas. The Board of Christian Education is telling us that they have to cut back their giving to church related colleges, and they're phasing out countless operations because they don't have the money to keep them afloat. And yet we can come up with ten thousand dollars to give to a communist who is called for the overthrow of everything that we believe from religion to democracy. Now what sense?

Apparently, some some black leadership in the Presbyterian Church said This is where the pain is and this is where we ought to be. Now you're saying that there's pain at the college level and there's pain in Appalachia and this pain that they call MA level over in India, perhaps. I think the way the Presbyterian Church operates, it's a representative form of government. And, you know, for a long time, we have been committed through our leadership. I happen to be very fond of the Cuban people and the island of Cuba and think of all the years we poured money into Cuba when Batista was operating down there. Now that was that was perhaps a mistake to the right. But I didn't hear of any churches threatening to cut back funds or people pulling out. I think this is part of the American malaise. We can always take something from the right that appeals to us because it you know it. It confirms certain judgment. So we have about the rightness of the world and so forth, but when something comes that has perhaps a leftish hue to it, we get awfully uptight when I think ten thousand dollars over the multiple millions that are involved each year is really pretty small and I I would have been much prouder of the church. So we said, you know, there's there's some question of judgment here, but our black brethren have made this determination. And after all, why they can't call all the shots in an age of revolution. And let's just wait and see and see what happens.

Well, you see in saying that though, you make it more of a racial issue than I'd be willing to sit still for because first of all, the Council on Church and Race is composed of people other than blacks. And secondly, people who support the gift are other than blacks. Therefore, it's not a racial thing, and I think that it does a disservice to the cause to racialized the issue.

And yet black ministers felt that incumbent, partly to

make it up. I don't know how many of our audience knows the 20 black ministers, and maybe some laymen 20 black united Presbyterian churchmen donated $500 apiece to rebate the church and as I work at the corporate church off the hook. But here again, I think this was a mistake. Why didn't they have some of the white people that were in favor of the gift to contribute? And why, in their letter, do they talk about the emasculation of black leadership? Our church has bent over backwards in the last 10 years to upgrade black leadership and to give them positions in the church.

Yeah, but you see, if you do it in the small areas of, then blow it in a large one, you're right back where you started from this. We don't give these things scale. White people don't assign scale to the various crises, and the black community has fastened upon this as an event of major proportions. And we're trying to say it's not that big. There are other things more important. That in itself is a kind of a repudiation on their judgment or their sense of scale. Now, for hundreds of years, you know, we've had it our way and they've gone on with our sense of scale. And I'm perfectly willing in a reparation disparity to say, OK, if you feel that this is where the action is and this is where the limelight is falling and this is where a Christian witness to justice can be born, then maybe tacitly, but nonetheless affirmatively we stand with you. I think we owe this to our black leadership. I really do.

I agree with you that we have to stand with them at the point of the fulfillment of their destiny as children of God and the fulfillment of their manhood and womanhood, just the way we do with white people and poor people and all kinds of minority groups. But I disagree with you, Ernie, at the point of the judgment that's being made here, given the validity of the general principle that the church should be on the side of justice and on the side of the fulfillment of the individual person and his destiny nonetheless. I think an error in judgment was made on this particular issue by the people both black and white in the council and church and racist who made it. And I think that we can say this and still be together in Christ and together in our denomination and together in the church.

I hazard a guess, though, as to where I think the problem really lies. I mean, I think, you know, when you go to a doctor, there's a presenting complaint and then there's the real complaint. And frequently the presenting complaint provides what really bothers us. I think what bothers Christian people and this is not just the Presbyterian Church, is the fact that the church is really beginning to take history seriously and not continue in its historical position regarding salvation. If you press a great majority of laymen and ministers in this country, they really believe that salvation involves the extrication of the individual from history by an act of the grace of God. Now it's my judgment that what salvation does is to free us for participation in history. Now, for a long time while we were dealing in social service and this sort of thing while we were building clinics for blacks and so forth, this was flattering to us debasing to them, although helpful to some degree. But when you get to the point where you really want to get involved and reformulating the power structures, this has to do with the flow of justice, not just an abstract commitment to justice. This is when the dominant white church member begins to back off. If you had to put a stop action and where the pain begins, it begins when when social service is still maintain, but one moves beyond that into social action. Well, I think what? That's what we have here.

You're putting your finger on, I think the basic theological issue that's raised here, I like to think of it in terms of whether or not people adequately understand the incarnation. Now I think that you and I do, but I'm not sure that I preach it all live and do, but from the point of view of the Christian. Incarnation of God came into the world to say, but he didn't pull people out of the world in some kind of ecclesiastical cocoon or churchy vacuum. Jesus Christ walked the roads of Palestine and took upon himself the burdens of our humanity, and it was an attempt to redeem humanity in the here and the now that Jesus lived out his days. But then if you grant this presupposition and if you grant, as I think many laymen will who are opposed to the Angela Davis grant, many ministers too that the church must be involved and has a right to concern itself and speak out. The question then becomes the prudential, one of where and how do you apply your insights and your resources? Niebuhr used to say to us in his lectures on Christian ethics at Union Seminary that it's all right to be a fool for Christ, but there's no point being a darn fool. And I think that sometimes we go overboard, and I think that this is one place where perhaps the zeal to be involved in the world has carried us away from where our true mission as a church lies in recognizing its symbolic value.

Could I ask a question, Dr. Hudnut? It seems to me that. Typekit camera raised the question as to whether or not this action was Christian or un-Christian. But the Samaritan and the Roman soldier and these are the people that were disliked, the Roman soldier who came to destroy the Jewish Society is the one who Jesus said about if he makes you carry his pack of mile, carry it to your objection to Angela Davis, primarily because she is a communist. Because she's black, although that probably also is one of the reasons why a number of Presbyterians object to this outright gift.

I hope you're wrong, but it isn't.

It isn't the admonition of Christianity to loved ones enemy and to be kind to one's enemy and to help one's enemy. And if you regard Angela Davis as a communist, as an enemy of the Society which you cherish, isn't it even more your obligation to help her?

This is a fair question, and I think that the of the answer is very complex and people will divine on this the same way they divide on our involvement in Vietnam. You mentioned the Good Samaritan Ernie, and I wonder sometimes what Jesus would have had the Good Samaritan do if he happened upon the fisticuffs while they were in process and whether or not he had the Good Samaritan participate. I think we have an obligation sometimes to spring to the defense of our more helpless neighbor. And I do think that as Christians and as individuals, we have a responsibility to try to help our enemy, the love, our enemy and to pray for him. And I know of sincere Christian people who've been praying for Angela Davis. If you please praying for her conversion. But I think there's a world of difference between loving your enemy as an individual and bringing the whole apparatus of the corporate church with over three million people to bear on her problem by doling out is it giving money can always solve the problem. $10000 to help her with her defense when she doesn't need it?

Aren't you? Aren't you half saying that it's that an individual can be Christian, but an organization?

Can't I maybe have saying

that I'd like to press you on that because it seems to me what you're doing is putting a premium on smallness here. And maybe I could play with that a little and ask you how small it must be kept for it to still be valid. I mean, if it's if it's good, let's say you and I want to help Angelo and we chip in a little bit together. That's, you know, that's going beyond one, but it's still manageable at what point numerically or in terms of adjudicators does it then become un-Christian? So I don't follow this. I think this is a I think this gets back and I'm not certain of not charging you with this bill. But I think there's a lot of Lone Ranger ism in American Protestantism, and we haven't even gotten to the question of what do you do when you're soured on what your church does? But the fact that some people feel that they can vote with their feet and so forth, I think indicates a very shallow understanding of the nature of the body of Christ. I think you have to learn to say we when you join a church, of course, and when you consider what the blacks have suffered over the years and they've said, we do a lot of things that they really had no heart for here, we find that a large number of whites can't say we when it's something that goes against them. And I think we ought to be able to move corporately in areas like this and trust each other.

This is part of the pain in the church today, the extent to which the man in the pew is willing to let the church speak and act corporately. And I do feel that we have to learn to say we and submerge our vaunted individuality right and come out with a united stand. Now the question is, what do you stand for and where do you apply your resort? Here again, I think it's a question of a value judgment. And many people feel that it was a mistake to give Angela Davis this money. They wouldn't have objected if the money had been applied to indigent people in jail situations all over the United States who really needed it. But to give $10000 to her, and you haven't even mentioned the twenty five thousand dollars they gave the Black Panther in New York City seems to be an error and

judge, didn't they?

I doubt that they did. I really don't think that they needed the help as much as a lot of poor, nameless blacks and Chicanos and poverty stricken people lying in jails awaiting trial all over the United States.

But then, Dr. Hudnut, aren't you saying that the reason for objecting to a gift like this to the Panthers or to Angela Davis is because you disapprove of the things they want to do?

Yes, I suppose I am saying that there's a no, there's a point beyond which I'm not willing to go so far as the allocation of my money is concerned. I personally would not want to give my money to aid and abet those forces in our society, which I think are aiming at the overthrow of everything that I hold dear. And I wouldn't want my church to give back accepting

that as a result of the gift to the Black Panthers, Panthers, or at least partly as a result of it, they got a fair trial and they were acquitted

in a 90 minute discussion, by the way, by the jury in New York. I was pretty fast, but I really want to press this idea of how do you move to change power structures? And I'm suggesting that the old way of one-on-one kindness or social service doesn't cut it. For example, where we saw it here almost every week for housing by people that just don't have it. I mean, you're fortunate to live in in plentiful state like Indiana, but we don't have much housing in New York. You can't do anything about housing in New York until you become political and you can't do it alone. You've got to begin to form coalitions. This doesn't seem to me to take us away from Christ. It's my judgment that when we get involved in some of these narrow mesas, you know that political life knows that we're actually finding Christ already there.

I wouldn't question, you know, we have to learn how to act in community organization and how to grow it and how to act

politically and even if the organization doesn't necessarily represent the wishes. Of every single member. Well, you've got to draw a line, still a valid

Mr.

Moderator, I think you've got to draw a line and you're going to draw to a close.

I'm drawing to a close. Thank you very much, Dr. Hudnut and Dr. Campbell, and I hope you'll be with us next week for a lamp under my feet.