THE FAR RIGHT AND THE CHURCHES
Eisenberg, Howard and Arlene
the FAR RIGHT and the CHURCHES by HOWARD and ARLENE EISENBERG This is the first of two articles on the ultra-right groups and the churches by Harold and Arlene Eisenberg, who have contributed to...
...That letter was written three years ago by the General Council of the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian churches...
...Prior to that, as a power in the Illinois American Legion he had helped persuade that veterans organization to condemn part of the Girl Scout handbook as "un-American...
...Gibney began, "first tried out their propaganda at bridge parties, social evenings, and the like...
...I made no secret of my position on race relations and ecumenism, and it caused some very active members—including deacons— to join other churches...
...He has written a right-wing best seller called Collectivism in the Churches, which the Birch Society and similar rightist groups urge their followers to read...
...My own community is somewhat of a hotbed of John Birch activity," a Texas pastor told us in a comfortable twang...
...Why should so many ministers across the country—such as the score or more in the Chicago area eorrently under attack by strongly entrenched Bircher minorities—now be assailed more bitterly than ever...
...We lost twenty-five to thirty members and that many more became inactive...
...But it is the Protestants who have been hit hardest and heaviest...
...The situation would have been worse if the minister had not heard of a surprise move, planned for an early meeting of his board, to try to pull the church out of the National Council of Churches...
...Catholic civil rights spokesmen in the Los Angeles diocese were silenced by their leadership, and rabbis involved in interfaith work were denounced by extreme conservatives of their own faith...
...The same day I left there," he recalls, "the church I had been supplying on Sundays offered me a full-time pastorate, and I accepted...
...They may be veiled or direct, continuing or smear-and-run...
...A man as influential in the state's fundamentalist circles as Bundy could bully potential donors into withholding gifts to the college...
...He wrote to the pastor who had invited him to town in the first place...
...Since he took over direction of the Church League, its budget has risen five-fold to more than $200,000 a year, with such benefactors as Abbott Laboratories, Armour and Company, Greyhound Corporation, Borg-Warner Corporation, and the Celanese Foundation supplying most of the funds...
...Ed Pines was "supplying" a local church on Sundays while serving as head of the philosophy department of a small fundamentalist-supported college the rest of the week...
...In this expanding war, any cleric, church official, or church member who supports liberal points of view—on civil rights, Medicare, the war on poverty, the United Nations, or ecumenism—or who opposes the views of the right and its spokesmen is automatically categorized as either a Communist or "Com-symp," and, therefore, one to be cast out of the church as an "unbeliever...
...He preached the sermon anyway, with the result that "pledges have been a little lower" this year...
...Old Money wants to keep the status quo...
...This college has nothing to hide...
...The church school curriculum had a distinct 1910 flavor...
...But it's better—a number of people are beginning to see the light...
...He said he'd had his eyes on my activities for a long time...
...Pressure is brought to bear...
...Dr...
...A California minister was hit by a mass walk-out of some 200 church members out of a total of 800 when he came out against Proposition 14—the anti-fair housing referendum—during the 1964 election...
...It gives you the freedom to do only what they believe is right...
...The attacks take many forms...
...Then Bundy appeared on Pines' horizon once more...
...One of the most battle-scarred—and bravest—ministers we met was a short, friendly, keen-minded Midwestern pastor who has been both teacher and preacher over the years...
...Ed Pines, the minister, was appalled to discover total surrender of morality in the chief executive of a church-supported school...
...Pines...
...Liberal ministers do not reject the right of fundamentalists to oppose the preaching and practice of the social gospel...
...It was an ideal town for the operation...
...Impressed," Pines continued, "with the fact that you understand neither the classic Christian faith nor the meaning of American democracy...
...Others are being advised, warned, or ordered not to speak on social and political issues...
...The truth is he'd never heard of me before my letter...
...And when I became a charter member of the Mayor's Committee on Integration, and invited the president of the NAACP in to talk, there was more than a little consternation in our little heaven...
...Their peace and unity have been disrupted, their central mission has been deferred, their reason for being has been lost sight of, as church member is set against church member and church officer against church officer...
...No," he said, "they never get tired...
...In their invaluable book, Danger on the Right, Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein write that the League, with its files of "Communists," fellow-travelers, and "Communist dupes" for sale, its weekly radio programs in eight states, its "church seminars" on Communism, and Bundy's speeches around the country, constitutes "a quasi-educational agency teaching the clergy to use its considerable influence with its congregations to oppose what the League believes to be dangerous tendencies in the Protestant churches...
...He was 'shocked' that any college would dare employ me...
...Politically, it is thirty years behind the times...
...Pines' explanation that he had written the letter as a class case study and that he had been dragged in by Bundy by the seat of his trousers, was summarily dismissed...
...By no means do all clerics emerge so unscathed as did Dr...
...The minister was left to overcome the doubts generated in his congregation...
...A cleric in the Southwest received nightly threats to his family's lives until he installed a telephone with an unlisted number...
...We can discuss civil rights from the pulpit without a barrage of insults...
...The following week, one member of the vestry resigned...
...Bundy smiled beatifically: another frightened soul capitulating—and the professor he had forced out of his job, at that...
...When I made it clear that I would not abandon the social gospel, there was much table-pounding, voice-raising, fist-brandishing—and I saw $1,600 in pledges walk out the door...
...After that, no resignation was necessary...
...Could they be tired of it all...
...But then one trouble-blighted day, Major Edgar Bundy came to town...
...We told him that to protect those in exposed positions whose ministries might become even more difficult in the light of national publicity, we would use pseudonyms for the ministers cited in our report...
...A letter from national headquarters to pastors of all United Presbyterian churches, suggested for reading from the pulpit to alert congregations to the rightist menace, put it this way: "With pseudo-evangelistic fervor and misguided zeal, some church members seek to convert Christians not to a firmer allegiance to Jesus Christ, but to a campaign of anti-Communism . . . 'There are congregations which are being rent asunder...
...But since his name would add little to the report but much to his problems, it seems wise to give him—and other ministers whose stories we relate—another name...
...He said I ought to be working in a grocery store where I couldn't spread my foul ideas to impressionable students...
...If the president stood behind the professor, his own job could be endangered...
...There was an initial threat to withdraw pledges— money already figured into the budget...
...followed by the sound of the receiver slammed back on the hook...
...For the congregation as a whole, the problems of the big cities, so far removed, are still hard to understand...
...When I stood my ground, I lost nine adults and seven or eight youngsters...
...The rightist crusaders are always ready to lead a charge—or make one—against those creeds and clerics who are infidels in the eyes of a Robert Welch or a Major Edgar Bundy...
...It isn't even the American position...
...Ed Pines, the teacher, was staggered by the president's craven collapse...
...If it would help put a couple of nails in the Birch Society's coffin, I'd crawl down Main Street on my knees...
...Is this church going to continue in this liberal line of thought?' I was asked...
...And Ed Pines' thermostat blew completely: "If you can't stand up to a fear-peddler," he stormed, "then you have jelly where you ought to have backbone and meat where you ought to have brains...
...Somebody has to show them the right-wing position isn't the Christian position...
...Other vestrymen showed signs of sympathy, but not enough to stand up and be counted...
...My deacons thrashed it out, and decisively rejected the move to leave the NCC—all because they had the facts before them...
...Then, the Birchers became more blatant...
...Members of the John Birch Society," Dr...
...The travel and research for this two-part report were made possible by an award to the Eisenbergs by the Society of Magazine Writers from funds provided by the Beinecke Foundation...
...They arrived in time, and one of my deacons took a stack home to read...
...He said angrily: "You have nothing to hide...
...I saw what could happen when people surrendered to Bundy's attacks without so much as an attempt at defense...
...But hundreds, perhaps thousands, in the past several years have been stunned to hear a voice cry out: "You're a damned atheist...
...Until that morning, Pines and the college president had been on the best of terms...
...But he was not through fighting...
...The vigorous young minister announced a series of evening meetings to put his cards and church problems on the table...
...Their ever-intensifying emphasis on a social gospel which brings not only Sunday but every day of the week and every significant aspect of community life within the minister's purview collides head-on with a long-established belief among many fundamentalists that man is "saved" only through acceptance of Jesus Christ, and the saving of souls is, or should be, the only concern of the Church...
...The pastor gave it to a friend on the faculty, who brought it to the president...
...I wrote to the NCC," recalled the minister, "asking them to rush me some materials that would answer all those wild charges I knew would be brought up at the meeting...
...The purpose—to divide the congregation and intimidate the church leadership...
...Clergymen are learning to listen for rumblings from the right and are developing defenses against assaults by extremists...
...The Reverend Dr...
...Bundy had not come to town for the special purpose of "coordinating" Dr...
...I didn't have to become involved personally at all...
...He went up to Bundy after his lecture and introduced himself...
...I wanted you to know I heard you and I was very impressed," he said...
...Since then, I keep a good stock of materials on hand that the NCC has compiled, and make it available to church members...
...we asked...
...There was an effective throttle on the pulpit, and the congregation had not yet heard a word preached on the subject of civil rights, or on any other important moral issue of the day...
...Some Catholic and Jewish clerics have been chastised for such activities...
...Several weeks later, he was summoned to the office of the college president...
...He wrote a letter attacking me as a known Communist, as a poisoner of young people's minds...
...The new and excellent Episcopal church school curriculum was adopted and the staff increased to nine well-trained teachers...
...An executive of the national office of a denomination told us of a minister so harassed by Birchen that he finally gave up the pulpit to go into seminary work...
...Telephoned insults, anonymous and venomous letters, poison-pen notes in the collection plate, propaganda tracts and clippings deposited mysteriously or distributed openly in the vestry—all these harass clerics personally...
...Pines fires freely from the pulpit as well...
...This went on for about two low-pressure but systematic years...
...Among those denominations whose ministers are assigned by a hierarchy, right-wingers often bring great pressure to bear on ranking officials in their efforts to get rid of a pastor...
...With its plans for expansion, the college was extremely vulnerable in the pocketbook...
...Recruiting, too, became open...
...Threats and intimidations become the order of the day when certain church members say: 'We will leave the church unless . . .' 'Our contributions will cease until . . .' 'You'd better stop preaching about...
...He explained that the national church convention he had attended had passed a resolution in support of the civil rights bill, and had directed ministers present to return to their flocks to explain the theological and social reasons for the action...
...Ed Pines, a teacher of logic, had acquired his first wound-stripe in conflict with the forces of illogic...
...the FAR RIGHT and the CHURCHES by HOWARD and ARLENE EISENBERG This is the first of two articles on the ultra-right groups and the churches by Harold and Arlene Eisenberg, who have contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest, and other publications...
...Here it is deadly serious...
...It gives them the freedom to force you to do it...
...When the principal turned him down, Bundy went to the local newspaper with the hint that those who had blocked him must be Communists or fellow travelers...
...At the same time, letters are sent to members of the congregation and to newspapers warning of the "Com-symp" (Communist-sympathizing) tendencies of the pastor or of the national religious body to which the church belongs...
...All the evidence we gathered in our travels for The Progressive bears out the Texas pastor's impression of an untiring foe...
...I advertised in the church paper to let the people know about it...
...We had to tighten our belts a bit, but when the Old Guard left, a breath of fresh air entered the church...
...What happened was that the Major tried to pressure his way onto a high school assembly program...
...I don't know whether they're just poised to pounce on us," he laughed, "or what...
...The attacker made his speech and drove blithely off to his next lecture engagement...
...Bundy's League, which is tax-exempt, declares that its purpose is to educate and influence ministers who will influence "the vast numbers they in turn reach" and "help to build a great national bulwark opposed to radical schemes and totalitarian trends...
...American Opinion, the Birch Society monthly, appeared in town along with many other right-wing publications and tracts...
...gradually to coordinate the voices of sound-thinking ministers into a powerful voice that can mean something when great national questions and issues arise...
...They accused me of brainwashing—a Birch term that disturbed me...
...The Editors There was a time, not long ago, when a minister who fumbled foggily for an insistently-ringing telephone at one o'clock in the morning could be reasonably sure that the words he was about to hear would concern sickness or sudden death...
...This Bundy is clever," Dr...
...Three teachers with a well-earned reputation for never attending a denominational training session made up the staff...
...Sick at heart, he walked out of the president's office and out of a teaching job he loved and has missed every day of his life since...
...Back home to mention the Birch Society was to laugh...
...I suppose it's like Don Quixote tilting at windmills...
...But his bishop, aware that he was made a target because of his outstanding record in the civil liberties-civil rights area, knew the indictment was riddled with prejudice...
...I've explained that the social gospel is not subversive, but simply the application of the Lord's teachings to social problems...
...Since we went into Communism thoroughly in one of the courses, I said, 'Well, let's write the man a letter and ask what proof he has of his charges.' Based on what I'd heard about him, I predicted that he would not answer specifically, but would use the old ad hominem argument: If you can't answer, attack the man...
...The National Council of Churches is Communist," he was told...
...Pines told us later...
...This time he had a platform, and a speech entitled "Enemies...
...I certainly have nothing to hide...
...I had some Goldwaterites in the congregation who were upset at some comments I made about his qualifications for the Presidency...
...He made it clear that he did not want faculty members involved in controversy...
...And I put some in the hands of one of my most ultra-right members...
...An important reason appears to be the growing tendency in the past few years of clergymen—Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish—to become involved in social issues, thereby bearing witness to man's responsibility toward his fellow man...
...His explanations were not only not cheerfully accepted, but were greeted with a torrent of abuse against the social gospel and "socialist" ministers...
...But their definition of freedom is a strange one...
...When Bundy's complaint was published, "Some of the students in my college classes brought up the matter," recalls Pines...
...The pastor of a Texas Disciples of Christ congregation reported: "My members have been flooded with right-wing material, and are being drawn into that camp for lack of counter-information...
...As Pines recalls, "This summed up his philosophy...
...Some ministers...
...He refused to dismiss the minister...
...Gibney from assaults by the extremists of the right...
...The tactics were familiar—innuendo, character assassination, gossip, social pressures...
...For most American clergymen, this is still the case...
...All in all, I lost a half-dozen to a dozen extreme conservatives...
...We had heard from someone else in town that Dr...
...Gibney succeeded the retiring minister, the church clearly showed the effects of the extremist take-over...
...Sometimes these tactics are effective, although not all ministers are sacrificed by their superiors to appease the extremists...
...But they oppose the tactics sometimes used, particularly by such strange bench-fellows of the fundamentalists as clerics Carl Mclntire of the Twentieth Century Reformation Hour, Billy James Hargis of The Christian Crusade, and Edgar Bundy of the Church League of America, and layman Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, who have turned what should remain basically a theological dispute into an unholy war against the churches...
...Bundy and his kind purport to see freedom threatened all about them...
...Major Bundy, a former Air Force Intelligence officer and an ordained Baptist minister who has never held a pastorate, has headed the Church League of America since 1956...
...But others joined us...
...Instead of studying the Christian mission, children were reading about the Civil War and Wild Bill Hickok—the Great American Past...
...It was quite a change," said the good-looking, bespectacled pastor wryly...
...But somebody has to tilt...
...His earnest statement that it was important for any human being—minister, teacher, or even housewife—not to let professional smearers like Bundy go unchallenged, brought this angry and frightened response: "Don't you realize that in future lecture tours he is going to accuse this college of harboring known Communists...
...But he didn't send his letter directly to the college...
...But a special cross-country inquiry among ministers of major denominations, undertaken at the request of The Progressive, has convinced us that ugly situations like these are still developing and that the need for such warnings against Birch-style tactics is more urgent than ever...
...Well-educated young people in the eighteen to thirty-five age group tend to move out and settle elsewhere...
...Right-wing members drew up a long array of charges against him, including financial undermining of the church...
...The concluding installment of this survey will appear in the August issue...
...Dr...
...The League occupies a $225,000 building in Wheaton, Illinois...
...And the announcement of a sermon on the United Nations brought down on an Ohio minister a rain of right-wing materials two inches high...
...The question stunned Pines with its naked revelation of the president's fears...
...The pastor smiled...
...I became a letter-to-the-editor writer...
...Feel free to use my name if you like," he declared...
...It was almost that bad for the first four months," he admitted...
...Pines' prediction was painfully correct...
...Gibney had been threatened with a fist at one point...
...When Dr...
...My own philosophy," he explained in his church study one evening after supper, "was not so much to give students answers as to help them find them in the welter of conflicting dogmas...
...Now, however, the president was cool...
...In Texas, a Methodist clergyman was assailed on his home ground by a well-known right-winger as "unfit to hold a pulpit" because, allegedly, he was a Communist fellow-traveler...
...The young Episcopal minister became a prime tar.-get...
...We have documentary proof...
...If you are a liberal in your economics, your politics, or your religion—you are ipso facto a Communist, an enemy...
...We spoke to a young minister and his wife who had come to an Episcopal church in a small Midwestern town from the liberal atmosphere of a big city university campus...
...Since that time, we don't hear much from the extremists...
...Two-thirds of his board voted to ask for his removal...
...The others find it difficult to accept the passing of the old agrarian way of life...
...are tragically resigning their pastorates or compromising their convictions...
...But the president's stony silence now made it obvious that he did not want an explanation, but only a conviction...
...A Midwest minister sent up a cry for help: "At every church session, members bring up the subject of Communist infiltration of the National Council of Churches, and I need ammunition to answer these attacks...
Vol. 29 • July 1965 • No. 7
