Embattled Ecumenism: The National Council of Churches, the Vietnam War, and the Trials of the Protestant Left by Jill K. Gill (review)

Jill Gill’s critical yet sympathetic analysis of the National Council of Churches’ (NCC) response to and critique of the Vietnam War provides a model of engaged history. Gill argues that the Vietnam War and other events of this divisive period challenged, splintered, and exposed the weaknesses of the NCC’s efforts against the war, and thus her narrative is “instructive for religious institutions that bring their faith into politics” (3). The book is not simply a narrative unfolding of the NCC’s antiwar stance, but a rich analysis of the theological foundations of an enduring ecumenical strand of Christian faith, adding to our understanding of such varied topics as the decline of the mainline Protestant denominations, the clergy-laity divide that became such a topic of debate during this period, the rise of the Christian Right, and the challenge posed to institutions and bureaucratic religious authorities such as the NCC by secular youth and Christian laity.

Unlike so many other works that either discount or ignore the historical precedents of the NCC’s activism in the 1960s (for example, James Findlay’s Church People in the Struggle and Mark Newman’s Divine Agitators, which are otherwise compelling accounts of the NCC’s engagement with race and civil rights issues), Gill gives appropriate attention to the historical antecedents of the NCC’s antiwar activities by providing a brief account of the Federal Council of Churches’ international and domestic social activism and its ecumenical vision. She argues that Robert Bilheimer, who was a major figure in the NCC’s campaign against the Vietnam War from 1966 to 1973, sought to ground the actual strategies and proposals of the NCC in its emphasis on unity in the body of Christ and a common theological vision within a broader Christian community beyond the United States. But as Gill states so aptly, “Its belief that it is part of a worldwide body of Christ was tested during a time when Christian nationalism and American exceptionalism spiked amid a unilateral hot war that the government saw as embedded in a global Cold War against atheistic communists” (390).

Gill calls for the integration of discussions of ecumenism, especially the NCC, into analyses of American religious history, post-World War II U.S. history, and the anti-Vietnam War movement. This emphasis on the role and influence of the NCC is convincing, but its insistent demand to speak with President Richard Nixon, who vengefully excluded the NCC from the White House, and its history of intimate involvement with government might be read as an unseemly quest for power that is an inherent tension for such a religious group that sought to “speak truth to power” and offer a “prophetic witness.” Gill’s work is an essential and enlightening starting point for future discussions about whether successors or detractors might learn from the NCC’s experience.