Embattled Ecumenism: The National Council of Churches, the Vietnam War, and the Trials of the Protestant Left

9—Courting Nixon, December 1968–Fall 1969

C h a p t e r N i n e Courting Nixon, December 1968–Fall 1969 Giving Nixon the Benefit of the Doubt Ecumenists approached the 1968 Christmas holiday with the desperate hope that, after a year of heightened violence and division, peace would return soon to Vietnam and America. Allan Parrent thought the war had become such a political albatross that Nixon would seek to end it.1 John Bennett also rejoiced at what seemed to be clear signals of closure for that wrenching conflict. He wrote, “this new stage in the war and in the negotiations, this new hope that a peace of some kind may be significantly nearer, has been the best news that we have had in many months.”2 Even the antiwar movement quieted substantially. Certain Council leaders took satisfaction in the knowledge that, of the Council’s seven points in its December 1965 statement against U.S. policy in Vietnam, the government had adopted four by 1968, and the other three were components of the current Paris peace talks.3 Therefore, concern shifted toward the stalled talks themselves, the content of a future settlement, postwar healing, and America’s postwar policy in Asia.4 Since Bilheimer had failed to secure visas to North Vietnam, he and Schomer pondered the possibility of meeting with the North Vietnamese in Paris. A consultation with them and perhaps the NLF might help fulfill the church’s responsibility to listen to the “enemy.” They were also anxious 230 E m b a t t l e d E c u m e n i s m to discuss factors involved in a peace settlement, Vietnamese views of their country’s future, and perhaps the church’s role in postwar reconstruction.5 They wanted new information to update their witness to government or, as Schomer said, “to speak fresh truth on Vietnam to new power, i.e., the Nixon administration.”6 Schomer worked with Mai Van Bo to complete the arrangements. All four delegations (North Vietnamese, NLF, United States, and South Vietnamese) agreed to separate, parallel consultations with NCC leaders. Each banned the media but permitted the Council to forward meeting content to church leaders and the U.S. government. Bo advised Schomer that any questions regarding the political future of South Vietnam and the representation of “third force” groups (that is, nonaligned noncommunist southerners) should be raised with the NLF, not the North. Therefore, Schomer worked with NLF leaders Nguyen Thi Binh (Madame Binh) and Tran Van Tho to outline an agenda regarding South Vietnam’s future.7 While making these arrangements, Schomer was stunned to learn of the North Vietnamese’s bitter reaction to Johnson’s 1965 Johns Hopkins speech that had delighted so many liberal Christians. The Vietnamese, it turned out, did not welcome big U.S. development programs of the sort that the NCC had encouraged Johnson to offer. As Schomer told Bilheimer: “you must hear from his own lips the ugly reception accorded Johnson’s Johns Hopkins speech to grasp as I suddenly did on hearing him that all our ‘good hearted’ American Christian notions of postwar relief, reconstruction or even development schemes are simply not on wave-lengths that Vietnamese who are not on our USA payroll will even tune in on. I think it is very important that Tracey Jones especially hear him,” he continued, “for the Methodists are as you know dreaming of many millions to be spent by Jim MacCracken and CWS in ‘post war R & R in Vietnam.’ I am afraid that our 1945 German (or even Czech and Polish) experience is so irrelevant to the eventual post-war situation in Vietnam that it could lead us into dangerous mistakes in our approaches even now.” For Schomer, this wake-up call clearly illustrated that ecumenists , like most other Americans, tended to interpret situations and create solutions from a presumptive Western worldview that did not necessarily match Vietnamese wishes. Such information also reinforced the IAC’s reservations about CWS’s approach to service work in Vietnam.8 The NCC delegation that arrived in Paris on January 4 included Bilheimer, Elston, and Schomer, as well as four members of the NCC’s Courting Nixon, December 1968–Fall 1969 231 constituency: Harold Berman (IAC member and Harvard Law professor), Rev. Edward Carothers (General Board member, United Methodist), Rev. Paul Empie (DoM member, Lutheran World Federation), and Richard Riseling (IAC member, American Baptist...