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

Jill K. Gill offers an exhaustively researched, well written, and important study about the National Council of Churches (NCC) and the fate of the ecumenical movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Focusing on its reaction to the war in Vietnam, Gill provides sharp analysis into the NCC’s antiwar platform and how this and other theological stances led to a divide between the laity and leadership, as well as a diminishing of Protestant hegemony in America. Gill uses vivid and detailed language to illuminate this history. Much as a novelist brings characters to life in the reader’s mind, Gill allows one to see the history through her careful telling of the story. Long and dense with examples, Gill’s study rightfully places the NCC and ecumenism at the heart of post–1945 U.S. religious history.

Gill begins with a broad survey of ecumenism from 1908 to 1963, including the 1950 creation of the National Council of Churches. This background roots her study in the theological framework of ecumenical outreach and activism that defined the NCC throughout its first three decades. Gill’s solid grasp of the theology behind the organization and its leaders reveals the fact that their faith drove their actions. She especially highlights their struggle against the erroneous assumption that ecumenism meant a gathering of two or more people from different denominations. As Gill describes:

[ecumenism] emphasizes community over self-interest, peaceful discussion over violence, collaboration over competition, universalism over exclusivity, the prophetic role of the church to “speak truth to power” over affirming an oppressive status quo, benevolence over individual acquisition, preaching social justice over mere personal piety, and the separation of church and state.

(p. 5)

This complex theology laid the groundwork for the NCC’s antiwar initiatives during the American phase of the Vietnam War. Robert S. Bilheimer, the NCC’s director of the Peace Program and International Affairs Commission, stated that he was not really “an anti-Vietnam War guy” (p. 145) but rather expressed his ecumenical witness through an antiwar theology. Gill thus uses the Vietnam War as a way to concentrate on the NCC’s calling during this era. Through its vast network of national and international politicians and religious leaders, the NCC often gained firsthand government knowledge about or eyewitness accounts of the atrocities committed in Vietnam and the wayward turn of U.S. foreign policy as applied to this war. Such insider information spurred the NCC’s stance, which pushed it theologically to oppose the war by attempting to unite Christians across the country to join its prophetic witness.

Yet this goal of unification brought about division within the very denominations that participated in the NCC, as Gill delineates in the NCC’s tension with the lay/clergy divide. Denominational leaders voiced concern that their more conservative constituents criticized the NCC’s liberal platforms. The threat of lost revenue kept even these more liberal leaders from always acting as the NCC hoped. Gill poignantly explains that this led to a diminished influence for the NCC in national affairs by the 1970s, along with Richard M. Nixon’s courting of the evangelical vote and subsequent shunning of mainline Protestantism because it failed to support him.

Gill concludes with an insightful epilogue that summarizes her findings, interprets their meaning, and offers ideas for future ecumenism and theologians. Yet calling it an epilogue seems odd, given that it serves more as a conclusion that readers will not want to miss. The treatment of these vital thoughts as almost an afterthought or optional reading feels awkward. Nonetheless, Gill provides a new must-read to post–1945 American religious history that details the triumphs, frustrations, decline, and yet importance of the mainline, liberal, Protestant establishment in the 1960s and 1970s.