The Adjuster

In Sao Paulo, Brazil last week, under the sleek, concrete shell of the Ibirapuera Park pavilion, 400 delegates and observers of the 18th General Council of the World Presbyterian Alliance waited for the showdown. Even before the first session began, the delegates (representing 76 Reformed and Presbyterian church bodies with more than 45 million members) shifted their interest from theology to a theologian. In the limelight: Czechoslovakia's Dr. Joseph Hromadka, 70, wartime lecturer at Princeton, dean of Prague's Communist-controlled Amos Comenius Theological Faculty, a wheel in the World Council of Churches and a vice president of the Presbyterian Alliance. Hromadka has attended every postwar ecumenical congress, has raised serious problems about how Western Christians are to regard their brethren in Iron Curtain countries.

"We cannot sit idly by while Professor Hromadka, champion of the Communist cause, is received into Christian fellowship and honored as a great Christian leader," cried Fundamentalist Minister Carl McIntire, president of the violently antiCommunist, anti-ecumenical and minor-league International Council of Christian Churches.*

In the past Theologian Hromadka had said that he is no Communist, and his brethren had largely believed him; now they expected a more detailed reply. Hromadka obliged them. His position, in effect: 1) the church must be maintained at all cost in Communist countries; 2) Communism is not really hostile to religion; 3) Christianity might eventually transform and Christianize Communism.

Insisting that "the church cannot be confined to one political bloc," Hromadka explained that he had learned that "as a Christian. I must be prepared for any situation and not rely on established regimes . . . God is greater than the greatest of doctrine man can produce . . . I and my church continue to give testimony of faith. Regardless of conditions, we perpetuate the living church. We must love all men, whether they believe or not." Hromadka bemoaned Communism's atheism, which "weakens church prestige and authority, but also challenges churches to purify themselves." He admitted that "I have certain understanding of and sympathy for the Communists. But I am not a Communist."

His words had their intended effect: the delegates, in spite of his evident urging to collaboration with atheists, backed Hromadka's stand. Hurriedly, a Mclntire "truth squad" printed and distributed a 70-page, documented indictment against Hromadka, pointed out that he had:

P: Been appointed to the Red-led National Front Central Action Committee immediately after the 1948 coup in Czechoslovakia, which put the minority Communists in control of the land.

P: Spread the Red line about U.S. bacteriological warfare.

P: Blamed the Hungarian uprising on reactionaries "at the service of German Nazis," and thanked Russia for "saving Hungarians from terrible bloodshed."

By the time this bill of particulars reached the delegates. Vice President Hromadka had already left on his way home to Prague. Said Dr. John Mackay, ex-president of Princeton Theological Seminary: "Dr. Hromadka does his utmost to adjust himself as much as a Christian can to a political situation. Christians have had to do this ever since the Roman Empire. There is more religious freedom in Communist Czechoslovakia today than in Catholic Spain."

*Said Mclntire last week of Ike's invitation to Khrushchev: "We cannot expect Almighty God to help us in our struggle for survival when we court the chief spokesman of the devil, who repudiates God."

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