Dimensions of Dissent

Clergymen have long been among the leaders of protest against the Viet Nam war, but in recent weeks the clerical dissent has become increasingly bold and bitter. Support for Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Viet Nam has grown steadily in the past year, and this winter a number of hitherto uncommitted publications--including the Roman Catholic Critic--have come out with declarations against the war. "It is now clear that the war can no longer be considered merely a political issue," said The Critic. "Rather, it is a moral question which American citizens as individuals must resolve for themselves.

To us only one conclusion seems valid: the United States should get the hell out of Viet Nam."

One reason for the increasing shrillness of dissent is sheer frustration that the voices of protest do not seem to be heeded in Washington. "Johnson, Humphrey and Rusk are simply not paying any attention to the word of protest," complains Presbyterian Theologian Robert McAfee Brown of Stanford.

"This means that those who are concerned have to escalate the dimensions of protest." To that end, a group of antiwar Protestant theologians met in Chicago last week in the first stage of an attempt to work out a clear-cut theological approach to situations like Viet Nam. Such an approach would indeed be helpful, since the antiwar churchmen differ widely among themselves as to why the conflict is wrong. Many, moreover, are all too ready to judge the war as "totally immoral" without being able to say why.

Holy War. One common objection to the war is that the U.S. is wrong in principle in trying to save South Viet Nam from Communism, especially since, it is claimed, there is no clear proof that the Saigon government represents the will of the people. Few if any of the antiwar clerics advocate handing the country directly over to Hanoi, but they argue that the U.S. has no divine mandate to use war to prevent the spread of Communism. Jesuit Theologian Daniel O'Hanlon of California's Alma College argues that the U.S. anti-Communist policy is "the holy-war theory, and it has been specifically rejected by the church." O'Hanlon contends that the pronouncements of both Pope John XXIII and Paul VI propose dialogue and not war as the "appropriate means" of combatting Communism.

A second charge against the war is that the toll in human bloodshed, especially among civilians, has now become morally intolerable, even though many of the civilians are victims of Viet Cong terrorism, and many others are deliberately pushed into the line of

Allied fire. One reason why some theologians feel especially sensitive to this issue is a residual sense of guilt for Christianity's failure to protest against morally debatable acts of World War II by the Allies. "The churches did not responsibly cry out against the saturation bombing of Dresden, about dropping the A-bomb," contends Jesuit John Coleman of Alma College. As a consequence, he says, churchmen today tend "to be very sensitive about the responsibility of silence."

Another frequently stated point is that the war is immoral because it has had a brutalizing effect on the American people and represents, in the words of Rabbi M. David Weiss of Boston, "a corruption of our national purpose." Stanford's Brown accuses the U.S. Gov ernment of telling American forces in Viet Nam, in effect, that "anything goes. All moral considerations are either subsidiary or suspended for the sake of military victory." Baptist Pastor Howard Moody of Manhattan's Judson Memorial Church, who only within the past year has joined the dissenters, says that "morally, it offends my sense of fair play to be beating the hell out of a small nation."

A more subtle argument against the war is that it is not going to be won by force of arms. An unwinnable conflict, theologians point out, violates the traditional concept of the just war, in which the probability of accomplishing a moral goal must outweigh the violent means involved. Says Lutheran Pastor Richard Neuhaus of Brooklyn, a co-founder of Clergy and Laymen Concerned: "There is no legitimate proportionality between the credible goals of the war and the means being used to win it. The credible goals are weak and tenuous, and the means are evident in their harshness."

Although growing in strength, the clerical dissenters against the war do not yet include a majority of U.S. churchmen; furthermore, active supporters of the U.S. policy in Viet Nam include such articulate religious leaders as Roman Catholic Archbishop Robert Lucey of San Antonio. But the protesters are well organized; one dissenter, the Rev. Martin Marty of the University of Chicago Divinity School, smilingly classifies them as the church's "leading editorial, ministerial, theological and professional Cosa Nostra." Thus as long as the war is unresolved, clerical protest will doubtless continue. Next week, for example, when Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr. is arraigned on a charge of conspiring to counsel young men to evade the draft, antiwar clergymen will conduct protest services at which they plan to collect draft cards, and dare the Government to arrest them also.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.