by Steve | Jan 6, 1979 | Archive - 1979
Archive: On Polarizing the Church
The following is reprinted with minor modification from our issue of April/June, 1970.
Recently, some United Methodist laymen met with their bishop. They came to talk about things that were bothering them.
“What happened?” we asked, afterward.
“The bishop accused us of making trouble. He said we were dividing the church. He said loyal Methodists go along with the Program.”
Across the continent, some pastors met with their bishop.
“What happened?” we asked, afterward.
“The bishop told us to stop polarizing the church.”
Such warnings have become commonplace. Out of the present turmoil and tension, United Methodism has developed a new litany: You are dividing the church! You are being disloyal! You are polarizing!
Most of the time, such warnings are directed at evangelicals. Often, we are condemned for polarizing (i.e., causing people to take strong positions for and against, thereby abandoning middle-of-the-road neutrality).
The time has come to look calmly at the polarization furor.
Why the alarm?
Who is frightened?
Is polarization really happening?
If so, who is responsible?
If so, is this necessarily harmful to the cause of Christ?
Is polarization an end in itself? Or is it really the means leading to a greater and more significant end?
Most UM laypeople are not often worried about the danger of polarization. The hue and cry comes from church officials at all levels. Those in the United Methodist Establishment show the greatest dread. The charge, “you are polarizing!” often becomes an institutional reflex action when questions are raised about United Methodist finances, theology, programs, and operating methods. The shrill cries of alarm, so often repeated, betray uneasiness in high places.
Those familiar with the Bible can recognize here the same sort of anxiety shown by the Pharisees, those ancient guardians of the church status quo. Remember? They reacted violently to a Polarizer named Jesus of Nazareth. He rocked the Jewish nation, polarizing the people called Israel into two opposite factions: (1) for the Pharisees and their religious system, (2) those whose religion boiled down to “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind … [and] you must love your fellow-man as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-40, TEV)
Our Lord’s three-year ministry was one continuing polarization. He drew a clear distinction between believers and unbelievers (John 3:16-21). And He revealed an eternal polarity between the children of God and those whose real father was the devil (John 8:43-47).
Said the Prince of Polarizers: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the world: no, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. I came to set sons against their fathers, daughters against their mothers, daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law; a man’s worst enemies will be the members of his own family.” (Matthew 10:34-36, TEV)
To top it off, He said to the Church at Laodicea: “I know what you have done; I know that you are neither cold nor hot [unpolarized]. How I wish you were either one or the other! [polarized] But because you are barely warm, neither hot nor cold, [unpolarized again] I am going to spit you out of my mouth!” (Revelation 3:15-16, TEV)
Jesus polarized because He was incarnate Truth. And Truth always does polarize against falsehood. The two will not mix any more than oil and water. Thus polarization is inevitable, indeed often desirable, as long as the world contains both truth and falsehood; good and evil. Polarization is one way opposites are separated.
This means that polarization began when evil entered the world through the unwise choice of Adam. And polarization will continue until, in God’s good time, the universe is finally cleansed of evil. Then polarization will cease and our Lord’s great prayer petition will have come true. “Our Father in heaven, may Your name be kept holy, Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as in heaven.” (Matthew 6:9-10, Jerusalem Bible) Until then, polarization is inevitable.
The Bible is a record of Godman polarization. And it is amazing how the anti-polarization sentiments of Bible times are being repeated today. Consider the feisty prophet Amos. He did a mighty work of polarization at Bethel when he condemned the hypocrisy and corruption of the king’s own church. Fearing polarization, the priest of Bethel, Amaziah, told Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah. …” (Amos 7:10-17)
A similar response sometimes greets polarizers today. The wife of one United Methodist pastor recently told a layman, “You are a fundamentalist. Why don’t you get out of the church? You don’t belong here!” Of course it was the layman’s fault that polarization was happening. … He, in the spirit of Amos, had dared to question how church money was being spent. He had stated his belief in the Bible’s authority, and the need for people to be saved through faith commitment to Jesus Christ. According to the pastor’s wife there was no room in the church for such a radical polarizer!
Before Amos, there was a polarizer named Joshua. He declared to God’s people, “Fear the Lord and serve Him sincerely; put away the gods that you and your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if you will not serve the Lord, choose today whom you will serve. … As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:14,15)
Church history reveals that leaders of the church have often feared polarization and tried to stamp it out. The Roman Catholic Church excommunicated a polarizing priest named Luther.
Our own John Wesley, though never excommunicated, was a polarizer of no little ability. Consider his standing before a bishop of his church and refusing to accept episcopal restrictions on where he could preach. Out of this clash came the now-honored Methodist dictum, “The world is my parish. ” We forget it was born out of intense polarization between the Gospel and the self-preservation urge of a church establishment that wished to avoid rocking the boat (which always happens when the Gospel is preached and believed).
Last year, some laymen met with their bishop and cabinet. They came to speak of their concerns for the church. Especially, they urged the importance of laymen having the right to designate · their money for support of special causes and/or institutions, rather than just giving to the conference. At one point a superintendent said that if the laymen could not go along with the conference program, they could “go to hell, ” as far as he was concerned.
Naturally, it was the laymen who stood accused of polarizing. …
Today, strong currents of polarization are running. Not only in United Methodism, but in other churches-and throughout the world. Young are polarized against old; black power against white power; tradition against innovation; new morality against old morality. The local church, in United Methodism, is increasingly polarized from its annual conference-making the classic Methodist connectional system harder than ever to maintain.
To deny polarization is futile as soaking up the ocean with a blotter. The truth is, polarization has already torn to shreds the fiction of church unity and brotherhood. The popularity of these slogans cannot conceal their absence in wide areas of church life today in ours and other churches.
Increasingly, the polarization is between the Institutional Church and its Program, and Christ and His Gospel. The two should be synonymous. But unfortunately more and more people perceive a wide difference. For example, a leading denominational official tells his annual conference that the only relevant part of the Gospel today is Christ’s call to social service. On the basis of this serious distortion the annual conference built its official program.
Thus, the Institutional Church abdicates as the Body of Christ by radically altering His Gospel. This is reinforced by a bishop declaring that his pastors’ supreme loyalty should be to the church. It is further reinforced by another bishop declaring this a time to proclaim the glory of the church. (Has “church” now replaced Christ as the object of United Methodist witness and devotion?)
Such developments accelerate polarization of the church. They force people with a serious commitment to Christ to “choose ye this day whom you will serve.” And so the polarization grows more intense.
An interesting polarization myth is that we evangelicals are largely responsible. Those quickest to condemn us seem to overlook the polarizing influence of the radical Left.
Who cried, “Polarization!” in the late 1960’s when cadre groups spawned by the Ecumenical Institute of Chicago set up revolutionary “cell groups” in annual conferences across the country?
Who cried, “Polarization!” when United Methodist seminaries started producing ministers primarily dedicated to social change and openly scornful of historic Christianity? Who cried, “Polarization!” when the denomination’s Board of Education started producing church school materials casting doubt on the Biblical miracles?
Let’s be honest—polarization is caused by no single group or ideology.
But is polarization necessarily harmful to the cause of Christ? This depends upon the issues or principles which form the poles around which people are drawn.
Acceptance of denominational programs is increasingly stressed by the Establishment as a “must.” Thus, conformity is rapidly becoming the major point of polarization. Conformity is urged, not only for programs, but for whatever interpretations of theology are in vogue at the moment. The organization’s full power may be exerted against ministers and laymen who fail to conform. Thus, the United Methodist system [ too often] breeds subservience—a quality strangely lacking in prophets!
Conformity is perhaps the most powerful polarization point for the church institution. But different groups within the church choose other points around which to polarize: [ free choice abortion, ERA, boycott of selected companies, support of terrorist groups, quota systems, or social action of the church, etc.] Both Left and Right polarize oppositely in regard to these and other basic issues.
Scripturally, however, there is only one proper point of polarization. It is around Jesus Christ. To unite with Him is good polarization which will surely work the purposes of God. But polarization around any other person, principle, or program will cause unproductive chaos within the church.
Let all United Methodists be very sure we are polarized around Christ crucified, risen, and coming again. And let us be careful it is not our private interpretation of Christ, but that which is revealed by the full Gospel and by authentic experiences of His resurrection power and His Holy Spirit. Only this can lead us toward the ideal Church, “in all its beauty, pure and faultless, without spot or wrinkle, or any other imperfection.” (Ephesians 5:27)
by Steve | Jan 5, 1979 | Archive - 1979
Archive: More About WCC Grants to Terrorists
By Charles W. Keysor, Editor, Good News Magazine
The Nov/Dec issue of Good News, contained an editorial titled, “Angry, Embarrassed, and Ashamed.” It discussed the gift of $85,000 given to two African terrorist groups by the World Council of Churches.
Three new developments deserve reporting and comment.
- Early in September, WCC announced granting a new gift of $125,000 to yet another African “liberation” group: SWAPO (South West African People’s Organization). This action was taken in the face of heavy worldwide criticism generated by the Rhodesian guerrilla grants. Therefore the SWAPO gift underscores the WCC’s determination to support “liberation”-styled terrorism in Africa. This latest grant is not an accidental blunder-rather, it evidences a deliberate and deeply-rooted policy which swings WCC straight in line with advocates of “throw a hand grenade for Jesus” liberation theology.
- When the Nov/Dec issue of Good News went to press, we had not yet received a reply to our letter to WCC, asking them to identify contributors to their Special Fund to Combat Racism, source of the terrorist grants. The reply to us contained no list of contributors; instead it was a sheaf of propaganda justifying the WCC actions. So we ask again: Who are these mysterious benefactors of African terrorism? One donor has surfaced, somewhat surprisingly. Which leads to …
- At the Fall 1978 meeting of the UM Board of Global Ministries, a paper was circulated under the title, “The World Council of Churches and the Grant for Humanitarian Services Through the Zimbabwe [Rhodesia] Liberation Leadership.” The author of this paper is identified as United Methodism’s top ecumenical expert, Robert W. Huston, “Associate General Secretary, Ecumenical & lnterreligious Concerns Division, Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 475 Riverside Drive, Room 1300, New York, NY 10027.”
This document is written with great subtlety; the truth is stated artfully. Reproduced below in italic type is what seems to be the crux of this paper. Those wishing to read the entire four-page document can get a copy by writing to Good News, 308 E. Main St., Wilmore, KY. Please enclose a stamped, self-addressed return envelope.
In the discussions about the grant there are several key points, however.
[1] Only funds specifically designated for this purpose are used in this program. They come from groups, individuals or governments (Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands). No United Methodist contributions to the Interdenominational Cooperation Fund (from which all our basic support of the WCC comes) have ever been or will ever be so designated or used. [Emphasis added]
[2] The Commission for the Programme to Combat Racism does not make grants unilaterally. It studies situations where racial oppression exists and makes recommendations. The Executive Committee makes the final decisions. The Executive Committee can and does delegate the final decisions to the officers. For obvious reasons, the general policy has been not to make grants to governments. But prior to this grant, nearly $112,000 had gone to the African National Council (Bishop Muzorewa’s movement before he became part of the interim government) while only $58,000 and $52,000 had gone to the other two movements. This puts it in some perspective. It should be remembered that the issues basic to the program were raised at the Nairobi Assembly of the WCC in 1975, at Central Committee meetings since then and always solidly affirmed by the majority voting. The PCR Commission is charged with responsibility for aiding oppressed persons fighting for their rights in racist situations. [Emphasis added] Whatever doubts one may have about the wisdom or timing of this specific grant should be looked at in this perspective.
[3] The Programme to Combat Racism receives its funds directly from special gifts. This means that contributions which our church, as a denomination, makes to the central budget of the WCC, as part of our Interdenominational Cooperation Fund, are not placed in this program. Its budget is made up of gifts designated to the Fund from local churches, individuals, denominational agencies, and even governments (Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands). The World Council lists no contributions from United Methodist agencies to the Special Fund in 1971 or 1972; $1,800 in 1973; $5,000 in 1974; none in 1975; and $7,820 in 1976. In 1977, the World Division sent $10,000, and the same amount in 1978. However, these latter two gifts were not designated specifically for the grants; as a result, they were placed in the budget for staff and office expenses and special projects. [Emphasis added] No gifts are included as “grants” unless they have specifically been so stated, though it is not possible for designation of which movement, since that decision is made by the Advisory Committee with final approval given by the WCC Executive Committee or its officers.
[4] In any event, funds are not used for military purposes. Doubters may be helped by the fact that in official inquiries by the governments of Rhodesia and South Africa (who would have interest in this) no evidence was discovered that funds from any of the PCR grants have ever been used for military purposes.
[5] The situation in Rhodesia is much worse than most can imagine and the abatement of the racist stance of the minority government hardly noticeable.
[6] Compassion for the plight of refugees from Rhodesia is a consideration the Christian cannot ignore. Many of these refugees are in camps in Botswana and Mozambique that are aided by the Patriotic Front and thus by the grant.
[7] It would be naive to claim that even humanitarian purposes cannot be twisted for use in political struggles in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe that are complicated, tension filled and have potential for the escalation of violence. Perceptions of these issues may be influenced by the simple fact that a United Methodist bishop has taken an active political stance in a hope for peaceful transition to majority rule. … [End quote]
Stripping away the bafflegab, it boils down to this: Unspecified United Methodist agencies, principally the World Division, Board of Global Ministries, have contributed $34,620 to the WCC racism thrust since 1973. At least $20,000 of this was apparently used to pay administrative/overhead costs of operating the Fund’s program. Thus, technically, UM money did not go directly to the terrorists; it only made possible the giving of such grants by supplying the essential administrative services.
To argue, therefore, that UM money has not gone to the terrorists is something like arguing that a clerk at the Auschwitz concentration camp, in ordering gas for killing Jews, did not actually kill any Jews.
Notice also, under #2, the assumption of equality between grants given to a United Methodist bishop working non-violently within the legal process and money given to Marxists publicly committed to violence. That both are equally supported and no distinction is made constitutes an amazing blurring of moral values. In effect, this says that the end (Rhodesia’s “liberation”) justifies any means. This, of course, is simply situation ethics applied to the spending of church money.
It is time for well-meaning apologists, who have been busily denying that UM dollars support terrorism, to admit now that a serious mistake has been made. Misappropriation may not be too strong a word, for how many people who put their money into the offering places of their local churches (or into their UM Women pledges) intended one penny to be used in support of African terrorism?
The next General Conference ought to take strong and decisive action. First, as a witness to the fact that we still follow the Prince of Peace, we should end the $300,000 annual UM pledge to the violence-promoting World Council of Churches. To do less than this will further implicate all United Methodists in the financing of violent, Marxist revolution.
Second, General Conference should reprimand and replace those UM executives who spent church dollars in this unbelievably irresponsible manner. It should be easy to find new executives with enough common sense to know the difference between the cause of Jesus Christ and the causes of Marx.
by Steve | Jan 4, 1979 | Archive - 1979
Archive: On Being a Christian Cop
Meet Don Osgood, a United Methodist layman who shares his faith on and off the beat.
by G. Wayne Rogers
“Every morning when I go to work I ask God to let me be the policeman He wants me to be and to guide me and protect me. I know that any day could be my last.”
“Christian policing” is the business that United Methodist layman Don Osgood of the Montgomery, Alabama, police department is in. And it isn’t an easy business. Especially when a bank robber is firing at him with a rifle, or when he’s storming a house where an armed man holds hostages.
But it seems to be his calling in life and he enjoys it. “I thank God that He allows me to live a Christian life policing,” says the affable 6’4″ officer. “I know that as long as I follow God and hold the hand of Christ, everything will turn out all right regardless of what happens. Being a Christian cop I’m not fighting a losing battle because I know that I have Christ to help me.”
A family man with a wife and two teen-age sons, Don has been a policeman for over 20 years.
Although a Christian policeman may seem hard to come by in larger American cities these days, Chief Osgood insists that he is only one of many. A number of men on the Montgomery force hand out tracts and are not ashamed to witness for the Savior, and five of his friends have left the force to go into fulltime Christian service.
Don does a lot of witnessing himself, both to those he meets in the streets everyday, and to other policemen. One night when he was cruising the city alone, a rookie called on his car radio about midnight asking Osgood to meet him.
Pulling up alongside, he snapped off his engine and radio and turned to the young man. “Cap,” he began, “what do I have to do to be saved?”
Slipping his fingers into his shirt pocket, Osgood took out a New Testament and showed him the plan of salvation. The boy accepted Christ.
The hardy police officer busies himself with the Lord’s work when he’s off duty, too. Since his conversion in 1955, Don has been involved in countless revivals and lay witness missions, giving his testimony in both word and song in churches, prisons, and many other places.
Last October he was leading the singing during a revival at Asbury United Methodist Church in Montgomery, when he got involved in a new kind of ministry-missions. The Rev. Maurice Stevens, a United Methodist evangelist who founded Missionary World Service and Evangelism, was preaching.
One evening Maurice told Don, “Your ministry lacks one thing-a trip to the mission field.”
The very next evening a couple informed him that God had spoken to them about paying his expenses to Colombia on a work crusade with MWS&E.
That’s where Don Osgood went the following January, with 16 other United Methodist laypeople from the United States.
Three weeks before time to leave, his plane fare was unexpectedly paid from Montgomery to Florida where the crusade group was to meet.
Osgood was shaken at the sight of little children sleeping in the streets of Bogota, huddling in doorways, covered only with old newspapers and cardboard boxes. He had seen poor children in ghetto areas of American cities, but this was unlike anything he’d known.
Working on a missions construction project for most of the Colombia crusade, Don had lots of time for spiritual reflection while he mixed and poured concrete.
Commenting on the Spirit-filled life as he worked, the 44-year-old Alabama man observed to a fellow-laborer, “It’s a tremendous thing that the Holy Spirit can dwell within a human being and give him joy that he never had before, a joy that’s unspeakable. It’s like the beauty of the mountains here in Bogota and La Mesa.
“And there’s no way in the world for me to be able to explain to anyone what it really means to know Christ and have the Holy Spirit dwell within me and guide me. I just can’t explain it.”
As he spread concrete under the broiling Colombian sun, Assistant Chief Osgood thought back to 1955 and his conversion to Christ in a little church in a jungle on Guam. He was in the Air Force, and that Sunday morning the chaplain had preached on Isaiah 53:6, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Walking back to the barracks that humid evening, God started dealing with him. Quickly doing an about-face, he headed into the base chapel to pray, and there accepted the Lord as Savior.
Twenty-one years had passed, and now Don looked back praising the Lord as he worked building the chapel in Bogota. “It’s a great life!” he exclaimed aloud with a glitter in his eye, as wet concrete splattered his shoes. “I tell people that I’ve lived on both sides of the river, so to speak, and I don’t intend to go back to the other side.”
Like many other United Methodists, Don and his family had helped support missionaries—to Haiti, Mexico City, Africa, and other places. But he discovered a new awareness of missions when he went to Colombia, a new consciousness of boys and girls, and men and women who have never heard about Jesus Christ.
Though he thinks often of the richness of his Colombian experiences, Don Osgood knows that God’s work for him at present is on the police force of Montgomery. For that city also, as for Bogota, Jesus died.
by Steve | Jan 3, 1979 | Archive - 1979
Archive: The Strange Silence
Why are we shutting our eyes and minds to the murder of millions of Cambodians?
A Call to Christian Conscience
By James V. Heidinger II, Pastor, Drummond United Methodist Church, Cadiz, OH
Member, Good News Board of Directors
Chairman, East Ohio Evangelical Fellowship
In mid-April 1978, NBC’s made-for-television movie “Holocaust,” depicting the slaughter of six million Jews during World War II, had a dramatic impact upon the American people. After previewing the special, Frederick and Mary Ann Brussat, editors of Cultural Information Service, wrote “’Holocaust’ makes us look at history, our beliefs and our deeds afresh. The result of this experience is the unavoidable resolve to make sure that such an atrocity never happens again.”
There is now overwhelming evidence that another such atrocity has been and still is happening in Cambodia. Every American, and especially every concerned Christian, needs to be aware of this tragic story of what has happened in Cambodia.
During the first week in May, syndicated Columnist Jack Anderson devoted an unprecedented three columns to reports of genocide in Cambodia since April of 1975. Anderson wrote, “The communists swarmed over the capital city of Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. The wholesale slaughter began on the same day. It was not the ravages of undisciplined troops gone wild. Rather, it was the calculated, cold-blooded policy of the communist conquerors to eradicate all vestiges of the existing social order.”
He continued, “The death toll from beatings, shootings, starvation, and forced labor may have reached 2,500,000 victims since April 17, 1975, when the communists seized control of Cambodia. Ignored by the outside world, perhaps one-third of the Cambodian people have been annihilated. It is as if the entire population of Kansas has been eradicated.”
Anderson continued, “Officers of the former army were the first to die. The KCP (Khmer Communist Party) simultaneously began executing all wealthy farmers, prostitutes, high-level monks, teachers, fortune tellers, former enlisted men and civil servants. Nor were families spared. An intelligence report states grimly: ‘Entire families were ordered executed because the surviving spouses and children would harbor resentment toward the government and would only create problems in the future!'”
Anderson claims that he has compiled intelligence reports, refugee accounts, medical records, smuggled photos, and eye-witness accounts over two-inches thick documenting the charges of genocide. The Khmer Communist Party set out systematically to execute all who were not from the poor farmer-working class.
An article in the January 23, 1978 issue of Newsweek confirms Anderson’s accounts. In that issue was a three-page story, “Land of Walking Dead,” written by Kenneth Labich and Holger Jensen in Bangkok, and Lars-Erik Nelson in Washington. Their story cited the same refugee accounts of wholesale slaughter immediately after the Khmer Rouge took power.
It is unbelievable that the television networks have not given attention to this story in their news coverage. On Jan. 20, 1978 there was a Washington press conference for Pin Yathay, a civil engineer who survived 26 months in communist Cambodia before escaping into Thailand. Not one of the three major networks even sent a correspondent to that press conference, though they had been specifically invited. The Associated Press ran an excellent article, carried by the Washington Star. But only Jack Anderson put the story on television, giving it an extended piece on the March sixth, “Good Morning America.”
More recently, the New York Times in the May 13, 1978 edition ran a lengthy story by Henry Kamm detailing the same gruesome accounts. Finally, after thousands of refugees flooding into Thailand with their stories of horror, and after the above-mentioned reports, CBS gave an hour to a special documentary entitled “What’s happened to Cambodia?” on Wednesday, June 7.
In the CBS Special, the testimony was the same from refugees, from former Khmer Rouge officers who had fled, and from various experts on Cambodian affairs. The authorities, representing Australia, Britain, Italy, Holland, and West Germany, were nearly unanimous in attesting to the consistency and integrity of the refugee accounts. It would appear that there has been wholesale slaughter in Cambodia as communist “liberation” forces attempted to remake the society from the ground up. Apparently, only the poor, working-class peasant farmers have survived the revolution.
The New York Times noted that “Of more than 5,000 refugees confined in the places visited … fewer than 10 were found who spoke basic French. The absence of French-speaking people and the generally peasant character of recent refugees lend credence to reports that the communist regime was methodically killing the educated classes and that the great majority of the millions of people driven from cities and towns after the communist conquest had withstood the rigors of the new life even less well than the rural people.”
Americans and the entire Christian world community need to join as one voice in condemning what has happened in Cambodia. The White House, Congress, State Department, and the United Nations need to be urged to call for condemnation of Cambodia as a criminal state. Demands need to be made for a United Nations team to be sent to thoroughly investigate these disturbing reports.
It is obviously too late to help those who have been butchered. However, expressions of outrage, of condemnation, and revulsion, along with economic sanctions and trade boycotts against the communist violators of human rights may help prevent a repetition of this kind of barbaric killing. Such action might, at least, cause the world’s next Khmer Rouge Party or Ide Amin to give second thought about needless slaughter of innocents.
One further question still remains. Why have the television networks been so silent for so long on this issue, when reports have been coming in and appearing in magazines and other places for months? Why was no correspondent sent from ABC, NBC, or CBS last January when a news conference was called in Washington, D.C., for a refugee to report of slaughter and genocide in his homeland of Cambodia? Why, at that same press conference, did a Washington Post reporter walk out, refusing to believe what the Cambodian refugee was saying?
Compare this reaction to the excited and extensive coverage given the freeing of editor Donald Woods from South Africa. On Jan. 2, both ABC and CBS ran extended stories of how editor Woods had escaped. On Jan. 8, ABC, which could not send a correspondent three blocks to hear Pin Yathay in Washington tell about genocide in Cambodia, dispatched its “Issues and Answers” team 3,000 miles to interview Donald Woods in London. Patrick Buchanan, in the News Watch section of TV Guide, raised these questions and then asked, “Why do the networks largely ignore the national atrocity transpiring in Southeast Asia to focus their cameras and concerns on the inequalities in South Africa?”
As we viewed “Holocaust,” many were responding that “If we had been living in Germany in those years, we would have done something about it!” Today, we do know that something horrible is happening in Cambodia. There are reports from thousands of refugees, and yet we are doing nothing about it. The networks did not give it any attention until they were nearly forced to.
If the network news teams today, through Watergate-honed investigative reporting, are able to uncover the omission of several hundred dollars in the tax return of a leading public figure, why could not these same networks, with the same investigative reporting zeal, discover that a nation was systematically executing 2,000,000 of its own people? Is moral outrage selective? Do we somehow consider the sins of communist governments less reprehensible than the sins of governments such as South Korea, Chile, the Philippines, Rhodesia, and South Africa?
It is well-known that the network newsmen and executives look proudly to the role they played in changing American opinion about the war in Southeast Asia. It would appear now that these same media change agents are not eager for the American people to know what has tragically transpired in Cambodia.
Appreciation must go to Jack Anderson for nearly forcing the networks to give some attention to Cambodia. But a corresponding disappointment and a sagging trust in the network news teams must follow their handling of the somber Cambodian story. If their handling of matters pertaining to our nation’s internal affairs are as inept and one-sided, then Americans (who get 60 percent of their news from TV) have a right to be deeply concerned.
Reports of brutality and autogenocide in Cambodia have continued. In August, Senator George McGovern brought up the Cambodian situation at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing by citing estimates that as many as 2,500,000 of the country’s 7,700,000 people have been executed or have died from starvation and disease since the Communist Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975. He said that the destruction of the population of Cambodia “… makes Hitler’s operation look tame.” (Texas Methodist/UM Reporter, September 8, 1978, p.5.)
So concerned has Senator McGovern been that in a Senate speech and in an interview, he has called for the United Nations to take “collective action” (military intervention) against the Cambodian government. He said he was struck by the degree of American concern about two political dissidents in the Soviet Union, while nearly ignoring the killing of “possibly 2,000,000 people” in Cambodia. (Akron Beacon journal, Aug. 27, 1978) These expressions come from one of the strongest “doves” in the U.S. Senate.
The American Jewish Committee expressed similar condemnation of the Cambodian government in a resolution adopted at its annual meeting this past May. The resolution said: “If published reports of mass killings in Cambodia by its communist rulers are even only partially true, then the scale of murder … approaches the enormity of the Nazi exterminations based on a myth of racial purity. (TM/UMR, cited above) In addition, in mid-1978, representatives of Britain’s Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and major Protestant churches have issued a statement of condemnation of the Cambodian government for the alleged atrocities and genocide.
Still, what may represent the greatest criminal act since Hitler’s Germany receives little attention among the American populace, little attention among the Christian churches in America, and even less attention from the major television networks in America.
by Steve | Jan 2, 1979 | Archive - 1979
Archive: The Healing
How a young woman came to experience God’s love.
The first of two personal testimonies by Joan MacMillan
“Our Father,” they said in churches. I thought I’d get sick if anyone said that again. Father. That was someone who hit you or ignored you, or told you that you couldn’t be trusted out the door.
Still I attended church. Week after week I’d catch a bus or walk to a neighborhood church. My parents neither went nor took me. I wondered why I bothered. Someone there was always telling us about that God they called “Father.” And about how He loved us.
Somehow I got through those ugly teen years. Blond, 20-year-old Dave entered my life. I didn’t love him. I didn’t know what love meant. But Dave was persistent. So one night I got on my knees and asked that “Father” in heaven for guidance about the marriage. The answer was more clear in my mind than hearing spoken words. “Marry David.” So I did.
What a commitment! My new husband, a quiet Christian, told me that God was loving, and because of that we would give away 10 percent of our income to His work. I listened, amazed. We were college students. I could see that we didn’t have enough money.
“It will work, you’ll see,” said Dave.
I should have seen God’s Fatherhood then. Always, when the financial end of our tether came, so did an unexpected source of money. One time when I needed a textbook for $8.00 and didn’t have it, an Air Force retroactive check unexpectedly arrived for $8.52.
Just as I’d begin to feel God’s love, the relationship with my parents would get in the way. We all have the need for family, and I kept going back to them seeking acceptance. We spent frustrating times amid misunderstandings and arguments. Often I cried on Dave’s shoulder when we returned home from visiting my parents.
My feelings of being unloved became overwhelming, so I found a psychiatrist whose brother was a Christian minister. I checked and learned that fact before I called him. I quizzed him on the phone.
“Work with me without taking away what faith in God I have,” I implored. He chuckled and agreed. Years of weekly visits with that doctor, along with Dave’s love enabled me to get better.
I grew to love Dave very much. Then 14 years after we were married, we finally conceived the child we had wanted all those years. We had a little girl and named her Elizabeth.
Still the healing of my emotions wasn’t yet complete. I knew God loved other people. I prayed for them. I watched Dave love Elizabeth, but still I couldn’t internalize a heavenly Father’s love. The fact remained that my earthly father didn’t love me. So God couldn’t.
Isn’t it strange the way emotions negate the truth? I’m pretty bright, but those old tapes of my past ran on and choked my capacity for receiving love.
My parents fell in love with the Lord about two years ago. We watched them change. Once my mother had been unable to admit making a mistake. She called recently and gently told me how sorry she was to have caused me so much grief when I was a teenager. I listened, and chastised myself as we hung up because I still felt resentment.
More recently Dave’s school went on strike, he with them. Our money reserves dwindled. My father didn’t think teachers had the right to strike.
“Their place is in the classroom, no matter what,” he told us. We explained the major grievances, but they didn’t make sense to Dad.
This morning my father phoned.
“We don’t want to interfere while you kids are upset,” he began. “We just have a couple of questions. First, is it all right for us to take Elizabeth all day tomorrow, since we know you two need some time together? Your morn doesn’t feel well today, but by tomorrow she’ll be better, and we want to take Elizabeth to the circus.” My mind flashed back to my college graduation, which my folks hadn’t attended because my Morn did not feel well.
My attention returned to the other question my father was asking.
“Please don’t be offended,” he said. “I just know Dave’s losing money every day, and we want to know if we can give you whatever you need.”
The healing. I feel its flood. Over my father. My mother. Me. The things that happened years ago don’t matter any more. That we disagree on the strike doesn’t matter. The offer of money doesn’t even matter. What I hear clearly is that my parents love their child and want to help.
“Father.” It is a good name for God.
