The Reagan administration is on the receiving end of a vocal church witness, the unity, numbers, and intensity of which appear to dwarf that of any similar effort around a foreign policy issue in this century. That common voice coming from the churches across the U.S. is calling for an end to U.S. military aid to El Salvador.
Local councils of churches, who have often had to scramble in the past to find tangible matters around which to foster ecumenical accord, are vigiling, marching, leafletting, worshiping, and praying together.
The U.S. Roman Catholic Church, its lay members as well as its bishops, priests, and religious, has led in opposing U.S. military aid. Indeed, there is a striking degree of coherence between the clergy and the laity within the Catholic Church on this issue.
"It is not often that activists [in the Church] cite their bishop's statements with such enthusiasm," noted Tom Quigley, Latin America adviser to the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCC).
In virtually every Protestant denomination, nationally elected church leaders have signed petitions and statements which have as their common theme opposition to U.S. arms aid. Some denominational heads have even marched in street demonstrations to protest U.S. policy toward El Salvador.
The religious activists are growing increasingly active. Led by their bishops and ministers, more than 3,000 Christians from virtually every denomination throughout Washington state marched together in a Palm Sunday procession in Seattle to publicly "stand with Archbishop [Oscar] Romero by supporting his plea that the U.S. not intervene in El Salvador." (That plea was made more than one year ago by the El Salvador archbishop, just before he was assassinated on March 24, 1980. It has been the central theme of the many commemoration services for Romero and other Salvadoran martyrs that were held in March of this year.)
"I've been here since 1964 and have been an active church member during that time, and I have never heard of or experienced anything the likes of that procession in terms of the size of the crowd and the ecumenical nature of it," said Pamela Cipolla, a member of the vestry of a local Episcopal church. The Holy Week event was sponsored by a task force of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, which has 250 member congregations.
In Atlanta, preoccupied as the churches are by the murders of black children, an ecumenical coalition of Christians set up several worship services. At the turn of the year, a wide spectrum of local church leaders signed a statement calling for an end to all military aid to El Salvador. Issued by the Christian Council of Metropolitan Atlanta, whose membership includes leaders from 28 different denominations, the statement was an unusual action for the group. The majority of its members are from non-mainline churches. The list included several Southern Baptist leaders, the district vice-president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the presbytery of the Assemblies of God Churches, bishops from the mainline denominations, and the Catholic archbishop.
In Minneapolis, an ecumenical religious task force planned a March 24 prayer service and candlelight procession that drew more than 2,000 people; the crowd swelled to 3,000 at a rally later in the day.
"The prayer service was a high for me," said one of the organizers, Maryknoll Sister Phyliss O'Toole. "I saw a terrifically dynamic, life-giving force in the interchange between the church and the social activists, many of whom I'm sure had not darkened church doors for several years."
In Greensboro, North Carolina, more than 100 Christians attended a Romero memorial service held in a mostly black, Roman Catholic church. The service drew Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist, Quaker, and Southern Baptist clergy and lay leaders. The local media has given considerable coverage to that and other events locally organized to oppose U.S. arms aid. These events have focused on the fact that the arms are "being used against the church in El Salvador," reported Rev. Henry Lee Atkins, an Episcopal priest active in the area. "People who for ten years have not been working together have come together around this issue."
The supposedly conservative church community in South Bend, Indiana, turned out more than 800 people in a procession through the downtown area, led by the local Catholic bishop, to remember the death of Romero and oppose arms aid. Ironically, Napoleon Duarte, president of the Salvadoran junta, is well-regarded in the area as a former student of nearby Notre Dame University, a fact that has engendered much local discussion of his current role regarding the Catholic Church in El Salvador.
The ecumenically based protests in San Francisco have a unique twist: The International Longshoremen's Union has worked hand-in-hand with the churches in opposition to U.S. military shipments to El Salvador. The dock-workers have refused since December to load ships bound for El Salvador with military cargo until the human rights violations cease.
On December 22, the union was backed publicly at a vigil with supporting statements from bishops of the area's Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, and United Methodist churches, as well as heads of other church groups and denominations, including the predominantly black Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and the Northern California Ecumenical Conference with its 12 denominational members.
Since then, an Ecumenical Committee on Latin America has been formed, which has coordinated vigils, press conferences, educational meetings on El Salvador, and a cultural festival in honor of Romero and the other martyrs, to which thousands of Christians came. During Holy Week, the Episcopal bishop called for a 24-hour vigil to remember the suffering people in both El Salvador and Poland.
In late March, a total of 1,400 people attended vigils in each of the 14 congressional districts in the Chicago area, commemorating Romero's death. Thousands of signatures were gathered urging withdrawal of U.S. military aid to El Salvador. The events were organized by the Chicago Religious Task Force on El Salvador, a broadly based coalition.
On Philadelphia's Independence Mall, in front of the cracked Liberty Bell, several hundred Protestants and Catholics prayed silently in late March. Given wide coverage in the local media, they focused their protest against increased arms shipments by asking how many more thousands of Salvadorans will be killed in 1981 with U.S. arms. Students from an area Catholic high school made crosses on which were painted the numbers of priests, nuns, peasants, missionaries, teachers, and others murdered in 1980.
In Tucson, dozens of Christians from several denominations have been holding regular public vigils. More than 1,000 church people marched in a procession and attended a Mass commemorating Romero's death in March. Because it is "so adamantly opposed" to U.S. policy, said Gary MacEoin, 72-year-old Tucson activist and noted religious author, "the church is actually on a collision course with Washington, and I don't believe Reagan is even conscious of it."
Washington may not want to recognize it, but the unprecedented unity and swelling activity at the local levels are matched by an equally unprecedented movement at the national leadership levels of U.S. churches.
At the forefront of the national church opposition has been the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops. Its repeated statements protesting all military aid and intervention from outside powers, particularly U.S. arms shipments, were initially inspired by the late Archbishop Romero. Recently, Romero's replacement, Bishop Rivera y Damas, supported the USCC's position and urged President Reagan "to stop the sending of military aid to El Salvador."
The Catholic hierarchy has been joined by nearly all of its Protestant counterparts. The National Council of Churches, the nation's largest organization of Protestant and Orthodox Christians, has officially opposed the sending of military assistance to El Salvador since the spring of 1980. Leaders of 11 of its largest denominations, with a total of more than 17 million members, have publicly stated their opposition to U.S. military aid and intervention in El Salvador.
Fourteen of the denominational heads traveled to Washington, D.C., during Holy Week and walked its streets on Good Friday, calling on the U.S. to halt its arms aid. Carrying a large wooden cross from the White House to the State Department, with stops at the International Monetary Fund and the Organization of American States, they recalled the sufferings of the poor in El Salvador at the hands of the U.S.-backed government, in remembrance of the sufferings of Jesus Christ on the way to the cross.
Heads of the following churches have publicly stated their official opposition to arms aid: American Baptist Churches; Church of the Brethren; Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); Lutheran Church in America; Presbyterian Church, U.S.; Progressive National Baptist Convention; Reformed Church in America; United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.; and the United Church of Christ. Bishops of the United Methodist Church and of three mainly black Methodist denominations have pledged their oneness with the Catholic bishops in opposing U.S. military aid. In late April, elders in the Moravian Church of America urged Reagan to halt the military aid.
Seventy-six Episcopal bishops, representing both conservative and liberal elements within the church, signed a statement in April calling on the president to end all military aid. The bishops said they wanted to express their solidarity with their "brother bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S." and their "deepest concern and anguish" about deteriorating conditions in El Salvador and the escalation of brutal violence that has resulted in well over 10,000 deaths since Romero's assassination, "many in martyrdom for their faith."
Also signing recent statements against U.S. arms aid were the heads of the General Conference Mennonite Church, the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, the World Evangelical Fellowship, Evangelicals for Social Action, and the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Unitarian Universalist Association, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and the American Friends Service Committee have also publicly opposed military aid.
Why this uncommon outpouring of unified church action on a controversial public issue?
In part, the U.S. church may have learned some lessons from its slowness to react critically to U.S. involvement in southeast Asia during the 1960s. Also, the murders of religious leaders in El Salvador have cast "a certain absurdity on the State Department's" characterization of the conflict, said Bill Callahan, S.J., co-director of the Quixote Center, a Roman Catholic-based justice group,
"The church here, as in El Salvador, doesn't buy [the official] analysis," said USCC's Quigley. "More people in the U.S. church know more about Latin America than about any other part of the world," he said, and that "gives them confidence" to speak out.
Phil M. Shenk was on the editorial staff at Sojourners when this article appeared.
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