Billy Graham made his first trip to Viet Nam over Christmas, preaching to the drone of airplanes, presenting the Gospel to mud-soaked GIs fresh from battle, and taking a first-hand look at America’s most perplexing problem, the bloody undeclared war there.
It was a quick-paced visit that started at the Saigon airport December 19, when U. S. Commander William Westmoreland drove up to welcome Graham, whom he had invited to come. It ended the day after Christmas with the last of ten services, on the carrier “Kitty Hawk” in the North China Sea, and an encounter with Bob Hope.
In his opening press conference, Graham said he had come not only to survey Christian work and humanitarian efforts generally, and to preach the Christian message of peace, but to study the U. S. military commitment, which he is asked about everywhere he goes in the world.
Asked about the “morality” of the war, Graham deferred comment until the end of the trip. When it was over, he said he didn’t want to be an “eight-day wonder” in analyzing the complex issue. Was he a “dove” or a “hawk”? Graham preferred “lamb,” a biblical symbol.
Though far less militant and outspoken than Cardinal Spellman, who was on tour the same week (see following story), Graham’s lamb had asserted itself clearly. He said that Americans should back their President in his decision to make a stand in Viet Nam and that the “pacification” program, which attempts to win the loyalty of South Vietnamese villagers, is essential.
After returning to America, the evangelist said the “stakes are extremely high for the Western world” in Viet Nam. “I hope for peace, but I don’t see any early possibilities of peace.” Expansionist China and North Viet Nam want the resources of the South, he said. He doesn’t believe that U. S. bombing raids in the North have been aimed at civilians. But he thinks the bombing question might become academic, because of the increasing effectiveness of Communist anti-aircraft weapons.
Graham said the death of civilians from U. S. bombing is only part of the story: “The atrocities of the Viet Cong would equal anything in history.”
While in Viet Nam, Graham and his four-man team got as much of a red-carpet treatment as could be expected in a combat zone. But the evangelist sometimes slept on a sagging Army cot and ate from tables hastily knocked together from ammunition boxes. He traveled the length of the An Khe Valley in a “Caribou” aircraft designed to land troops and supplies for battle.
An Khe, with weather wavering from bright sun to pouring rain, was Graham’s locale on Christmas Eve and perhaps the high spot of the tour. The day’s first service was held next to a helicopter landing strip. A brass plate on a cement block near the makeshift stage noted that Martha Raye had been there two months before. After some jokes and carol-singing, Graham preached that any man can enjoy personal, inner peace, even in the midst of war, by putting his faith in Christ. As usual, he ended with a call for decisions, and several dozen lifted their hands in response.
That night, a shining star easily visible to Viet Cong in the surrounding jungles stood on the radar-rimmed hill above a candlelight service for the crack First Cavalry. Thousands of sky troopers plodded through mud and rain to spread their ponchos on the meeting ground. While guards watched for any Communist violations of the Christmas cease-fire, rifle-clutching troops sat through intermittent rain, listened to a specially organized chorus of troopers, and at one point held thousands of individual candles aloft as the searchlights were turned off. Graham again spoke on the peace theme, from Luke 2:14, and many hands were raised in response to his invitation.
As the troopers quietly left the service, many to attend Protestant and Roman Catholic communion services, a chaplain remarked, “This was the greatest Christmas I’ve ever celebrated.”
Through the night, mortars were fired and flares dropped over the camp at hour intervals, and there were continual reports of VC activity. The evangelist slept little and was jolted awake by the noise. Shortly after midnight a young soldier went berserk in front of the chapel. He shot and killed two comrades and wounded a third, who was inside the chapel.
In another Christmas Eve tragedy, a Flying Tiger plane crashed short of the runway at Da Nang, killing the four crew members and nearly 100 Vietnamese on the ground. Graham heard the news while en route to Da Nang on Christmas Day and decided to make one of his many hospital trips to visit the survivors.
An estimated 7,000 men attended the major service on Christmas Day in an amphitheater near the base. This and several other sermons were beamed afar by Armed Forces Radio.
After the shipboard service on the 26th, Graham flew to the coastal city of Quinhon at the invitation of Bob Hope, who was also on tour that week. Graham spent an hour in private with the famous comedian. He sat on the stage for Hope’s show, brought greetings, and led the audience in reciting John 3:16. Although obviously embarrassed by some of the seamier parts of the show, Graham later spoke highly of the singing of Anita Bryant, who has been outspoken in her Christian conviction.
Graham was often wet and weary but was always ready to speak a “hello” or a “God bless you” to as many soldiers as he could. The first major service was held at Tan Son Nhut airbase in Saigon, the world’s second-busiest airport. Giant jets often drowned out Graham’s voice. The next day at Long Binh, some thirty miles from Saigon, 6,000 troops sat in the hot sun to hear his message. Meanwhile, hundreds of special troops guarded a nearby ammunition dump, and helicopters scurried around the perimeter of the base like hens trying to protect baby chicks. Hundreds of troopers responded to Graham’s invitation.
Other major services were held at Cam Ranh Bay, home of the 12th Tactical Fighter Wing and a huge new port facility, and landing zones “Oasis” and “Hammond,” with the First Cavalry.
Graham and the team were obviously affected by their visit. Veteran gospel singer George Beverly Shea remarked, “They think it’s their pleasure to have us, but it’s been our pleasure to be with them.” Graham said that if the war continues, he will certainly go back for another preaching tour of Viet Nam.
The emphasis this time was on U. S. soldiers, but President Doan Van Mieng of the Evangelical Church (Christian and Missionary Alliance) urged Graham to return in the near future to minister to the Vietnamese. Besides holding services, Graham spoke at an International Christian Leadership breakfast and a luncheon for missionaries. He met many chaplains and had high praise for them. He also noted the tremendous humanitarian efforts in Viet Nam.
Doves, Hawks, And A Cardinal
Old cardinals don’t even fade away, it seems, and New York’s Francis Cardinal Spellman, 77, stirred up dust from Vatican City to Viet Nam last month. Like Greek Orthodox Primate Iakovos (see January 6 issue, page 39), Spellman voiced firm support of U. S. policies during a trip to the combat zone:
“This war in Viet Nam is, I believe, a war for civilization. Certainly it is not a war of our seeking. It is a war thrust upon us, and we cannot yield to tyranny.… We do hope and pray, through the valor, the dedication, the service of our men and women of our armed forces, we shall soon have the victory for which all of us in Viet Nam and all over the world are praying and hoping; for less than victory is inconceivable.”
These reported remarks during a Christmas Eve Mass for 5,000 troops at Cam Ranh Bay did not appear in the text released from the cardinal’s New York office. But he later stood by the hawk-like words attributed to him.
Response was swift and biting, not only from Communist capitals, but also from the Vatican, where a “high source” told Religious News Service that Spellman “did not speak for the Pope or the church. The Pope, who sees the conflict as an impartial observer, feels that a negotiated peace rather than a military victory by either side is the way to end the war.” Another unnamed Vatican aide told Newsweek that the Pope was upset by Spellman’s reported identification of U. S. troops as “soldiers of Christ.” “He cannot say that Christ is all on one side or the other. This is not a holy war.”
Anti-Spellman speculation was heightened by an editorial in the Vatican daily urging support for Pope Paul’s peace drive “without preference or reservation.” Yet another confidential source told United Press International that the editorial was not meant as a rebuke of Spellman.
On Formosa, the cardinal said he is obeying the Pope’s appeal to pray for peace. In Spellman’s terms, this means prayer “that light might come to the minds of the Communists, that some time they will be moved by pity, moved by compassion, and will come to the peace table so that all involved in this terrible and useless war will have peace again.”
If Spellman’s views were strong, so were those of the doves at the Catholic weekly Commonweal, published in New York: “The United States should get out of Viet Nam,” began its Christmas week editorial. “It should seek whatever safety it can for our allies; it should arrange whatever international face-saving is possible; and, even at the cost of a Communist victory, the United States should withdraw.” The article then went on to agonize over the ambiguities of the war, arguing more from pragmatism than from pacifism.
Among Protestant voices was that of Soviet Baptist executive Alexander Karev. In a Radio Moscow program beamed at the United States, he urged “an immediate cessation of U. S. A. bombing and the beginning of a clearly stated and swiftly phased withdrawal of all American troops and weapons.”
The World Council of Churches’ Christmas message urged “all parties” to seek negotiations, and General Secretary Eugene Carson Blake, an American, said in a CBS-TV interview that “the suspicion comes” that the United States isn’t trying as hard as it should to bring about peace talks. Leaders of the National Council of Churches sent telegrams to member denominations urging support for President Johnson’s call for United Nations help in settling the war.
Two For Fordham
After some communications snafus between New York and Toronto, Fordham University (Jesuit) this month handed Canadian communicologist Marshall McLuhan a $100,000 state-backed chair in humanities. McLuhan, a convert to Catholicism, has rippled academia with outlandish analyses of media.
Fordham also named Robert L. Wilken of Lutheran Theological Seminary (LCA), Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to teach patristic theology. He is one of the first Protestants to win permanent appointment to a Catholic theological faculty. Fordham already pools faculty, credits, and library with Union Theological Seminary.
Union and Yale Divinity School are also negotiating for another Catholic neighbor. The Jesuits are giving “serious consideration” to moving their noted rural Maryland seminary, Wood-stock College, to an urban locale and establishing Protestant contacts.
Spare A Hallowed Landmark?
Presbyterian leaders in southwestern Pennsylvania meet this week to weigh the fate of historic Tent Church. A move is on to disband the fifty-six-member congregation founded during Revolutionary War days by merging it with several nearby Presbyterian churches. The building itself is in reasonably good repair and might be preserved as a historical site. Some are afraid, however, that it might merely be abandoned and left to rot away. A commission is being named by Redstone Presbytery to come up with merger plans on which the churches can agree.
“I guess they feel we’re just too small to bother with,” says Mrs. Gladys Hixon, clerk of session for Tent Church. “The coal mines have closed, and people have gone.”
Last fall the congregation voted by a narrow margin to explore merger. It acted after the presbytery had voted down a move to close the church.
Although the church pays its own bills and its dues to the presbytery, some contend that the attendance, which averages twenty-five or thirty each Sunday, is too small to warrant continuation of services. The Rev. W. H. Strohm, general presbyter, says the church is not progressing. The main problem seems to be that it cannot meet the minimum annual expense of $5,000 needed to maintain a regular minister. At present, the church is served by seminary students from Pittsburgh for a fee of $20 per sermon.
Thought by many to be the first rural sanctuary west of the Alleghenies, Tent Church was founded in 1773 or 1774 by a missionary from the East. A large tent of bear skin, made in Indian form, was provided for the minister; hence the name Tent Church.
The tent arrangement lasted for eighteen years. Not until 1792 was a 35-foot-square structure hewn from logs. Finally in 1832 a brick building 60 feet by 40 feet was erected at the same site, just west of what is now Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
Through the years the church has faced numerous threats to its existence. Because church trustees failed to obtain a lease for the land, it was sold at a sheriff’s sale and had to be repurchased. In 1878 a disastrous fire left only blackened walls standing, but within four months the church was rebuilt. In 1905 the church survived the explosion of a nearby powder mill.
In the latter years of the nineteenth century, the attic of the church reportedly served as a refuge for a notorious band of outlaws.
There is now a manse on the church property and a cemetery nearby. Trust funds provide for the care of the grounds.
B. J. CATON
