Viet Buddhists at It Again

This article is based largely on dispatches from two religious reporters in Saigon who have interviewed informed Vietnamese in recent weeks: Ernest Zaugg of Religious News Service and Dale Herendeen of Christianity Today.

The Buddhists of South Viet Nam were at it again this month, fomenting a power struggle that could have major effects on America’s troubled commitment to the Southeast Asian nation. Rarely has a militant religious group waged a political campaign with such worldwide ramifications.

Not all Viet Nam’s Buddhists were involved in the move to oust the reigning military junta and form an elected civilian regime in which Buddhists might have the controlling hand. Half of the nation’s 12 million Buddhists are nominal, and the others are not a cohesive force. However, the biggest, best-organized religious body in the country is the Unified Buddhist Church.

Zaugg says Buddhists are divided between the “nationalists,” who are anti-Communist and want their faith to gain official predominance, and “a more astute and mysterious minority” of Communists who have infiltrated Buddhist ranks. But most observers, including U. S. experts, emphasize that while some Reds were involved in the rash of Buddhist-run demonstrations and threats of civil war, the major impetus came from nationalists.

Other observers define two basic Buddhist groups: intellectuals, who want their church to remain only a spiritual force and are not very influential; and activists, who sense the needs of their masses and are willing to do something about them.

South Viet Nam has had recurring rivalries among its religions, particularly Buddhists and the 1.6 million unitary Roman Catholics (see “A Heritage of Religious Turbulence,” January 21 issue, page 36). Although old enmities remain, it is significant that Catholics have given general support to the Buddhist drive for a new constitution and civilian regime within the next few months.

Leaders of the tiny Protestant minority are silent in the current turmoil, apprehensive about their numerical weakness and what the future will hold. Some young men who would like to pitch in and help whatever government survives fear such activity might bring more trouble for their church. And Protestant leaders have argued so long for a “hands off” attitude toward politics (for understandable reasons) that few have any significant opinions to offer either their fellow believers or outsiders.

The new crisis, which threatened at mid-month to bring down the reign of Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, began March 10 when Ky fired popular First Corps Commander Nguyen Chanh Thi, a Buddhist who was overlord of the nation’s five northern provinces. His replacement was a nominal Roman Catholic and night-lifer, Ton That Dinh.

Buddhist activists seized this strategic moment to stir street protests and then called for a civilian government. The leading strategist was the Venerable Tri Quang, an enigmatic 44-year-old monk credited with the downfall of no less than six other Saigon regimes.

The street demonstrations began with an orderly, almost festive tone. With typical Oriental strategy, the one in Saigon on March 31, for instance, coincided with a national holiday honoring an early king, Hung Vuong. The Buddhists tacked on honor for one of their own martyrs, Quach Tri Trang, who was shot by police in a 1963 protest against President Diem.

Things snowballed, and during the Christians’ Holy Week the mobs grew bigger and angrier. Injuries and property damage mounted, and American soldiers were confined to quarters for their own safety.

Premier Ky called a national political congress to pave the way for an elected government and invited representatives of all the religious and political blocs, as well as provincial and city officials. The Unified Buddhist Church boycotted the session, reportedly because it felt such a meeting would downgrade its strength. But the Buddhists considered the meeting’s call for civilian government a victory.

Despite anti-American signs and shouts in recent weeks, religious leaders know Reds would fill the vacuum overnight if America pulled out. Buddhists are as mindful of the fate of fellow believers under Communist China as the Catholics are.

America has been caught in a sticky predicament. It feels that only the South Vietnamese military has the strength to govern the country in the present war situation. Thus, despite an over-all commitment to self-determination for South Viet Nam, it backed a non-elected military junta of fading popularity.

There is a natural grass-roots opposition to all foreigners, American and otherwise, and a centuries-old tradition of stubbornness against accepting Westerners. The sight of GIs—many young and noisy—running around the streets irritates the people, particularly intellectuals who cherish quiet contemplation. These know less about Viet Cong terrorism than about the graft and greed resulting from the war and the United States’ involvement. America becomes the scapegoat for such things as galling high prices and the black market. The U. S. planners know these problems and in recent months have worked hard for economic reform, moving beyond mere military aid toward a cross-cultural attempt to give real aid to the Vietnamese, not for selfish reasons but to help build the nation.

For America the stakes are high. Its commitment includes the lives of 100 American soldiers a week (during the week of riots more Americans than South Vietnamese were killed in the war for the first time). The economic burden is well over $200 million a week. On top of religious unrest, reports of growing rebellion came from areas dominated by the “Montegnard,” a general term for 700,000 hill tribesmen who dominate two-thirds of the countryside.

More important than governmental changes this spring may be the World Buddhist Conference, which begins May 28 in Saigon. Tri Quang has worked hard for international power within this group, and some interpreted his anti-Ky machinations as a drive for new prestige in advance of the meeting. A resurgent pan-Buddhist bloc across Southeast Asia could rewrite the history books.

Herendeen says, “The future lies with the youth, and this is not lightly said. The young people of Viet Nam are looking for leadership—for someone or ones who will step forth with a powerful program for the total need of Viet Nam, whether Buddhist, Catholic, or whatever. The day of the ‘old man’ is over here. They don’t want Communism, by and large, but they might get it by default if nothing greater, and better, comes along.”

‘Aid’ For The Unwed

Public birth-control programs have expanded quietly in many cities during recent years. Now the stimulus is coming from the top. An unpublicized memo from Welfare Secretary John Gardner in January spelled out the new emphasis, and last month President Johnson said is his health message to Congress:

“It is essential that all families have access to information and services that will allow freedom to choose the number and spacing of their children within the dictates of individual conscience.”

The most controversial element in that statement, and subsequent explanations from the Executive Branch, is that unmarried mothers are not prohibited from receiving aid. The director of the Children’s Bureau, Mrs. Katherine Oettinger, told a Planned Parenthood meeting in Boston that if Johnson’s program is carried out, “it will not be the role of the federal government to dictate which women shall or shall not have family planning services if they desire them.”

Critics of such an open policy, most notably Roman Catholics, contend that the government subsidizes and encourages promiscuity by giving unwed mothers the means to have sexual intercourse without fear of pregnancy.

Gardner’s rather daring new policy proved none too bold for Alaska’s Senator Ernest Gruening. Gruening, an M.D., was editor of the Nation in the 1920s and fought for Margaret Sanger’s birth-control cause. When Gardner appeared before a Senate subcommittee last month, Gruening told him, “Instead of facing it frankly, you are continuing to do it under the table.”

The Senate hearings concerned a Gruening bill that would set up population assistants in the State and Welfare Departments. Gardner opposes the idea.

The testimony revealed the following federal programs: The Children’s Bureau is spending $3 million in thirty-two states on family planning this year, with $5 million scheduled next year. The Office of Economic Opportunity, which prohibits birth-control devices for unwed mothers, has spent $1,250,000 in the past fifteen months. In fiscal 1966, $6.5 million is being spent on population researeh. The government now has 165 staff specialists in population.

Besides the touchiness of the unwed-mother problem, the methods of contraception are undergoing close medical scrutiny. Mechanical methods are not foolproof in preventing pregnancy. Pills, which are more expensive, are more reliable, but some experts are wary about their side effects and unknown results on future generations.

To answer second thoughts, a fourteen-member committee under the World Health Organization surveyed medical complaints. Last month it reported that no causal relationship has been established between the pills and such maladies as cancer of the uterus, blood clots, strokes, or permanent infertility. But it said long-range effects won’t be known for years.

The experts urged caution in use of the pills for women with a history or symptoms of cancer or of liver or kidney disease, and said more research is necessary on many questions.

‘Monkey Trial,’ 1966 Style

A county judge in Little Rock, Arkansas, is scheduled to rule in May whether the state’s law against teaching of evolution in public schools is constitutional. The brief hearing on the issue April 1 was in marked contrast to the long, circus-like Scopes “monkey trial” in Tennessee forty-one years ago.

The 1925 defendant was science teacher John Scopes, now 65, who became a geologist for a gas company and lives in Shreveport, Louisiana. This time the evolutionists are on the offensive, challenging the law through the person of Mrs. Susan Epperson, 24, a Presbyterian. She teaches biology in Little Rock’s Central High School, where school integration achieved an anxious first victory in 1957.

Mrs. Epperson is backed by the Arkansas Education Association, which represents the state’s 15,000 teachers; the Arkansas Council of Churches, whose nine denominations have 275,000 members; and Winthrop Rockefeller, who hopes to become Arkansas’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction this November.

Evolution is an issue in New Mexico’s gubernatorial campaign. Republican candidate David Cargo accuses the State Board of Education of “coaching” students in their beliefs because it orders biology texts to have a pasted label stating that “evolution is being taught as theory and not as fact.” A state board official called on Cargo to retract his complaints and explained the disclaimer had been added after “many and widespread objections from church groups.”

Tennessee’s anti-evolution law still is on the books, and after the Scopes trial it was echoed by Mississippi and Arkansas. The law’s partisans in Arkansas include many Protestant fundamentalists, whose most visible organizational voice, the Arkansas Baptist Bible Fellowship, asserts that “the forces of Communism, liberalism, and modernism seek to undermine the historic faith of our fathers by fostering the theory of evolution.”

Mrs. Epperson, who says she believes in both God and evolution, is fighting the law because of the hypocrisy involved, since most science teachers conscientiously break the law.

Another contrast with the Scopes trial is that Judge Murray Reed has ruled out all discussion of evolution and religion. The narrow question of constitutionality is thus the only issue on trial.

Mrs. Epperson told the court it was her duty as a teacher to discuss “various scientific theories, including the Darwinian theory of the origin of species.” But if she does her duty, she becomes a criminal. The law, she said, perpetuates “ignorance, prejudice, and bigotry.”

Whatever Reed’s May ruling, an appeal to a higher court is likely. The National Observer asked Scopes what he thought about the fuss, and he mused, “I don’t think the world changes very rapidly.”

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