Responding to Human Needs during the Cold War: Personal Growth and Organizational Change: Guiding Church World Service from 1975 through 1984

By Paul F. McCleary

One of the primary characteristics of life is change. To be alive is expressed in a constant adaptation to an environment in change. The underlying thesis of this story is the ever-changing reality in the life of a missionary family for whom doors of opportunity open to new work experiences. They become a part of an organization needing to undergo change in order to respond to the environmental change taking place in the world.

The story is built around the personal growth of a missionary as he is challenged to assume new responsibilities. The element of personal growth is reflected in the transformation an organization must make to respond to changing global conditions in order to fulfill its mission.

The background to the story is the radical change in the political scene which took place following World War II. Two aspects are highlighted. The first one is the emergence of newly formed nations that gained their independence from having been colonies of European nations. The second was the emergence of the Cold War reshaping the global political scene into a bipolar context between two superpowers.

The organization in the story is Church World Service (CWS), the relief and refugee arm of the National Council of Churches. Its mandate was to respond to natural and man-made disasters anywhere in the world. The story is told of the formation of two world bodies that contributed to world peace, the United Nations and the World Council of Churches.

The Cold War led to the formation of a series of walls and militarized borders around the world. The story details the intense endeavor to find ways to fulfill the mission of CWS in a fractured world. This book is not a specific history of Church World Service. The key to the story is the creative ways in which CWS reinvented itself to build bridges to overcome the political walls that had been built.
The book is an important reading for anyone interested in the history of the Christian Church during the Cold War. It also has value for those who study organizational change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798369411124

Paul F. McCleary

Paul F. McCleary shares how the trajectory of life was changed by a single encounter and the ramifications that were produced. The author assumed when he enrolled in seminary his future would probably involve being a pastor of a church in rural downstate Illinois. A visit to the seminary by a Methodist bishop from Latin America became an encounter that changed entirely the direction of his career from that of a local church pastor to a missionary. The McCleary family arrived in Bolivia in the last decade before Methodism transitioned from being a mission to becoming a national autonomous church. The author shares the challenges of contributing to the formation of a new church in a developing country struggling to find its new identity. The view of open country churches visible over the cornfields of Central Illinois, where he served as a student pastor, stands in sharp contrast to living in the poorest country in South America—a country second only to Haiti as the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. Methodism’s footing in Bolivia came through the fact that at the turn of the century, the Bolivian president had a daughter who was sent to Santiago, Chile, to gain a high school education not yet available to girls in Bolivia. The author’s real education, even after a degree from college and seminary, came from Bolivia. Living among the poor and ministering to families with children is a quick course in understanding how conditions of absolute poverty shape the world in which many people live. As incongruous as it may seem, the country was rich in natural resources whose benefit failed to trickle down to improve the daily lives of the indigenous majority of society. As the author quickly learned, as insignificant as Bolivia appeared, it was an attractive pawn in the larger context of global politics. The expansion of Nazism took easy roots in the Bolivian quest for an alternative social order different from the past. The end of World War II in Europe only served to scatter the seed to other corners of the world. There were attempts to continue it in countries such as Bolivia. Klaus Barbie was a resident in Bolivia under protective cover offered by lenient military administrations. The emergence of a Cuban presence led by Che Guevarra was an effort to establish a colony in the more isolated Eastern area of Bolivia and was another political influence. The author shares how new theological currents were also influencing the Christian faith as an outgrowth of conditions in Latin America. These new challenges came in the form of liberation theology articulated by Gustavo Gutierrez, and identification with the poor by Paulo Freire was also gaining wider acceptance. The author was so influenced by these ten years in Bolivia that he went on to direct three different international nonprofit organizations that focus on combating the conditions of absolute poverty on children and families. In so doing, he served as staff of the National Council of Churches, on commissions of the World Council of Churches, as president of the Non-Governmental Organizations Committee to UNICEF, and as a member of the Bishops’ Task Force on Children and Poverty of the United Methodist Church.

Book preview

Copyright © 2023 by Paul F. Mccleary.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/09/2023

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

852234

CONTENTS

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 11974: An Unexpected Door Opens

Chapter 21975: Learning What Ecumenism Means

Chapter 3The Cold War Impact in the United States: My Early Perspective

Chapter 4The Cold War in 1975 in Latin America

Chapter 5The Cold War in Europe, Asia, and Africa

Chapter 6April 1, 1975: Move to the Sixth Floor, 475

Chapter 7The WCC: Center Piece of a Global Network

Chapter 8The First Year (1976–1977)

Chapter 9The United Nations

Chapter 101977–1978

Chapter 111979-1980

Chapter 121981

Chapter 131982–1983

Chapter 14US Foreign Policy and Humanitarian Aid

Chapter 151984: An Assessment

Appendix 1:Presidents and Vice Presidents From 1973–1993

Appendix 2:General Secretaries World Council of Churches

Appendix 3:Assemblies of the World Council of Churches

Appendix 4:Regional Ecumenical Bodies (With Date of Formation)

Bibliography

Let us stop at its source all this hurt, cried he,

"Come, neighbors and friends, let us rally;

If the cliff we will fence, we might almost dispense

With the ambulance down in the valley."

—Joseph Malins, The Ambulance at the Bottom of the Cliff (1895)

ABBREVIATIONS

INTRODUCTION

This book covers a ten-year period of my ministry. It could be considered a sequel to Building for the New in which I discussed the ten years prior when we served as missionaries in Bolivia. I did not intend to write more about our personal life and professional activities after Bolivia. What brought me to the decision that I ought to write about my ten years with Church World Service was the realization of the significance of the global transitions underway at that time and their importance to the realities of today.

By the 1980s, mainline Protestantism in America was losing its social and political dominance as forms of secularism and Evangelicalism grew. The Interchurch Center, built in the late 1950s in New York City with Rockefeller funding, housed various denominations and religious organizations in the hopes that their proximity to each other would foster ecumenism. Located near the theologically liberal Union Theological Seminary with the prestigious Riverside Church across the street (a major pulpit of mainline Protestantism), the building was colloquially referred to as the Vatican of mainline Protestantism. The National Council of Churches and Church World Service had their headquarters in this building.

Another global change, beginning in the 1950s, was the creation of new countries in Africa and Asia. Global colonial empires were fracturing with national movements assuming political authority. The USSR continued to fund, train, and supply munition to revolutionaries engaged in proxy wars in Indochina, Central America, and Africa. The Asian Tigers—South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan—chose a development path implementing population policies along with rapid industrialization resulting in high economic growth. China soon followed a similar path to economic growth.

But especially important for a new global context was the political scene in the United States. The United States still continued to be the center of a global structure of financial and political formation created following World War II. It was during this period that the foundation was laid for what today is the political reality of the post-Trump era. We did not realize then what Joe McCarthy was giving expression to would solidify the conservative right of the Republican Party, which could propel the likes of Donald Trump into the White House.

This book is not a specific history of the organization called Church World Service. It is not intended to be a chronological record of events. This is the story of the organization’s transformation from emergency relief to a human development agency. What is told is the various aspects of the transformation by the changes that were made in the operation of the organization in order to function in a world fractured by the Cold War.

The two global structures—the World Council of Churches and the United Nations—came into being after World War II and became the framework in which Church World Service could operate. Both of these organizations supported emerging national movements and their indigenous leadership.

In brief, this is an attempt to demonstrate that, in spite of the difficulties whether these were political, man-made, or natural disasters, there was a synergy possibly whereby joining two or more organizations in some form of cooperation, the end result was greater than the parts with the objectives of enhancing social justice, bringing about human development and supporting nation-building.

CHAPTER 1

1974: AN UNEXPECTED DOOR OPENS

The phone rang while I was seated in my office on the fifteenth floor at the Interchurch Center in New York City. It was a call from Harry Haines, executive director of the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) of the United Methodist Church.¹ Harry asked a straightforward question, Would you be willing to be interviewed for the position of executive director of Church World Service? It had never crossed my mind to think of changing jobs. His question required an answer that I needed time on which to reflect.

When we returned from Bolivia after serving ten years as missionaries, I was asked to serve at the Board of Missions offices in New York. My assignment was a temporary one. It involved implementing the new quadrennial emphasis of our denomination approved at the general conference in 1968 into programs of overseas conferences.

Six months into the task, however, the world division agreed to my secondment to the Structure Study Commission of the General Conference. The union of the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren Churches took place in 1968. It was now timely to bring the two structures together. The commission was mandated to develop a new organizational structure for the program agencies of the United Methodist Church that was of efficient design. The commission was to present its proposal to the next general conference in four years.

Working as chair of the commission introduced me to the national operations of all of the program agencies of the church. A secondary benefit was that we would be much closer to our families as the commission was based in Evanston, Illinois. Program agencies were spread out with their headquarters in five cities. It was an amazing experience. The end result was the 1972 General Conference approved the organizational design proposed by the Structure Study Commission, with only slight modifications.

With the task done, I was invited to return to the board in New York now bearing the name Board of Global Ministries. My new responsibility was to serve as Assistant General Secretary for Latin America. This was a supervisory function over the activities of the Board of Global Ministries in Central and South America and the Caribbean.

In the two years since returning to the mission board I felt at home and comfortable in the work as the secretary for Latin America. The position Haines was suggesting I apply for was quite different. Church World Service was a unit of the global outreach of the National Council of Churches of Christ (NCC) responsible for the refugee, relief, and development programs, The NCC is an ecumenical agency with a governing board composed of representatives of thirty-two Protestant denominations.

If I were to accept, it would mean having the geographical scope of my vocation enlarged from national (Bolivia) to hemispheric (United States and Latin America) to global. The NCC would represent a more inclusive theological approach embracing churches representing the episcopal, reformed, and congregational traditions.

What every individual does when a new vocational opportunity is presented to them is to look carefully before they leap. The scope of the mandate of Church World Service (CWS) had been only international—that is, the world outside of the United States. In 1974, however, the mandate was expanded to include the United States. This transformed the organization from one that was international to one that was operational globally. The mandate was to respond to natural and man-made disasters and emergencies anywhere.

World War II had elevated—almost by default—the United States to a role of prominence in the world. CWS, the instrumentality of mainline US Protestantism, had become a major means for cooperative relief and reconstruction by American Protestantism in Europe and Asia. Attention was turning from such crisis-war-induced conditions to reconstruction. There was a growing commitment to rebuild churches in Europe or missions that had been orphaned in Asia and Africa.

By the 1970s, tensions had developed within mainline denominations between what was identified as the mission and the service programs. This pitted those who saw the primary objective of the church to make disciples against those who saw that the church was called to serve the least, the downtrodden, and the poor.

The conflict played itself out over limited church resources in the face of a war-torn world in recovery. By 1974, a very incongruous situation existed in the NCC structure with CWS—by far the largest unit in personnel and funds operating as a subunit in the Division on Overseas Ministries (DOM). It was a tension that should never have come into existence, but every institution is made of very human persons.

The locus of the tension settled in the DOM of the NCC. The head of the DOM was Dr. Eugene Stockwell, a Methodist minister with strong credentials in the mission program. The proponent was James MacCracken, executive director of CWS, a Presbyterian layman. The resolution chosen by Stockwell to solve the tension was to fire MacCracken.²

The problem, which had been festering in denominations, came to a head in the actions of the NCC. The staff of service units of denominational member churches were demoralized. The invitation to meet with the search committee was like looking down the barrel of a smoking pistol. My search for information brought me to this point.

There was another matter on which I wanted more information before making a decision to meet with the search committee. The public assessment of CWS was very positive. Such an appraisal would hardly be an adequate evaluation of the internal operation of an organization. It was, however, important for me to know if the organization had any skeletons in closets, which might rise up to cause problems. The most obvious problem was the structural one, which isolated the executive director while directing the largest unit in terms of staff numbers and funding, from the table where basic decisions were being made. My inquiries with staff and auditors did not turn up a scrap of information about misconduct of a moral or financial nature. MacCracken had been a very effective and efficient manager.

When we moved back to the East Coast from Evanston, Illinois, we chose to live in Montclair, New Jersey. Our children needed to be in reliable schools to catch up to their peers in preparation for college. Also, Montclair was where many of the executives of the church agencies headquartered at 475 Riverside Drive were residents. In fact, they had incorporated the Montclair-Riverside Carpool as their means of commuting to work. The carpool operated three station wagons and had a membership hovering around thirty persons. During the first two years, I was working in the World Division of the Methodist board. Commuting to work in the carpool gave me an unusual opportunity to meet and mingle with executives from other boards and churches housed at 475.

During the two years, I had been serving as staff of the world division of the United Methodist Church, the daily exposure in staff discussions had been a form of in-service training about the major issues in the other regions of the world. Though not aware of it at the time, I was being groomed for the CWS position. At the time, I knew I was privileged to work with some of the finest professionals in the church.

The key consultation when considering a job change was my wife, Rachel. A move to the Church World Service would not cause a major change for the family. After returning to the United States from Bolivia in November 1968, we led something of a peripatetic life, which had not been the best for the education of our children. We first lived in a lovely, rented home for about six months in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, before moving to Glenview, Illinois in June 1969. We then moved back to New Jersey in September 1972 to live in Montclair. This meant that our children had attended as many as four different school systems. One daughter attended four different high schools in four years.

We would be able to continue to live in Montclair, and I could continue to commute in the Riverside carpool. No change in schools was an important factor for Rachel. Rachel was finding a life for herself in the work of our local Methodist church. She was comfortable with the children’s adjustment to a new school environment. And, as usual, she was supportive of whatever I thought might be a meaningful working environment for me. Having satisfied all of the concerns I had, I took the next step, which was to call Dr. David Taylor, chair of the DOM search committee, to tell him of my willingness to meet with the search committee.

The committee was well-informed of my background. It also had a strong recommendation from my denomination. Harry Haines played an active role in the discussion. As I left the meeting, I remembered the serious and professional way the conversation was conducted. It was reassuring, whether I was offered the position or not, to know that the search was in the hands of such an impressive group of people.

In a matter of hours, I received a call from David Taylor. It was an invitation to join the staff of the National Council of Churches. I accepted. Very soon thereafter, a call came from Gene Stockwell³ welcoming me to the staff of the Division on Overseas Ministries. In subsequent conversations, details were discussed concerning the work and the date to initiate it. April 1, 1975, was set to begin.

The date agreed upon allowed me time to bring reasonable closure to my present work with the world division. The challenge of the new job was not far from my daily considerations. However, what really concerned me was whether I would be comfortable working in an ecumenical structure.

Addendum

The Interchurch Center

475

The offices of the world division of the Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church were in the Interchurch Center in Manhattan. The Interchurch Center is a nineteen-story limestone-clad office building located at 475 Riverside Drive and West 120th Street in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York City. It was the headquarters for the international and pension departments of major mainline denominations such as the Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed Church in America, Methodist, and United Church of Christ.

In addition to denominational offices, it was the headquarters of the National Council of Churches, including Church World Service. It also houses a wide variety of church agencies and ecumenical and interfaith organizations as well as some nonprofit foundations and faith-related organizations, including the Religion Communicators Council.

Its concentration of religious organizations has led some to nickname the building the God Box. Samuel G. Freedman described the building as the closest thing to a Vatican for America’s mainline Protestant denominations.

The center benefits from a strong religious and educational environment. A tenant is the New York Theological Seminary. The Interchurch Center is located immediately South of Riverside Church and West of Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University and is a short walk to the Jewish Theological Seminary, Manhattan School of Music, the Korean Methodist Church and Institute, and Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

The building was the home to several cities and state denominational offices, the Council of Churches of the City of New York, the Agricultural Missions Incorporated, and the Foundation for Christian Higher Education in Asia. In addition, offices and classrooms of the New York Theological Seminary, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund also occupied space in the Center.

Having a location in one place was perceived as a means by which to create stronger ties of cooperation among Protestant churches. On March 29, 1948, the Protestant Center was created. The purpose of this corporation shall be to establish an interdenominational center in New York City to assist the work of the various religious denominations, and to promote cooperation among them, and between them