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Martin Luther King Jr. Day And The Politics Of Race, Jill Gill
Martin Luther King Jr. Day And The Politics Of Race, Jill Gill
Jill K. Gill
The last few states to adopt the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday were largely non-southern, overwhelmingly white, and rural. Gill explores the political process by which one of these, Idaho, in 1990 became the 46th state to claim the holiday. In a conservative libertarian-leaning state with no significant non-white voting bloc and a weak understanding of King’s historical significance, politicians saw little need for the holiday until the Aryan Nations’ violent white-supremacist actions hurt the state’s image. Ironically, the Aryan Nations became Idaho’s “Bull Connor,” not only shaming the state into creating King Day, but schooling it in the pertinence …
The Decline Of Real Ecumenism: Robert Bilheimer And The Vietnam War, Jill Gill
The Decline Of Real Ecumenism: Robert Bilheimer And The Vietnam War, Jill Gill
Jill K. Gill
Traditional Christian ecumenists such as Robert Sperry Bilheimer, educated in the ways of the World Council of Churches, grappled with activist "new-breed" church leaders over how to protest against the Vietnam War. During 1966-74, Bilheimer headed the International Affairs Commission of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC) and sought to unite the member churches in an ecumenical effort. Activists in the NCC, spearheaded by "new-breed" spokesmen, focused on protest, however, and church leaders, who were often more liberal than those in the pews, failed to develop consensus within their denominations. Consequently, Bilheimer's efforts at cross-denominational …
The Political Price Of Prophetic Leadership: The National Council Of Churches And The Vietnam War, Jill Gill
The Political Price Of Prophetic Leadership: The National Council Of Churches And The Vietnam War, Jill Gill
Jill K. Gill
The National Council of Churches (NCC) felt called by church bureaucrats to take a prophetic leadership role on the Vietnam War. Therefore it moved beyond the sentiments of its denominations’ parishioners to articulate antiwar positions on this controversial issue. Council leaders met several times with Dean Rusk to persuade him to change the presuppositions undergirding America’s Vietnam policy, while Rusk tried to sway the Council into accepting the necessity of the government’s actions. The Council’s staff failed to realize that government weighed the NCC’s clout not by the quality of its information, staff, or moral vision, but rather by the …
Preventing A Second Massacre At Wounded Knee, 1973: Methodists Mediate For Peace, Jill Gill
Preventing A Second Massacre At Wounded Knee, 1973: Methodists Mediate For Peace, Jill Gill
Jill K. Gill
In 1973, when armed members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of the Oglala Sioux in South Dakota, military and law enforcement agencies of the United States arrived to quell the civil disturbance. The National Council of Churches sent a delegation consisting of Methodists - Bishop James Armstrong and pastors Wesley Hunter, Homer Noley, and John Adams - to serve as intermediaries. The members earned the trust of AIM and government authorities but were ousted from the reservation at the behest of Oglala Sioux Tribal Council chairman Dick Wilson, who believed …
Patriotism, Protestantism, And America’S Christian Image: The National Council Of Churches Protests The Vietnam War, Jill Gill
Jill K. Gill
No abstract provided.
The Politics Of Ecumenical Disunity: The Troubled Marriage Of Church World Service And The National Council Of Churches, Jill K. Gill
The Politics Of Ecumenical Disunity: The Troubled Marriage Of Church World Service And The National Council Of Churches, Jill K. Gill
Jill K. Gill
The fifty-year marriage between Church World Service (CWS) and the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (NCC) did not survive. In 2000, when they divorced to create separate 501(c)(3) organizations, CWS pleaded irreconcilable differences. The fact that two of America’s most prominent mainline ecumenical organizations, committed to Christian unity, were unable to maintain a healthy organizational marriage bears examination. Many people became aware of their troubles in the late 1990s when their financial arguments caught the attention of religious news services and periodicals such as The Christian Century. Few are aware, however, that the issues that caused …
Caught In The Middle: Navigating The Clergy-Laity Gap During The Vietnam War, Jill Gill
Caught In The Middle: Navigating The Clergy-Laity Gap During The Vietnam War, Jill Gill
Jill K. Gill
Executives within many mainline denominations, such as the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, were frustrated by their inability to inspire widespread debate and action at the congregational level about the Vietnam War Using the UPCUSA as a case study, this article argues that parish clergy functioned as the primary bottlenecks between the denominations and the congregations, constricting the flow of information largely because of their uncomfortable, precarious, middle position between liberal leadership and more conservative laity. By ming clergy journals and citing pastors in their own words, this essay illustrates the ambivalence local ministers felt toward …