Hypocrisy among the churches
Harold Pateshall
With the Archbishop of Canterbury now on an East European tour, it is a good moment to examine the position of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in regard to communist regimes. An article published a few months ago by former WCC General Secretary Eugene Carson Blake — 'The Churches and Human Rights in Eastern Europe' — is particularly instructive.
This is a prepared defence as to why the WCC is not defending human rights in Eastern Europe, despite its loud and often bizarre espousals of a variety of antiWestern causes and movements, of which its support for Marxist guerrillas in Africa and Latin America are best known.
Assuming that its pronouncements represent official WCC policy, they are an intriguing revelation. As Blake puts it: 'Marxist thinking is becoming so important in the Western Churches . . . The theological reflection on Marxism is now a common necessity for all churches, under whatever form of Government they live and witness. If such study were not to involve churches which live in Socialist lands, we would deprive ourselves of the experience and witness of churches who live and work in countries were secularisation is not only a cultural process but a Governmental programme.'
Setting aside all the other odd things in the piece, perhaps that phrase 'secularisation is not only a cultural process but a Governmental programme' might first be savoured by connoisseurs of euphemism. The Times of last October 19 put it differently, reporting on secularisation as a governmental programme as it affects Moldavian Roman Catholics under the heading 'Soviet police raze church with bulldozers.' Presumably, however, the two ways of putting it add up to the same thing. Blake continues: 'The World Council of Churches . . . knows that many of its general procouncements on human rights are as much applicable in Eastern Europe as in South-East Asia, North America, South Africa and Latin America.'
But after making this evidently painful admission (the 'socialist' countries 'are often victims of Cold-War propaganda', he says earlier), Blake indicates that the WCC is in fact often putting pressure on Communist Governments to mend their ways. At least this is apparently the idea the following paragraph is meant to convey: 'Some of our member churches, especially concerned about such situations, have, after carefully establishing the facts through study and direct contacts, made contact directly with the embassies of specific countries in their own land. Such direct contact with representatives of governments concerned are often more effective than requests or complaints to our member churches in East European Countries.'
Pruned of excess verbiage, this seems to indicate that Comm unist Governments may listen to foreign religious bodies though they will not listen to their own. There is no explanation of why this odd state of affairs should be, but what follows is perhaps as near as we get to one: 'We must ask in each case: do we really help by public protest, or should we make a non-public approach? Several WCC leaders and staff members have made private demarches to government officials in socialist countries in order to advocate greater freedom for the churches. It must be remembered that we have often found such approaches more successful than public declarations.'
However, if Blake is able to specify or quote as much as one instance where a 'socialist' government, given this rather peculiar usage of the word 'socialist', has in fact changed its internal policies in response to polite behind-the-scenes pressure and appeals from members of the World Council of Churches' staff, he declines to do so. People, he implies, who want the churches to make a public declaration or protest to Communist regimes may not have the churches' best interests at heart, or are perhaps at best dangerously misguided: 'There are many people in our constituency who plead for equal treatment in all cases of discrimination. They would like to protest in exactly the same terms to a country where public opinion is a mighty force as to others where public opinion has little influence. They would like to use the same language in countries where churches are regarded as an important part of the electorate and a strong moral force as in countries where churches are hardly tolerated.'
A reader coming in fresh at this point might well agree With Blake's disparagement of the idea that churches should offer the same kind of condemnation and protest against the violation of human rights in pluralistic and religious societies and in totalitarian dictatorships. However, such a reader will in all innocence have missed Blake's fundamental point: for him the churches should not criticise totalitarian societies more vigorously and unequivocally than democratic ones, but less: 'Even if the churches get into major troubles when the World Council criticises their governments, these people feel that the World Council should speak there in exactly the same way as in countries where churches are allowed or even encouraged to make their critical contributions.
'I know that a policy in which the difference of situation is disregarded may help, the public image of the World Council 01 Churches, but I am not willing to pay such a price for our image.'
Quietly assured that this noble self" sacrifice of image will not be in vain, Blake points out that 'primary responsibility' is t° criticise governments led by Christian!, and, returning to a familiar theme: 'that Is why I hold the ecumenical programme to combat racism to be so important.' Presuin.ably, following this logic, the correct religlous position in 1939 would have been to criticise and condemn thatritishexclusionof Chinese from Hong Kong clubs in precedence to the German National Socialist construction of Dachau.
The virtually unanimous testimony competent authorities on East-bloc affairs' of course, is that Western protest is the one thing that may help dissidents. Even the show-trials, in attempting to indicate the uselessness of protest, indicate that it is a force Communist rulers take seriously. That protest saved the Panovs, and resulted in the exiling, rather than some' thing far worse, of Solzhenitsyn, Grigorenko and numerous other leading dissidents, is not a matter to be seriouslY disputed. It is, of course, possible to denY such testimony, but to do so is to fly in the face of all the knowledge the West has et Communist systems. Blake continues: 'More important than the image of the World Council is the quality of our fel' lowship, and a genuine fellowship expre' sses itself through differentiated approaches according to the real needs of those suffering discrimination. In the ecumenical movement respectful atten' tion for different cases, and consequentlY for different means of improvement, Is essential. 'All this should not lead us to silence in cases in which we must speak, but it maY well lead us to a different way of spealc' ing. We may criticise the one where We plead with the other, or protest publiclY in one case while we try to persuade behind the scenes in another.'
No indication is given of what persuasion behind the scenes may be effective with the regime that staged the trials Of Shcharanksy, Orlov, Ginzburg etc in st deliberate, if defensive, demonstration o' its professed contempt for moral pressures. The argument seems to boil down to the unheroic proposition that you don't offend anyone who is really powerful, dangerous and likely to retaliate.
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