“Addressing the Issues,” criticized the unruly behavior of Williamson’s supporters at the Western North Carolina Presbytery meeting where his “ministry” was not validated, and which raised questions about any validated ministry unrelated to preaching and the sacraments. The offending sentence was this:
“The most visible and egregious instance (mentioned in the reasons for disqualifying Williamson’s ministry) was the 1989 attack on Syngman Rhee, calling him a communist dupe when he was working in the Global Ministry Unit and with the National Council of Churches for the reunification of Korea.”
In “The Ministry of Fear” editorial, Williamson disputes this statement, calling it false:
But this is the same journal [The Layman] which, without checking the facts, printed the rumor that Syngman Rhee was connected with the North Korean Communists.”*
I read the September/October 1989 issue of The Presbyterian Layman. It was devoted to discrediting Syngman Rhee and the ministry of reconciliation that he and others undertook in response to an action of the 1983 Reuniting Assembly in Atlanta. That Assembly believed that God was opening up mission work for the newly-minted PC(USA) in North Korea with two primary objectives: to pay attention to the special needs of Christian families divided for decades, and under the Lordship of Christ, to walk humbly with open minds toward reconciliation between North and South Korea, seeking peace with justice.
The 1989 article states that no one questions Rhee’s motives, yet it also says: “the accuracy of Rhee’s statements have [sic] undergone scrutiny by skeptical Presbyterians. They wonder if the pain of this man’s personal history [his Presbyterian minister father was killed by Communist forces during the Korean War] has clouded his judgment and has made him vulnerable to manipulation by the North Korean government.” One of the article’s internal headlines reads, “Rhee: A Tool for Kim Il Sung?” Further, he “sees and hears no evil.” It is alleged that Rhee voiced no criticism of the North Korean government after a visit there. [Rhee’s sisters and other family remained in North Korea during this time, which the Layman failed to tell its readers.]
True, the Layman did not specifically state “Rhee is a communist dupe.” Williamson is right to ask me to correct the error. Yet the article on Syngman Rhee ill represents a Christian publication, the editing and publishing of which is claimed as a validated ministry. The mood of their exposé was redolent with the trappings of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950’s. Readers were invited to understand how vulnerable poor Rhee was to manipulation.
The good news is that in the intervening years, Rhee’s stature has increased. He publicly declared his forgiveness for the Layman’s attack, and remains close to a member of the Layman’s board. He is a venerable, respected former moderator of the church.
You may wonder why I have bothered to respond to Williamson. Journalists say that the Outlook is under no legal obligation. The statements to which the Layman objects are in editorials, not news stories. There were no quotation marks; therefore, editorial speech is protected. Yet something deeper than legality is at stake. Something else needs protection, for what is thoroughly permissible may not be helpful to the church. What is merely legal can kill – kill vision, kill hope, discredit the gospel, and cripple the church.
I would rather make this correction, and live with the foolish expectancy that the church – even church journalists and especially Ministers of Word and Sacrament – can do better about re-porting and editorializing. Every church organization needs to be – pro ecclesia – for the church – for its well being, its growth, its witness, its truth-speaking, its strength in the gospel and in the power of the Spirit. Church organizations do not need success in worldly power, smear tactics, and lawsuits. Such things lead Christians to despair.
Christianity, after all, is the only world religion that actively urges its members to be agents of reconciliation, people who in our own lives and being, in our blood, bones, and spirits – are called upon to seek and make peace. We are invited to be stewards of the holy, universal church, and surely we ought to be able to speak to and about each other without resorting to innuendo and verbal savagery. Must holding each other accountable in our fragile denomination, a part of the body of Christ, reflect the policy of “mutually assured destruction?” Or is there a better way?
There is a better way. To arguably the most contentious church in the New Testament, Paul wrote:
From now on therefore we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new. All this is from God who has given us the ministry of reconciliation . . . in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. (II Cor. 5: 16ff.)
Kathy Galloway, leader of the Iona Community, reflecting upon the painful, long history of hostilities in Europe and especially of hostility between the Scots and the English, writes that in a book she has been reading about Northern Ireland, this sentence took her aback: “Christians are the visible fruits of God’s reconciliation in Christ.” She was not taken aback because she disagrees; in fact she knows it is impeccable theology. Rather she heard it as a claim on her life. And then she asks, are we visible fruits of reconciliation?
It’s a question for all of us, on whichever side of the aisle we sit. Even in profound disagreement, the Outlook extends a right hand of fellowship in the bond of peace.
— O. Benjamin Sparks
*Sniffen, now Associate Editor of Presbyterians Today and a fine journalist, accurately describes the rumor in the 1989 issue of The Layman. The Layman article states that “members of the Korean-American community in Southern California . . . accuse him [Rhee] of duplicity and of actively supporting North Korea’s plan to ‘communize’ the Korean peninsula.” That’s the printed rumor, and the fact is that Rhee is not now and never has been a tool of the North Korean Communists. He is a faithful servant of his (and our) Lord Jesus Christ.
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