Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam

Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam (CALCAV) became the largest ecumenical organization opposed to the war in Vietnam. A moderate group composed predominantly of Protestants, it maintained the American tradition of dissent despite opposition from the American government and the more conservative churchgoing public.

As early as 1963, ordained and lay church leaders had begun to speak out against the Vietnam War. As military action escalated, the protests of religious leaders also rose. In January 1966, Yale University chaplain William Sloan Coffin Jr. announced the formation of the National Emergency Committee of Clergy Concerned About Vietnam (CCAV) as an outlet for clerics who opposed U.S. policy in Indochina. Coffin had a history of political activism. Heavily involved with the civil rights movement, he had also cofounded, with Allard Lowenstein, Americans for Re-Appraisal of Far Eastern Policy in 1965 to push for official recognition of the People's Republic of China and advocate a cease-fire in Vietnam. Like many others in the religious community, Coffin had discovered the inequalities of American society through the civil rights movement, and this knowledge prompted him to reevaluate his acceptance of Cold War attitudes.

CCAV brought together many of the most prominent religious leaders in the nation, including the controversial antiwar priest Daniel Berrigan. Most of the members came from theologically liberal denominations: Methodist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, and United Church [Page 138]of Christ. Lutherans and Baptists were also members. Although the organization was all-male at its beginning, it eventually included 13 women among its 75-member national committee.

By April 1966, the members of CCAV had become convinced that the U.S. government intended gradually to escalate the Vietnam War. They decided to keep their organization in existence for the duration of the war and formed Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam. Richard Fernandez, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ who had once been arrested for civil rights activities, was named head of the new organization.

CALCAV's association with the American religious mainstream earned it greater respect in the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson than most of the other groups in the antiwar movement. It was even able to gain access to highly placed officials within the executive branch, though to little effect. CALCAV believed that the military escalation in Vietnam and the verbal attacks on war protesters at home indicated that the U.S. government was not genuinely interested in seeking a political solution to the war, despite statements to the contrary.

CALCAV maintained that the conflict in Vietnam did not result from communist aggression from the north but instead had begun as a civil war in the south. Some members challenged the arguments of the Johnson administration that American treaty commitments created a military obligation in Vietnam. Others denied the idea of monolithic communism and the validity of the domino theory (one country after another falling to communism) that had been used as early as 1954 by Pres. Dwight Eisenhower to justify intervention in Southeast Asia. Several leaders publicly stated that revolutions in some of these countries were needed to eliminate social, political, and economic problems and counseled the leaders of American government to respond to each individual situation rather than blindly interpret them all as communist-inspired attacks.

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