Baldwin Finds Churches Racist

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31726, 9 July 1968, Page 13

Baldwin Finds Churches Racist

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) UPPSALLA (Sweden), July 8. The American Negro novelist, James Baldwin, has told the World Council of Churches that destruction of organised Christian churches might be “not only desirable but necessary” because, he said, they had promoted racism, United Press International reported.

Mr Baldwin, addressing the council’s fourth assembly yesterday, said he became embittered toward the Church because he said it affected his father, a Baptist minister. “In those days it was the Christian Church versus Black Sambo,” he said. “I saw white power destroy black minds—not merely on chain gangs and in slave labour but by every other method of oppression that could be imagined.” Mr Baldwin said Christianity still ruled the world to a sufficient degree “that it should be able to prevent the killing of another Martin Luther King, it should be able to change conditions in South Africa, and it should succeed in shutting off the dropping of bombs by my country on South-East Asia.”

The Associated Press reported that Mr Baldwin ended his study of black and white

with a plea to delegates to produce “not just good will and paper resolutions” but the initiate action on racial injustices. Delegates and others in the 700-strong audience crowding the university hall gave Mr Baldwin a minute-long standing ovation. The other guest-speaker was the British United Nations Ambassador, Lord Caradon (Sir Hugh Foot) who called for an internationally co-ordinated youth movement to combat racial Injustices. He also received a standing ovation. Lord Caradon declared that “none of us can escape a personal solution, an individual stand on the issue of racism, the most dominant and dangerous problem of our time.” He talked of the danger of a world-wide racial confrontation that “would make past conflicts look like family quarrels."