In the extraordinary summer of 1966, far from the exploding ghettos of the urban North and the tense confrontations in the Deep South, a minister and missionary of the Churches of Christ sets out on a journey that will change his life.
By 1966 Wendle Scott has long since committed himself to a message of good news and hope for the people of Mexico. His wife, Maria, whom he met when they were students at Abilene Christian College, is a Mexican citizen. They had married despite warnings from college administrators that "we don't believe in interracial marriage here." By 1966 they have five children. Wendle Scott preaches for a Spanish-speaking congregation in McAllen, Texas, and presides over a training school for Mexican preachers. All around him, throughout the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, Mexican laborers struggle to plant and harvest crops of fruits and vegetables for "Anglo" landowners. Most often these Mexican workers are itinerants, moving from farm to farm, living in primitive conditions, surviving on meager wages. Yet there is money here that they cannot find in impoverished Mexico, and so they come, year after year, to South Texas, where their labor is welcome but their presence is resented.
By 1966 a nascent farm-workers' labor movement has entered the fields of South Texas, proclaiming change and hope to Mexican laborers and arousing fierce hostility among Anglos throughout Texas. Wendle Scott has no choice but to choose, and choose he does. The Christian Chronicle, pursuing its newly minted "firm and vigorous editorial policy," tells the story. For Wendle Scott the route of the farm-workers' march is a road on which there is no place and no way to turn back. For better or worse, he is still on it. Others have chosen other roads.
Uncertainty as to the future of the work among Latin Americans in the McAllen, Tex., area is the result of a minister of the gospel joining a union-organized protest march of Mexican farm workers for higher wages.
The march, which involved over 100 persons (most of whom were Latin Americans), began July 4 in Rio Grande City, Tex., and concluded July 8 at San Juan, Tex. Wendle Scott, anglo minister for the Spanish-speaking Church of Christ in McAllen and director of a small training school for young Mexican preachers, entered the march the first day. He also brought seven of the young men in the training school into the march with him.
News releases in the secular press said that Scott represented 10 to 15 ministers of the Church of Christ in the Rio Grande Valley area. However Scott told the Chronicle that there were only nine eventually--himself, the seven students, and a Mexican preacher from Matamoros, Mexico, Adolfo Cepeda.
The five day march through several Rio Grande Valley cities was organized by farm labor unions in the Valley to back their demands for a $1.25 minimum wage for Latin field hands. The prevailing wage now is from $.85 to $1.00 per hour. The march was led by James L. Navarro, pastor of the Kashmere Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. At least one other preacher, a Methodist, joined the march one day.
The marchers followed an American flag, and a Catholic banner with a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The march was to end Friday, July 8 about 4:30 p.m. at San Juan, Tex. At 6 p.m. a mass was planned for the Catholics in the march at the San Juan Catholic Church. (Scott told the Chronicle that he was going to leave the march at the end and not go to the mass.) Scott's stated purpose was to help the cause of the Mexican laborer in the Valley and he cited several instances in his personal knowledge where members of his own congregation had been unfairly dealt with by Valley employers. "This was a moral question with me," he said "one of moral mistreatment, and I participated in the march as an individual."
He said he realized the march of the Mexican workers was organized by a union, but that he felt his participation in the march would help the Mexican workers to gain a little power in bargaining with their employers.
Monday afternoon, July 4, after Scott and the students (some of them Mexican citizens in school in the U.S.) had already participated in the first day's march, the elders of the Harvey Drive Church of Christ in McAllen asked him to meet with him [sic].
The McAllen elders do not sponsor Scott's work--either [5] with the Mexican church which numbers about 25 members, nor with the training school which meets in old church property at 700 N. Main in McAllen. Scott is supported by various churches and individuals and receives $390 monthly support for the school work from the Highland Church of Christ in Abilene. Both the church and school property in McAllen used by Scott are, however, owned by the Harvey Drive elders.
E. L. Crawford, one of the Harvey Drive elders, says that they met with Scott to try to persuade him the best thing for him to do was to withdraw from the march. They told him of their fears of the publicity the church would receive-- specifically because of the union backing of the march and because the Mexican organizations behind the march were "Communist-inspired." Scott refused to discontinue his participation in the March. He asked the elders what they were going to do. The elders, according to Crawford, said that although they had not made a decision up to that time on the matter, that unless he refrained from further participation in the march they would ask him to leave the church property and the school property in McAllen. They gave him until Tuesday, July 12 to vacate the school property.
The elders of the Highland Church of Christ in Abilene were meanwhile trying to contact Scott to ask him not to go on with the march. Dr. R. W. Varner, an Abilene physician, was quoted by the secular press as saying he had appealed in vain with Scott to stick with his mission work instead of "labor organizing." "We asked him several times yesterday (Tuesday) and up to midnight last night for Mr. Scott to permit us to fly down there to talk to him. We wanted to prevail on him to carry on his teacher work rather than his labor organizing work. He refused to let us come and said he was emotionally upset and did not want to talk to us. We were trying to reason with the man," Varner said.
Varner told the press that the 16 elders at Highland had agreed in a meeting to contact Scott and ask him to desist from marching. They felt their financial commitment in the McAllen school work gave them the right to insist on this. They also asked him to put the seven ministerial students back in school and not to involve them further in the march. Scott did take the boys out of the march the last two days, but continued until the end himself.
For two or three days Scott admittedly avoided phone calls and personal attempts of brethren in McAllen and Abilene to reach him and discuss the situation. On Thursday he and his wife left their home and stayed in a motel to escape the pressure of the phone calls.
He did talk to the Chronicle editor Friday at length. His explanation of this action was: "I had made a decision based on conviction and I felt there was no possibility of changing that decision." He said the phone calls--many of them from close friends--were kind, and thus upset him even more.
Scott told the Chronicle that he believes his action was justified as an individual Christian making public his belief in social rights for the Spanish people of the Valley. He reiterated that he was not representing the Churches of Christ in his march, but the secular press played it that way.
He also told the Chronicle that he believed neither the elders at McAllen nor the elders at Abilene had the right to order him out of the march. It was a personal decision on his part, he said, and not one with which the elders had a right to interfere.
The elders of both churches stated to the Chronicle that their interest was for the good of the church, and they felt their commitment in the work (McAllen church in the properties involved, and Abilene because of the financial commitment to the work) gave them the right to reason with the preacher and ask him not to march.
The upshot of the week's trying situation is this:
(1) Wendle Scott has been asked by the McAllen elders not to preach in the building owned by them which has been used by the Mexican brethren, although they said he and the Mexican brethren could continue to worship there.
(2) The future of the preacher training school for Latin Americans in McAllen is uncertain because the McAllen elders have asked Scott to vacate the premises by July 12. The elders at Highland in Abilene plan to meet soon with Scott to discuss the future of the school work. Scott told the Chronicle that he had received several letters and telegrams from brethren commending him for his action. Crawford said the McAllen elders had received many communications from churches in Texas backing them on their decision.
But at week's end the pros and cons of Wendel [sic] Scott's action in marching through the Rio Grande Valley were still reverberating. No one could foresee what the future held for his work as a preacher and teacher or for the small school for Latin American preachers which he has directed.
The elders of the Highland Church of Christ in Abilene met Wednesday night, July 13, and discontinued their support of Wendle Scott and the training school for Spanish-speaking preachers in McAllen, Tex.
Scott was in Abilene and was informed personally of the elders' decision. Wide publicity accompanied Scott's participation July 4-8 in a union-organized protest march for higher wages of over 100 Mexican farm workers in the Rio Grande Valley.
The Highland congregation was contributing $390 monthly to the work of teaching young Spanish-speaking men to preach. There were eight students in the school which was operated by Scott in property owned by the Harvey Drive Church of Christ in McAllen. Scott has also been the preacher for the 25-member Spanish-speaking Church of Christ in McAllen. The building they meet in is also owned by the Harvey Drive church.
The McAllen elders have asked Scott to vacate the school premises and not to preach for the Mexican congregation in the church building. This came as a result of Scott's refusal to withdraw himself from the protest march.
The Highland elders made their decision based on the same reason.
Scott told the Christian Chronicle that he is returning to McAllen, and that he plans to continue the school and church work with the Spanish-speaking brethren if he can obtain sufficient support from other sources.
LAS VEGAS, New Mexico--Members of the church of Christ meeting at 8th and Washington Streets in Las Vegas have agreed to send $100 each month to Wendle Scott of McAllen, Tex., to aid him in his work of training Spanish preachers. Thomas O. Mallory, part-time minister for the New Mexico church, told the Christian Chronicle July 25 that the first check had already been mailed to Scott.
Much of Scott's support has been cancelled recently since his participation July 4-8 in a union-organized labor protest march in the Rio Grande Valley of Mexican farm workers. The Highland Church of Christ in Abilene discontinued its $390 monthly support and the Harvey Drive Church of Christ in McAllen asked Scott to vacate the school property which they owned.
Mallory told the Chronicle that the Las Vegas group--which numbers about 60 members and has no elders--met and made the decision to send the money regularly. The congregation has an interest in the Latin-American work and especially in the preacher training work Scott has been engaged in.
Mallory preaches part-time for the 8th and Washington group. He is an English teacher in a local college.
There is also a Spanish-speaking congregation in Las Vegas. Joe Gomez serves as its minister. The two Las Vegas groups cooperate in many activities and there is full fellowship between them, Mallory said. The Spanish-speaking group is not, however, sending funds to Scott, Mallory continued.
These are unprecedented reports of an unprecedented situation. There is nothing like them before in the multivariate history of journalism among Churches of Christ. James Walter Nichols has decided that the Chronicle has "a responsibility to every reader to make an extraordinary effort to report the news unslanted." Such "news" as this has never been
"reported" in that way before, and rarely since. If this effort does not entirely succeed, it is nonetheless heroic. The Highland Church of Christ is by far the largest and most lucrative client of Fidelity Enterprises, which owns the Chronicle.
By 5 August, when the story of financial "support" for Wendle Scott is buried on page 10, the Chronicle's commitment to "a firm and vigorous editorial policy," however boldly conceived, is beginning to come unraveled. Walter Burch and Dwain Evans are seeking signatories for an advertisement defending Wendle Scott and soliciting support, but their effort fails--to the great relief, we may be sure, of James Walter Nichols. Most of those asked to sign this full-page ad refuse, for they do not want to risk their "influence"; most of those who would sign the ad are not asked, having no "influence" to risk.
R. W. Varner, M.D., the foremost exponent of John Birch ideology in conservative Abilene, will remain a pillar of the community and the Highland Church, wreaking political havoc for years to come.
For Wendle Scott the fervent support of scattered and mostly insolvent well-wishers is too little and too late. He soon concludes that he will have to leave the Churches of Christ, where he has found little sympathy for the moral decision that propelled him to social action rooted in the Gospel.
Today Wendle Scott owns and operates a small ranch near Nixon, Texas, where he breeds greyhounds and, in the years when it rains, a few cattle. His social, political, and religious opinions, forged in the fires of McAllen, appear weekly in the newspaper he edits, the Cow Country Courier. His wife, Maria, ill in body and wounded in spirit, caught in an unbearable dissonance with her husband and her Church and her people, ended her life by suicide.
The tragedy of Wendle Scott is the tragedy of the Churches of Christ. While it is true that no white minister of the Churches of Christ marched from Selma to Montgomery, it is also true that Wendle Scott marched from Rio Grande City to San Juan. For that he should be celebrated as a hero. The tragedy is that he marched alone, and alone he is still marching.
May God have mercy.
dhaymes, his mark +
(I gratefully acknowledge the indispensable assistance of Jake Vincent, who has been able to spend time with Wendle Scott at his home in Nixon.)
Let us add this letter to the series, for it is an historical document.
Let us grateful to our beloved Wendle--for so he is, and so he deserves
to be--for taking the time and the pain to put his reflections on the record.
May God grant him Peace--and, for the rest of us, may God have mercy.
dhaymes, his mark +
9 November 1996
Dear Don:
Long forgotten emotions are stirred by remembering those events of so long ago. To me it's like those things were done to someone other than myself. I was surprised by my feelings, and I think it might be interesting to you also.
When I searched through some old files, located, and read a Memo of Record I had written about that last meeting with the Highland elders, reading about it 30 years after the fact made me angrier than when it happened. At that time I felt more sorrow than anger. In 1966 much of my energy was devoted to protecting the Church of Christ from the horrible publicity it would have received if those publicity naive elders had gotten their way.
It would be correct to say those things actually happened to someone quite different than the Wendle Scott of today. Today, I feel mostly anger that such men had such power and used it so dictatorially.
I think the reports in the Christian Chronicle were accurate and that they succeeded in reporting the matter fairly. There are a couple of very minor errors but they weren't important even in 1966, much less in 1996.
One error that might be worth correcting is that most of the farm workers who were involved in the march were not from Mexico. They were residents of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Their ancestors had emigrated from Mexico but the marchers were mainly U.S. citizens.
As to "asked" and "ordered": During the march I don't remember dealing with any Highland elder except Dr. Varner. In truth, he did the dealing, I was just the object being dealt with.
Dr. Varner never asked, he demanded, and very emphatically at that. After the march was over and I met with the Highland elders, they also demanded. In that meeting I was demeaned and insulted, mostly by their spokesman, Dr. Varner. Not one elder ever indicated the least disapproval of his treatment of me. The guilt of the other elders consisted mostly in allowing their chosen spokesman to behave so recklessly toward another human being.
I understand that these elders are long gone. I hope that their attitude of "Lording it over" is also long gone from that eldership. In those years I worked with a number of elderships but none had the kind of attitude that those men at Highland had.
During the week of the march several Highland members contacted me. Other than their TOTAL subservience to the elders their attitudes were good. I would classify their efforts as "asking" not "ordering."
The elders of the McAllen church (Harvey Drive) also had a much better attitude. We sharply disagreed but with mutual respect. They did use their power as owners of the Spanish church property to order me never to enter it. That was quickly amended so that I was to allowed to attend church services but not permitted to take any public part in any church service. Their concept of congregational autonomy might be criticized, but little else.
The proposed full-page ad in the Chronicle was actually published (back-cover as I remember). There were some quite influential names in it. Dr. Frank Pack was one. Also at the end of the year when the Chronicle listed the top ten stories of the year this story was included. I think it was listed as seventh.
The Spanish Preacher Training Program ended almost immediately. Due to the valiant efforts of Elder Ralph Sweet a church in Austin (I'm sorry I don't remember its name) courageously offered to sponsor the program. But they required me to pay all moving expenses. I could have handled my personal moving expenses but moving the library and other school equipment was more than I could handle so sorrowfully I sent the students back to Mexico and found a secular job.
Yours,
Wendle Scott
This document is a transcription of notes prepared by Wendle Scott in the heat of controversy over his participation in the farm workers' march in South Texas in 1966. It is preceded by a note to Jacob Vincent, who transmitted the text to me.
This account of these events is an extraordinary primary source. i have edited the format in which it was transmitted, but these are the words of Wendle Scott as they were written in 1966, accompanied by a poignant postscript from 1996.
For several weeks I have been having difficulties with my email. I received your message only yesterday.
I mentioned to you that I had written an account of events regarding the Farm Workers' March as they happened. Since you were here I found a copy of it. If I can figure out how to use the "Attachment" portion of this program I will send you a copy of it. Feel free to use it as you choose.
[material deleted (by JV)]
It is unrevised--if I should write it today it would be somewhat different in tone--but I did add a postscript.
Wendle Scott
Prelude: The elders of the Harvey Drive Church of Christ in McAllen, Texas, came to me in October of 1958 and requested me to move to McAllen so they could have a "sound man" on whom to build a school for training Spanish-speaking preachers.
An agreement was made that I would receive $40.00 per week for part-time preaching until such time as the school operation was actually begun. The $40.00 was later increased to $50.00.
On January 4, 1961, our first class met. I was put on a full-time salary paid by the church, now known as the Harvey Drive congregation. Near the end of that year the financial commitment for their new building made it impossible for the Harvey Drive church to continue my support. As a result, both their support and oversight of the training program were discontinued.
I took a job as an operator of a printing press in the daytime and taught evening classes until I could raise enough support to return to full-time teaching. From the fall of 1961 until early 1965 I continued the school without the oversight of any group of elders.
Late in 1964 some members of the Highland church in Abilene became interested in the training program. This resulted in the Highland elders assuming the oversight of the school in February of 1965. Highland members agreed to support six students. This was mutually satisfactory and beneficial.
On July 2, 1966, I sent a short, two-sentence notice to some Valley newsmedia stating that a group of 10 to 14 Valley ministers and ministerial students would join a workers' march for better wages.
That evening brother C. E. Wamble, elder, called expressing his disapproval and requesting that I talk to a Harlingen newspaperman and emphasize that our action was individual and that we were not representing the church (this was done) and also requesting that I talk to brother E. R. McLaughlin, another elder at Harvey Drive.
Brother McLaughlin insisted that the march was led by people trained in a communist school and that I should not join the march. He asked if I had a fact-finding committee to check on the situation. I replied that I had personally spent 9 years fact-finding on exploitation of the Latin American farm workers.
On July 4, along with one other minister (Adolfo Cepeda, of Matamoros, Mexico) and 7 ministerial students, I joined the workers march. A number of newsmen talked to me. To each of them I emphasized the individual nature of our participation.
When we returned home, we found calls from each of the Harvey Drive elders, and a telegram from Dr. R. W. Varner, an elder of the Highland church in Abilene. Dr. Varner's telegram requested me to wire or call immediately.
When I contacted the Harvey Drive elders they wanted me to meet with them that same afternoon, so I decided to meet with them before calling Dr. Varner. The meeting with the Harvey Drive elders was attended by E. L. Crawford, C. E. Wamble, E. R. McLaughlin, Jeff Wilson, and myself. I was told that "There are farmers in these Valley churches and they are fighting mad. We are under strong pressure to move you out of our property if you continue marching." I recommended that they should announce that I did not represent them nor did they approve of my actions but that they recognized my right to speak out as an individual. This they refused to do.
Dr. Varner called during the middle of this conference but, even after being told that I was busy and would call him as soon as the conference ended, he continued to insist that I speak to him immediately. On his third attempt I agreed to interrupt the conference to talk to him immediately. The conversation was quite short.
Dr. Varner: Wendle, I'm speaking for the Highland elders. We don't want you or the students to take part in that communist-led march.
Scott: We have already marched today.
Varner: Don't do it any more.
Scott: I have to continue.
Varner: Are you going to continue with us telling you not to?
Scott: Yes, sir!
Varner: Then we don't have much left to talk about. You will probably lose Highland's support.
Varner hung up.
After this, the meeting with the Harvey Drive elders continued. I asked them if they planned to move the school out of the North Main property. They replied that if we continued the march pressure would probably force them to do so. I told them I would like to know.
Jeff Wilson: (Standing up) Do you want a decision right now?
Scott: Yes, sir!
Wilson: I propose that we demand that Scott move his school possessions out of the North Main property immediately. That Wendle Scott be forbidden to enter our church property at 1921 Gumwood, and that we send letters marking Wendle Scott to the brotherhood as a troublemaker and a divider of churches.
The first two items were approved; the last was not acted upon. I then asked them if they really wanted me to move immediately. I requested the remainder of the month. The elders said they didn't think the brethren would allow them to give us that much time. I suggested they wouldn't want to act in a way that made them appear vindictive, so they decided on 12 days.
Next I asked if I was actually forbidden to enter the church building where I had preached and worshipped for almost eight years. They decided they only meant to forbid me to preach, but that I could continue to worship there.
After the second day's march I received two phone calls from personal friends, members of the Highland church, David Fry and Bob Bailey. Both of these conversations further disturbed my already upset emotions. In particular, Bob's long sincere and fervent appeals for repentance to save my soul from hell left me extremely unsettled. A close friend with whom I talked a short time later declared that I was actually incoherent.
To avoid further emotional agitation I left the telephone receiver off the hook. Shortly before 10:00 o'clock that night brother Crawford came to the house with a request from the Highland elders that I meet with them and talk to them the following afternoon.
After giving more than an hour to consideration of my unsettled emotions vs. my natural inclination to please the Highland elders, I notified brother Crawford that I would not meet with the Highland elders until I was once again in control of my nerves. I told brother Crawford that the only Highland members with whom I would talk were James Walter Nichols or Lane Cubstead, since I thought no one else seemed to understand the damage that would be done to the church by the press if I should bow to the elders' demands to stop marching.
The next day, Wednesday, July 6, I obtained the assistance of a young woman to take calls at our house so that my wife and I could move to a motel to avoid further mental disturbances.
My refusal to talk with the Highland elders was based on two main considerations: (1) I was very near the limits of my emotional endurance. For four days I hadn't been able to eat solids, only liquids, and I had slept only with the aid of sleeping pills (for the first time in my life); (2) I could not in good conscience obey their demand that I stop marching.
Wednesday morning I asked the students to remain home and not to join the workers' march due mainly to the opposition of the Highland elders who were supplying their support. Another consideration was the desire to avoid even the slightest appearance that the training school was being officially represented.
David Fry, Highland deacon and a leader of the mission committee, had told me that if I had marched alone, without the students, it would have been a different matter. In this, I was attempting to show that I was not indifferent to the wishes of the Highland elders. That evening, in our periodical checks with our house, we learned that David Fry and Joe Corbin had flown down to talk to me despite my statement that I would not speak to any Highland members except the two before-mentioned Chronicle editors.
The following week I learned that two Highland elders were also with them. After leaving our house, they went to the students' dormitory and had the students call the house saying that they had an emergency and that I should call them. We told the girl to find out what kind of emergency they had, and to tell us on our next call in fifteen minutes. Naturally we did not call them when we learned the nature of the emergency
Brother Jake Pratt, another member of Highland, also tried to contact us Wednesday. I told the girl to notify him that I was available to anyone during the march hours and he agreed to meet me there. (The Highland elders could have seen and talked to me any day at the march.) Thursday morning I asked brother Pratt to stand with me at the side of the road as the marchers passed by. He saw the kind of people who were marching and talked with me for at least an hour. He saw Latin Americans come to me and express their sincere appreciation for my help to their people. His original intention of attempting to convince me that I should stop marching was changed by what he saw to the extent that he urged me, "Since it has gone as far as it has, you must not stop marching until the end." Brother Pratt did urge that I should stop before the march entered the Catholic Church in San Juan, which I did. He later spoke in our favor to the elders at Highland on Sunday, July 10.
We spent Wednesday and Thursday nights in the motel and then moved back home on Friday morning. Friday afternoon I spent most of my time taking pictures of the marchers. Due to numerous blisters on each foot and to a blistered face and scalp I could not march continuously on Friday. However, I did march the last part of the way into San Juan and up to the edge of the Catholic Church property. There I said goodbye and shook hands with the workers as they marched by.
Friday evening James Walter Nichols called and urged me to meet with the Highland elders. I told him I would certainly do so as soon as possible. Saturday I rested some and managed to get my feelings under better control. Sunday I called David Fry and made an appointment to meet with the Highland elders on Wednesday, July 20. Monday night, brother Neal McLeskey, elder, urgently requested that I come to Abilene to meet with the elders the following Wednesday night, July 13. After the McAllen elders agreed to give us an extra week to move from their property my wife and I left for Abilene the following afternoon.
Wednesday evening after the worship service the elders met. After a wait of about 30 to 45 minutes they called me in. The most important points of the conversation, as nearly as I can remember them, went as follows.
Dr. Varner: Due to my involvement in this matter I have been chosen to speak for the elders. We are not interested in discussing whether the march or your part in it was justified or not. We feel that you have disobeyed the elders and have hurt the church. Oh, how you have hurt the church!! We are interested in salvaging the students, and you if possible. You were working for us and left your work against our wishes.
Scott: I was not working for you. I work for the Lord.
Varner: We were supporting you.
Scott: Highland has never supported me, not one dime.
Varner: We do support you! Didn't you get a deposit slip from Highland this month?
Scott: You support six students, but not me personally.
Varner: We oversee you as elders.
Scott: No, sir! You oversee the training program only.
Varner: We oversee and control you 24 hours a day.
Scott: No, sir!
W. F. Cawyer: Wendle, our minutes state that we assumed oversight of you, Wendle Scott.
Scott: I haven't read your minutes. My understanding was that you were to oversee the training school. I did not understand that you wanted, for example, to oversee my preaching and teaching to the Spanish-speaking church in McAllen, much less my individual activities.
Neal McLeskey: We feel that we have complete oversight of you. For example, Stanley Shipp, whom we support, in L[a]usanne, Switzerland, is under our oversight. He goes wherever we tell him to go. He can't even leave L[a]usanne without our permission, not so much as to leave town, without contacting us first.
Varner: Why didn't you consult with us before participating in this protest march?
Scott: Since I acted as an individual and not as a representative of the church, nor of the school, I felt you had no scriptural right to tell me what to do in this matter. To be quite frank, if I had consulted with you, you would have said, "Don't do it!" Then when I did what my conscience told me to do you would have been even madder at me than you are now.
Varner: (with strong emphasis) You want to talk frank.You should have talked to us first, and then resigned if you wouldn't obey the elders. I'll talk frank with you!
Scott: [Silence]
Varner: You quit your work and went out to that march honky tonking around.
Scott: Dr. Varner, do you really want to accuse me of honky tonking?
Varner: I don't know anything better to call it. I don't mean you were dancing and such, but I don't know anything else to call it. You weren't doing what you were being paid to do.
Scott: If you don't think I was serving properly, consider it a vacation. I've been teaching and studying 12 months a year for five years without any vacation, except Christmas holidays.
Varner: That's not the point.
Scott: No, sir! It isn't the point.
Varner: You disobeyed the elders and flaunted it in our faces when we tried to reason with you
about it.
Scott: I did disobey you because I must obey God rather than men, but I did not do it disrespectfully.
Varner: You refused to talk to us, and when we came anyway, hoping we might see you on the street you refused to talk with us.
Scott: Yes sir. I was so torn up emotionally my health wouldn't permit me to talk more with you at that time.
Varner: There isn't an ounce of truth in that!
Scott: Dr. Varner, do you really want to declare me to be untruthful?
Varner: There isn't an ounce of truth in it! Any man who isn't too sick to walk ten miles a day, isn't too sick to talk 15 minutes with men who love him and want to help him.
Scott: (To all elders) Do you brethren want to permit your spokesman to make this accusation without saying anything? . . . Brother Cawyer, do you agree with Dr. Varner?
Cawyer: You should have talked with us.
Varner: Since we have no control over you, and apparently never have had, we have decidedto discontinue our support and any connection with the school in McAllen.
Scott: I would like to request that you brethren, or at least some of you, fly down and see the workers' march with your own eyes. Seeing it made a lot of difference to the only Highland member who has seen it.
[Silence]
W.C. Smith: I won't be there.
Cawyer: Wendle, let's be awful careful what we say in the church papers and to the public press.
Scott: Brother Cawyer, I won't be vindictive but I reserve the right to tell them what you have decided and done.
Cawyer: Will you tell them that we want to continue supporting the students somewhere else under another teacher?
Scott: I can't very well tell them that I am confident Christians will supply us with adequate support, and then add, but in case they don't . . . .
Cawyer: Will you cooperate with us to send them to Lubbock? They have more teachers and a broader curriculum there, anyway.
Scott: In case I am unable to raise support to continue in McAllen I will advise the students to go elsewhere to study.
Varner: We have a right to ask you to cooperate and send them now since we have money invested in these students.
Scott: You have money invested in them but I have five years of my life invested in them.
W. C. Smith: I don't see that we have anything further to talk to him about.
I was dismissed from the meeting.
The following afternoon, Thursday, I met with David Fry, Bob Bailey, and Joe Corbin, all members at Highland. We discussed the extent of the authority of elders. I was amazed to find that at least two of them felt that they had a scriptural obligation to obey the elders in their purely family and business affairs, even where no question of morals or religion were involved. A specific point was whether one could have a dog or what breed of dog. One brother assured me he would submit to the elders' wishes even in such a matter as his dog.
Friday we started home, passing through Austin and San Antonio, where we spoke with several brethren in an effort to locate funds to replace the $420.00 per month we have lost. Our plans are to continue our work. Of course, many Christians and churches must come to our rescue with regular monthly financial support if we are to demonstrate that not all churches of Christ are indifferent to injustice and human suffering in the 20th Century.
To whom it may concern:
Everything previous to the double line above was written immediately after the events themselves while they were fresh in my memory. They were written from the perspective of a young minister who was following the example of a Galilean carpenter.
If I were to write about those events today the perspective would be quite different. The facts would remain the same but my attitude would be much less subservient.
Thirty years later, upon reviewing these events, I'm amazed at how I made concession after concession to those small-minded men, jumping through hoops in a useless attempt to please them, when it's painfully obvious that nothing short of total capitulation could have satisfied them.
At that time my main emotion was sorrow. From my present perspective of one who has freed himself from youthful brain washing, my main emotion is anger--anger at those tiny tyrants who coveted power to such an obscene degree.
I also feel pride. Pride that in the essentials I stood up to their bullying just as long ago the young carpenter refused to yield to an abusive high priest.
These events were pivotal in my life; they caused me to reevaluate the fruits of the church of Christ philosophy. This eventually enabled me to free myself from it.
Most Elders are chosen from among the most financially successful church members. Whether they be farmers or businessmen, their own self-interest will outweigh all spiritual considerations.
Perhaps I should even feel gratitude toward those two elderships. Their dedication to radical conservative politics forced me to take a long, hard look at the shifting foundation on which I had built my life.
Without this crisis I might never have found a better way of life, one based on real truth rather than on myths and miracles. And it is true that . . . the truth shall make you free.
Wendle Scott
dhaymes, his mark +