The leaflet is a reprint of an article "Making '86 An Action Year on S. Africa" by Jerry Filteau, January 24, 1986. The article says in t9S6 U.S. Catholics and members of the other mainline Christian bodies can expect to see much more visible, concerted and intensified action by the U.S. churches to fight South African apartheid. The article says the church groups hope to help restore some kind of peace in a country that otherwise seems headed inexorably toward a bloody civil war. The article says answering last December's plea from South African church leaders to quit issuing statements and start doing things instead, some 150 leaders of U.S. churches, met in Washington Jan. 13 to devise a...
The leaflet is a reprint of an article "Making '86 An Action Year on S. Africa" by Jerry Filteau, January 24, 1986. The article says in t9S6 U.S. Catholics and members of the other mainline Christian bodies can expect to see much more visible, concerted and intensified action by the U.S. churches to fight South African apartheid. The article says the church groups hope to help restore some kind of peace in a country that otherwise seems headed inexorably toward a bloody civil war. The article says answering last December's plea from South African church leaders to quit issuing statements and start doing things instead, some 150 leaders of U.S. churches, met in Washington Jan. 13 to devise a common strategy against apartheid; they proclaimed 1986 "the year of action by U.S. churches against apartheid," and they seem ready to make good on that promise; economic pressure to force relatively peaceful change may be the only alternative to violence that could kill hundreds of thousands of people, they said. The article says among their plans for 1986, a day-long lobbying action on Capitol Hill this spring and a day of prayer, fasting and public witness June 16 are just the more obvious, public events; June 16 is the 10th anniversary of the Soweto riots - equivalent for black South Africans to the storming of the Bastille in France or the Boston Tea Party in the United States. The article says key goals enunciated by the U.S. church leaders include "comprehensive economic sanctions" against South Africa by the U.S. government, getting U.S. banks to deny South Africa any renewal or rollover of short-term loans coming due this spring, and escalating the campaign to force U.S. corporations to dissociate themselves from apartheid. The article says the group formed an Emergency Committee on Southern Africa, made up of several heads of U.S. churches, to flesh out a two-page strategy plan and devise ways for the churches to communicate and cooperate for more effective action; co-chairing the committee are the Rev. Avery Post, president of the United Church of Christ. and the Rev. N. Lorenzo Shepard, president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention. The article says several Catholic officials attended the meeting; they included Father Rollins Lambert, African affairs specialist of the U.S. Catholic Conference; Father Joseph Witmer, ecumenical affairs officer of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, who led the meeting's closing prayer; and African Missionary Father Thomas E. Hayden, president of the board of the Washington Office on Africa. The article discusses the World Council of Churches, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, Protestant bodies, the Anti-Apartheid Action Act, and President Reagan.
