Letters
"While I have been a reader for some time of the Gospel Guardian and as yet am unconverted to its stand on current issues, I am thankful that the other side is occasionally printed and that I can air a pet peeve of mine.
Many times I have read in the paper that you brethren are accused of not believing in supporting widows and orphans and have read your defense. Personally I have heard no such charge and understand perfectly that you do not believe in churches contributing to Orphan Homes and Homes for The Aged that are among us. Furthermore, in your paper you have set forth clearly that you are not opposed to Orphan Homes and that such have a right to exist if supported by individual contributions only and that you do believe in them. I concur that you have every right to make your position clear and call to account any who would falsely accuse you.
By the same token I call attention to the writers of the Guardian to some very unfair expressions very commonly used either to prejudice minds against those who hold to the position that I do (that churches may contribute to our orphan homes) or simply to designate us.
'Institutional Brethren' and 'institutional minded brethren' are often used by Guardian writers. Since you set forth in your editorial that 'institutional' orphan homes have a perfect right to exist and that everybody agrees to the right, and give editorial endorsement to Brother Plyler's articles in which he sets forth that the difference is only in church support and that they have a right to exist if without it, how is it that we are institutional brethren and institutional minded or as Bro. Lewis put it institutional boys, and those who hold with you are not? If indeed you believe in them and we believe in them would we not both be institutional brethren and our difference only in the question of church support? I think this is readily as unfair an expression as for any of us to say that you do not believe in them or in the care of widows and orphans.
Boyd E. Morgan El Paso, Texas
July 30, 1957 Dear Brother Tant:
Thanks for running my article in the Gospel Guardian this week. I have received a number of kind remarks on my stand and the article, and so far no quarantine nor boycott.
Just in case someone might not notice that there was a word left out in the title of the article, I wonder if you would mind running a small correction at your earliest convenience. The title of the article was "I Want You To Know Where I Stand," but it came out in the Guardian "I Want to Know Where I Stand." Maybe I don't exactly know where I "am at," but it was not my intention to make any such confession when I wrote the tract.
Yours fraternally, Mack Kercheville Fort Worth, Texas
July 31, 1957 Brother Tant:
I, along with others, would like to see the article by Mack Kercheville in the last Guardian put into tract form for free distribution. Every church opposed to present day innovations should buy and distribute them by the hundreds. I think it would open the eyes of many who do not know the truth on the matters discussed.
Yours in Christ, R. L. Yancey
Yokohama, Japan July 13, 1957
Dear Brethren:
I have thoroughly enjoyed the sincere and honest stand of the Gospel Guardian on the difficulties and problems that have confronted the church in recent years. It behooves us all to be ever watchful over the 'bride of the Lamb," and to guard her continuously with the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. We need more soldiers of the cross who are willing to fight the good fight of faith and contend earnestly, but with meekness and humility, for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.
We realize that in preaching the whole counsel of God (that like Paul, we may be free from the blood of all men) we will encounter much opposition from those who are making merchandise of the gospel. The thing that disturbs my loyal wife and me here in Japan is the fact that from those whom one would expect to receive the loyal support and backing, we encounter the most opposition. I am referring to the eight missionaries and their families who are resident instructors on the campus of Ibaraki Christian College. Omia, Ibaraki-Ken, Japan. Their continuous interference with the activities of the G. I. (Service Men) Churches of Christ and their continued efforts to milk them dry financially for the support of the college and themselves has caused many of us to wonder as to what, if any, screening was given these men by the churches who support them before they were sent into foreign lands to preach. Brethren Carroll, Gurganus, and now Brother Nichols, have felt the scourge of these brethren at Ibaraki simply because they have refused to align themselves with the college, and insist that the church only should be the organization for evangelizing the world. Brother Forrest Pendergrass who formerly preached for the Church of Christ worshiping at the Chapel Center here in Yokohoma and who is working full time as an instructor at the Ibaraki Christian College admitted from the pulpit that the church was not succeeding in gaining converts; therefore he left the native church in Yokohoma and joined the ranks of the seven other missionaries at the college "in order to reach more young men and women."
In addition to Brother Pendergrass' highly irregular and questionable handling of the funds American churches have sent him, and his refusal to account for $4,300.00 he obtained from the G. I. church here, his preaching from the pulpit is so saturated with modernism and philosophy that he rarely if ever quotes any scripture during his sermons. Prior to our arrival here in Japan he had dominated the local group of Christians here in Yoko-homa, and was having everything his own way. It is unfortunate that many of the service men and their wives are, for the most part, only babes in Christ and therefore easy marks for these young, enterprising and money grabbing missionaries from Ibaraki Christian College.
My wife and I took a short vacation during the first part of the month of June and drove throughout the southern and western parts of Japan. To our amazement, we only found two American women trying to teach the natives the truth of the gospel. They do not consider themselves as "missionaries" in the sectarian sense, but are devoting their lives as teachers. One of these ladies, Sister Nettie Lee Ewing, who works with the native church in Shizuoka, Japan, and has spent the last thirty years among the people here, has also felt the quarantine from the brethren at Ibaraki. These brethren pose as "missionaries" to Japan, but in reality are following a private vocation as instructors at Ibaraki Christian College, with the evangelization of Japan occupying only a very small part of their time. Not one male missionary could we find all throughout southern and Western Japan. When we asked Sister Ewing why none of our brethren were working in these localities, she replied, "They say it is too lonely out here for them; at least that is what they have told me when I approached them with a plea to locate at Shizuoka, Nagoya, Kyota, Osaka, and other areas throughout Japan."
We believe it is about time that the churches back home learn of the true conditions existing here in Japan. We are aware of the fact that Bro. Logan J. Fox. the President of Ibaraki Christian College, was recently in the States, and expounding the merits of I.C.C. But we are likewise pretty certain that the things I have just written were never mentioned by him at any time. If you would like to verify these statements of mine, you may do so by writing Bro. George Gurganus, Freed-Hardeman College, Henderson, Tennessee. Bro. Gurganus has recently left Japan after a sojourn here for the past ten years and has accepted a position to teach at the college beginning with the fall term.
I trust I have not bored you with all the details I have related. I have spent the past twenty-seven years in the service of my country; and since becoming a member of the Lord's church in November, 1953, I have devoted all of my non-duty time to working in the vineyard of the Lord.
I firmly and sincerely believe that the Lord's church, built in accordance with the Divine pattern given in the New Testament, is able and fully capable of accomplishing everything God gave her to do. And she needs no blood-sucking parasites attached to her for the purpose of draining from the Lord's treasury money to further the institutions built by men. I am not anti-college, and I would like to see every young man and girl in the church have the very best education that their individual abilities or their families can afford. But I am definitely opposed to using the Lord's money, from the church treasury, to support any institution to do what God commanded the church to do. Furthermore, I am opposed to the colleges taking over the field of evangelization — a work which God gave to His church. If such conviction brands me as an anti-hobby-rider, radical, and the like, then I'll just have to bear the stigma. For as Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, "For I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."
May God continue to bless your efforts to guard that which is committed unto us, the purity and sanctity of the church of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Yours in Christ, Howard S. McCutcheon
Lt. Col. Howard S. McCutcheon, 051703 Office of the Provost Marshal,
Hq. U. S. Army, Japan APO 343, San Francisco, California