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According to an official W.C.C. paper, the antiracism grants, admittedly token amounts, allow the council to "move beyond charity and involve itself in the redistribution of power." The anti-racist money, raised separately from regular W.C.C. dues, is earmarked for welfare purposes, not military spending, but the W.C.C. does not monitor its use. Opponents say the grants amount to a moral endorsement of terrorism. Even America's pro-ecumenical Christian Century editorialized that because the welfare grants merely free funds for war use, those backing the armed struggle in Rhodesia should be candid about their role as "vicarious doers of violence."
In a bitter struggle like the one in Rhodesia, atrocities on both sides are inevitable. The Rhodesian guerrillas are accused of many attacks on noncombatants, including the murder of as many as 40 missionaries and members of their families. In June alone, two Salvation Army officers and four other missionaries were shot, and eight adults and five children from Britain's Elim Pentecostal mission were bludgeoned to death. The Patriotic Front officially disavows the Elim massacre and other bloody incidents. But the front's leaders, Joshua Nkomo and the Marxist-oriented Robert Mugabe, are probably unable to control their own forces. Many guerrilla commanders consider missionaries part of the country's administrative structure and may make religious groups targets for terror to undermine government control and encourage white flight. One guerrilla commander told TIME: "We've warned the missionaries to leave. If they don't heed our warnings, we can't help it if they get killed."
The Rhodesian grant raises an ancient and troubling question: Just how deeply should the church get involved in violent political disputes? The W.C.C. staff, headed by General Secretary Philip Potter, a West Indian activist who refuses to answer questions on Rhodesia, believes that Christian justice demands the "liberation" of oppressed peoples, a program that includes an end to white minority governments. And in that process, violence may be necessary. The Rhodesian grant, in fact, is popular among most Third World churches, and was approved by Canada's Anglican Primate E.W. Scott and other officers. The overall antiracist grants program survived unscathed at the 1975 W.C.C. Assembly in Nairobi, attended by delegates from all World Council member churches, where a pointed floor proposal to deny church money to violent organizations was voted down.