Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 10. Juli 2003 / Time Line July 10, 2003
Version 3.007/10/2003
Herman Will, former church peace worker, dies
By United Methodist News Service
Herman Will Jr., who spent 37 years working for peace and justice
and wrote a history of Methodism's peace witness, has died.
Will, 88, a former staff executive of the United Methodist Board of
Church and Society, was remembered Oct. 4 at a memorial service. He
died Sept. 27 in Des Moines, Wash.
"Herman Will was an unrelenting guardian of justice and was
unafraid to witness to the church's commitment to world peace and
attendant issues," said the Rev. Thom White Wolf Fassett, former
top executive at the board in Washington. The two men worked
together for four years before Will retired in 1980.
After retiring from the board, Will was hired to write a history of
the church's peace witness, titled, A Will for Peace (Peace Action
in the United Methodist Church: A History).
Will embraced religious pacifism and became involved in the
national youth movement of the former Methodist Episcopal Church at
age 19. He served as youth secretary for the Methodist Commission
on World Peace and was president of the National Council of
Methodist Youth from 1939 to 1940.
He was a delegate to the 1939 Uniting Conference of the Methodist
Church, which merged three branches of Methodism that had been
separated over issues of race and lay representation.
Because of his pacifist leanings, he became a conscientious
objector when drafted during World War II. He performed alternative
service primarily as the director of the Castaner Project, a rural
hospital and service project in the mountains of Puerto Rico that
was operated by the Church of the Brethren. He traveled, speaking
and organizing for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation
in Cuba and Mexico.
Will also worked with members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation
on issues of desegregation and racial justice, culminating in the
1942 creation of the Congress of Racial Equality.
He served as administrative secretary for the Board of World Peace
of the Methodist Church in Chicago. When the Board of Christian
Social Concerns, now the Board of Church and Society, was formed in
1960, he moved to Washington, directing the peace division until he
retired in 1980. He also played a role in the creation of the
Church Center for the United Nations in New York in 1963.
Fassett said that Will's abilities as a lawyer, along with his
knowledge of the church and its public policy agenda, served the
denomination "in powerful ways to witness to the convictions that
were embodied in the Social Principles."
In 1994, responding to a query from grandson Alexander Lwazi Will,
the retired church executive offered words of advice. "Don't
believe all you hear on TV or read in the papers," he said. "Be
independent in your thinking. Remember that the U.S. has one form
of democracy and that political leaders here are greatly influenced
by campaign contributions from wealthy and powerful individuals and
corporations and their lobbies, and less by labor unions, mainline
churches and social reform organizations. We are a very violent
nation and have more people in jail than any other country in the
world.
"Religion can help you to be more concerned about others, less
about yourself, and to seek justice and peace."
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