Henry Smith Leiper

Henry Smith Leiper (born September 17, 1891 in Belmar , New Jersey , † January 22, 1975 in Heightown ) was an American missionary and church official.

Life

Leiper was the eldest of three sons of the Reverend Joseph McCarrell Leiper, a Presbyterian missionary, and his wife Fannie Heywood (Smith) Leiper († 1895). The father, the son of Scottish Presbyterians, worked for the Dodd Mead publishing house before giving up his job to study at Union Theological Seminary . The mother was a former music teacher and the daughter of a managing editor of the Chicago Tribune , who later went to Massachusetts and became a member of parliament.

In 1889, the parents went as missionaries in the Indian territory of present-day Oklahoma , where Joseph Leiper (to the pastor minister ) ordained was. After her mother's death, Leiper was raised by various aunts and her maternal grandmother in Worcester , Massachusetts. From 1905 Leiper attended the preparatory school of Maryville College in Knoxville , Tennessee . He then spent three years at the Blair Hall Academy in New Jersey.

In 1913 he received a bachelor's degree from Amherst College . During his studies there, he learned to play the organ and piano and wrote for the student newspaper. At the end of his studies, he decided to pursue a career as a missionary. In 1915 he was ordained a Presbyterian pastor. After earning a master's degree in philosophy and ethics from Columbia University in 1917 , Leiper went to China as a missionary in 1918, where he remained until 1922. During this time he met the young Mao Zedong , who temporarily worked as his library assistant in Beijing .

1930 Leiper was executive secretary ( executive secretary ) of the American section of the World Council for Life and Work ( Universal Christian Council for Life and Work ) and Secretary of the Department for the maintenance of relations with churches abroad of the National Council of Christian Churches in America ( secretary of the Department of Relations with Churches Abroad of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America ). In this capacity he made two longer trips to Germany in 1933 and 1934 in order to get an idea of ​​the situation of the churches and of the faithful under the rule of the National Socialists. During his visit in 1933 it came a. for a meeting with Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller . In the following years, Leiper was considered a leading luminary for the situation of the Church in Germany and - later - in other countries that came under National Socialist rule. After his return he wrote a brochure published by Friends of Europe on the repression of the churches in Germany.

In the following years, Leiper used his position as secretary of the World Council to support the work of the Confessing Church in Germany. In addition to providing organizational assistance, he arranged for the translation of Martin Niemöller's autobiography into English. In the spring of 1939, at Reinhold Niebuhr's request, he brought the young theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer to New York in order to get him out of the focus of events there for a while, as he was threatened with political fire in Germany.

These and similar actions brought Leiper a place on the black list of the National Socialist police organs: In the spring of 1940 he was placed on the special wanted list GB , a list of persons who would be succeeded by the occupying forces in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht Special SS commandos should move into the country, should be located and arrested with special priority.

From 1938 to 1952 Leiper served as Associate General Secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), the provisional (and from 1948 definitive) World Council of Churches . In this position he was a prominent advocate of the demand for the establishment of world peace and the idea of ​​a detente of different nations and political ideologies. From 1948 to 1952 he also acted as editor of the organ of the Ecumenical Ecumenical Courier .

From 1945 to 1948 he held the post of ecumenical and then foreign secretary of the Federal Council of Churches . From 1952-1959 Leiper executive secretary (was executive secretary ) of the Council for missionary work ( Congregational Christian Church's mission council ).

In 1915 Leiper married Eleanor Lansing Cory. From the marriage, the son Hal Leiper (1918-1960) and the daughter Carrell Leiper (1916-2007) emerged.

Awards

In 1935, Leiper received an honorary doctorate from Amherst College and in 1938 the PiLambdaPhi Association Prize for Tolerance.

Fonts

• Personal View of the German Churches under the Revolution. A Confidential Report based on Intimate personal Contact with the Leaders on both Sides of the Church and State Controversy in the Third Reich , 1933.
• The Church-State Struggle in Germany: A Personal View Based on Two Months' Intimate Contact with the Situation in Europe During August and September, 1934 , 1935.
• Christ's Way and the World's, in Church, State and Society , 1936.
• World Chaos or World Christianity , 1937.
• From U-Boat to Pulpit , 1937. (Translator)
• Pilgrimage to Amsterdam , 1947.
• Churchmen who defy Hitler , 1947.
• Blind spots. Experiments in the Self-Cure of Race Prejudice , 1948.
• Relations Between the Ecumenical Movement and the Vatican in the Twentieth Century. Memorandum , 1950.

literature

Current Biography , 1947, pp. 374-376.

• William John Schmidt, Edward Ouellette: What Kind of a Man ?: The Life of Henry Smith Leiper , 1986.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Entry on Henry Smith Leiper on the special wanted list GB (reproduction of the list on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London).