Clergy Opposed to War.

One of the centers of opposition to the American involvement in the war in Vietnam was the clergy. From the beginning, pacifists, such as A. J. Muste of the Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA), and antiwar organizations, such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Quakers, and the American Friends Service Committee, raised questions about the U.S. support for the regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam).

Minister's Vietnam Committee.

In September 1963, in the wake of Buddhist protests against the Diem regime's oppression, Rienhold Niebuhr and Harry Emerson Fosdick joined ten other clergymen to form the Ministers' Vietnam Committee, which took a full-page advertisement in The New York Times to protest American support for the repressive South Vietnamese government.

Presidential Issue.

After President Diem was toppled by the military, the situation in Vietnam...