How Churches Helped Build & Give Away the Panama Canal
When President Jimmy Carter wanted to get the Panama Canal treaties passed in the U.S. Senate in 1977, the Baptist Sunday School teacher turned to gospel music. Or at least to a mostly-blind gospel music disc jockey.
Rev. J. Bazell Mull of Knoxville, Tennessee, was heard on the radio coast-to-coast each night — and elsewhere in North America and the Caribbean — with his “Mull’s Singing Convention” as he broadcast gospel tunes. The New York Times noted one such popular song: “I Went to an Old Camp Meeting with the Devil (But I Came Home with the Lord).” He had an audience of millions, to whom he also sold records and Bibles. And he hosted a Sunday morning TV show, on which Dolly Parton made her first TV appearance.
The 63-year-old Mull left the studio in the basement of his home for multiple trips to the White House to help Carter sell the treaties in which the U.S. gave control of the Panama Canal to the Panama government after controlling the 51-mile long waterway since construction had started seven decades earlier.
“I’m strong for the signing of the canal treaty,” Mull declared during a White House event. “Now suppose we had 9,400 Japanese or Russian troops marching up and down the Mississippi. Even though it was our land, here they’d be right in the middle of us. Do you think we’d like that? Do you? I’ll tell you right now: Doc, we wouldn’t put up with it — but that’s just what they want the people in Panama to do.”
“I had a little boy in the ninth grade in school call me and want to know something about the treaty for a class. I explained it, and he became convinced we should sign it,” the disk jockey-turned-treaty advocate added. “Everybody who understands the treaty is for it. Many of the American people don’t know about it so they are against it. I definitely think we are changing their minds.”
Mull also met with senators, including the key player who happened to be one of his own: Republican Minority Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee. Asked in November 1977 to predict the future of the proposed treaties Carter had signed two months earlier with Panama’s military leader Omar Torrijos, Mull said he believed it would pass. Whether his politicking made the difference or not, he proved prophetic.
The first treaty, which gave the U.S. the right to defend the canal from any force that blocked access to all nations, passed the Senate in March 1978. The second, which pledged the U.S. to transfer ownership and control of the canal to the Central American nation on Dec. 31, 1999, passed the following month. On both votes, 16 Republicans (including Baker) joined 52 Democrats (including freshman Joe Biden) in supporting ratification, while 10 Democrats and 22 Republicans opposed them. If just one more senator had voted against them, the treaties would’ve failed.
More than a half-century later as a horse-drawn carriage slowly moved Carter’s flag-draped coffin toward the U.S. Capitol for the former president to lie in state, President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday (Jan. 7) blasted Carter for the Panama Canal treaties. Calling the transfer of the waterway “a terrible thing to do” and “a very big mistake,” Trump falsely claimed Carter sold it for $1 and that Panama had “morally violated” the agreements. Trump then reiterated his threat from last month to take back the canal. On Tuesday, Trump even refused to rule out the possibility of sending U.S. soldiers to take the canal — and seize Greenland from Denmark — from an ally nation.
While Trump fantasizes about retaking the Panama Canal, it’s important to remember how we got here and the roles Christian leaders played. Many U.S. denominations followed American colonialism into that strip of land, but then several faith groups joined Mull in becoming outspoken advocates for returning the land. So this issue of A Public Witness digs into the religious support for building the canal and giving it back to Panama.
For God & Country
After hundreds of years of explorers and colonial rulers dreaming about cutting a canal through the area to speed up travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific sides of the Americas, the French tried in the late 19th century to do it. But the effort failed after more than 20,000 men died from diseases and accidents and they spent the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars today.
The U.S. effort began first by supporting a coup. In 1903, when the territory was still part of Colombia, President Teddy Roosevelt sent U.S. warships to block the Colombian government from ending a Panamanian rebellion. After the Republic of Panama was declared on Nov. 3, 1903, the U.S. quickly recognized the new nation and kept it from being attacked in exchange for a perpetual lease on the land that became known as the Panama Canal Zone. But given that it was signed under the shadow of warships, many Panamanians came to view U.S. control of the canal zone as a violation of Panama’s national sovereignty.
The next year, the U.S. started working on the canal, which was completed in 1914 after the U.S. spent the equivalent of over $15 billion today. Officially, just over 5,600 people died in that decade of work, though historians generally place the number as much higher. And thousands more suffered significant injuries in horrible work conditions. One section, the Culebra Cut, was known by the contract workers (many of whom came from the Caribbean) as “Hell’s Gorge.”
Following the American workers and overseers into the canal zone were missionaries, setting up churches alongside the schools, grocery stores, and other parts of the communities inside the zone. The construction of churches met the spiritual needs of canal zone workers and their families, which also helped sustain the project and even baptize the canal as holy work. For some denominations, this marked the first effort in Panama, though it was at first just for Zonians (the Americans and other expatriates living in the canal zone political entity and thus not Panamanians).
In 1905, the Southern Baptist Convention started its work there. But quite tellingly, it did not send people from its Foreign Mission Board (now known as the International Mission Board). Instead, the ministers it sent came from the Home Mission Board (now the North American Mission Board). Since the canal zone was a U.S. territory and those being ministered to were primarily U.S. citizens, the SBC viewed this as a home missionary effort.
It should be noted that Baptist work in the area had actually started in 1866 when Jamaican Baptists started ministering to Panamanian people. Southern Baptists, on the other hand, didn’t start work among Spanish speakers in Panama until 1941 and work with the Indigenous peoples didn’t start until 1954. For decades, the work in Panama was just for those in the canal zone as if it were just another U.S. community. Interestingly, one canal worker later became a president of the SBC: R.G. Lee.
Similarly, the Episcopal Church started its work in the canal zone in 1904, though there had already been some other Anglican work in the area. Eventually, the ministries in the canal zone and other parts of Panama were combined into one Episcopal diocese under the auspices of the U.S. church after World War II. After a few years of advocacy by Panamanians, the Episcopal Church voted in 1997 for the Panamanians to have their own jurisdiction as a separate group in the Anglican Communion.
Other mainline Protestants worked together through the Federal Council of Churches (a forerunner to the National Council of Churches) to create “union churches” in the canal zone. The goal was to establish churches for the U.S. workers without all of the denominations needing to go and compete for members. Despite this plan, the Episcopal Church went in on its own. The creation of union churches included an act of Congress, which actually specified the pastors and other leaders of the churches “shall be” U.S. citizens.
Advocating for Justice & Human Rights
Although tensions between Panama and the U.S. existed for decades over control of the canal, the situation escalated in 1964. The previous year, President John F. Kennedy agreed to fly the Panamanian flag next to the U.S. flag at non-military sites in the canal zone. But it didn’t happen. A month after Kennedy’s assassination, the U.S.-appointed governor of the canal zone sought to avoid the agreement by simply removing the U.S. flag from non-military sites. However, Zonians responded by hoisting the flags anyway.
In response, a group of Panamanian high school students marched in protest on Jan. 9, 1964, and attempted to fly a Panamanian flag next to the American flag at a high school in the canal zone. After the Panamanian flag was torn during a scuffle as Zonian students and adults sought to prevent the flying of the second flag, more violence broke out and eventually U.S. soldiers arrived, firing tear gas and bullets. Jan. 9 is still a national holiday in Panama known as “Martyrs’ Day” to remember the 21 Panamanians who were killed. Additionally, five Americans died in the violence.
As a result of the violence and the international criticism of the U.S., both the Johnson and Nixon administrations attempted to negotiate a new treaty but failed. Thus, even before Carter won the presidency, the Episcopal Church declared its support for, as a 1976 general convention resolution put it, “an equitable treaty” between the U.S. and Panama. The Episcopal statement added that the delegates expressed hope for “a just, peaceful, and prompt outcome of the negotiations” that would establish “a new relationship which will satisfy the aspirations of both countries and thus promote peaceful international understanding.”
After Carter reached the agreement on the treaties, the Episcopal Church’s Executive Committee commended Carter and urged the Senate to ratify the treaties. When the treaties were signed, the Episcopal bishop of Panama and the Canal Zone was in D.C. for the ceremony, along with the Catholic archbishop from Panama, two priests, and a rabbi.
Other mainline leaders also advocated for the treaties. For instance, Claire Randall, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) elder who served as general secretary of the National Council of Churches, praised Carter and the Senate for having “acted wisely and courageously” and called the ratification of the canal treaties “an important and new direction in U.S. foreign policy, which is encouraging.” She added, “Our government has made clear that the United States recognizes that all nations, however small or new, are to be treated with respect. These treaties symbolize the understanding that true security for our nation rests on the power of respect for justice rather than on the force of armed might. … The future will be better for us all because of this action now.”
On the evangelical front, Carter found support from leaders in the largest Protestant denomination, his own Southern Baptist Convention. SBC President Jimmy Allen, who became a close friend of Carter’s (and like Carter later left the SBC to join the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship), argued that “the gospel of Christ has a stake” in the treaties since the canal is “a symbol of colonial exploitation which cripples our witness as American Christians.” Similarly, Charles Bryan, who oversaw the SBC’s Foreign Missions Board work in Middle America and the Caribbean and previously served as a missionary in Latin America, called ratifying the treaties “the right thing at the right time and for the right purpose.”
Other religious groups expressing support for the treaties included the Church of the Brethren, Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers), United Methodist Church, and American Jewish Congress. Additionally, Carter found a strong ally in the Catholic Church.
Archbishop Joseph Bernardin, head of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, declared in the fall of 1977 that the bishops supported the treaties. He met with Carter in the White House, noting he had “received many questions on this subject from bishops in other countries” about concerns over “how firm and lasting the present U.S. emphasis for human rights will prove to be.” He added that he recognized Carter had a “firm and sincere commitment” to human rights. It was the first White House meeting between Carter and Catholic leaders, coming about eight months into the president’s term. Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia later testified in support of the treaties before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and other bishops pushed their own senators.
Similarly, Catholic Archbishop Thomas Kelly of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., who joined Bernardin in meeting with Carter to discuss the treaties, issued a statement shortly before the Senate vote on the second treaty to turn over the canal. He noted the bishops’ conference had supported such a move since 1975 to “return to Panama full and effective sovereignty over the whole of its national territory” to help “initiate a new cooperative relationship” between the countries and meet “the requirements of international social justice.”
After both treaties passed, Catholic leaders in the U.S. and Panama praised the ratification. Kelly expressed his prayer that “the promise of greater justice and peace in the hemisphere symbolized by these treaties will be borne out in fact and that the lot of the poor in Panama especially will be enhanced.” Two thousand miles to the south, church bells peeled with the news of the Senate’s ratification of the second treaty.
Two Directions
Despite the support of religious leaders, the president, and a majority of the Senate, the treaty remained controversial in some circles. Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, had advocated against the treaty before its ratification. Some Republican lawmakers pushed efforts to overturn it for decades. Supporting the treaties even brought political consequences for some.
The passage of the treaties needed every vote they got, and helped cost a freshman Democratic senator his reelection. Sen. Robert Morgan of North Carolina initially opposed the treaties, but changed his opinion after visiting Panama and seeing how, as he explained it, “Our global position as world leader and a moral standard-bearer is seriously weakened by maintaining this vestige of colonialism.” With his vote securing the passage of the treaties, his fellow senator from North Carolina worked to oust him in 1980. Sen. Jesse Helms, who had led the senate opposition to the treaties, declared in an ad supporting Morgan’s Republican challenger: “What we need is a real American in the Senate, a real Christian in the U.S. Senate.” Similarly, when the lead U.S. negotiator, Robert Pastor, was later nominated by President Bill Clinton to be the U.S. ambassador to Panama, his nomination was blocked by Helms.
Despite the festering political opposition — and President George H.W. Bush’s brief 1989 invasion of Panama with the so-called “Operation Just Cause” to install a new leader — the transfer of the canal zone still went ahead as planned in 1999. Two years before that, the Episcopal presiding bishop, three Catholic bishops, and other religious leaders signed an open letter urging Clinton to honor the treaty commitment to turn over control. Clinton expressed support for the transfer but declined to attend the ceremonies in Panama (with Vice President Al Gore and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also skipping), which officials there viewed as a snub. But Carter was present.
A quarter-century later, a new president wants to undo Carter’s work. If Trump continues to press the issue, how will Christian leaders react to the saber-rattling? Some will support imperial dreams like during the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, while others will push for human rights and international peace like during the tenure of Jimmy Carter. The question is, which vision of Christianity will win out?
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor