Claude C. Williams' middle name is Clossee, but it might as well have
been Trouble. The son of a Tennessee dirt farmer who was half Cherokee
Indian, he made up his mind to get an education and become a minister.
At first his favorite theme was “Eternity—where will you spend it?”
But the Depression got him interested in other themes, and in the mid '30s
he was fired from his pulpit in Paris, Ark. as too radical.Energetic Claude Williams looked good to Detroit Presbyterians when
their city was writhing in the throes of war industry expansion. They
appointed him the presbytery's “industrial chaplain.” But trouble was
waiting for Williams in Detroit, too. Fired again by the middle of
1945, he went to work on his own organization, the Peoples' Institute
of Applied Religion.Last week the Rev. Claude C. Williams, 58, was an unfrocked minister
labeled a “heretic.” A presbytery commission of five clergymen and
three elders had tried him and found him guilty of: 1> heresy, 2>
preaching doctrines not in conformity with the faith, and 3> failing to
report his activities and make annual accountings. The commission
dismissed a fourth charge of following the Communist Party line because
it felt itself judicially incompetent to reach a verdict in such a civil matter.Claude Williams promptly announced that he would appeal “the whole thing
to the highest courts of the church.” In his appeal, he said, he “will
insist that it is the moral responsibility of the presbytery to find me
innocent or guilty of their charge that I am a Communist or have
followed the party line.” Williams' prosecutors wanted the issue
settled too; if he did not take the Communist charge to higher
authority, the prosecutors might.
