In 1979, as Christmas approached, the United States Embassy in Tehran held more than fifty American hostages, who had been seized when revolutionaries stormed the embassy. No one from the U.S. had been able to have contact with them. The Reverend M. William Howard, Jr., was the president of the National Council of Churches at the time, and when he received a telegram from the Revolutionary Council, inviting him to perform Christmas services for the hostages, he jumped at the opportunity. In America, “we had a public that was quite riled up,” Reverend Howard reminds his son, The New Yorker Radio Hour’s Adam Howard. “Who knows what might have resulted if this issue were not somehow addressed? . . . Might there be an American invasion, an attempt to rescue the hostages in a militaristic way?” Reverend Howard was aware that the gesture had some propaganda value to the Iranian militants, but he saw a chance to lower the tension. Accompanied by another Protestant minister and a Catholic bishop, Howard entered front-page headlines, travelling to Tehran and into the embassy. He gave the captives updates on the N.F.L. playoffs, and they prayed. It was a surreal experience to say the least. “It was in the Iranian hostage crisis that I understood how alone we are, and how powerless we are when other people take control,” Reverend Howard says. “And really it’s in that setting that one can develop faith.”This segment originally aired on December 15, 2023.
Chapter 1: What prompted the Reverend to travel to Iran during the hostage crisis?
Well, I had no facility of that kind, but we did something that I think personally was quite affirming of the people. I said to them, if you have, as individuals, something you want to share with me of a personal nature and so forth, you know, sort of pastoral counseling, if you will. I'm going to sit here and you can come over. And there were a few people who came over.
We talked about how they were being treated and they wondered, for example, if there was a way for me to communicate with their families. And was there a way for us to make an appeal for their release? And sure enough, on Christmas afternoon,
a representation of our group, went back to the embassy to pick up letters that were being written by the hostages, and they were subsequently delivered to the family members when we returned. So that is essentially the first sort of link the family members had with their relatives who were being held captive. And then at some point the time ended and they were escorted out of the room.
My colleagues and I eventually wound up in a common room that felt like a basement to me. And the students who actually had invaded the embassy, taken the hostages, were there. And by the way, around the wall of this room were very young men. They could have been teenagers from all that I could tell.
very much armed with semi-automatic rifles or automatic rifles, standing around the wall of this little room. And that's when Dr. Coffin said something to the effect, how many of these folk are you going to allow us to take home?
Now, when he said this, had he given you and your colleagues any warning that he was going to do this? Did you think this is completely crazy what he's doing and dangerous?
Well, I said right away, Bill, it's not that kind of situation. He was associating this with Vietnam.
Hmm.
The Vietnamese were not driven by religion. These were people of real conviction about Islam. There was a female leader of these students, and she was known in the American media as Mary. When she spoke to him very sternly, you heard the young men cock their rifles, that kind of sound. And I said to him, Bill, you'd better leave that alone. And he backed down right away.
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Chapter 2: How was the telegram invitation received?
Like if a mullah was sitting here and I'm sitting here, our knees were almost touching. And that was when they really poured out all of their suffering. Some of them were crying. They told us stories. I'll give you one really iconic story. about American teenagers riding motor scooters into the mosque at prayer time.
And the leaders, the leaders were unable to do anything about it because the Americans were so much influential of the Shaw that the Shaw would not allow anything untoward to happen to the Americans. So these kids could just disrespect and so forth, and they cried. They explained there was some guy there with one eye, and he told a story about how he lost his sight The brutality of the Shah.
Now, we had some general knowledge of this, but this was like detailing. Now, on the image and indoctrination thing, because many people in the United States were assuming that if you guys could get in there and see the hostages, you must be a little bit biased toward these folks. You know, that was going around.
And so what we decided, because we got some word that the Ayatollah was going to invite us for a conversation. And we had seen these conversations on the television. He's telling them things and you're sitting there quietly. We did not want to be in that situation. So we literally planned our exit from the country in some forethought that this may transpire. So we were successful.
And I'm sure he maybe would have used it for propaganda purposes.
Oh, yes. It would have been on American television before you could imagine that.
So speaking of American television, when you came back, obviously there was quite a lot of press coverage, quite infamously in our family memories. You appeared on the Donahue show. What are your memories of that in terms of what the reception was when you came back? It was virtually every major outlet.
One thing I would say, especially the live shows, is how uninformed the people in those audiences were about... the history of Iran.
I'm tired of seeing my flag burned. I'm tired of hearing these people kill President Carter. I'm not saying to go in and militarily take them over. But I think that you better understand that we are tired of everywhere in this world that people that we have helped turning around and allowing them to destroy our flag, our self-image. Oh, wow.
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