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COVER STORY:
Tobacco Churches
June 5, 1998    Episode no. 140
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BOB ABERNETHY: The U.S. Senate has resumed debate on the tobacco bill. It's certain any tobacco bill will bring huge changes to the American tobacco industry. At the bottom of the long production chain which results in a package of cigarettes are the small farmers who grow tobacco on 50 or 100 acres. Correspondent John Dancy has our report from eastern North Carolina on the moral dilemma facing the farmers and the churches where they worship.

Photo of WHITE MEMORIAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH JOHN DANCY: Tobacco's roots grow deep into the soil of Johnston County, North Carolina. Jay Stephenson grew it until he retired this year. Randy Benson still grows it. Tobacco farmers are the backbone of White Memorial Presbyterian Church in Willow Springs, North Carolina -- Christians who grow a crop that addicts, sickens, and kills. The relationship between tobacco and the church here in eastern North Carolina is both cozy and complex. Farmers grow tobacco, tobacco supports the churches, and the churches rarely speak of tobacco as an evil.

Reverend Dr. VAL ROSENQUIST: I never preached against tobacco.

DANCY: The Reverend Dr. Val Rosenquist used to be pastor of White Memorial.

Photo of REVEREND ROSENQUIST Rev. ROSENQUIST: To come in and say, unilaterally, "What you're doing is evil or wrong," tears them up from their very souls and it rips out what they do with their Christian identity. It tears that apart.

DANCY: To people who don't live here, it's a simple, clear-cut, moral issue -- just don't grow tobacco. But to the farmers who do grow it, it's not that simple. To them, it's a livelihood and a way of life.

Photo of J.NELSON GIBSON J. NELSON GIBSON (Former Tobacco Farmer): Tobacco farming in North Carolina is a heritage thing. My father grew it, my grandfather grew it, my great-grandfather grew it. It's in my blood.

DANCY: J. Nelson Gibson can't remember a time when tobacco wasn't a part of his life. His family has farmed around here since 1750 and the town where he lives, Gibson, North Carolina, is named for his family. He still has eight-millimeter films that he's proud to show of the old days when men and women worked together to string up the tobacco and get it in barns to be cured. The land supported the people and people supported the town. Now Nelson Gibson's tobacco fields are empty. A staunch Methodist, he stopped growing tobacco in 1990, gave up a government allotment which let him grow 100,000 pounds of tobacco a year.

Photo of GIBSON AND DANCY Mr. GIBSON: It was wrong to grow it.

DANCY (To Mr. Gibson): Wrong to grow it? Why?

Mr. GIBSON: It became more and more evident that tobacco was very harmful to the human body, and despite the fact that it was profitable, it wasn't profitable to me.

DANCY (To Mr. Gibson): What about the church here in town? Do they discuss the morality of growing tobacco?

Mr. GIBSON: No. Tobacco money keeps the Methodist Church going. They make no bones about that. If you read newspapers in North Carolina, you read about it.

JAY STEPHENSON (Farmer): The quality of the tobacco is very good.

DANCY: But to farmers like Jay Stephenson, who's grown tobacco all his life, giving up the crop would be economic suicide.

Photo of JAY STEPHENSON Mr. STEPHENSON: We could not make it here within this county without tobacco.

DANCY (To Mr. Stephenson): What about the young farmers here? Are farmers going into tobacco now or are they getting out of it?

Mr. STEPHENSON: Most of the younger men are looking at other ways of life.

DANCY (To Mr. Stephenson): How does that make you feel?

Mr. STEPHENSON: Well, sad. I would like to see my sons continue on in the back, but we don't have any place for them right there right at the present time.

DANCY: On a nearby farm, Randy Benson grows 100 acres of tobacco and some other crops that are harder to grow and more perishable. He feels under relentless pressure -- not from the church, but from public opinion.

Photo of DANCY AND BENSON RANDY BENSON (Farmer): And everybody wants to do away with my livelihood, and I've got 20 years invested in farming and equipment and, you know, it's just hard to say, "You've got to quit," you know? "We don't like what you're doing." It's hard to accept.

DANCY (to Mr. Benson): Could you make a living farming if you didn't farm tobacco?

Mr. BENSON: It would be hard. Probably 70 to 75 percent of my income comes from tobacco, and I depend on soybeans, sweet potatoes, small grain -- I don't know that I could survive.

DANCY: Randy Benson doesn't feel guilty about growing tobacco. He concedes it's a health issue, but not one of heaven or hell.

(To Mr. Benson): Is it a moral issue for you?

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Mr. BENSON: No it's not, you know? And I've had friends that have, you know, died of cancer. I had an uncle die of it. But it's his choice, you know? That's the basic -- that's the freedom of choice.

Photo of DUKE UNIVERSITY DANCY: Tobacco looms over North Carolina, and its towns are synonymous with it -- Raleigh, Durham, Winston, Salem. Duke University was built with tobacco money.

CLYDE EDGERTON (Novelist): What has tobacco meant to the state of North Carolina? The first thing I think of is it's meant my father's death.

Photo of NOVELIST CLYDE EDGERTON DANCY: The novelist Clyde Edgerton watched his father die of emphysema. He believes tobacco is a moral issue, one the churches are ducking.

Mr. EDGERTON: It's difficult for the churches to deal with the issue of tobacco because of money and health questions. If a preacher has a number of parishioners who tithe -- give 10 percent of their earnings -- he may trace 50 percent of the money that his church takes in to the fact of selling tobacco.

DANCY: For decades, tobacco supported a large population and a thriving economy in little towns like Gibson, North Carolina. But these days, 25 percent of all tobacco sold in the U.S. is imported. Small tobacco farmers are giving up, leaving the crop to big farmers who used mechanized equipment, not people. And a way of life is ending in small towns across the state. That troubles even tobacco foes like Clyde Edgerton.

Photo of CLYDE EDGERTON Mr. EDGERTON: To not support transition for our fellow Americans who are in hardship is not right. We need to say to other members of our society, "As a society, through government, we'll help you out." And that's not happening.

DANCY: So, too, the tobacco churches are torn. Pastors are caught between the need to condemn a product that kills people and the needs of their own tobacco-growing parishioners who sit before them each week, wondering what to do now.

Photo of DANCY AND ABERNATHY ABERNETHY: John, that was fascinating. It was interesting to me that in your story, there was not one person currently serving as a pastor of a church who was critical of tobacco.

DANCY: Val Rosenquist actually was critical of tobacco when she was pastor of White Memorial, but we didn't find any others. They're very reluctant to talk. We searched diligently for farmers -- for pastors who would talk to us and found none.

ABERNETHY: The conflict is just too great?

DANCY: It's too great. But nobody wants to be out in front of it.

ABERNETHY: Talking to the farmers and others in their communities, what impressed you the most?

Photo of DANCY DANCY: What impressed me was how caught these farmers are in this situation. They're at the bottom of the production chain. They're the people who are being squeezed. The tobacco industry will go on whether these farmers survive or not. But many of these small towns and many of these small farmers will not be able to survive, absent tobacco.

ABERNETHY: I think it's important to acknowledge that it's not just tobacco farmers who face a moral choice about the work they do. There are plenty of other people around.

DANCY: Sure. Many people.

ABERNETHY: But do they feel that they're being uniquely and perhaps unfairly singled out for criticism?

DANCY: Many feel that they're being demonized in this and for all, 30 years ago, to be a tobacco farmer was a big deal. It was a great profession and one that many people aspired to.

Photo of BOB ABERNATHYABERNETHY: Does anyone there or anywhere else have some proposal whereby these people could keep their way of life, keep the small towns, keep the small farms and grow something else and, at the same time, make a living?

DANCY: Everybody understands that they need to transition out of this, and there is money in the tobacco bill before Congress that will help them do this. The problem is, what are they transitioned to? As one farmer told me while we were there, "If Jay Stephenson and Randy Benson and I all decided to grow tomatoes, we could drive down the price of tomatoes in eastern North Carolina." And that's a big problem for them. What do they do now?

ABERNETHY: Yes. And what do they do now? What do you think? Is it just dying? Is the whole way of life dying out?

DANCY: It's a business that is going to be allowed to continue, but with many, many more controls on it than there are now.

ABERNETHY: John, many thanks.

DANCY: Thank you.

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