John M. Sutton

"I had always thought I would spend my life as an evangelist," says the Reverend John M. Sutton, a minister of the United Methodist Church. "But I appear to have taken a much different road." Indeed, few would argue with that statement. Fore the past 15 years, Rev. Sutton has been doing his preaching and his good works not from a pulpit but from positions outside the framework of his church. Since 1978, he has been President of the Near East Foundation (NEF), a prestigious, non-profit and secular institution that gives technical assistance to developing countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. For nine years before that, he was executive director of Americans for Middle East Understanding, Inc. (AMEU). How did the Reverend Sutton get onto this road, anyway?

The way he looks back on it, the seeds of his future calling were sown during the early days of his ministry, when in the southern states of the U.S. he first became sensitized to the issue of civil rights—and developed strong views on the subject. By the time he had done tours as a student and pastor abroad, his concern over civil rights had grown into a passion about human rights—including those of homeless Palestinians.

Racism and the Palestinians

"As a pastor in Germany not long after World War II, I became very aware of the holocaust," Rev. Sutton says. "I began to realize more deeply than ever that there was a deadly sickness of racism in the world—not only in Germany but in our own and other countries." Later he served as pastor in a church in Athens, studied in Jerusalem, and traveled extensively in the Middle East. "I found out for the first time what had really been done to the Palestinians—which was quite different from what we had been led to believe at home," he says.

On his return to the U.S., Rev. Sutton says, he felt "impelled to speak" on those matters he had learned about at first hand. At first, he attempted to speak out from the bosom of the church. Once, while serving as pastor of the United Methodist Church in Weston, Massachusetts, he wrote a letter to a Boston newspaper on the anniversary of the slaughter of Palestinian civilians by Israeli terrorists in the village of Deir Yassin in 1948. "It was a pious tribute to the dead—I didn't shake my finger," he says. But the publication of the letter provoked obscene phone calls to him and his family, and he was attacked by some local church organizations on grounds that he was "anti-Semitic."

"That letter was the turning point," he says. "I realized that it wasn't right to involve the church in complex contemporary issues for which it was not well equipped to be a witness. It seemed to me that those of us who had the opportunity to see the truth on such matters should come out of the ecclesiastical framework and tell what we knew—not attempting to speak on behalf of the church. But we would be supported and guided by it."

Shortly afterwards, Rev. Sutton got permission from his bishop to join AMEU, then a new organization seeking to provide Americans with factual material on Middle East issues. After nine satisfying years, he accepted the opportunity to move over to the Near East Foundation as a change of pace—or, as he puts it, "to do something besides talk." But he adds that he also wanted to assist an institution that he had "long admired."

Learning to Fish

NEF grew out of a relief organization founded during World War I, but for more than 50 years has been concentrating on technical assistance to help people to help themselves—on the principle, NEF officials say, that "if I give a man a fish, I feed him for a day; if I teach a man to fish, I feed him for his lifetime." Increasing food production, in fact, is the main focus of its effort. So far it has helped more than 45 countries—including Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Syria, as well as the Israeli-occupied West Bank. At present is ongoing programs in Middle East countries include assistance for desert development in Egypt, beekeeping in Sudan, rural welfare in Jordan, sheep-raising in Lebanon and agricultural extension services in the West Bank, where it cooperates with American Near East Refugee Aid, of Washington, D.C. But it is also active in countries of Asia and West Africa, and Rev. Sutton says his institution's acronym could be appropriately translated as "Nearly Everywhere Foundation."

Headquartered in New York City, NEF operates with a small endowment which is supplemented by contributions from individuals, groups and corporations in the U.S. and in host countries. In embarking on a program, Rev. Sutton stresses, "we never try to go anywhere we're not invited, and once we've finished our work, we pull up stakes and leave." He adds: "there's no place where we've ever been asked to leave."

Rev. Sutton was educated at Duke University, Garrett and Northwestern University, and did graduate work in both Harvard Divinity School and New College in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is married and has four children.