I should like to call your attention to the cover page and a featured article in this week’s December 5 issue of Time magazine. This article traces, as well as a magazine of this type can do, some 20 centuries of baptismal belief, from Rome in 100 A.D. to Richmond, Virginia, in 1955. It is a well-done article dealing mainly with the rise of the Baptist denomination, together with something of the recent changes that have come about in Baptist beliefs and practices. Instead of trying to give you a thumbnail summary of it on this program, I am calling it to your attention, for time available here cannot do justice to this well-deserved tribute to a great denomination.
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A significant comment by John B. Hollister, director of the International Cooperation Administration (formerly FOA), upon his return from a month’s trip to the Far East and Southeast Asia came in these words that the Free World “is not holding its own” in competition with the communists. This points up the curious timing in announcements from Washington that foreign aid officials are hopeful that further cuts in the U.S. overseas aid program can be made. It is curious because it comes at a time when the Soviet Union is mounting its coexistence offensive around the world. Probably something could be trimmed from the foreign aid program of some $2.7 billion, but the bulk of this (over 2 billion) goes for military assistance and defense, while less than a half-million goes for technical and economic assistance. In the meantime, Russia is intensifying her competition in India and elsewhere. Recently the premier of Burma praised Russia for buying the rice surplus of his country and thus averting an economic crisis there. Wherever Khrushchev and Bulganin have gone recently they have held out promise, and made a start carrying out their promise of assistance. In India, for example, where our assistance programs amount to some $70 million, Soviet technicians are planning a steel mill to be rebuilt with Soviet funds in central India to cost $100 million. Thus, at a time when our own diplomats admit that we are barely holding our own in the competitive fight against communism in the economic realm, Washington politicians suggest cutting back on our program. This may well prompt the question so often heard these days: Do they really want to fight communism, or don’t they? Budget cutting is always a good line to take prior to an election year, but it may well be a high price to pay if by so doing, in this case, we fail to hold our own among people who are now our friends but who desperately need help which our foreign aid program can provide.
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One of the tragedies coming out of the so-called Conference at the Summit at Geneva in July, the 11th Annual Meeting of the United Nations in New York, another meeting of the United Nations in New York, and another meeting of the foreign ministers at Geneva is that hundreds of millions of common people all over the world were led to believe that these meetings were all in good faith and, consequently, expected something constructive for global peace; a result that in the very nature of things was most improbable if not impossible. All those attending the meetings knew beforehand that they would not result in the unification of Germany, the security of Europe, the tranquilizing of Asia, the pacification of Africa, nor disarmament, upon all of which world peace really depends.
The fact is that neither the powers that be in the so-called free democracies of the West nor the powers that be in the so-called people democracies of the East want world peace on the basis of complete disarmament. Both Eisenhower and Bulganin, spokesmen for the West and East, respectively, made that clear. It is equally clear that the alternating softness and toughness of Soviet leadership is only a tactic in an overall strategy to soften and divide the Free World. It would seem about time that we recognized that, and that we not try to soothe our own people and those of our friendly allies by misrepresenting the total results of such conferences.
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Down in Rock Hill, South Carolina, a state not noted for progressive race relations, something has been happening during the past two years that represents a constructive approach to a tough problem, and gains have been made at the community level that other communities well could imitate; in fact, it is being imitated elsewhere. One winter night about two years ago a mayor, a priest, and a business man of this city discussed the possible effects of the forthcoming court decision regarding segregation, and the larger problem of human relations in the South, namely how to open up channels of better communication between Negroes and whites. With them was an expert in the field, Dr. George S. Mitchell, executive director of the Southern Regional Council. As a result of this meeting, there was initiated a council on human relations consisting of 21 persons, including five Negroes, appointed by the city council.
Since that time, a Negro has been appointed to the City Recreation Commission; a study of hospital space and needs has been undertaken, and various projects to improve Negro recreational facilities in the community are about completed. This human relations group is making detailed studies of local education, welfare, health, and safety and is reporting its findings to the city council. The city has been host to a state council on human relations, a meeting at which college presidents, ministers, teachers, and others discussed such subjects as “offering job opportunities for all,” ways and means of working toward rapid compliance with the court decision, and other similar topics. Europeans on tours sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency have visited Rock Hill to see how one Southern community is facing up to its problems brought about by the court order.
Now there is a human relations council in every Southern state, though not many in some. In at least one instance, the formation of a council was precipitated by a flare-up of racial tensions. Late in June of this year a bi-racial church conference at Southern Union College, a Congregational Christian church college at Wadley, Alabama, was broken up by a threatening white group. Four days later the council was formed, with the mayor serving as chairman, and containing members of the city council, three ministers, businessmen (white and Negro) and Negro teachers. Governor Folsom condemned the action of the white group which broke up the meeting, and asked law enforcement officers to see that no further mob action takes place.
One day last summer Bryant Bowles, president of the National Association for the Advancement of White People flew to North Carolina and tried to stage a much-publicized rally in the stadium there. The local and state Councils on Human Relations urged “the decent and fair-minded people in our community to concern themselves with this problem (i.e., desegregation) and provide the necessary leadership for a sensible approach to it…” The rally was a flop. About 200 persons showed up in the large stadium and Bowles postponed his efforts to organize a local chapter of his organization, and bitterly denounced local newspapers and organizations, including that of the Council on Human Relations, which had, too fully for his purposes, informed the citizenry of his background and beliefs.
In commenting on what happened at Charlotte, the president of the Rock Hill Council said, “If we repulse the outsiders, then we must face our own problems ourselves,” and that, it would appear, its just what Rock Hill is doing. What is your community doing about its problems?
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Just north of us, another state, Virginia, is attacking her problem posed by the court in an entirely different manner. A bill would direct the governor to call a statewide vote of the people on whether to have a constitutional convention that would amend the [state] constitution by striking out a section prohibiting the use of public money for private schooling. If such an amendment were to pass, it would enable the state, technically and temporarily, legally to subsidize education in private schools, thus eliminating the possibility of integration in the public schools. Well, one way to cure a headache is to chop off the head.
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Lafayette, Louisiana: Bishop Jules Jeannard has lifted his excommunication decree against two Erath, Louisiana, women. They had been accused of beating a Roman Catholic teacher who had instructed Negro and white children in the same catechism classroom. The bishop said the women “have indicated to their pastor their repentance.”
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Vatican City: An authoritative source says Pope Pius XII will recite a Mass over television for the first time on Christmas Eve. Never before in Catholic history has the traditional Mass been celebrated by a pope before TV cameras.
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Milan, Italy: An Italian magazine has mentioned reports that Pope Pius has been credited with the miraculous cure of a blind child. Another Italian magazine recently was the first to report that the pope had had a vision of Christ. Vatican quarters say they know nothing about the new report.
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New York: The American Bible Society’s Advisory Council and Board of Managers has approved a budged of $3,858,000. The money will be used for the 1956 intern denominational program of translating, publishing, and distributing the Bible and encouraging the reading of scriptures.
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Milwaukee: A Lutheran congregation has voted against accepting the resignation of its pastor who was convicted by high church officials of heresy. The Rev. Victor Wrigley of Gethsemane Lutheran Church in suburban Brookfield had been found guilty of deviating from church doctrine.
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Omaha: The president of the National Council of Churches will conduct religious services for members of the Armed Forces in foreign lands for the third successive year. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake of Philadelphia will spend the Christmas period visiting members of the Northeast [Air] Command, their families, and Air Force chaplains in Newfoundland, Labrador, and Greenland. He accepted an invitation to conduct the services from Donald Quarles, secretary of the Department of the Air Force.
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A Roman Catholic layman and a Protestant minister have criticized adults for their part in the youth problem. Frank H. Sheed, Catholic author and publisher of London, England, says society is sick and most adults are “mixed up kids.” He further describes such adults as unable to provide examples and to teach moral standards to their children. His statements have been made at the National Conference of Catholic Youth Work, held in St. Louis this week. Sheed has urged the delegates to teach moral standards in their child guidance programs, stepping in where parents fail. And all of us who are honest will admit that we fail many times. Protestant minister Billy Graham also blames parents for the delinquency problem.
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Some U.S priests of the Russian Orthodox Church say Soviet Archbishop Boris should be allowed to come to this country. The Americans, visiting in Moscow, have expressed opposition to the U.S. refusal to give the prelate an unrestricted visa. The protesting priests belong to a part of the U.S. Russian Orthodox Church still loyal to the Moscow patriarchy. The U.S. Department of State gave Boris a visa to the U.S., but limited his ministry to Soviet nationals only. The visa was revoked when the Soviet government declined such conditions. One of the Russian priests says it has been a tradition since 1794 for the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in North American to be appointed from Moscow. That clergyman, Father David Abramstov of Wolf Run, Ohio, thinks the practice should be continued.
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The oldest active pulpit in the U.S. is to get a new minister. The Rev. Joseph Barth of the First Unitarian Church of Miami, Florida, will go to King’s Chapel in Boston on January 1. He will succeed the Rev. Dr. Palfrey Perkins as pastor of the 270-year-old church.
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About 500 Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jewish rabbis in the New York metropolitan area are discussing religion in the public schools in their Sabbath sermons this weekend. The rabbis are against what one of them terms blatant attempts by the New York City Board of Superintendence to introduce religion into the public school system. Rabbi Edward Klein has stated in his sermon that Catholics, Protestants, and Jews alike are agreed that the need of the hour is not less religion, but more. But he added, “Let us be Catholic, Protestant, and Jew in churches and synagogues and homes, but in the classrooms of America, let us be Americans all.”