Washington: A New York congressman has asked the president to sponsor a meeting of the world’s religious leaders to organize a collective security pact for the protection of the souls of mankind. Representative Herbert Zelenko said the religious leaders (and it is a pretty good guess that he means Christians only) could issue a manifesto that would be a philosophical rallying point for men of spiritual belief everywhere.
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Philadelphia: The Rev. Clarence W. Crawford, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., has been nominated without opposition as president of the American Baptist Convention. He will be installed tomorrow at the closing session of the meeting.
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Paducah, Kentucky: The Memphis Conference of the Methodist Church has voted to permit Negro churches to request membership in the annual conferences of white churches. The measure is permissive and applies only to conference activities. It does not apply to local membership in individual churches.
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New Concord, Ohio: Final action will be taken next week on a proposal to merge two Presbyterian Church groups into one denomination comprising 3 million members. The 99th General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church of North America will vote next Friday on merging with the Presbyterian Church, USA. The latter group voted approval of the merger last month.
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Washington: President Eisenhower named Edward McCabe, his associate special counsel, to represent him at a solemn pontifical Mass yesterday honoring St. Benedict the Moor. The Mass commemorates the 150th anniversary of the canonization by the Catholic Church of the first Negro ever elevated to sainthood. Wonder what the white citizens councils and the Catholic haters think about that!
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In Syracuse, Sicily: Polish Primate Cardinal Wyszynski said Mass this week before the image of the weeping Madonna, fulfilling a vow he took during the dark days of persecution and confinement in his homeland. Said the cardinal, “In the most anguishing time of my life, I turned with faith to the Virgin Mary, vowing to kneel here before her.” More than 10,000 Sicilians watched the Polish cardinals celebrate the open air Mass.
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Vatican City: Pope Pius has told a group of American surgeons they are dedicated men who devote all their energies to the essential good of the individual and the community. The pope spoke in English to representatives of the American Section of the International College of Surgeons who are visiting Italian medical centers.
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Again, Vatican City: The pope says that even in an age of automation a biblical injunction will apply. This is that men must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. But the pontiff adds that new forms of labor will replace those eliminated by automatic machinery and electronic brains. He also stated that spiritual as well as material values must be kept in mind as automation develops. And he has charged that Marxists are wrong in attributing a determining weight to the technical side of life and claiming automation by itself can change the life of man in society. Well, anybody want to bet that it won’t? Despite what the good pontiff says?
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A 40-year-old reductionist priest and author has been named director of the Family Life Bureau of the National Roman Catholic Welfare Conference. He is the Rev. Henry Sattler, a native of North East, Pennsylvania, and a leader of many retreats and conferences for married and engaged couples. Father Sattler has written a book entitled “Parents, Children, and the Facts of Life.”
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Trained sponsors and friends will be the rule from now on for confused, rebellious children in Louisville, Kentucky. A youth program has been set up to show that kindness is not a gimmick. This program is undertaken by the new Committee on Institutions of the Louisville Area Council of Churches. The chairman of the council’s Juvenile Court Committee, Edgar Price, explains the aims will include leading youths in a Christian way of life, aiding the juvenile court with problems and helping young persons prepare for and find jobs.
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A Baltimore, Maryland, policeman is going to change from a uniform to clerical dress. Patrolman Thomas Barranger will resign from the force at the end of this month. Next month he will become a Protestant Episcopal Church deacon in Roundup, Montana. Patrolman Barranger has been in the Baltimore Police Department since 1943. It took him 10 years of night study to earn a college degree. He is already ordained, is married, and the father of three children.
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Three Midwestern professors have found a lively interest in Germany in the University of Iowa’s Interfaith School of Religion. They have told the Berlin Society of Christian-Jewish cooperation that they help university students arrive at a better understanding of religion. Professor F. B. Bargebuhr, representing the Jewish faith, has stated it is not the teachers’ intention to put the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish beliefs into a melting pot. Professor G. W. Forelli, a Lutheran, declared the U.S. background keeps Americans from considering it unusual that professors of three different religious faiths work together. Also on the tour is the Rev. Robert Welch, a Roman Catholic member of the University of Iowa Interfaith School faculty.
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The president of the Rabbinical Council of America says Orthodox Judaism is experiencing a new vigor on American soil. Rabbi Solomon Sharfman has told a meeting of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America that theirs is no longer a religion for the aged. He adds that Orthodox Judaism has begun to capture the imagination of Jewish youth, who are, he says, returning to the synagogue and giving it new energy and militancy.
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Some of you listeners have been interested in having me pursue further the term “liberal religion,” which is been used quite frequently on this program. Any attempt to define any term is hazardous because the person doing so perforce reads into it something of his own prejudices and values. However, I should like to make it clear that the liberal is not free to believe in anything he would like to believe. He is constrained by history, reason, science, observation and common sense. For example, he is not free to believe that a man named Balaam had a donkey that could talk, that the earth was created by divine fiat in exactly 4004 B.C., or that God dictated the Bible.
The liberal approaches religion as he does everything else…. Suppose, for example, we sit in on a conference of scientists. A member reads a paper setting forth a conclusion in the tentative form, based on research. He presents evidence for critical evaluation and perhaps lists some difficulties in the acceptance and calls for further exploration. He has use the scientific method – observation, experimentation, calculation, and history of previous relevant studies according to the needs of the investigation. He has felt free to use any method that promised to yield results. He is modest and by truth he means only a very high degree of probability supported by unvarying evidence. This is what the liberal means by freedom, freedom under discipline.
But how different across the street in the church were there is a meeting of Orthodox churchmen. No modesty is found there, nothing is tentative. There heard thundering affirmations and dire predictions of doom for all who disagree. The difficulties are not mentioned, such as that which is not in accord with common observation, the contrary evidence of history and science, and the absence of testing by logic. In all that is spoken, reason is downgraded, emotion is upgraded. It is plain from what is said that all good people will accept and that those who do not are sinners. Appeal is made to writers on religion of centuries ago, and their writings are labeled as the final word. Appeal is made to ancient materialistic creeds that are meant to summarize what the speaker thinks people used to believe. The self interpretation of some religious fanatic long since dead may be cited as authority.
In short, while the scientists are engaging in an earnest and continuing quest for truth, the church, a backward and undemocratic organization, is saying “Stop here. This is the end. We know what is good for you to believe and we’ll tell you, and if you do not accept you are not a religious person.”
Liberal religion means freedom to exchange the views of yesterday as new evidence becomes available. At one time every religious person believed the earth was flat. But anyone would seem pretty silly insisting that this is true today. Religious liberalism is free, democratic, unafraid, and thus is well calculated to make contributions to the happiness of the race.
Some people attack reason in religion by calling attention to all the problems that reason has not solved. Well, authoritarianism, revelation, self-appointed revelators, and holy virgins have not solved them either. Elaborate rituals have not solved them. Appeals to God in the sky to intervene have not solved them. So far as problems have been solved it has been by slow, careful, patient, scientific investigation. So the liberal chooses between the creeds and superstitions of yesterday and today’s relentless search for truth.
Of course there is more to religion than reason, and the liberal recognizes that. Religion has to do with the whole of life. But the liberal also says that if religion will not stand up under the impact of reason, it needs revision. Religion is not static. It is not something delivered full-grown once and for all to the hands of this planet, complete and finished. It is intrinsic, a potential, native and natural, and must change as man changes and grows in knowledge and spiritual insight. The person who will not reason in religion is a bigot. He who cannot reason is a fool. He who dares not reason is a slave.
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Two events this week have moral and ethical if not strictly religious implications. Last Monday the Supreme Court handed down a decision that said in brief that a person cannot be convicted on a criminal charge if the evidence used to secure the fiction is marked secret for security purposes and the accused or his attorney does not have access to examination of this evidence. The other event involves whether an American soldier, on duty in Japan, who killed a Japanese civilian should be tried by Japanese or American courts.
The howls about these two events were remarkable. In the case of secret evidence, the newspapers, of all agencies, three of them serving the Johnson City area, blazed forth with editorials urging that Congress do something to prevent baring secret materials in criminal cases. One wonders if those editors have not read Amendment Six to our Constitution which guarantees that in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall have the right to be informed of the nature and cause of accusation and to be confronted with the witnesses (evidence) against him? What would those same editors have said had a decision been handed down restricting freedom of the press that is guaranteed under the First Amendment of that same Bill of Rights?
In the case of the American soldier accused of killing the Japanese woman, the veterans organizations, the professional patrioteers, the DARs, and others of similar mind made speeches, wrote letters denouncing the executive branch for permitting an American to be tried in other than an American court. Unfortunately, the soldier’s case is confused by technicalities. He was on duty at the time, but the act he committed which is said to have caused the death was not exactly in line of duty. Furthermore, the civilians had been warned to stay off the range where the firing was taking place. A further complication is found in our Status of Forces Agreement with Japan.
But waving all technicalities aside, let us consider a moment the incidents and the howlers. If it is incumbent upon our Supreme Court to uphold Amendment One of the Constitution, it is equally responsible for defending the Sixth. If Japanese soldiers were on occupation duty in this country, those same ultra-nationalists would be demanding that the soldier be tried in American courts. One cannot but wonder if editors and patrioteers had thought of this. Was it not an itinerant carpenter in the insignificant little place called Galilee who said, “As ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.”