Washington: Some 1,200 Methodist leaders met yesterday in the nation’s capital to discuss what churches are doing, and failing to do, in the downtown areas of big cities. Their reaction: Methodists and other Protestant denominations are concentrating too much of their attention on the relatively prosperous suburbs, and too little on the blighted city areas. The surveys and reports given to the conference indicated that years ago the city areas were being occupied by European immigrants, chiefly with Roman Catholic backgrounds. But they said the newcomers today are predominantly white and Negro southern families with Protestant ties. One survey of 50 churches in such areas showed that more than half had lost membership or barely held their own while their neighborhood populations were on the increase. The conference decided that the first step would be for church members everywhere to recognize that they share the responsibility for offering a vigorous Protestant ministry to such city sections.
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New York: A federal judge is seeking an internal settlement in the dispute over the merger of two church bodies. The merger of the General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical Reform Church was arranged in 1949. Two congregations are trying to upset the merger. Federal Judge Archie Dawson suggested formation of a laymen’s committee to settle the dispute to avoid long litigation in the courts.
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Vatican City: Pope Pius told 1,000 parish priests that Rome is threatening to turn into a “mediocre, inglorious, nearly pagan” city. He cited suicide, scandal spreading, abuses of Sunday, and careless driving among the sins of the city. In his words, “This is the time for action, most urgent action.”
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Again Vatican City: Roman Catholics throughout the world began the annual observance of Lent on Ash Wednesday. Priests touched the foreheads of their parishioners with ashes to mark the opening of the period of penitence and fasting. The ashes, made from burnt palms, signify for Roman Catholics the fleeting quality of human things.
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Chicago: A National Council of Churches executive criticized the Eisenhower administration proposals to curtail federal welfare programs. Dr. William J. Villaume, executive director of the council’s social welfare department, said the administration’s 1958-59 budget amounts to a cutback in national support for human welfare. Dr. Villaume characterized this as dangerous contentment with inadequacy. He spoke to a group at the annual meeting of the National Association of Methodist Hospitals and Homes.
Methodist Bishop Richard C. Raines of Indianapolis, another speaker, called on Methodist hospitals to take the lead in extending privileges to patients and nurses without racial discrimination. He said Methodist institutions should be among the first to adjust their practices to the principles of Christian fellowship and democracy. And speaking as a Methodist, this reporter can wholeheartedly agree with that.
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A St. Paul clergyman was elected bishop of two different episcopal dioceses on the same day. He is the Rev. Daniel Corrigan, rector of St. Paul’s Church-On-the-Hill. At its annual convention the Diocese of Quincy, Illinois, elected Mr. Corrigan its new bishop. Simultaneously, the convention of the Colorado Diocese also elected Mr. Corrigan to its vacant post of suffragan bishop. The St. Paul clergyman said he was overwhelmed and promised he would make his decision soon on which election to accept.
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Atlantic City, New Jersey: A leading rabbi urged a conference of Christian, Jewish, and Moslem leaders to seek a lessening of religious tension in the Holy Land. The proposal was made by Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, Chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the Rabbinical Assembly of America. Rabbi Hertzberg spoke at the annual national conference of the American Christian Palestine Committee. He said an understanding among the three major religions is important now because of a communist threat in the Middle East. Unless the major religions make peace with one another, he said, there may soon be a red flag flying all over the holy places and there will be nothing left to differ about. The good rabbi could well have said that in that case there would be no freedom to differ about anything. Certainly the churches have a continuing obligation in this respect, but they have a more-than-usual heavy one at this time in our history when we have no clear-cut, coherent, and consistent policy with respect to the Middle East in the place where there should be one: namely in our own Department of State.
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The House of Representatives is now opening its session every day with a brief reading from Scripture – the Protestant, Christian scripture, of course. Dr. Bernard Braskamp, chaplain of the House, prefaces his opening prayer with a short reading, usually just one verse, from the Bible. Reaction from members of Congress has been so favorable that Dr. Braskamp intends to continue the practice. In doing this, he had reinstated an old custom followed by one of his predecessors, the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, who is better known today as the author of “The Man without a Country,” but he served as chaplain of the House for many years. I wonder if he will ever get around to reading that verse containing the last words of the Master, namely, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
And while on the subject of Congress, it might be observed that the House Ways and Means Committee has approved a bill to allow duty-free importation of religious works of art by churches, religious orders, and church-controlled institutions. Among the items that would be allowed in duty-free are altars, pulpits, communion tables, baptismal fonts, shrines, mosaics, and statuary.
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New York: Three American chaplains and the chief of chaplains of the Belgian Armed Forces were presented with the Four Chaplains Award. This award is given annually for service in the cause of intercredal good will. The citations were conferred by the Chaplain Alexander D. Goode Lodge of B’nai B’rith. The winner of the international award was General Fernand Cammaert of Brussels, the Chief Belgian Chaplain, who is a Catholic and was honored for his contribution in the formation of the first NATO chaplain’s conference held at The Hague in 1956. The three Americans honored were Lieutenant Colonel Meir Engel, a rabbi who is assistant post chaplain at Fort Dix, New Jersey; 1st Lt. Eugene Z. Szabo, a Hungarian Reformed Church minister on duty at Lake Charles Air Force Base in Louisiana; and Lt. John C. Condit, a Catholic priest stationed at the Pre-Flight Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. The Four Chaplain’s Award commemorates the sacrifice of four U.S. army chaplains who went down with the transport Dorchester when it was torpedoed off Greenland in World War II. The four – two Protestants, a Catholic, and a Jew – were awarded the Silver Star for Gallantry after their deaths. A bill has been introduced into Congress to confer the Congressional Medal of Honor on them.
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Washington: If present trends continue, nearly 7 million students will be enrolled in church-related and other private and elementary secondary schools by 1965. This prediction comes from a long report on the state and non-public schools published by the U.S. Office of Education. The report says the estimated enrollment in non-public schools will be 6,845,000 by 1965. At that point, it says, one in six American grade and high school students will be in religious or other private schools. At present the ratio is one in seven. In 1900 it was one in 11.
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London: The World Council of Churches’ executive committee took an initial step this week toward establishing relations between the World Council and the Russian Orthodox Church. The committee agreed to a suggestion from Russian churchmen that World Council officials meet in August with representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate. No arrangements were announced as to where the meeting would take place. The conversation would be informal.
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In Covington, Kentucky, a Baptist pastor is building what he calls a “Garden of Hope.” It is the project of the Rev. Morris Coers, pastor of Covington Immanuel Baptist Church. A replica of Christ’s tomb has been completed on a three-acre site. In the planning stage is a carpenter’s workshop of the time of Christ, a Spanish-type mission, a so-called Chapel of Dreams, and a Wall of Memory. The wall will contain a 500-pound stone from the Wailing Wall of Jerusalem. Mr. Coers said items for the Brotherhood Garden have been contributed from 22 nations.
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Omaha, Nebraska: A speaker at the session in Omaha of the National Council of Churches’ division of Christian education offered a warning about the possible establishment of denominational schools to avoid court decisions calling for integration in public schools. Dr. Rolfe L. Hunt, executive director of the council’s department of religion and public education, said denominational schools can do more damage to American unity than has been done by racial segregation in public schools.
Dr. Minor C. Miller, a Virginia Council of Churches official, declared that weekday religious classes give children a better solid religious education than do Sunday schools. In his state, he said, less than half the children are enrolled in Sunday schools. But, he said, 95 percent of pupils who get an opportunity to participate in weekday religious classes have enrolled in them.
Such practices are curiously out of line with American traditions of separation of church and state. Virginians, and some others, are quick to resort to the portions of the Bill of Rights, with which they agree, regarding states’ rights and the matter of school segregation, especially the 10th Amendment. But they are prone to overlook the First Amendment and almost innumerable court decisions interpreting it that make it clear there should be no action on the part of government to aid or prohibit the practice of any religion. Public schools should be neither religious nor irreligious, they should be simply non-religions, do-gooders to the contrary notwithstanding.
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The thoughtful person will want to know whether his philosophy of life is well founded. He will want to know whether the statements of belief handed down to him from the past are in harmony with the facts of the universe as we know it today, or whether they were based on false concepts conceived in ignorance. The great obstacles to peace and progress today are fear, prejudice, and selfishness. Are these fears and prejudices founded on truth? Few bother even to ask, much less to investigate. The masses take for truth whatever they read, hear from the radio or pulpit, or see in the movies or on TV. The thinking person is one who wishes to know not what the masses accept as truth, not what is comforting or pleasing, but what is so. It is ofttimes difficult to know this, but the only way to do it is to question, to doubt what seems unreasonable, to investigate. It is not the easy way or the comfortable way, but it is the only way to progress, and there should be progress in religion the same as in anything else. This is the way by which the keys are discovered which unlock doors to new visions of the grandeur, the beauty, and the mystery of existence. “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” are no idle, academic words. For without knowledge of the truth, one’s existence is in a dream-world quagmire of ignorance, and one in ignorance is also in intellectual slavery.