Author: Susan Beversluis

The House Education Committee of the Louisiana House of Representatives this week ordered the president and the deans of the state university to appear before it and explain why it is that 59 faculty members of the university oppose segregation in the public schools. The vote to do this was taken by the whole House, wherein the vote was 70-0 to put the university officials on the stand to explain this subversive attitude of certain members of the faculty.

Time here does not permit any extended examination of the nature of a university, but certainly it is of fundamental importance that such an institution be dedicated to the untrammeled examination of all points of view about basic issues in the contemporary world. Freedom of thought is indispensable to such an examination. Moreover, in our scheme of things, respect for law and order is one of the basic precepts that should be taught, whether we like a particular law or decision or not. It would be passing strange if, in a university as large as Louisiana State, some members of the faculty did not personally subscribe to segregation while some oppose it. Problems are not solved in a democracy by sticking our heads in the sand or by repressing ideas that are unpalatable to some. Academic freedom exists not for the benefit of the teacher, but that society itself may profit from the examination of all sides of all issues to the end that individuals can develop sound understanding and form valid and informed ideas about problems affecting society. Apparently the politicians in the Louisiana legislature have never heard of, or are conveniently forgetting the idea that “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

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And along the same line, the state of South Carolina is concerning itself not only with rooting out faculty members in the public schools and colleges who oppose segregation; it is stretching its pressure to private colleges also. Two private Negro colleges have been singled out for special attention. On May 7, Governor Timmerman was instrumental in having the board of trustees of Benedict College in Columbia dismiss three faculty members: Dr. Lewis Smith, Dr. J. Spencer Kennard, and Mrs. Marion Davis. This dismissal climaxed a year of wrangling which began when the good governor accused six professors of “disloyalty,” a handy term that may mean anything its user wishes it to mean, and called for a legislative investigation. In the process of this investigation, Allen University last September was denied accreditation. More than 85 percent of the graduates of Allen University and Benedict College are education majors, and loss of accreditation means that they cannot secure teaching jobs in South Carolina public schools.

Thus, not only freedom of thought is suppressed, but also the aspiring Negro student becomes a victim of a vicious cycle. He cannot get a better job unless he secures better training, and now the graduates of those (and doubtless other Southern schools) cannot get better jobs even with that training, because the white supremacists that hold the power of accreditation are using this power to hold in line those with whom they do not agree. One ironical aspect of the matter is that those individuals who do these ridiculous things call themselves “Democrats,” when a more appropriate label would be “Hitlerites.”

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Even at least one federal agency is getting into the act of suppressing criticism. Cyrus W. Eaton, a noted industrialist, made the following statement on a public program: “… Scores of agencies are nowadays engaged in investigation, in snooping, in informing, in creeping up on people…. The scientist is conscious that the FBI is breathing down the back of his neck all the time, scaring him…. [and this despite the fact that] there are no communists in this country to speak of except in the minds of those on the payroll of the FBI.” J. Edgar Hoover and members of Congress are sure that, somehow, Mr. Eaton is disloyal, dangerous, perhaps even worse. Honest and sincere men will agree with or take issue with Mr. Eaton in his statement. But the FBI apparently agrees with him entirely, for it has called for an investigation of such a dangerous individual, thus proving itself guilty of Mr. Eaton’s charge.

Very much in the news currently is the revelation that Mr. Sherman Adams, Assistant to the President, and alleged by some to have been the acting president the last five years, had his hotel bills paid by and received gifts from a business man. The record indicates that Mr. Adams, in turn, interceded with federal agencies on his friend’s behalf, agencies with which that friend was having difficulty. Protestations by White House spokesmen that such intercession does not indicate that pressure was brought on these agencies are not convincing. This reporter served in a Washington bureau long enough to know that simply a call from a congressman, or an official of the White House staff, is enough to constitute pressure on that bureau or agency, and that goes, whether such calls were made with innocent or guilty intent.

Some of us have long memories. We remember the mink coats and deep freezes of a former administration and were disgusted. There is no differences between the mink coats of the Truman era and the vicuna coat of the present one. Both are stench in the nostrils of decent and honest men, and party affiliation has nothing to do with justifying one or condemning the other. Is this the end product of the great moral crusade we heard Eisenhower preach so much about in the campaign of 1952? And what about the statement of the Man of Galilee who, 2000 years ago, said that “Ye cannot serve two masters”?

The Southern Baptist Convention, meeting at Houston, took up a challenge from its president to help promote world peace and good will. Some 8,000 delegates also adopted a proposal made by Representative Brooks Hays of Arkansas, the convention president. The delegates authorized the appointment of a committee which will report back within a year on what Southern Baptists can do to promote peace and good will in the world. Hays was reelected to a second one-year term as head of the Southern Baptists, who number almost 9 million. In his presidential address, he defended the convention’s Christian Life Commission. The commission has been criticized by some denominational members for its activity on race relations and other social issues.

A feature of the convention’s opening session was a pageant heralding the five-year Baptist Jubilee Advance Program, which will run from 1958 – 1964. The final year will mark the 150th anniversary of organized Baptist work on a national scale in North America.

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Meanwhile, it was announced in Salt Lake City that a new three-state Southern Baptist Convention will be organized in September 1959. It will be formed by the Southern Baptist churches in Utah, Idaho, and Nevada. Some of these churches have been until now in the Southern Baptist Arizona Convention and others in the denomination’s California Convention.

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Figures just published in the official Catholic Directory reveal that Catholics in the United States and its territories increased by nearly 1.5 million last year. The new total represents an increase of almost 10 million persons in the last 10 years. Enrollment in Catholic colleges and universities showed an increase for the fifth successive year. A new high of 13,500 Catholic educational institutions of all types were reported. The largest archdiocese in the country, Chicago, has close to 2 million Catholics. The largest diocese is Brooklyn, though part of it became the diocese of Rockville Center last year.

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At Plymouth, Massachusetts, Congregationalists reenacted historical events of more than 300 years ago. They signed a new Mayflower Compact dedicating themselves to the Pilgrim spirit. This pact was signed outside the renovated Fort Meeting House, the original Pilgrim church at Plymouth. Then they gathered in 10 basement Bible meetings similar to those held by Pilgrims in Holland before coming to North America. By prearrangement, the local sheriff and five deputies broke up the meetings and arrested the leaders. Bibles were confiscated in the reenactment of the persecution Pilgrims suffered before reaching the New World.

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Since his prize-winning performance in Moscow, Van Cliburn’s exploits at the piano have become known to all America. But few have heard about his musical sidelines. One of them is choir singing. Mr. Cliburn, who won the Stalin Prize a few weeks ago, sang in the choir for [Billy] Graham’s New York meeting last summer. The 23-year old Mr. Cliburn is a Texan who moved to New York to continue his musical education. In New York he has been active as a member of the Calvary Baptist Church across the street from Carnegie Hall. Recently he gave a new Steinway piano to the church. And he has written several hymns and short pieces for the congregation. He has also composed a choral setting for a psalm which has been performed over a New York radio station.

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A Jewish leader told the American Jewish Congress at Miami Beach, Florida, that differences among the three great faiths in America are healthy for our democracy. The Jewish leader, Leo Pfeffer, said these differences should not be avoided. But a Protestant authority, Dr. George Williams, told the congress that conflicts could be eliminated with more interfaith cooperation. Dr. Williams said barriers between the faiths could be cut down eventually. Mr. Pfeffer is director of the Commission on Law and Social Action of the congress. Dr. Williams is professor of ecclesiastical history at Harvard University. During discussion of church-state relations, Dr. Williams said the biblical history of Israel should be as important a subject for public schools as the glory of Athens and Rome. Dr. Williams said the history of Israel could be taught without violating any constitutional principle.

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While this was going on, a Catholic priest at Richmond, Virginia, declared that the tremendous gap which once separated Catholic and Protestant thinking has narrowed significantly. He is Father Gustave Weigal, professor of ecclesiology at Woodstock Maryland, College. Father Weigel spoke at the 48th annual meeting of the Catholic Press Association. He admitted there is still a gap and will always be one as long as Protestants are Protestants and Catholics are Catholics, but he said the shrinking of the gap allows us to see each other without distortion. He attributed the better understanding to changes in Protestant and Catholic attitudes as well as to other forces.

Catholic editors at the meeting were told they must help the church in its relations with the civil and social order. Monsignor Francis J. Lally, editor of The Boston Pilot, said the Catholic press plays its part in this way: it brings the teachings of the church in contact with the realities of human living.

The association made its annual awards to newspapers and magazines. Four papers won double awards. They were The Catholic Free Press, Worcester, Massachusetts; The Boston Pilot; The Tidings, Los Angeles; and The Catholic Week, Birmingham, Alabama. Top magazine winners were The Critic, Jubilee, and St. Joseph Magazine. John J. Daly, editor of The Catholic Virginian, published at Richmond, was elected president of the association.

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Protestant welfare leaders met in Chicago for the annual Church Conference of Social Work. The meeting was sponsored by the National Council of Churches’ department of social welfare. Held at the same time was the annual session of the National Conference on Social Welfare. The National Conference conferred on Dr. Leonard W. Mayo a citation honoring him for his leadership in church welfare work. Dr. Mayo is chairman of the National Council’s social welfare department. Plans were announced at the Chicago meeting for a national all-Protestant conference on health and social welfare agencies in 1961. It will be the first of its kind on a Protestant-wide level.

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A Christian turned the first sod for a new Jewish temple in Benton, Illinois. Fred G. Harrison, president of the Bank of Herrin, Illinois, was given the honor because he had donated a four-acre site for the New United Hebrew Temple of Southern Illinois. Mr. Harrison, a Baptist, said he gave the land because he felt it was a good cause and because he had so many Jewish friends.

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Here are some briefs from the wires of Religious News Service:

In Boston, some 5,000 men sat down for the eighth annual Protestant Laymen’s Communion Breakfast. They marched to the huge breakfast in the mechanics building after attending communion services in six Boston Protestant churches.

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In Minneapolis, the executive council of the Augustana Lutheran Church recommended that the denomination ask for a study to determine the effect of American movies on the minds of foreign audiences. The study would be made by the National Council of Churches.

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The Capuchin Monastery of St. Bonaventure in Detroit will open its doors to the public on June 13 for the first time in its history. Permission for the Diamond Jubilee Open House was granted by the Vatican.

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In Washington, major airlines asked the Civil Aeronautics Board to permit a joint airline meeting to discuss passenger fare discounts. Most of the airlines apparently opposed the discount idea. Only one truck line has offered a reduced rate to clergymen since such discounts were authorized by Congress in 1956. (Parenthetically, it might be observed that this reporter included that item on this program at the time and raised a question as to whether such discounts under congressional authorization did not violate the First Amendment. He still raises that question.)

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Central Hall, a London Methodist Church, is pictured on the new three-cent and eight-cent United Nations stamp. The church had an important role in early U.N. history. The first U.N. General Assembly met in the 2,500 seat auditorium of Central Hall.

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And now the news from abroad:

In Vatican City, Pope Pius endorsed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He said it is necessary if the West is to be alert against an enemy that, in his words, goes around like a roaring lion seeking whom it can devour. In a separate speech the pontiff upheld a nation’s right to wage a defensive war. In defending itself against aggression, said the pope, a country may use all things necessary for prompt and strong action. But he noted that the Catholic Church rejects the idea that war is necessary.

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In Sydney, Australia, a Methodist evangelist just back from a visit to the U.S. said American church life is vital, evangelical, healthy, and dedicated; which we are, of course; pleasant sounding adjectives that lend themselves to almost any interpretation one wishes to put on them. However, the good Rev. Harold Hawkins is convinced that more enthusiasm characterizes the U.S. church than is true of those in Australia.

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From Berlin comes a report that East German communist authorities imprisoned three Protestant clergymen and the wife of one of the ministers. The Evangelical Church in Germany said the arrests marked a new wave of anti-church activity by the Reds. A year ago, church leaders said, seven Protestant pastors were in prison in East Germany. Now there are 24.

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And in Winnipeg, Canada, a goal of 1,000 overseas missionaries was announced by the Christian and Missionary Alliance. The Rev. H.L. Turner of New York, alliance president, told the organization’s annual international general council that there now are 822 alliance missionaries. The aim is to reach the 1,000 goal before the end of 1960. The work of this interdenominational agency is carried on in 138 languages in Africa, Asia, South America, the Near East, and a number of island territories.

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This next item comes under the anything-can-and-probably-will-happen department. Church groups sometimes have to struggle along with inexperienced officers. In Dayton, Ohio, the Sunshine Circle of the Third Street Baptist Church chose a new secretary and told her that one of the secretary’s jobs was to record the minutes of every meeting. At the next session, the secretary was called on for the minutes. The young lady arose from her seat and announced: “Minutes of the last meeting: 20 minutes, six seconds.” Then she sat down.

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Ladies and gentlemen: Last Friday, across the river from Washington, in Arlington Cemetery, there gathered the military, political, and judicial great to pay homage to America’s unknown dead. There are now three graves there instead of the one that has been there since World War I. The two recent ones represent those Americans who gave their lives in World War II and the Korean War. John Dudley Chamberlain, Jr., news editor, has composed some lines which he imputes to the first unknown soldier addressing the newcomers. These lines are:

“Come friends, lie down beside me here where spring breezes whisper soft and guards walk overhead to keep us safe. For 40 years I’ve lain alone, so tell me please, how goes the world since then? Did the Princeton sage achieve his goal of peace and justice for all men? Were our lives well spent, or did we sacrifice in vain? And tell me, friends, how came you here? How did you die? If you fell as I, alone, unknown upon some bloody field, then tell me this: How came the wars in which you fought? Whither eternal peace for which I died?”

American and the world have no valid and defensible answer to these questions.

 

 

An interfaith team of five religious leaders will leave New York next Tuesday to confer with top church and political leaders in Europe and the Middle East. Soviet Russia is on the itinerary. The National Conference of Christians and Jews is sponsoring the trip. The conference said the team will discuss with foreign leaders the problems affecting religious groups throughout the world. This is the first time such an interfaith team has entered the Soviet Union.

Members of the group are Dr. John Sutherland Bonnell, pastor of New York’s Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church; Dean Leonidas C. Contos of Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Los Angeles; Dr. Samuel L. Gandy, dean of Dillard University Chapel in New Orleans; Rabbi Irving Lehrman of Temple Emanu-el in Miami Beach; and Roy J. McCorkel, director of the conference’s Commission on Religious Organizations.

A conference spokesman said the group has been kept small intentionally. The leaders hope to encourage an intimate exchange of ideas between the foreign and American religious leaders. The Americans will try to get authoritative viewpoints on the relationship between politics and morality on issues facing the world today. The team will visit Moscow, London, Prague, Vienna, Istanbul, Belgrade, Budapest, Rome, Geneva, Paris, and cities in Egypt and Israel.

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Seminary development was in the news during the week. In New York, Union Theological Seminary, largest interdenominational seminary in the world, announced a $16 million program. Charles C. Parlin, chairman of Union’s development committee, said the program is a long-range one designed to meet the needs of its increased enrollment. Before World War II the largest student body the seminary ever had in one year totaled 314. Today, 669 students are preparing for service all over the world. The seminary hopes to modernize facilities, increase faculty salaries, develop advanced studies and internships, provide student scholarships, and build new student residences, offices, lecture, and seminar rooms.

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At Notre Dame University in Indiana, a cornerstone was laid for the new $3 million theological seminary scheduled to open on the campus next fall. The Rev. Theodore J. Mehling celebrated a solemn High Mass prior to the blessing of the cornerstone. Father Mehling is provincial of the Holy Cross Fathers who operate Notre Dame University. He said the new building will provide residence and training facilities for 200 seminarians, as well as 28 rooms for faculty members, student priests and semi-retired religious workers. Funds for the seminary were raised through a nationwide appeal. Earlier this year the university announced a $66 million development program.

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The American Jewish Congress, meeting at Miami Beach, heard a warning that Jewish existence as a people is in danger in the Western world. Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, told 1,500 delegates that the danger lies in a lack of challenge. Through the centuries, he said, Jews have reacted constructively and heroically when threatened. Conversely, he said, we have not been conditioned to maintain Jewish solidarity and identity in normal times. Dr. Goldman said that because of the lack of challenge, a process of disintegration is at work, especially among the younger generation. Sidney Hollander of Baltimore, convention chairman, declared that recent bombings of Jewish schools and synagogues in the South stemmed from lawless resistance to school integration. He said there must be a reversal of the policy of the Southern states of organizing massive resistance to the nation’s desegregation policy.

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Ten thousand women gathered at St. Louis this week for the fifth quadrennial national assembly of the Women’s Society of Christian Service. The WSCS is the Methodist women’s group. Delegates represented 31,000 local chapters, as well as larger area groupings. Dr. Walter G. Muelder, dean of Boston University School of Theology told the women they now have tremendous social, cultural, and religious power. Women must use it, he said, as a trust. Dean Muelder said that at the very time when economic opportunity tends to entice the woman away from home and church, both these institutions need her ministry with a greater sense of vocation than ever. The Methodist women also heard a plea that they work for measures that will combat crime and delinquency in the United States.

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In Los Angeles, Protestants welcomed a group of 82 White Russians, who arrived from Hong Kong on their way to new homes in Brazil. The Russians have lived in China since 1919. They are “old believers,” members of a Russian Orthodox sect. The 82 who arrived in California are the vanguard of 192 White Russians to be resettled in Brazil. Another 500 are expected to follow at a later date. Transportation for members of the sect was arranged by the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration with the help of a $100,000 allotment from Church World Service, a relief agency of the National Council of Churches.

The bearded Russian men, their wives and children, were to sail for Brazil from Los Angeles with 60 tons of farm supplies contributed by American Protestants through Church World Service. A 6,000-acre tract of almost virgin land will replace farms seized by the Chinese communists from the old believers in 1951 and 1952.

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In Washington, a congressional conference committee agreed not to raise second-class mail rates for religious and other non-profit periodicals (which may or may not be legal.) The conference committee voted, however, to increase third-class rates for other printed matter sent by non-profit organizations. This hike will be only one-fourth of a cent per piece, and it won’t take effect until July 1, 1960.

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Here are some briefs from the words of Religious News Service:

In New York the Jewish Theological Seminary of America established a new institute of ethics named after former Sen. Herbert H. Lehman. One quarter of the projected $1 million endowment already has been raised.

In Dallas, Texas, 300 white Protestant ministers issued a statement declaring enforced segregation morally and spiritually wrong. The ministers urged school boards in the area to make their desegregation plans public as soon as possible.

In Chicago, Dr. Ruh Edwin Espy, a National Council of Churches official warned that the world’s people must learn to live closer with one another. Dr. Espy sees world population growth to 6 or 7 billion by the year 2000 (He must be seeing things, for this is a doubtful projection). [In fact, world population was over 6 billion in the year 2000.]

When the Syrian Orthodox Youth Organization meets in Pittsburgh in July, the young delegates will get occasional breaks from the routine of convention business, but they will be religious breaks. Planners of the convention have arranged for the delegates to relax by listening to informal 10-minute talks by religious leaders. Sounds like the postman taking a walk on his day off.

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And now for some foreign news items:

In Portugal, a 15-ton statute to our Lady of Fatima was unveiled in front of the Basilica of Our Lady of Fatima. The shrine commemorates the appearance of the Virgin to the three shepherd children of Fatima in 1917. The statue was donated by American Catholics, and was carved by an American Dominican priest, Father Thomas McGlynn.

In the new city of Jerusalem, a towering new structure was dedicated as the supreme religious center for the entire Orthodox Jewish world. It is a seven-story building on the highest hill in the new city, and will serve as the seat of the chief rabbinate of Israel. It will house also a new Orthodox research and information center, a rabbinical library and a liaison office for Jewish religious foundations throughout the world.

And in Ruschlikon, Switzerland, European Baptist leaders urged revitalization of the Baptist conception of the priesthood of all believers. Baptists from 17 countries met for a conference on evangelism sponsored by the European Baptist Federation. Dr. Joel Sorenson of Stockholm was chairman. He said the consensus of the delegates’ report was that the Baptist idea of the priesthood of all believers must be revitalized through good neighborly contacts and adequate programs for laymen.

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Dr. Charles Allen, Atlanta pastor, in his syndicated column this week passed along some excellent suggestions under the title of what he calls “The Race Issue.” Taking his text from Galatians and calling it an expression of the “climate of freedom,” he goes on to urge:

1. We must grant to our opponents the same freedom that we demand for ourselves.
2. The freedom of the pulpit must be maintained. There was a time when heretics were burned. Now, he says, they are sometimes fired. So long as a minister is loyal to truth, he should be encouraged to speak his honest convictions on vital matters.
3. Let us quit calling our opponents names. Good, honest men differ on important matters. Name-calling is unbecoming. Someone has said that “Labels are libels,” and few people should want to be libelous.
4. In this controversy over race relations, only reason and tolerance will win in the long run. Force in any form, threats, intimidation, coercion, have not the ghost of a chance of winning. Force may win a skirmish but it will lose the war.

Can you think of four better guiding principles in trying to forge our way through the mass of tis so’s and tain’t so’s about this subject?

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Two final items of a local nature that may or may not have any particular religious and/or moral significance.

It has been an amusing and not un-educational experience of reading the local paper “The Tempest in a Teapot” regarding the wearing of shorts, as reflected in letters to the editor. However, the letter of May 14 contained a statement that was rather nettling. The “Old-Time Reader” closes his letter by saying that “God meant for people to wear clothes.” It is difficult to be patient with people who are sure that they know what the intent or purpose of the deity was or is on any subject. The immediate reaction this reporter had to that sentence was this: “If God had intended people to wear clothes, is it not reasonable to assume that they would have been born fully clothed?” which makes the whole thing ridiculous. Emotionally inclined people, particularly the blood and thunder type, are sure they know God’s purpose on every subject. Those of us who try to make up our mind on the basis of evidence take no stock in such nonsense.

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The last item is this. This program has emphasized rather heavily and frequently the traditional and imperative practice of separation of church and state as a part of our social scheme of things. Yesterday I attended a political convention in Jonesboro, where the (self-phrased) “platforms” of candidates were read. One candidate, who later was nominated for an important office, included in his platform statement, not only the fact that he affiliated with a particular religious denomination, but went on to nauseous lengths to describe how long he had been so affiliated, the various posts he had held in the church, that he had been Sunday school teacher, superintendent, etc., etc., etc. Conceding, that it may be perfectly proper for a candidate to indicated that he is church-affiliated, it not only is in poor taste but also a violation of our principle of church-state separation to make such an obvious bid for votes on the basis of a religious appeal. There is no necessary relationship between church membership and good citizenship or good performance of a public official. That candidate maybe secured some votes by this appeal. It may be also that he lost at least one by so doing.

 

 

More than a thousand teachers and community leaders will attend 38 human relations workshops this summer. The workshops will be held at leading colleges and universities throughout the country, with the help of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. The conference also will give $30,000 in scholarships for the program. The money will help pay the expenses of those taking part. Details on the program were announced at New York by Dr. John L. McMahon, national chairman of the conference’s commission on educational organizations. Dr. McMahon is president of Our Lady of the Lake College in San Antonio, Texas. The workshops will last from 2-6 weeks. They will train teachers and community workers in how to deal with interracial and inter-religious problems. Since 1941 the conference has aided more than 340 workshops in every part of the country, with more than 13,000 educators and other community leaders taking part in the sessions.

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Mrs. May Roper Coker of Hartsville, South Carolina, is the reigning American Mother of the Year for 1958. Her selection was announced in New York by Mrs. Daniel A. Poling, president of the American Mother’s Committee. Mrs. Coker was chosen for her success as a mother, her religious and spiritual integrity, her constant practice of the golden rule, and her sense of civic and international understanding. She has reared three daughters of her own and five step-children. Besides taking part in numerous civic, business, and cultural affairs, she is an active member of First Baptist Church in Hartsville and a Sunday school teacher.

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The National Council for Jewish Education held its 82nd annual conference at Atlantic City, New Jersey. All-faith support for Jewish religious schools was urged by Dr. Samuel Dinin, dean of the University of Judaism at Los Angeles. Dr. Dinin said better schools result in better communities and therefore deserve support from all residents of the community.

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Catholic mother of the year is Mrs. Leo Stupfel of McMinnville, Oregon. She was chosen by the Family Life Bureau of the National Catholic Welfare Conference. The bureau cited Mrs. Stupfel for her ability to devote time to her church and community and still be an extraordinary success as a Christian mother. Mrs. Stupfel is a member of St. James Church in McMinnville. She has eight children, four of whom are active in religious life.

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At Rye, New York, businessmen were urged to concern themselves not so much with profits as with spiritual production. The advice came from Alfred H. Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Mr. Williams spoke at the 17th annual conference of the Laymen’s Movement for a Christian World. He said the time has come for business to set new goals – the goals of broadening and deepening the lives of each individual within our large business organizations.

J.C. Penney, chairman of the board of the J.C. Penney Company, was another speaker. He declared that our challenge and purpose are to discover and translate the Sermon on the Mount into business conduct. The Laymen’s Movement is a nonsectarian association of individuals pledged to bring Christian principles into their everyday affairs.

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Plans have been announced for a multi-million dollar center in Washington to commemorate the religious heritage of America and its free institutions. The proposal was disclosed by the organization, Religious Heritage of America, at the conclusion of the 8th annual Washington Pilgrimage of American Churchmen. The intercreedal center would give recognition to the contribution of all religious groups. It would include an auditorium, a chapel, a library, and a museum where documents relating to religious freedom could be enshrined. A committee was named to survey sites in the capital and to plan an architects’ competition for a suitable design. Sponsors of the project acknowledged that it might take 10 years or more to raise the necessary funds. But they said it would fill an obvious need in the capital, which now has no shrine to the nation’s religious heritage.

Several awards were presented during the Washington Pilgrimage. Dr. Joseph R. Sizoo, a theologian at George Washington University, was honored as Clergy Churchman of the Year. Cecil B. DeMille, noted Hollywood producer, was cited as Lay Churchman of the Year. And Dr. Georgia Harkness of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, was given the Churchwoman of the Year award.

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The United States Steel Foundation announced in New York it had made $631,000 in grants to 415 church-related institutions of higher learning. The 415 were among 621 liberal arts colleges, science and engineering institutions, public and private universities, and medical schools included in the foundation’s Aid to Education program. Roger M. Blough, chairman of the foundation’s board of trustees, said the grants were intended to help maintain the vigor of educational institutions.

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At Melrose, Minnesota, a Catholic nun was honored on completion of her 60th year of teaching in Saint Boniface schools. She is Sister Celsa, a Benedictine nun who just passed her 80th birthday. For all but two of the 60 years she has been at St. Boniface, she has taught first grade. The National Education Association called her career a record for service in the same school. Sister Celsa says she’ll keep on teaching as long as her superiors let her do so.

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At Honolulu, three American Quakers and a Methodist were given 60-day jail sentences, which were suspended, for defying Federal Judge John Wiig, who warned them they would be jailed again if they made another attempt to set sail for the nuclear proving grounds. The men said after the court hearing they were undecided about their next move. They were taken to court after the Coast Guard stopped their 30-foot ketch, the Golden Rule, a half hour out of Honolulu Harbor. By sailing for the weapons testing area, they violated orders from the Atomic Energy Commission and the Navy, putting the testing grounds off limits. The Golden Rule was a protest against the continuation of nuclear weapons tests. The journey was sponsored by an organization called Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons. The crew of four included George Willoughby, executive secretary of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors. Spokesman for the group in court was Lieutenant Commander Albert Smith Bigelow. He told the judge, “It would have been contempt for God if I hadn’t done my best to stop those nuclear atrocities. They are contemptuous crimes against all mankind.”

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More than a million persons were served by the U.S.A. and the United Presbyterian Church social agencies in 1957. The figure was reported at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, by John Park Lee, executive secretary of the National Presbyterian Health and Welfare Council. He spoke at a conference of Presbyterian community and neighborhood house workers. Mr. Lee said 362 social welfare agencies of the two Presbyterian groups served 1,068,000 persons last year. More than half were served by 121 community centers and neighborhood houses. The two Presbyterian denominations will merge at the end of this month to form the New United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

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In Berlin, East German communist newspapers sharply attacked the synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany. The communists criticized the Protestant organization for failing to condemn West German atomic armament at its recent meeting. The Evangelical Synod adopted a resolution condemning atomic war. But the leaders were split on atom bomb production. Some argued situations were conceivable in which defense with equal weapons is justifiable.

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As the communists protested, seven prominent West German Catholic theologians issued a declaration upholding a country’s right to use atomic weapons if necessary for its defense. The statement, however, noted the devastating effects of atomic weapons and said a state must be prepared to make big sacrifices to preserve peace.

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Major churches around the world were in the news during the week. In the Philippines, Catholic officials announced that the new Cathedral of Manila will be solemnly inaugurated on December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The big Romanesque structure replaces an old one destroyed in World War II. American troops turned guns on the old building to dislodge Japanese suicide squads who made a last-ditch stand there.

In London, Queen Elizabeth II headed an overflow congregation at services marking the reopening of the east end of famous St. Paul’s Cathedral. The east end of the American structure was almost completely destroyed by Nazi bombs during the war. It has now been restored.

And in Quebec, Catholic Archbishop Maurice Roy celebrated a solemn Pontifical Mass opening an anniversary celebration. It is the 300th anniversary of the famous shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre in the tiny village of the same name 25 miles from Quebec City. Three million pilgrims are expected at the shrine during the five-month celebration.

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Yesterday, I perforce, watched the Armed Services parade in Johnson City. I say perforce, because I was waiting for a person to keep an appointment with me, and since he was late, I waited. I found myself in a place where it was almost impossible not to see the parade that was going by. It sadly lacked coordination and continuity.

But these are not important points about it. The major sensation that coursed through my consciousness as I watched the guns, tanks, uniformed persons go by was: What a graphic commentary upon the stupidity of man, who insists upon calling himself civilized. There was nothing civilized about the affair. My next reaction was to wonder how much all this equipment, these uniforms, and other expense of the show, a small one that was repeated many times over not only across the country but around the world, would do toward providing food, shelter, clothing, education, and medicine, for hungry, forlorn and destitute people, of whom there are entirely too many in this world. Yet, here we were making a showy parade out of the fact that mankind is so unwilling to profit by the lessons of history that he goes on kidding himself that by getting ready for war he can have peace.

No loyal citizen would question but what such trappings are a necessary evil of our present nationalistic system of things. But the discouraging and distressing thing about it all is that nobody in responsible place seems to be thinking about changing the system so that, in the foreseeable future, such grisly reminders of man’s inhumanity to man would no longer be necessary. Not only that, but those of us who would change the system, peacefully, substituting law and order where we now have nothing but the code of the jungle, are looked at askance, as if were were trying to destroy the country, when in reality we would save it from its own folly.

Peace has been established in ever-enlarged areas only to the extent that so-called sovereignty is wrapped in the orderly process of law. Such must be applied on a world-wide basis if a just and durable peace is to come about. We may not like the idea of world government, but an increasing number of us would much prefer world government to world suicide. There does not seem to be any alternative middle ground.

There are those who say world government is fine but we are not ready for it. The same thing was said about the formation of our own federation in 1788, but it has endured to prove the doubters wrong. One way to be defeated unnecessarily is to insist before beginning that something cannot be done. It is far more constructive and productive to seek, instead, ways and means by which it can be done, for be done it must if we are to survive.

 

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Last week I reported briefly on criticism emanating from the Associated Church Press meeting in Chicago to the effect that religious papers are not aggressive enough in espousing great social issues. There is more news of the same vein in this week’s news. Fear was expressed at the meeting that the church press may be relinquishing moral leadership to the secular press because of its reluctance to discuss realistically the big issues. And Dr. Harold E. Frey, editor of The Christian Century, said religious publications ought to stick their necks out more on vital public questions.

In New York, meanwhile, two secular dailies and the United Press Association received awards of merit for distinguished coverage of local, national, and international religious activities. The papers are the Detroit Free Press and the Medford, Oregon, Mail Tribune. They were honored by the National Religious Publicity Council at its annual meeting. And in Washington, Louis W. Cassels, religion editor of the United Press, was named to receive the 1958 Faith and Freedom Award in American Journalism, which will be presented May 3 at a banquet highlighting the ninth annual pilgrimage of American churchmen.

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Dr. Douglas Horton, dean of Harvard Divinity School has announced the first professor in Catholic studies ever established at the school. Harvard’s Protestant Divinity School is 139 years old. Dr. Horton said Christopher Dawson, distinguished British Catholic historian and author, will become the first Chauncey Stillman Guest Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies. The new professorship is designed to attract to the Divinity School distinguished educators who can contribute to a wider understanding of the Catholic Church. Dr. Horton also announced appointment of another Englishman, Robert Henry Slater, to the newly-created professorship of world religions. Slater is theology professor at McGill University’s Montreal Diocesan Theological College.

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The Methodist Council of Bishops has called for a revised U.S. foreign policy in which the idealism of the American people is dominant. The appeal was issued in a message to the church from the meeting of the bishops of Miami Beach, Florida. The Methodist prelates urged a foreign policy that would not be based primarily on security and defense. They warned that the war for the minds of men will not be won so long as blind politicians demand tariff walls, envision fortress America, and call for more devastating weapons. It is no wonder, the bishops say, that the communist wins the exploited people. He tells them that he is out to abolish the exploitation of man by man. But, instead of telling the world that we give economic aid because we want a peaceful world, we advise them that such aid is in our national interest and to maintain our own security. The bishops went on to propose that the government seek advice from teachers, philosophers, preachers, missionaries, labor leaders, musicians, and artists, as well as business men and military leaders, when world-wide policies are being drafted.

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Two Catholic organizations warned during the week against over-emphasis on science and technology as a result of the age of satellites. Meeting at Detroit, the American Catholic Philosophical Association said much emphasis would constitute a danger to our way of life. At Buffalo, the Catholic Library Association urged educators to keep a proper balance between physical science and the humanities despite current pressures for more scientists.

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Bells made from the cones of Nike rocket boosters rang out at the opening ceremonies of a unique chapel near Carrizozo, New Mexico. The chapel was built entirely from scrap materials available at the isolated Red Canyon Rocket Range, plus stone cut from the walls of Red Canyon. Army rocket men began work on the chapel last December. Among their materials were old telephone poles and rails salvaged from the Southern Pacific Railroad. Col. John. J. McCarthy, head of the camp, said the chapel bells really have an excellent tone. The metal cones have been tempered by the extreme heat of exploding gases driving the Nike rockets skyward.

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In Washington, Monsignor Wm. J. McDonald was installed as rector of the Catholic University of America. Edward Cardinal Mooney, archbishop of Detroit, presided over the colorful ceremony. James Francis Cardinal McIntyre of Los Angeles and nearly 40 archbishops and bishops of the Catholic Church attended. In his inaugural address, the new rector expressed hope that the questioning now going on in American education will goad us into improvement.

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The oldest Baptist church in this country was rededicated at Providence, Rhode Island, after completion of restoration work. The church is First Baptist of Providence, built in 1775. Its restoration was made possible by a $0.5 million gift from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. This church, often called the Meetinghouse, has long been the scene of baccalaureate and commencement services for Brown University students. Baptist leaders from throughout the country took part in the dedicatory ceremonies.

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The American Jewish Yearbook, just published in New York, reports that enrollment of pupils in Jewish day and Sunday schools has doubled in the last 10 years. In 1947, there were 231,000 students in Jewish schools; by last year, the book says, the figure has grown to 490,000. The growth occurred during a period when the Jewish population increased by only 15-20 percent. Of the 5.25 million Jews in this country now, some 3 million are formally affiliated with an Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform congregation. An estimated 4 million, the yearbook says, are regarded as basically within the synagogue. The book estimated world Jewish population at 12,350,000.

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Two major U.S. Baptist leaders arrived in Moscow to worship with and confer with Russian Baptists. They were representative Brooks Hays of Arkansas, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Dr. Clarence W. Cranford, president of the American Baptist Convention. They were met at Moscow Airport by Dr. Jakov Zhidkov, president of the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians, the Baptist group in the Soviet Union. Dr. Zhidkov was in the U.S. in 1956 as the guest of major American Baptist bodies.

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In Karachi, Pakistan’s President Iskander Mirza said several hundred thousand Christian farmers will get land from the government. President Mirza gave the assurance to Dr. R. Norris Wilson, executive director of Church World Service, relief agency of the National Council of Churches. Many Christian farmers in Pakistan were dispossessed 10 years ago when some 8 million Moslems left India and poured into newly created Pakistan. President Mirza said his government is aware of the injustice of the dispossession and is determined to right the wrong. He said Christian farmers will be eligible for land now available for resettlement. The Pakistani leader expressed thanks to Dr. Wilson for relief and rehabilitation work sponsored by American church agencies in his country.

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Some of you will be surprised at this next item; at least at its source, if not its subject. It is an article entitled “Segregation in the Churches,” by Dr. Wesley Shrader, associate professor of pastoral theology at Yale Divinity School. The article appears in the current, May, issue of Esquire magazine.

“… Here is the most striking irony of the twentieth century: that the church of Jesus Christ has become the primary instrument for the perpetuation of segregated life. This is more dramatically (though not exclusively) seen in the South where the Christian church openly represents the greatest bulwark of segregated power. The church will undoubtedly be the last bastion to fall – if, indeed, it will ever fall.”

Going on to report upon his interviews with representative spokesmen of various so-called Christian groups – Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and others – together with citing articles and other published statements on the subject, Dr. Shrader concludes his article with this paragraph:

“What is the future of the Christian church in the South? Are these tiny gains destined to set the pattern for better things to come? Or will the church in truth continue to boast about their large congregations, their extravagant church buildings and their overstuffed treasuries while denying a place of service and worship to a brother in Christ because of the color of his skin? Will segregation’s divisive wedge mar the life and honor of the church throughout the length and span of this generation? Time will tell.”

Here is a profound indictment of the very institution that should exhibit the least traces of distinction between because of the accident of race. “Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of these, ye have done it unto me.” Do segregationists really believe that? Or is merely words that they parrot? Apparently the latter. Anyway, don’t miss the article in the May issue of Esquire magazine.

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A correspondent sends me this incident: He says he met two men and “I thought they were a couple of Methodist bishops. They were talking about conversion and redemption. I moved in and found that they were bankers talking about bonds.”

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This week your reporter read carefully a radio broadcast address by Dr. Harold Scott, pastor of the First Unitarian Society of Salt Lake City, Utah. The script made sense. After pointing out that prayer in some form has been a characteristic of most peoples of all time, primitive and modern, he goes on to observe that Hebrews composed prayers that in their day were of much literary merit, but which reflect a conception of deity that today the science of religion must regard as superstition. The main theme is that Jehovah is taking care of the Jews and cares little about anyone else.

The Roman Missal and the Episcopal Prayer Book, he goes on, both have prayers for many occasions; some of which are of high literary merit, but embody so much of superstition that they are not usable by moderns in religion.

In most Protestant churches, the prayer is by the minister, is impromptu, and is likely to consist of fervid outpouring of pious phases which if written down would have no literary merit and would make little sense – just a loose series of religious sounding words.

Orthodox Jews funeral prayers make a direct appeal to God on behalf of the dead, presumably on the theory that God can be induced to changed his mind as to the treatment of the dead.

It is typical of Americans, he says, with more than a modicum of truth, that when they pray they ask for materials benefits. They will take a chance on anything to get hold of property. But of course this is nonsense, for goods are produced only by the application of labor to land. God does not run a department store. If you want more wages, praying won’t give them to you. Better join a labor union.

Prayer he emphasizes, to the rational person, whether Christian, Jew, or what have you, embodies:

1. An outpouring of thanksgiving for the good, the true, and the beautiful. This serves to sharpen our search for value, meaning, and appreciation.
2. It addresses itself to the pitiable state of mankind and voices aspirations that man can climb up out of hate, suspicion, fear, superstition, want, and misery.
3. The expression of a deep longing for more than life has thus far yielded. It should voice the aching sense of unfulfillment as we observe the great gulf between what we are and what we want to be.

Well, as Dr. Scott, observes, prayer may be many other things, but it is certainly these.

More than 10 years have passed since a Bedouin shepherd stumbled over the first cave hiding place of the Dead Sea Scrolls, considered by biblical archeologists as the find of the century. Since their discovery, many of the 2000-year old leather and copper documents have been thoroughly examined by scholars and technologists. These scholars have tried to answer tentatively the absorbing question of whether the scrolls actually shed any new light on Christianity. Archaeologist Frank Moore Cross, Jr., and Old Testament scholar and author of the recently-published book on the scrolls, “The Ancient Library of Qumran,” gives a qualified affirmative answer. Cross, who is the first to concede that his book is incomplete, says the light is not exactly shed, but rather is case by reflection. Most scholars agree that the scrolls were not the work of the early Christians, but rather a Jewish sect known as Essenes. This sect inhabited the Qumran community shortly before and shortly after the birth of Christ. Cross points out that the importance of the scrolls lies in the fact that the Essenes were an apocalyptic sect, or believers in the imminent triumph of righteousness on the ashes of the evil world. The primitive Christian church was also apocalyptic.

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Some question has been raised as to whether Samuel Cardinal Stritch will keep his American citizenship while serving in a high office in the Vatican. The cardinal, who has headed the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago for 18 years, is en route to the Vatican to become pro-prefect of the Church’s congregation for the propagation of the faith. The citizenship issue was raised by the National Association of Evangelicals, an association of 41 small denominations. It refers to itself as the Conservative Protestant Wing. At its annual convention, held in Chicago, the group said an American loses citizenship by accepting office in a foreign state. Delegates approved a resolution calling for an investigation to determine whether Cardinal Stritch is affected.

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A revision of the traditional church policy at Harvard University is being sought by a group of faculty members. A spokesman for the group explained that its petition to Harvard President Nathan Pusey was tempered, but otherwise declined to say what kind of revision is desired. At issue is whether Memorial Church in Harvard Yard should be used for services of faiths other than Christian. The controversy stems from a lengthy article which appeared recently in the undergraduate daily newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. The article charged that the university preacher refused to allow a Jewish student to be married in the church. Several letters were received as a result and an unidentified Harvard official said the Jewish student had not been denied the right. The spokesman noted, however, that the student was encouraged to be married by a Protestant minister with a rabbi present, and that the ceremony was performed in that manner. Harvard President Pusey takes the stand that the university’s historic tradition has been a Christian one. He says that while Memorial Church is not regarded as affiliated with any one denomination, it has always been thought of as a house of Christian worship.

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This reporter habitually avoids movies in order to avoid disappointment, but so much has been said and written that it seems pertinent to pass on to you an evaluation of the “Bridge Over the River Kwai,” prepared by Dr. Harold Scott of Salt Lake City. He says, “We saw a preview of the film, ‘The Bridge Over the River Kawi.’ We recommend you see the showing. It was strange to see Alec Guinness in a serious role but he was adequate. This is a serious picture showing (1) the irrationality of war, (2) the futility of principles held to be absolute in the face of pragmatic propositions, and (3) the violence done human personality by the slave code of the military whereby a man must obey another man instead of his own intelligence and conscience.”

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In Washington, the White House confirmed that President and Mrs. Eisenhower had contributed $1,000 toward a mural that was dedicated Easter Sunday in a Washington Negro church. Mrs. Eisenhower made the gift by check to Elder Solomon Lightfoot Michaux, a Negro evangelist whose congregation recently dedicated a $350,000 building called the Temple of Freedom Under God.

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The National Catholic Educational Association, meeting in Philadelphia, urged greater lay participation in the operation of Catholic schools. One resolution adopted at the meeting asked Catholic educators to explore the possibility of increased use of the laity for advisory boards, on citizen’s committees, and individually in the areas of special knowledge. The resolution suggested enlistment of lay volunteers as teacher aides, library assistants, and study hall supervisors. This, the Catholic educators said, would help relieve teaching loads and teacher shortages. (Parenthetically, it might be observed that it is also likely to relieve the quality of work that goes on in the school.)

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At Miami Beach, Florida, the Methodist Council of Bishops declared an amendment to the constitution of the Methodist Church adopted and in full effect. The amendment is the one voted by the Methodist General Conference in 1957 to set up a procedure for gradual dissolution of the denomination’s all-Negro central jurisdiction. It provides a system of permitting Negro churches voluntarily to transfer into the five white geographical jurisdictions. The bishops said the amendment has been approved by nearly all of the 127 annual conferences that have voted on it so far. Membership in the Methodist Church was reported at an all-time high of 9,566,000, an increase of nearly 150,000 over 1957.

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In Chicago this week the religious press was chided for failing to speak out forcefully on social issues and for not assuming a prophetic role in Christian journalism. The criticism came from Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, president of the National Council of Churches, and Milburn P. Akers, editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. They addressed U.S. and Canadian editors attending the annual meeting of the Associated Church Press. The organization is made up of Protestant and Orthodox publications. Mr. Akers expressed disappointment that many church publications avoided comment on great social issues. Dr. Dahlberg agreed, saying it is a great mistake to make church papers into mere program publications. The greatest opportunity of the religious press, he said, is that of adopting a prophetic role in society. Dr. Dahlberg said the religious press must deliberately educate and strengthen the conscience of the nation and be the voice of that conscience.

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Membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints increased by more than 70,000 last year. There are now close to 1.5 million Mormons. The figures were reported at the denomination’s annual conference at Salt Lake City. The report showed the Mormons have almost 13,000 missionaries, roughly half of them full-time. President David O. McKay told 8,000 delegates at the Salt Lake City conference that civilization is threatened by man’s failure to match progress in science and invention with progress in character and spirituality.

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After a long boom period, church construction is beginning to fall off, apparently because of the business recession. In Washington, the Departments of Commerce and Labor estimated new church starts in March totaled $61 million. That is $3 million less than the February level and $2 million below March of a year ago. Normally, March brings an increase in all kinds of construction.

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In Rome, the Vatican art gallery disclosed it is starting a new department dedicated exclusively to modern art. Up to now, the gallery has had nothing more recent than a painting of King George IV of England, done between 1820 and 1830. A number of works already have been donated to the new department.

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Newspapers reaching Hong Kong from the mainland indicate that communist leaders in China have started a witch-hunt for so-called rightists in the Chinese Protestant churches. One newspaper reported that the Red leaders had convened a meeting of Protestants from all parts of Kwangtung Province. According to the communist account, the meeting was used to unmask nine Protestant pastors. The clergymen were accused of collaborating with imperialists and engaging in activities aimed at overthrowing the Communist Party. Another paper described a similar unmasking of two Protestant leaders in Kansu Province. The papers did not say what happened to the accused men.

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Some details of the constitution for the New United Church of Christ were disclosed at Cleveland this week. The co-chairmen of a special commission drafting the chapter said it will guarantee the freedom of local congregations to own and manage property. The congregation also will be guaranteed the right to call ministers and choose their own form of worship and standards of membership. Ministers will be free to accept or reject calls to churches. The United Church was formed last June by merger of the general council of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical Reformed Church. It is being governed by a basis of union until the constitution is approved. The charter will define the organization and work of the new church’s general synod and describe the relationships between the synod and its local churches and agencies.

Meanwhile, the new denomination made an offer of what it called inter-communion, recognition, and fellowship to all Christian bodies who accept Christ. It asked other Christian bodies to adopt the practice of serving Holy Communion to all church members who proclaim their commitment to Him.

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The ethical standards of the TV industry’s advertising are about on the level of a con man. Many of the commercials are clearly fraudulent. The industry dresses up studio dopes in white jackets to impersonate a physician, then prescribes drugs wholesale without examination or diagnosis. It makes claims for tobacco, soap, toothpaste, and cosmetics that cannot be substantiated. It is highly doubtful if any TV company insists on a clearance from the American Medical Association. Better Business Bureaus are overwhelmed and the Federal Trade Commission is given too little money to police crooked business. Most Americans don’t seem to mind, but the claims of TV advertising have become incredulous and ridiculous.

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9,245 scientists of 44 countries have signed a petition to stop testing nuclear bombs by international agreement and that petition has been presented to the United Nations. The petition bears the names of 36 Nobel Prize winners, 101 of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, 35 fellows of the Royal Society of London, 216 members and correspondents of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., and leading scientists of other countries. The press of the U.S. has ignored this, but the wire services bring plenty of statements from Dr. Teller, the military and its captive, the Pentagon, assuring us there is no danger from nuclear testing and that preparation for collective homicide brings peace. How illogical, irrational, and stupid can we get?

It should be apparent to all that admirable as is the statement of the scientists, that the answer to the problem of war lies not in the scientific laboratory but in the political arena. As long as scientists of each country are trying to outdo all others in death-dealing weapons, with no international control over the use to which their discoveries will be put, we rush madly to collective suicide. But if the Russians have a Sputnik in the skies, we must have one too.

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Immanuel Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, has borrowed some biblical language to solve a current problem. The problem was how to keep the curb in front of the church free of parked cars. A sign was erected that proved very effective. It read, “Thou shalt not park.”

 

 

During the last few weeks this program has carried items in the news on the matter of Sputniks and on the crisis in American education, and has pointed out something of the relationship between the two. This week, two articles came to my attention, putting both subjects in such pertinent focus that I shall report as many excerpts of them as can be included within the 15-minute limitation because of the secular and moral implications of the two subjects.

The first appears in the “easy chair” department of Harper’s magazine for April, and is written by guest editor, Col. E. B. Crabill, infantry officer in three wars, earning 12 decorations, and serving in many battles all over the world. He recently retired, but his training and experience make what he says of more than cursory value.

He points out that since the Korean War, American citizens have paid an annual tax bill of around $70 billion. Instead of diminishing, this bill shows every sign of increasing. He says:

“The primary excuse for this astronomical bite is that a sacrosanct monstrosity labelled ‘national defense’ – do not touch … Why should it be a sacred cow? Have the people so much confidence in the Defense Department that they think it can do no wrong? Isn’t there a possibility of a little empire-building mixed up with the real requirements? …

“What the defense setup needs is a good tough inspection. Let’s take a hard look at some of the prevailing sophisms that are responsible for this astronomical spending. Any of them could be the subject of a complete article???

1. The military leaders…are best able to determine our needs for national defense. They might be if they were able to rise above their prejudices, but they are not…. It might be possible to approach a solution by asking an admiral what the Army needs, an Army general what the Air Force needs, and an Air Force general what the Navy needs, but to ask each what his own service needs is like opening the doors of the treasury and handing him a shovel.
2. The money appropriated for military purposes is necessary for the defense of the country. It is about as necessary as it is to furnish each voter in the country with an air-conditioned Cadillac.

“The characteristic demanded by the service in their airplanes, ships, weapons, and vehicles are now so expensive that the cost of them is from two to ten times as great as that – with a small loss in comfort, efficiency, or accuracy – of a serviceable substitute…. The Russians have a heavy trench mortar that looks as though it had been machined with a sledge hammer, but it throws a lethal shell a long distance.”

3. It takes nine men in the rear to keep one man at the front. This is a great understatement. It started … far back … where animal transportation was all that was available…. Nowadays with motor and air transport, and radio and telephone communication, the proportion of rear-area personnel, instead of decreasing, has increased.
4. The officers in our services are brave, intelligent, zealous, and unselfish…. I would call this 20 percent correct. We owe our success in wars to a very small group of heroes. The rest just go along for the ride. Nor is this small group made up of more generals than privates or vice versa. It is about the same in all ranks.
5. All soldiers, sailors, and airmen contribute equally to their country’s defense and should be equally entitled to veteran’s benefits. Baloney.  If you believe this, go out some night when it is raining … dig yourself a foxhole with about four inches of water in the bottom and spend a couple of weeks there living on canned rations….

“Battles are won by a very few unusually brave men who are able to do the right thing at a critical time.… More often, they are decided by the boldness of some lieutenant or sergeant who makes a break-through which is then exploited by higher leaders….

6. Wars of the Future will be all-out wars like World Wars I and II. This is highly improbable and plays directly into the hands of the Russians who obviously have no intention of getting into an all-out war with the U.S.
7. Wars of the future will be decided by atomic bombs, airplanes, and guided missiles. Don’t you believe it. Any time she chooses to do so, Russia can march across Europe. There is nothing to stop her….
8. Atomic Weapons are so devastating that they will eliminate war as a means of settling international disagreements. Don’t believe that one either. History is replete with weapons so devastating that war would be impossible.
9. Wars are won by the nations having the best machines. This follows the old saying that God is on the side of the heaviest artillery…. History has too many instances in which a rabble poorly armed and trained but possessing high morale has defeated well-trained and well-equipped armies…”

Colonel Crabill lists nine suggestions which he calls “a better way,” only some of which can be reported here for lack of time:

1. Stop depending on guided missiles, atomic bombs, and airplanes to solve all defense problems. They probably won’t be used in small wars, and will be suicidal to use in big wars.
2. Keep ready and available in the … United States at least a dozen tough and well-trained divisions of professional soldiers that can be removed anywhere to back up decisions of the United Nations.
3. Reduce by 50 percent the personnel on duty in the Pentagon, including assistant secretaries, admirals, and generals….
4. Revise the military characteristics of war material, to eliminate requirements that make it expensive without proportionately increasing its combat value.
5. Start the pay of enlisted men at $50 a week; of officers at $6,000 a year. This would probably eliminate the draft.
6. Eliminate the corps of military police. This is an outstanding waste of good manpower.

Three other suggestions of similar nature are given. You read them in Harper’s for April, now on the newsstands. They are thought-provoking.

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This second item deals with the values that Americans as a people hold. The morality, the ideals of a people, like those of an individual, can be measured more by what a people do than what they say. We spend more for tobacco, beverages, chewing gum, than we do upon the education of our children, though every public speaker that touches upon the subject declares piously, and momentarily at least, sincerely, that our children are our most precious resource. Then we go right out and appropriate millions for highways and thousands for schools.

The following comment comes from Dr. John R. Everett, president of Hollins College, and it appears in a recent bulletin of that college (December, 1957) under the title “Hollins Herald Issue.” It goes like this, in full:

“The Sputniks seem to be doing what all the leaders in American education have failed to do. Some yet unborn historians will have a field day trying to explain a sequence of events that even now appear to be part of a grim irrational melodrama.

“Future historians who try to make sense out of our age might first take a few television commercials. In these they will find giant corporations spending millions of dollars to tell that they are first in research. Pictures of fine buildings, test tubes, sputtering electric circuits and all the rest flash on the screen to the accompaniment of ungrammatical Madison Avenue phrases. But the meaning is clear: American progress is firmly based in research and is guided by industrial statesmen who know the value of educated brains.

“Since we expect our historian to be rational, he will then wonder why a country with an extremely short tradition of learning, Russia, could surpass the United States in science. He will look around and find a number of small things like thoughtless rivalries in the defense establishment, poor coordination in program planning, use of captured scientists from Germany, congressional distrust of “eggheads,” and so on. But he will know that although these things contribute to the explanation, they are only a small part of the truth.

“In order to get further facts our historian goes into the musty files and reads literally thousands of reports made by all sorts of agencies and associations. Soon a peculiar feeling of reading in a Mickey Mouse world begins to dawn. In one set of statistics he reads that in the Commonwealth of Virginia the average college professor lost 10 percent of his purchasing power in a 15-year period (1941-1956), while industrial workers gained 197 percent in their power to buy. Going on to the president’s committee report he finds that fresh PhD’s entered college teaching at about $3,700 a year and could not expect to double their salary in their entire lifetime! And then he runs across the odd fact that railroad engineers got more income than senior scholar-teachers, and that a hip-waving, nasal-voiced guitar player got as much for one performance as a professor got for five years of teaching. There must be a reason.

“Before looking for the reasons it is necessary to see the effects. More reports are read, and the Mickey Mouse world begins to disappear. The ancient and tested laws of human behavior appear to begin working again. He finds that the production of the PhD’s increased four times in the 10 years between 1946 and 1956. But like sensible people these young scholars went into industry or some other activity that gave them a decent share of America’s production. Figures and statements of this sort begin to appear – ‘three of every four new PhD’s in chemistry who take new jobs upon graduation go outside education’s environs. Three of every five new PhD’s in physics and other physical sciences take the same path.’ All this seems quite normal to our seasoned observer of human action.

“Of course he knows that the mid-twentieth century Americans were not stupid so his next step is to find out how industry and government were dealing with the problem of helping new talent on its way through the schools. Sure enough he uncovered all sorts of foundations, corporations and individuals supplying scholarship funds. High school teachers, guidance counselors and national testing bureaus were all looking for and financing the exceptional student. There was much to be done, but a good start was underway. Indeed, it had been going on for generations; regular scholarship plans had been in operation since the colleges were founded.

“But who was teaching this crop of bright students? Some dedicated souls who would rather teach than eat well, some second- or third-rate people who could not stand the strain of business competition, some people who could never quite make up their minds about a career so they just slipped into teaching jobs? All these and more. Where was the great weight? Still with the dedicated ones, but the balance was rapidly shifting.

“The political managers of the United States took immediate and decisive action. They gave speeches and made low interest money available for dormitories and dining. This was right where it was least likely to do the most good.

“The other leaders also became decisive. One of the nation’s largest companies and one of its greatest consumers of educated manpower gave over $1 million to the cause – less than the cost of three hour-long television shows. But one should not forget that it was a good public relations gesture because over 1,000 news clippings were received and there were some 40 favorable editorials. Less enlightened leadership did not come up to this standard, but there were a number of speeches given to all kinds of audiences indicating something should be done by someone.

“Our historian was back in the Mickey Mouse world. He could find no adequate reason for a great nation with the world’s powerful economic system refusing to support its scholars and teachers. As one report stated, it was like the improvident farmer who ate up his seed corn and then wondered about next year’s crop.

“But at least the search through the libraries had not been in vain. Sputniks I and II and what came after were explained.”

 

 

 

This week, across the Holy Land, members of three great religious faiths observed ceremonies that are holy to them. Easter hymns of Christians mingled with Moslem calls to Ramadan prayers in the old city of Jerusalem. While not far away, Jews stocked up for their Passover observation. As the Way of the Cross procession began, Moslems gathered at the hallowed Dome of Rock for their usual prayers on Friday during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting. This dome is said to mark the spot where Mohamed ascended on horseback into heaven. The rock once was the sacred altar of the Jewish temple where Christ is said to have driven the money changers from the temple. At the other end of the Way of the Cross, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Christians entered the church courtyard opposite the Mosque of Amar as loudspeakers in the mosque’s minaret broadcast sermons in Arabic.

At the same time, Jews in the new city of Jerusalem prepared for Seder, the feast just after sundown which opens the week-long festival of the Passover, commemorating the emancipation of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. During the Passover week, only unleavened bread is served to remind the Jews of the haste with which their forefathers fled from Pharaoh’s bondage. Traditionally Jews change all cooking utensils. Only dishes which are kept especially for Passover are used.

To make the following comment: It is something of an anachronism that while the representatives of these great religious philosophies worship, each in his own way and in his own temple, that the land in which they worship is torn with strife and tension. One can observe without being suspected of disparagement of any one of these faiths that there is one thing common to them all: All, in one phraseology or another, subscribe to the idea which Jesus put in these words: “As ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.” Is it not both ridiculous and distressing that apparently neither one of these three takes this precept seriously in its practice. If all did, there would not be strife and tension.

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In New York an electronic computer has compiled the first complete index of a major portion of the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls. In preparation for making the index, 30,000 words from the scrolls and fragments found in the Dead Sea caves were transferred to machine punch cards. The cards were sent to New York where the computer converted the data into two reels of magnetic tape in two hours. The index will be a valuable tool for scholars seeking a more complete knowledge of the manuscript fragments. The lists prepared by the machine will enable a student to study any word of the scrolls in all its contexts. Also, by transposing prose into a series of mathematical relationships, the computer can make qualified guesses as to what words originally were written in hundreds of mutilated sections. This the machine does by analyzing words preceding and following each gap. Then it electronically scans thousands of words until it finds one that most nearly fits into the context.

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This next item comes under the “I don’t know what it means, if anything, department.” It says that the Queen Anne Christian Congregation in Seattle, Washington, used a novel method of breaking ground for its new church. More than 100 adults and children of the congregation grabbed onto six long ropes and pulled a plow through the earth of their building plot. Pitching in to help tug was the Rev. Chester Dunkin, pastor of the 52-year old parish. Unquote. You figure it out.

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An evangelical magazine published in the nation’s capital offers an interesting analysis of how Protestant ministers see themselves, theologically speaking. The magazine, Christianity Today, has published results of a survey made for it by the Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton. The ministers were asked to classify their own theological position, that is, to say whether they felt they were fundamentalist, conservative, neo-orthodox, liberal, or something else.

The largest number, 39 percent, called themselves “conservative.” Another 35 percent classified themselves as “fundamentalist.” Only 14 percent said they were “liberal,” and 12 percent, “neo-orthodox.” What, no radicals? The greatest radical of them all is the central theme of worship in all Christian churches today.

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Durham, North Carolina, was bombed with thousands of leaflets carrying invitations to attend Sunday school. This was the end of a month-long “Go to Sunday School” drive, conducted by the Edgemont Free Will Baptist Church of Durham in an effort to combat juvenile delinquency.

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Archbishop Makarios, spiritual leader of the Greek Orthodox Church in Cyprus, has given an ancient Greek manuscript of portions of the New Testament Gospels to Boston University’s Schools of Theology. This manuscript is believed to date from the 10th century. Dr. Walter G. Muelder, dean of the school, received it from Dean John Zanetos of Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral at Boston. The document will be made available for study by scholars.

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In Chicago, representatives of four merging Lutheran bodies resolved two major issues in the proposed union. They adopted resolutions concerning the ministry and control of seminaries. One measure declared that ministers ordained in the new church shall refrain from membership in secret societies or be subject to discipline. The second approved a compromise plan giving supervision of seminaries to the proposed new central church body and its constituent synods. Broad powers and duties would be assigned to a board of theological education. The four bodies are the United Lutheran, the Augustana, the Finnish Evangelical, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church. The new denominations will have a membership of about 3 million persons.

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Ground was broken at Elgin, Illinois, for a new $1.5 million headquarters building for the Church of the Brethren. It will provide space for the denomination’s central offices and will also house printing and merchandising facilities. The denomination’s general brotherhood board held a meeting at Elgin and adopted resolutions urging an end to nuclear weapons tests and more economic foreign aid.

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A nuclear test ban was also called for during the week by the Commission on Social Action of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, which held its annual meeting in Dayton, Ohio.

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And in Washington, a Quaker-sponsored petition supported by several religious pacifist groups was presented at the White House. The petition asked for cancellation of nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific as a first step toward disarmament and peace.

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While college tuition around the country continues to rise, a Catholic school in Vermont is offering a cut-rate family plan. Saint Michael’s College, Winooski, is operated by the Fathers of St. Edmund. Tuition there is $800 a year, but if a student’s brother enrolls, it costs the brother only $600. If another brother enrolls, his tuition will be only $400 a year.

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In Honolulu, USA Presbyterian officials announced the first Presbyterian church in Hawaii will be organized in a few months. In Hong Kong, a new orphanage called The Children’s Garden was dedicated this week in impressive ceremonies. The orphanage, which already houses 800 orphaned youngsters, 12 to a cottage, is sponsored by the Christian Children’s Fund. The fund is an independent agency, though it is affiliated with the National Council of Church’s division of foreign missions. American sponsors support the 800 children, write them letters, send gifts, and sometimes even visit them.

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In Toronto, the United Church of Canada reported spending $14 million to build 196 new churches and 85 manses in 1957. Dr. M.C. McDonald, secretary of the denomination’s board of home missions, said the church plans to erect 178 new churches and 59 manses this year at a cost of $13 million. In the last 10 years, 1,222 churches have been built.

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Dr. C. Oscar Johnson recently resigned from the pulpit of Third Baptist Church in St. Louis, the largest Protestant congregation in Missouri. He is former president of the American Baptist Convention, but has moved to California to join the faculty of Berkeley Baptist Divinity School, where he’ll teach evangelism and public speaking. He should find the academic climate agreeable, for the president of the seminary is his son, Dr. Ralph M. Johnson.

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Of course there is no necessary connection, but Federal Judge Robert Taylor this week came around to agreeing with the viewpoint of this program that the censor board in our neighboring country of Knox was unconstitutional. The swan song meeting of this august board, however, banned four novels and three magazines. Publication of the banning of these titles was about the best advertising they could have had. Anyway, perhaps now, restrictions of the press in Knoxville will come only as it should – when person or corporations are brought into court charged with specific violation of obscenity laws. But it is almost a certainty that the good judge’s decision left a lot of do-gooders unhappy.

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The state of California makes churches take a loyalty oath or pay taxes. This gives the conscience of the church into the hands of the state in a way not dissimilar to that which Russia exacts in Poland and elsewhere from the churches in order to let them stay in business. Three Unitarian and Universalist Churches have resisted this ridiculous requirement in the courts. And the U.S. Supreme Court has just consented to review these cases in the spring calendar – this session. Cost of this new action is about $20,000. Anyone wishing to contribute to freedom of religion can do so by mailing sums to the Fund for Religious Freedom, 2441 LeConte Avenue, Berkeley 9, California.

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In these days of mounting hypertension among the nations about whether to suspend or not to suspend nuclear tests, comes an understatement from former Secretary of Defense, Charles E. Wilson, who emphasized that “One of the serious things about this defense business is that so many Americans are getting a vested interest in it. Properties, business, jobs, votes, opportunities for promotion and advancement, bigger salaries for scientists, and all that. It is a troublesome business.”

Does this mean what the Russians have been insisting all along, that we are, deliberately or otherwise, perpetuating the Cold War as a means of trying to maintain a semblance of prosperity? If so, it is a sad commentary upon a system that can remain prosperous only by maintaining a potentiality for killing human beings.

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My comments a few weeks ago aroused various kinds of reactions from some of you listeners. With no apologies for what was said then, let me quote from a recent item of a national columnist who puts it this way: “A recent report on public education reveals that the biggest increase in enrollment in that state have been in driver education, office practice, and band. Opponents of this kind of education contend that it does not fit students for higher learning, but instead, confronts colleges with shoals of high school graduates who are unable even to read and write the English language properly.” And to that, this reporter can heartily attest. Do we believe in missions? Why not put that belief to practice in our own educational backyard?

 

Two items this week were pointed up that certainly have moral implications, even if not strictly religious ones.

All of us are doubtless familiar with the revelations brought out by the Harris Committee Investigating shenanigans in the Federal Communications Commission. You will recall that Mr. Mack was forced off the commission because it was alleged that he accepted money from a lobbyist seeking that agency’s approval of a TV channel in Miami for an airlines company. Reportorial gossip had it that he was virtually told by the White House to get out or be asked to resign, and that while he was trying to explain his innocence, Sherman Adams hung up on him. The next day, his resignation was on the president’s desk and was promptly accepted. Rumor had it still further that the White House wanted Mack to resign in order to shunt aside too much probing by the committee into activities the presidential staff may have engaged in in lobbying for friends of theirs with the various agencies. Be all that as it may, or many not, we saw the spectacle this week of one R.G. Hyde, a veteran of 30 years in the business of regulating radio and television, coming before the committee and admitting that he permitted his hotel bills to be paid by executives of radio and TV corporations while at the same time he turned in his expense account of the full $12 per diem allowed by the government for the same hotel bills and other traveling expenses.

Mr. Hyde professed to see nothing in either accepting pay twice for such bills, or for accepting favors from individuals whose businesses he was regulating. All this aroused Frederick C. Othman, in his column for March 27 to comment as follows:

“All I can say as a taxpayer who never yet asked the boss to pay bills which didn’t exist is that we’d better change the laws.… The fact that nearly all the FCC commissioners collect double on their speech-making forays doesn’t make the situation any better. The sums involved are ticky-tacky, but neither does that affect the ethics of the operation.

“These commissioners,” Mr. Othman goes on, “are top brass in the government. They’ve got fancy offices. They receive plenty of bowing and scraping and each one of them earns $20,000 a year. They shouldn’t have to stoop to chiseling on the old expense account.

“He [Mr. Hyde] said he relied on a ruling of the comptroller general in 1954, holding that it was OK for a bureaucrat to take the $12 a day, even though he didn’t have to spend it. Now we’ve got a new comptroller and he professes to see something not quite kosher in such collections….” There is more, but the issue is covered fairly well in the excerpts I have quoted.

The public has a right to know who is using his position in public office to secure favors that may not be a violation of the letter of the law, but certainly violate any true spirit of that law. Public officials should have their expenses paid by the government, and not permit themselves to be under obligation to private concerns, especially those which they are supposed to regulate. And that goes for commissioners, members of Congress of whatever party, members of the executive department, and any other public office.

Wasn’t there a lonely Galilean who, some twenty centuries ago, commented upon how difficult it is to serve two masters at the same time? The application is as true of government officials today as it was of whomever he was talking then. The public has a right to know, but whether it will or not, remains to be seen. Until or unless it is convinced that thorough job has been done of investigating all who have been suspected of such unethical practices, the presumption will be that the whole thing is pretty much of a whitewash affair.

The other item deals with government officials also; this time, state employees. Under a United Press dateline of March 27 appeared this statement:

“State employees will be asked to make the ‘traditional’ contributions to the gubernatorial campaign of Buford Ellington, the candidate backed by Gov. Frank Clement…. Employees of the State Safety Department are being asked for contributions…. The solicitation is expected to reach all departments except those financed partly with federal funds…. Contributions from workers in those departments would violate the Hatch Act, officials said…. The usual contribution asked from state employees is 10 percent of the take-home pay for one month…. Safety Commissioner Hilton Butler said the request for contributions is ‘traditional’ and is strictly on a voluntary basis.”

That is the end of the UP dispatch, but the matter received such reception in the press and on the air that, apparently, the governor felt it necessary to make his own explanation. That explanation appeared two days later, yesterday, again under a Nashville dateline from the United Press, and I quote:

“Governor Frank Clement denied yesterday that any ‘pressure’ is being put on state employees to contribute to the campaign fund for Buford Ellington, one of six candidates for governor…. At his press conference Clement said, ‘contributions are strictly on a voluntary basis.’ He said, ‘there has been no order out and there has been no pressure.’”

This reporter has been engaged in public service at federal, state, and local levels too long not to know that such voluntary matters are rarely that. One does not have to contribute, but if he fails to make such “voluntary” contributions, he may well find the road ahead pretty rocky. Was it not the Bard of Avon who said that “methinks thou dost protest too much”? Few there be who will fail to see a moral involved here, too, law or no law.

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In these days of rising prices and increasing unemployment, an anachronism within themselves, one could, if it were not such a serious matter, be more than amused at how the Republicans are, we fear, minimizing the severity of the depression, while the Democrats, equally anxious to make political capital out of a misfortune under their opponents’ administration, are, we hope, exaggerating the situation. Both sides are proposing nostrums, panaceas. Greater spending, lowering of taxes, re-creation of New Deal depression agencies, and so on ad infinitum. However, a rather curious proposal emanates from the Committee for Economic Development, an arm of the National Association of Manufacturers. It calls for a temporary, “across the board” tax cut of 20 percent if the economy in March and April drops below the February level. According to the committee, this would result in available capital for plant expansion, etc. It fails to mention that, apparently, one reason for the depression of the moment is that our plants are turning out more of certain items than the consumer can or will purchase. So it wants to go on expanding plants to turn out still more.

And to the unwary, a 20 percent tax reduction for all sounds fair, but isn’t. The need is for greater consumer purchasing power, and that comes more readily by making money available to the lower income groups. A 20 percent tax reduction would place, theoretically at least, $20 in the hands of a citizen who pays $100 in taxes, but it would place $2,000 in the hands of one who pays $10,000. Actually, if the committee wants a straight across-the-board tax cut that is both fair and which puts more money in the hands of those who need it most, i.e., the low income groups, it should recommend raising the exemption from its present $600 to, say $1,000. Both large and small taxpayer would then be given a boost of an additional $400 on which they would not have to pay an income tax. This would be getting it around to recognizing (with Burns) that “a man’s a man for a’that.” Do you suppose the committee is taking advantage of what it hopes is our inability to do simple mathematics? If so, then there might just be a moral involved there too.

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A National Council of Churches Official reported in Minneapolis on the released time religious education program throughout the United States. Mrs. Alice L. Goddard, director of weekday religious education for the council spoke at a luncheon in St. Paul. She estimated that 4 million children of all faiths are released from public schools once a week to attend religious education classes. She said classes for most of the Protestant children are conducted on an interdenominational basis. The council official added that she prefers to call released time, “shared time.” This, she said, implies for the child that it is a part of his regular workweek.

Well, to paraphrase Montague, a violation by any other name is still unconstitutional. What sins, secular at least, we commit in the name of doing good! Wonder if those in charge of released time for the 4 million ever take the First Amendment seriously, or read court decision after court decision under it which rules such released, or shared, time is illegal?

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Army Secretary Brucker appeared this week before 3,000 Presbyterian laymen in Chicago to defend the U.S. defense policy. He spoke before the 10th annual meeting of the National Council of Presbyterian Men. He said it is not un-Christian for America to arm herself with missiles and nuclear weapons in defense against godless Russia. But he warned against relying on armor alone. In the final analysis, he said, it is the power and grace of the whole armor of God to which we rightly and confidently entrust our future. There is more, but this is enough to indicate the line he took. Did you ever know any public figure advocating a policy who did not try to wrap that policy in mother love, the little red schoolhouse, the grand old flag, or divine approval? The truth is that God must be disgusted at the way the human race here is rushing to destruction by trying to develop ever more terrible weapons to kill more people in a shorter time. The idea that he is stepping in and taking sides is identical to the idea of the Greeks, e.g., during the Trojan War, where the gods stepped in and fought, on both sides, incidentally, and against each other. Probably, under the present scheme of things, there is nothing we can do at the moment but go ahead with a defense policy involving thermonuclear weapons, but let us keep out of our argument the idea that we are doing it with divine approval. Such is nonsense, and to some of us at least, sacrilege.

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Quite of another nature is the urging of a world famous missionary educator that Americans pledge a dollar a week for five years to help save a billion persons in Africa and Asia from hunger, misery, illiteracy, and communism. Dr. Frank C. Laubach, a pioneer in literacy training has spent 45 years working in Asia and Africa and has taught millions of people to read with his training methods. He said the U.S. is taking a propaganda beating in those continents from communist technical aid experts. He said communism has, in effect, 400,000 missionaries among the people there. By contrast, not more than 400 American missionaries are working to help these people improve their farming methods and living conditions. Well, maybe not, but we still have Brucker and our missile program. After we get through with using these, there’ll be not so many who survive to teach. Anyway, Dr. Lauback’s suggestion makes sense, and few there be who would not insist that it, rather than that of Brucker, has divine approval.

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Christian leaders have joined in the strongest condemnation of violence against Jewish community centers in Nashville, Tennessee, and Miami, Florida. Protestant and Catholic leaders expressed horror at the bombing of the two centers. Damage was estimated at around $36,000 at the two places. Fortunately no one was hurt in either incident. Dr. Harold E. Buell, president of the Greater Miami Council of Churches, declared the violence and apparent prejudice lying behind it damages the influence of American democracy, while the Rev. Thomas Baker, executive secretary of the Tennessee Council of Churches, asked all Nashville residents of all faiths to contribute enough money to repair the Jewish center there. More violence will follow, he warned, unless we of Nashville show by word and deed that we abhor the act and motive. Father Charles M. Williams, chancellor of Nashville Catholic Diocese, called the bombing a terrible thing. Bigotry and prejudice, he said, are to be deplored at all times.

 

 

An unusual new church, built in the shape of a huge fish, was dedicated at Stamford, Connecticut. The $1.5 million building is the new First Presbyterian Church. The fish shape was chosen because it was the symbol for Christ used by early Christians forced to hide in the catacombs to escape persecution. It is an imposing structure, 60 feet high at its highest point, and 234 feet long. On both its long sides are some 20,000 jigsaw stained glass windows in the colors of ruby, amber, emerald, amethyst, and sapphire. The thousands of inch-thick windows are embedded in the shapely sloping gray slate walls. On one side of the nave the stained glass windows depict the crucifixion; on the opposite side, the resurrection. The basic structure is of precast concrete panels held together by steel rods. Inside the 750-seat church, the lack of supporting pillars gives a feeling of soaring space. Behind the communion table is a 320-foot cross faced with wood from the Coventry Anglican Cathedral, which was bombed in World War II. More than 2,000 persons attended two separate services at the dedication. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, clerk of the U.S.A. Presbyterian Church, delivered the dedicatory sermon at both services.

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At Youngstown, Ohio, a helicopter was used to lift the cross in place atop the city’s new Catholic cathedral. The helicopter rose from a parking lot across the street. Attached to the whirlybird by cable was the 300-pound aluminum cross. Workers stood on a scaffold on the 1330-foot church tower and guided the 20-foot cross into its socket. Bishop Emmet M. Walsh of Youngstown blessed the cross before it was lifted aloft by the helicopter.

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Many area meetings are being held around the country to acquaint Lutheran pastors, choir directors, organists, and others with a new Lutheran service book and hymnal. Lutheran officials announced at New York that advance orders from publishing houses have been received for all 635,000 copies of the first edition. The book will be distributed by publishing houses of the eight denominations belonging to the National Lutheran Council. Dr. Edgar S. Brown, executive director of the department of worship of the United Lutheran Church in America said the service book and hymnal is expected to hasten the day when more than 4 million Lutherans in the U.S. and Canada will be united in their forms of worship and their hymns.

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At Kansas City, Kansas, a commission of the American Baptist Convention recommended that the denomination locate its administrative headquarters and its agencies at New York’s Interchurch Center. The center is being built on Riverside Drive in Manhattan. The National Council of Churches and a number of denominations will occupy the center. These recommendations were made to the convention’s general council. Final action on the headquarters location will be taken in June by the convention’s annual session in Cincinnati.

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In Hastings, Nebraska, the evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society has acquired 419 housing units built 10 years ago by the federal Public Housing Administration. The cement block homes are in Hastings’ Spencer Park and are part of an 805-unit development. The society has an option to buy the remaining units. Four hundred persons now living on social security and old-age assistance will find homes in the area. This is the Lutheran organization’s most ambitious project to date. The society operates 58 homes and two hospitals in a dozen Midwest states.

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In New York, Saint Luke’s Chapel, one of the oldest church buildings, has been restored along with a block square setting in a five-year program costing $1 million. The chapel is part of Trinity Episcopal Church parish.

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At Jacksonville, Florida, a new flagship for the Presbyterian Mission Fleet in Alaska was launched. The 65-foot motor ship will carry a clergyman to isolated logging camps and fishing villages along the rugged Alaskan coast.

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At Hanover, New Hampshire, the Dartmouth College Library announced it had received as a gift a Breeches Bible once owned by Jon Alden. The Breeches Bible gets its name from the fact that this translation stated that Adam and Eve made breeches out of their fig leaves.

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In Boston, directors of the American Unitarian Association announced the nomination of Dr. Ernest W. Kuebler to succeed the late Dr. Frederick May Eliot as association president. Delegates must approve such nominations at the association’s annual meeting in May.

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In Warsaw, Poland, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski reported he has personally supervised the distribution of $2 million worth of American relief supplies. The supplies came from U.S. Catholics through Catholic Relief Services Agency of the National Catholic Welfare Conference.

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In Jerusalem, Israel, an American Jewish leader announced that an archaeological school will be opened there in the fall of 1959. Dr. Nelson Glueck made the announcement. He is president of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute in Cincinnati. The institution is sponsoring the archaeological school. It will be a graduate institution for both Christian and Jewish scholars interested in advanced biblical and ancient Near East studies.

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At Taipei, Formosa, a visiting American church relief official said he found Formosa still badly in need of relief supplies. The official was Dr. R. Norris Wilson, executive director of Church World Service, who is touring centers in 22 countries. He said nationalist Chinese officials had stressed to him their gratitude for the aid American churches already have sent to Formosa.

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In Madrid, Spain, a noted American Catholic priest announced plans for a series of religious radio broadcasts that he expects eventually will reach as many as 2 million Spanish families. He is Father Patrick Peyton of Albany, New York, founder and leader of the Family Rosary Crusade. He has been in Spain supervising the completion of color films portraying the mysteries of the rosary. The busy priest took time out to plan a Spanish network series of family hour broadcasts to be heard every Friday evening.

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And here is a sign of the times:

In Chicago, First Immanuel Lutheran Church became concerned over rising unemployment among its Spanish-speaking members. The church held an employment clinic, bringing in state employment service representatives to brief the members on job and training opportunities.

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A quotation garnered from the news somewhere this week seems worth passing on to you in these days of investigations of labor rackets, Federal Communication Commission shenanigans, etc., apparently ad infinitum. It goes like this:

“A weak man in office is like a squirrel in a cage, laboring eternally, but to no purpose; like a turnstile, he is in everybody’s way, but stops nobody; he talks a great deal but says very little; looks into everything, but sees nothing; and has a hundred irons in the fire, but very few of them are hot, and with these few that are he burns his fingers.”

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This program has consistently taken the position that religion, any religion, should objectively seek truth, and discard that which is unbelievable or unworkable, whoever said or advocated it. In short, religion should be practical and mature. There are several identifying features of a mature religion:

1. It should be free, for growth can take place only where the human spirit is unshackled, and a mature religion will not be afraid of freedom. It will not shut up the human spirit in a prison of creeds, nor chain it to a single source of truth.
2. It will be growing as man’s understanding of the universe and himself continually expands.
3. It will go beyond indifference to a deep and abiding concern for the welfare here and now of humanity.
4. It will practice, not a passive tolerance with respect to its great sister faiths, but an active cooperation in good works and in the appropriation and assimilation of all that is best in them into itself.
5. It will give the feelings of the heart full scope and expression under the guidance of the alert and informed mind.
6. It will be concerned with society and its problems as much as it is with the individual, for it is doubtful if the individual can be saved apart from his society; it is likely that we can be saved only within its context of struggle for righteousness, justice, brotherhood, and peace.

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Doubtless many of us experienced all sorts of reactions the other day when Randolph Churchill over TV blew his top. No monitor mercifully threw a switch to save him from his folly. His profanity and obscenity went out over the whole network. Churchill is a reporter and knows that the newspaper code is that when an actress gets drunk and abuses police officers, that is news. If she is the daughter of one of the world’s greatest citizens, that is hot news. There is some question about how much if any of juvenile and domestic court proceedings should be reported, but the freedom of the press is fundamental to a democracy and no restriction should lightly be placed on it. No such question is involved in this case. In the U.S. you just can’t get drunk and bawl out police officers and get away with it. Also, the more prominent you are the more likely you are to get your picture in the paper. In the Churchill episode, however, I suspect that many of us got a kick out of a reporter being subjected to his own impertinent technique. It was a case of the interviewer being interviewed.

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The last item comes from an editorial in our own local paper in its March 18 issue. It says:

“A Jewish community center is bombed … A federal judge’s life is threatened. Thus does hatred, in alliance with cowardice and sacrilege, rise again to challenge the citizenship of Tennessee. The forces of anarchy have demonstrated there is no depth to which they will not stoop. In their depraved insanity, they have defied both God and man. They have put themselves beyond the pale…. Law-abiding citizens must react with vigor and resolve. Total resources of the state must be made available to bring the guilty to justice. United public opinion must be mobilized so that its weight may prove an unbearable burden to any who would thumb their noses at law and constituted authority…. Nashville bows in shame today. It could be our town tomorrow…. All citizens have a continuing job to do. By respect and example, they must do their part to uphold that which is right. And they must labor in the knowledge that flouting of the law in a small way makes it easier to flout it in a large way. They must never forget, either, that one concession to the enemies of the law may open the floodgates of destruction.”

This reporter is not presumptuous enough to try to improve upon that statement. He should like to add that a great American, and former president, said some years ago that a threat to the freedom of any man anywhere is a threat to the freedom of all men everywhere. That is as true of the Jewish faith in the Nashville bombing as it is of the Christian or any other faith anywhere. A threat to one is a threat to all.

 

 

Since the dawn of the Sputnik age, we Americans have been flailing around in a tizzy about the status of education in this country, revealing to the world that we are sure that something is wrong, but revealing equally as clearly we are not sure what. Like we do so often in a crisis, scapegoats are sought and panaceas are proposed. From one salient view, the spectacle is ridiculous; from another, it is tragic.

In St. Louis some time ago, a superintendent of schools in Iowa charged the public with being to blame for the mess education is in. The public, equally generous with blame, is saying it is the fault of the schools. Politicians, with their usual balanced view, are trying to place the blame, either on whichever side will lose them the fewest votes, or taking a neutralist stand and talking about setting up a National Academy of Science. An ex-governor of this state made a speech the other day in East Tennessee during which he proposed setting up a State Science Academy, to be supported by state funds, to be located at Oak Ridge, and to be supervised by the state university. Local school systems are scrambling around, trying to do something (just what is not evident from available reports) but perhaps they are mistaking action with progress. One near here a few weeks ago announced a drastic overhaul of its systemic procedure, then announced the next day that it was nothing new; that it was simply an expansion of plans long in the making. But this announcement convinced few people. Most of us probably recognized that system was suffering from an acute cause of Sputnikitis.

Several basic facts must be considered, along with some theory. A great American once defined education as the debt the existing generation owes to the next one. Most of us can accept this as axiomatic. If we do, then the next assumption is that our children deserve the best from this generation that we can possibly give them in the way of an education that will better enable them to live effectively in the topsy-turvy world we shall bequeath them. Virtually all are agreed upon this. The only question is “What is the best education?”

In the first place, there is no royal shortcut to learning. Learning is a laborious, never-ending task, and while there is no virtue in doing things the hard way for the sake of doing something in a difficult manner, the sugar-coated, everything-should-always-be-interesting-to-every-student, notion is not only silly; it results in much purposeless activity that is about as realistic in today’s world as the proverbial Alice in Wonderland. Yet, that is what the educationists have been spouting so long that this reporter, who taught during the worst delirium tremens of the progressive education age, has long since become disgusted with such nonsense and tried to avoid coming in contact with it. Any education that is worth anything involves disciplining both mind and muscle, and whether we like it or not, a generation of American young people have been nurtured within the schoolroom, when they should have been matured in that room. It is not their fault; it is the fault of those who mistook fancy for fact; who confused interest with intrinsic merit; who insisted that it did not really matter what scripture a teacher taught as long as he had been baptized in the right religion – which meant the type miscalled “progressive.”

In the second place, while money will not work educational miracles in and by itself, it can cure the teacher shortage, about which there is so much wringing of hands, but far too little plunking down dollars. Young people in college today look at the world pretty realistically. They see a world in which their social order is a closely-geared economic one, in which money is the entree to those material things which they have learned – rightly or wrongly – are necessary for satisfactory living. When they see that teaching, as an occupation (It has not yet, maybe never will, reach the dignity of a profession), fades into the financial background when compared with other occupations, they are attracted toward the shining light of adequate remuneration for their lifetime services (Ofttimes when they would prefer teaching, if they could afford to do so).

Then, aside from the financial returns in teaching as compared with other fields, when they consider the restrictions placed upon teachers, because they are teachers, they are further discouraged. No teacher should be made to occupy a second-class citizenship status because he teaches. Certainly he should be a good citizen, which means he should have all the rights of free speech, freedom of association, freedom to think his own thoughts, and behave himself just as any other citizen, which means within the limit of the law. It is a rather curious observation, from a teacher’s viewpoint, why it is that society entrusts us teachers with the ability to develop good citizenship traits in their children, but does not permit teachers to demonstrate those same traits in their own personal behavior.

The powers that be must consider another facet of the problem of securing efficient career people in their schools, a facet that looms large in the thinking of many school teachers. That is the fact that they are subjected so long and so often to preaching and scolding: preaching about how great a service they are rendering, scolding about what they should have done that they did not, or should not have done which they did. Most of us have heard the word “dedicated” thrown at us so long that when we hear it from someone, that person’s stock takes a bigger dip with us than the stock market did in 1929. One cannot pay his grocer, butcher, and candlestick maker with dedication. All workers in every field should have a certain amount of loyalty and devotion to and interest in their work. School boards, supervisors, and administrators would do well to leave it at that if they want to get teachers and keep them.

A third, and perhaps more important consideration about our current educational tizzy is that we should not jump to the conclusion that the part is greater than the whole. So much has been written about our need to speed up science and mathematics that one would think, if he did not keep a sense of balance, that all we needed to reach an educational Eden would be to recruit (through bribery, force, or otherwise) all bright young people and put them through a rigorous course of training in the natural sciences and math. Then all would be well with our world. The stark fact is that if that were done, we would then stand less chance of maintaining any world for long at all than we do now. Surely we need good scientists, the best we can find and train; the same is true of mathematicians. But our progress in the field of invention in science, invention of material things has so outstripped our development in human relations that this is a problem with us and the rest of the world now, more so than Sputniks or missiles. We have done a good (or bad, however you look at it) job of training scientists who can invent death-dealing devices; we have made little headway toward developing a generation that can find, or has found, better ways to reduce prejudice, hatred, religious discrimination, racial friction. One can only speculate what would be accomplished within a generation if as much emphasis and prestige were put upon the development of peaceful adjustment as is now put upon launching an explorer into space. Whatever educational changes are made, they should certainly seek to improve both quantity and quality of education, in all fields of learning, from kindergarten through the university. Perhaps if equal emphasis had been placed on the humanities and the social sciences a generation or two ago that was placed on poison gas, germ warfare, fighter planes, etc., we would not be in the straits we are today.

There is a moral responsibility resting upon each and every one of us, a responsibility to provide the best this nation can afford in the way of a thorough and realistic education for young people. This will not be done unless we proceed on the basic acceptance of the fact that learning requires work on the part of both teacher and student. Neither can do the other’s work for him. It also requires the best teachers that can be provided, for what goes on in the schoolroom determines the quality, or lack of it, of our educational system. To get and hold such teachers requires not only expenditure of money, it requires respecting the right of those teachers to be human beings, not members of a third sex. And, finally, it requires balanced emphasis in all the fields of learning, not in just one or two.

Over 100 years ago, Edward [Deering] Mansfield, a careful student of education, America and elsewhere, summarized:

“If America has presented anything new to the world, it is a new form of society; if she has any thing worthy to preserve, it is the principles upon which that society is instituted: Hence, it is not a Grecian or a Roman education we need; it is not one conceived in China, Persia, or France. On the contrary, it must have all the characteristics of the American mind, fresh, original, vigorous, enterprising; embarrassed by no artificial barriers, and looking to a final conquest over the last obstacles to the process of human improvement.”

If he were writing that paragraph, in the context of today’s world, it is likely he would make few changes. Whether, in our preoccupation with the very real dangers that exist today, we will provide such a desirable kind of education, only time, and what you and I do, will tell. But American cannot afford the luxury of failure. It is too late for that.

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I read editorials and receive material through the mail reminding me that competition is the American way; that it will bring abundance. Maybe so, but the writers of this stuff appear to me to be completely insincere. They avoid competition like the plague. They want tariffs to reduce competition; price-fixing (so-called) and mis-called “fair trade” legislation; chain stores; bank consolidations; corporation mergers; uniform insurance policies; big capital-owning manufacturing subsidiaries; fewer steel, aluminum, and car companies. They even want church union. There is such a thing as being honest with yourself, as well as with the public. What they really want is competition in fields other than their own, i.e., it is good medicine for the other fellow.

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A pertinent note in connection with our preoccupation with development of scientists to the exclusion of other important fields, comes from a statement of Congressman Frank Thompson, Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, who said recently, “We have seen today a message go to Congress on education: 100 percent for science, mathematics, but nothing for the humanities. We could achieve technological superiority which is greater than anyone imagined, and still, if we do not have people educated to understand human beings, it would be an empty victory. Suppose for instance, some Soviet biologist comes forward next month with a discovery in biology as startling as was the Sputnik breakthrough. Would we then have a message asking us to educate 40,000 biologists in the next few years?”

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Our secretary of statements reiterated this week that we must negotiate, if we do at all, from a position of strength. Well, it would make a great more sense to try to negotiate from wisdom than from a strength that we do not have. It looks as though we must choose between co-existence or co-extinction, as invidious as may be the alternatives. We have good reason to doubt Russia’s sincerity, but no agreement is going to be reached by anyone anytime unless it is based on a realistic acceptance of facts.

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And while on the subject of Russia, it seems pertinent to report that the presidents of two major Baptists conventions will visit Moscow next month. They are Dr. Clarence W. Cranford, president of the American Baptist Convention and Rep. Brooks Hays of Arkansas, president of the Southern Baptist Convention. They plan to leave for the Russian capital April 15, and will spend five days as guests of Russian Baptists. Both leaders are expected to speak in Moscow’s first Baptist church.

 

More than 15,000 programs were placed on TV stations last year by the Broadcasting and Film Commission of the National Council of Churches, it was reported at the commission’s annual meeting this week in New York. Of the total, 56 were half-hour network programs presented over 140 CBS or NBC stations. In addition, the commission sponsored 260 radio programs. Dr. S. Franklin Mack, executive director, said three of the TV programs were widely acclaimed and received awards. These were the “Look Up and Live” series for teenagers, “Frontiers of Faith,” and “Off to Adventure,” a new children’s series. The “Frontiers of Faith” series is one in which segments are presented alternatively by Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.

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In Detroit, church building experts were warned not to let the church of tomorrow become a building with a spiritual vacuum. The warning came from Dr. George M. Gibson, a professor at Chicago’s McCormick Theological Seminary. Dr. Gibson spoke to several hundred architects, artists, denominational church executives, and laymen attending the 18th Joint Conference on Church Architecture, which was sponsored by the Church Architectural Guild of America and the department of church building of the National Council of Churches. Dr. Gibson warned that many churches built in the last 30 years virtually deny in their architecture what they are saying in their doctrine. He said it must not be forgotten that while the church building must be functional, its primary purpose is sacramental. But at the same meeting the executive director of the council’s church building department said that fear of building new types of churches may paralyze both thought and action. The Rev. Scott Turner Ritenour spoke at the department’s business meeting. So, it would seem, you pays your money and you takes your choice in the matter of when and if a given type church building is functional or sacramental. By the way, the medieval ecclesiastics never did agree on how many angels could dance on the point of a needle, either.

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A Jesuit sociologist this week held out high hopes for the progress of interracial brotherhood in the southern states. He is the Rev. Albert S. Foley, professor of sociology at Spring Hill College in Mobile. Spring Hill is the only racially integrated college in Alabama. Father Foley spoke at a John A. Ryan Forum presented in Chicago by the Catholic Council on Working Life. He said seeds of brotherhood, not of civil strife, are being planted in desegregated southern universities, seminaries, theological schools, and secondary schools. The priest went on to say that a whole new crop of southern minds is being reared. In them, he added, we repose the greatest hope for the well being of the region in time to come. He praised the restraint of southern Negroes, and lauded Christian Negro ministers for their leadership in Montgomery, Alabama. He also praised Methodist, Congregationalist, and Episcopal clergymen in predominantly Protestant areas of the South who, he said, have made significant steps up the road to brotherhood.

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In Atlantic City, New Jersey, the American Christian Palestine Committee called for an intercredal conference to protect the Holy Land from communist penetration. The committee, holding its annual meeting, suggested a conference of Christian, Jewish, and Moslem leaders. In its issued statement, the committee said, “It is of the utmost importance that the three faiths find a way of reconciling and jointly furthering their spiritual goals in the land sacred to all. Unless they do, they run the risk of losing the holy places to the communists.”

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More than 1,100 bishops, ministers, and church workers gathered in Washington this week for a three-day convocation on urban life in America. The conference was sponsored by the Methodist Church. The participants heard a report saying that Methodist and other Protestant denominations have a great evangelistic opportunity. The report went on to emphasize that the opportunity in so-called inner-city areas is the greatest in the last 50 years. To this inner city, the report went on, come the newest arrivals in the metropolis, the European immigrant, and more recently the newcomers from the South, both white and Negro.

Another sociological study reported at the conference concerned class-consciousness in the church. It deplored the fact that middle-class laymen monopolize leadership posts in the Methodist Church, and warned that the church is in danger of losing the interest of the poor and underprivileged because of a tendency to minister only to middle and upper income groups.

Speaking at the meeting also was Dr. James G. Ranck, a psychologist at Drew University. He cited religious divisiveness as a form of segregation in this country which astounds secularists and provides propaganda for communist Russia. He scorned what he called the alienation of Jew and Christian, the rift between Catholic and Protestant, and the ridiculous denominational fragmentation of Protestantism. He urged all religious forces in the U.S. to form a united front in proclaiming the fallacy of secularism and the primacy of moral and spiritual values. And he concluded by urging religious forces to cooperate more actively in every area of human need.

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Much the same idea was expressed in New York this week, where 3,000 men gathered for an eastern area regional meeting of the National Council for Presbyterian Men. At this meeting, Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen, president of Union Theological Seminary, urged the laymen to join in an all-out campaign for united action on the common responsibilities of all Christians, suggesting that churches and laymen cooperate in every community to set up interdenominational guilds of Christian lawyers, physicians, bankers, teachers, industrialists, and men in other occupations. Such groups, he said, could face and think through the ethical problems, the perplexities, the Christian tasks and opportunities in each profession.

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Recently returned from his second visit to the Soviet Union in the past five years, the Rev. Dr. Reuben Youngdahl of Minneapolis told of numerous talks with the Russian people who, he said, are fearful the United States will start a war. Dr. Youngdahl, minister of Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, said this week in an interview in Omaha that his talks had been encouraging in that the Russian people are no longer afraid to talk. He described them as apparently having divested themselves of what he termed “the dictator complex” so noticeable on his first trip to Russia. Dr. Youngdahl reported that Baptists in Moscow have added one more church service by popular demand, for a total of three. He also noted that 58 churches are now open in Moscow. The Minneapolis clergyman explained, “The people volunteer information now, and couldn’t be more friendly and helpful. Yet they keep asking why, if we don’t plan a war, do we build bases all around them?” Commenting on nuclear energy, Dr. Youngdahl quoted noted scientist Dr. Arthur Compton, “Science has created a world in which Christianity is imperative.” Few would disagree with that, but some of us would substitute the word “religion” for Christianity, for nobody but the bigots is so Pharisaical as to insist that there is only one religion interested in saving mankind from its own folly.

Dr. Youngdahl has asked a question that goes to the root of the problem of establishing a working peace with the communist world, a problem about which we hear little from our officials. Peace grows out of a common understanding of different viewpoints, and that cannot come about without until and unless there is mutual communication, something that neither Mr. Dulles nor Mr. Khrushchev is as concerned about as both are about Sputniks and similar engines of possible destruction. It certainly is not coming about as long as we refuse passports to American newsmen who wish to go behind the Iron Curtain to let us know what they find. This is trite, but apropos at this point, “What the people don’t know can and probably will hurt them.” And having been a bureaucrat for nearly nine years, albeit on the lowest rung of the totem pole, and knowing something of the bureaucratic mind, this reporter is all the more resentful that men of little vision are given power to tell the American people what they can and cannot hear, through censoring what will be released to the public about the workings of the government. We need more eggheads than fatheads in those places.

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Since its founding 50 years ago next Wednesday, The Christian Century, of Chicago has come to be considered one of the most outspoken voices in American Protestantism. Some have called it the conscience of American Protestantism; some have called it other things, not quite so complimentary. Certainly, on more than a few occasions, it has prodded, coaxed, and occasionally slapped the wrists of Protestant churches – no matter what the denomination.

In its 50 years of interdenominational service, the magazine has stood solidly for two things: relating the whole gospel to the whole secular world, and seeking reunion of Christians through integration of denominations.

Boasting a world circulation of 40,000 and a staff of 60 correspondents scattered around the globe, the magazine’s managing editor is a Presbyterian minister, Dr. Theodore Gill. He concedes that the publication has frequently drawn the ire of each of the denominations because its undenominational position offers the opportunity to comment independently on developments within all denominations. He recalls that many Methodists were unhappy with the magazine for a time when it questioned the tempo of their action 10 years ago in the field of race relations. Now, Dr. Gill comments, “We have been as vocal as anyone on the real strides they have made in the last two years.”

He goes on to note that many Lutherans protested when The Christian Century questioned the church’s handling of the issue of the defrocked ministers in Milwaukee two years ago. It was the magazine’s feeling, says Dr. Gill, that the ministers had failed in their pastoral responsibility to their young colleagues.

Billy Graham is the target of one of the magazine’s most recent controversial stands. Dr. Gill has this to say on the matter: “We are the only religious journal that has minimized the significance of Billy Graham’s revivalism. We consider it a serious threat to real Christian evangelism.” Pursuing the subject further, Dr. Gill calls the Graham brand of revivalism “a tissue of archaisms and irrelevancies which muffles the gospel it seeks to display.… We consider revivalism,” he goes on, “a reminding to some forgetful souls of what they have forgotten for a while. It is not evangelism, which is the penetration of the antagonistic world by the Gospel.” Well, that is Dr. Gill’s diplomatic way of taking issues with Mr. Graham. This reporter has from time to time on this program taken issue with him in other ways, but, unfortunately, not as skillfully as does the editor of The Christian Century.

The magazine has had about three editors in its first half century. Charles Clayton Morrison served from 1908-1947, and at the age of 83 he still contributes articles. Methodist minister Paul Hutchinson was the second editor. The present editor, Dr. Harold Fey, a Disciples of Christ clergyman, took over in 1956. The contents of the 50th anniversary issue are typical of this very influential religious journal. It has articles by Dr. Fey, South African novelist Alan Paton, by Morrison, one by Jewish scholar Will Herberg, and a review of a new book by the Roman Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain.

And as a footnote, it might be observed that the contents of this issue are indicative of its materials generally. It recognized that the religions of mankind have arisen and developed because people in all times and places have been moved by certain basic and impelling needs, fears, aspirations, desires. Such feelings, unanalyzed and usually at some dim level of awareness have motivated human beings everywhere to those activities and beliefs which make up the substance of religion. In time these activities are formalized into rituals, and the beliefs systematized into theologies, in each instance with the culture influencing further the ultimate pattern of the particular religion. It is always essential, and The Christian Century continually points that out, that we do not mistake the form for the meaning of religion. Substance is always paramount to semblance.

 

 

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.

 

Rarely has a subject evoked such wide religious comment as the furor triggered by the Soviet Sputniks and emphasized even more boldly by the recent launching of America’s first earth satellite. Man-made flight through the heavens has definitely struck a sensitive chord in the churches, a reaction some clergymen prefer to describe as the “handwriting in the sky.” Many ministers argue that the spiritual consequences of these advances in nuclear space engineering can obviously be either helpful or detrimental. They contend that the peoples’ eyes can either be opened to fuller truth or blinded to anything but dazzling technology. One Roman Catholic clergyman put it like this: “He who lives by the Sputnik shall perish by the Sputnik.”

Just how the nation’s spiritual resources can be mobilized in the light of current and future space achievements was the subject of serious discussion this week by a group of pastors and Midwestern business leaders. The University of Chicago sponsored their conference, which had as its general topic “Religion Faces the Atomic Age.” Significantly, these church leaders are concerned over the possible effects of the new technological developments on faith. A noted Lutheran theologian of Philadelphia, the Rev. Dr. O. Frederick Nolde, sees the danger of falling into the trap of professed atheistic materialists if science is exalted over all other forms of power. It would be vain indeed, he says, to try to outdo a system by becoming like it. A Presbyterian pastor of St. Cloud, Florida, the Rev. Handel Brown, notes that the Bible relates of man’s first attempt to reach into the stratosphere. That was when people, duplicating Adam’s effort to become equal to God, began building the Tower of Babel. They said, “Let us build a tower whose top reaches into the very heavens.” The results were confusion and dismay. (Rather far-fetched analogy, one cannot but reflect.)

In olden times, some clergymen fought new scientific feats as devilish tampering with God’s order. Today’s religious leaders, however, welcome such achievements as gifts, but leaving it to man alone to decide whether they are to be used for good or evil.

When the Russian Sputniks reached outer space, the Communist Youth League promptly boasted that their satellites refuted religion. The league triumphantly chortled, “This proves how wrong were all religious organizations in speaking of heaven. We materialists create our own heaven and fill it with our own moon and stars.”

An Episcopal weekly, The Living Church, commented, “If there is a religious message to Sputnik, it would seem to be one more in a long series of historical events that reach back into Old Testament times when God has used irreligious forces to advance his purposes. If nothing else, Sputnik has humbled America.” Well, most of us would agree with the last sentence, but the idea as to what God’s purposes are and their relationship of these to Sputnik is simply one man’s speculation and wild guess. This sort of emphatic pronouncement is rather presumptuous, to say the least.

A little more realistically, the Catholic auxiliary bishop of Chicago, the Most Rev. Bernard Sheil, offers the comment that man, the alleged master of his destiny, now stands in terror before his own creation. While the United Student Christian Council sees it all as “a real threat that education may become dominated by narrow technological objectives.” And with that, many of us can emphatically agree.

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In New York, the Very Rev. James Pike, dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, agreed to accept the post of Protestant Episcopal Bishop of California. He said he decided to accept his election, keeping in mind the fact he now holds “a post I dearly love.” As dean of the New York Cathedral, Dean Pike has held one of his church’s most important posts.

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Moscow: Radio Moscow broadcast a special program commemorating the 40th anniversary of the separation of state and church in Russia. The Red broadcast said what it called “cruel and despotic power of the clergy over the life of the people” has been ended in Russia. The communists said belief in God would not die elsewhere without a struggle.

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Washington: A top staff official of the group called Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State has resigned in protest against what he calls the organization’s “current course.” Stanley Lichtenstein was head of the group’s research and press relations for nine years. He said its recent action “actually tends to undermine the constitutional principle which the organization professes to uphold.” The protest was directed especially against a recent statement urging voters to ask any Roman Catholic candidate for the presidency a series of questions on church-state relations.

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New York: The Presbyterian Church in the USA and the United Presbyterian Church of North America have approved consolidation of their mission boards in the U.S., Canada, and the West Indies. The two denominations plan full consolidation in May.

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Washington: Thousands of Protestant churches will join today in prayers for a peaceful solution of America’s racial problems. The occasion is the observance of “Race Relations Sunday” sponsored by the National Council of Churches. Without in any way disparaging the sincerity and good intentions of such prayers, it is only pertinent to observe that so far there is no evidence that God has done or is going to do anything to inject violence into such a solution. They would probably be more realistic if they spent the time, effort, and interest in working on some of those human beings who project strife into the race problems picture. The problem will be solved by promoting improvement in human relations, not by any metaphysical appeal to the supernatural.

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Washington: The leader of the world’s oldest Protestant sect is now visiting the United States. Dr. Achille Deodato, moderator of the Waldensian Church of Italy, plans to speak before several groups which have given financial support to his church, which was founded in the 12th century. Deodato says recent court decisions are beginning to give Italian Protestants the religious freedom promised to them under the Italian Constitution.

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Paris: France is preparing for a huge number of Catholic pilgrims expected to begin arriving this week for the centenary celebration of the famous Lourdes Shrine. The celebration marks the time 100 years ago when the peasant girl Bernadette said she had seen visions of the Virgin Mary. The celebration opens February 11 and will run through December 8. Officials expect from 6 – 8 million pilgrims to make the journey to the little shrine in the Pyrenees.

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Beginning one week from today, February 16, and extending through February 23, is National Brotherhood Week, the annual observance sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews, from whose weekly publication, Religious News Service, much of the materials for these broadcasts is taken. The National Conference is a civic organization engaged in a nationwide program of inter-group education. It enlists Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, who, without compromise of conscience or of their distinctive and important religious differences, do work together to build better relationships among men of all religions, races, and nationalities. Its operation is civic and social, although obviously the roots of brotherhood which it seeks to build are in the moral law and in religious faith.

The National Conference was founded in 1928 by Charles Evans Hughes, Newton D. Baker, and the Rev. S. Parkes Cadman. Roger W. Straus, Carlton J.H. Hayes, and other distinguished Americans participated in its foundation and its early years of operation. This year’s observance will be carried on in the Tri-Cities under the sponsorship of local service organizations. Watch for announcements and programs in the local papers and over local radio and television outlets.

It will do any of us good, not only to find out what other religious groups believe, but also to compare those beliefs honestly with our own. Otherwise, we are likely to fall into the pit of egotism where, like the Pharisee, we thank God that we are not like other people, but assume that we are better than they. It might do us good to distinguish honestly for ourselves who is Pharisee and who is publican.

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The Christian Amendment Movement, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has announced a concentrated effort to obtain a hearing on the “Christian Amendment Bill,” which provides for recognition in the U.S. Constitution of “the authority of Jesus Christ, savior and ruler of nations.” The bill was introduced by Senator Frank Carlson of Kansas. Well, if the Senate passes such amendment, it will be proof positive that it needs a psychiatrist much more than it does a chaplain.

 

A rather curious approach to the matter of church attendance was taken this week by Dr. R. Dean Goodwin, a prominent Baptist clergyman of New York, who has concluded that it does not work to tell folks they should go to church because they ought to, or to please the pastor. He favors a joint study by all churches of the new art known as motivational research. It is his view that the churches should do what advertisers recently learned to do – namely, reach into the subconscious with their hidden persuaders to motivate those tiny springs that make people do things without realizing why.

Dr. Goodwin is a former Nebraskan who directs communications for the American Baptist Convention, and he explains the new art as one which studies people’s hidden needs and desires so they can be appealed to without knowing it. He puts it like this, and I quote, for I have no desire to place myself on such a petard as this: “If you put the same kind of coffee in three bags of difference color, women will select the brown package and swear it is the best coffee, even though it is the same coffee.”

There is more to the good doctor’s statement, but enough of it has been included to indicate the general nature of his view. Even a simple analysis of this view reflects that such a procedure would be trying to put something over on the people without their knowing what was happening to them. Furthermore, it presumes that there are not enough intrinsic merits in the religious viewpoint itself to hold the allegiance of people; we have to add a new magic ingredient of some kind, like blue cheer or headache medicine, or some of the other nostrums of soaps paraded through radio speakers and on television screens these days ad infinitum and ad nauseam. Is it not going a bit too far to adopt Madison Avenue techniques of hucksterism to something that is so fundamental, so intrinsic within itself that it is a universal phenomenon even among people who never heard of present-day psychology and subliminal advertising? How crude and asinine can we get in the name of religion? I personally don’t want to be sold a bill of goods, even in religion, where the salesman swears it is good for me. Did you ever know a salesman who told his customer that his article was bad? Then, if we could and do use it in the Protestant world, what about the Catholic, the Hebrew, the Mohammedan, and all the other religious worlds? Each insists that his brand is the best. Frankly, religion of any kind will appeal to humanity and endure only insofar as they are aware of the need for it, see sense in it, and get satisfaction from it. Let’s leave it that way.

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Several church groups warned during the week against the use of church facilities aimed at maintaining segregated schools. The Methodist Church’s General Board of Education issued such a warning at its annual meeting in Cincinnati. The board noted that some states have passed laws permitting abolition of the public schools if courts force integration upon them. Efforts may be made, the Methodist agency said, to use church facilities to maintain a segregated system. Some persons have advocated segregated parochial schools as an alternative to non-segregated public schools. The Methodist leaders said such proposals endanger our democratic way of life and threaten the integrity of our churches.

A similar view was expressed by 14 Protestant leaders in an article published in Presbyterian Outlook, a publication of the Southern Presbyterian Church. The church magazine asked leading churchmen whether the churches should let their facilities be used to run segregated schools if public schools were closed down.

The churchmen, from both North and South, agreed the churches never should permit such segregated parochial schools. The opinion was voiced by such prominent religious leaders as Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the U.S.A. Presbyterian Church; Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr of New York’s Union Theological Seminary; Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, President of Morehouse College in Atlanta, and others.

The same view was offered in a resolution adopted by the North American Area Council of the World Presbyterian Alliance, holding its annual meeting at Mt. Pocono, Pennsylvania. The resolution said a church is in error when it commits itself to a program to deny the right of any person to be treated as a child of God.… The measure said segregated church schools would strike a mortal blow at the public school system at a time when the maintenance of that system at a high level of efficiency is even more vital than ever. In a separate statement, the 100 Presbyterian and Reformed leaders attending the Mt. Pocono meeting called integration in American education the crucial race relations issue today.

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A consultation and information center on Judaism has been set up in New York by the New York Board of Rabbis. Rabbi Harold H. Gordon, executive vice president of the board said the center will consult, advise, and give information on Judaism. A commission headed by Rabbi Robert Gordis of Belle Harbor, New York, will operate the center.

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In Washington, a special committee was named to conduct a two-year nationwide study of Baptist attitudes toward spiritual, moral, and religious instruction in the public schools. This committee will represent six major Baptist conventions affiliated with the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs. The study group will sponsor seminars, workshops, and conferences in various parts of the country. These various studies will culminate in a national conference to be sponsored by the Baptist Joint Committee in 1960, at which time the Baptist leaders will try to state more clearly Baptist positions on controversial issues relating to the public schools.

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So much appears in the press, on the radio, and through all communication media about round-the-clock prayer sessions; about asking for this, praying for that, until at times one cannot help but wonder whether the deity takes the trouble to listen to so much piffle, various parts of which are often contradictory. We have seen such a spasmodic series of supplications going on in our own midst these last few days, apparently in preparation for the forthcoming experiences of renewing Protestant prejudices by sharing them with each other and to the exclusion of any consideration of any kind to those other great religious systems, many of which are older and affect far more people than our own. But we go on holding our missions here and sending missionaries to other countries, when it is more than a sound bet that we would not welcome their missionaries into our own midst. Anyway, out of it all, there comes a wholesome illustration of a realistic prayer that is even more pertinent now than when it was uttered.

It took place like this: When the U.S opened its nuclear detonation season the test began with a short prayer, intoned over the intercom by the warship’s chaplain and it went, “Unto us who are privileged to draw aside the curtain into the secrets of thy universe, teach us that our whole duty is to love thee, our God, and to keep they commandments.”

Sydney J. Harris, columnist for the Chicago Daily News, suggested that a more realistic prayer would have been, “Unto us who have the pride and the presumption to release the most devastating forces of nature, O Lord, be merciful: Protect us from cardiac contusion; preserve us from cerebral or coronary air embolism; guard us from the dreadful consequences of respiratory tract hemorrhage; allow us not to suffer from pulmonary edema; save us from the trauma of distended viscera; withhold from us the horrors of hemorrhages in the central nervous system; visit these catastrophes upon our enemies, not upon us, and we promise to love thee and keep thy commandments – all except one, O Lord, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”

This, at least, would have been an honest and meaningful prayer. No nonsense, no hypocrisy, no solemn theological jargon to disguise and sanctify the purpose and power of the bomb. It is highly probable that the deity would not have granted this prayer, but at any rate, it would not have been an insult to his intelligence and an affront to his benevolence. One wonders, sometimes, if God may not be more discouraged by the blindness of his shepherds than by the folly of his sheep.

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And while on the matter of hypocrisy, further reflection on the matter comes from the public forum of a recent edition of The Salt Lake Tribune, a newspaper of wide circulation and influence in the inter-mountain area. The writer points out that “We Americans are a peculiar people and surely like to kid ourselves…. We shout lustily in favor of free enterprise; whereas, in very truth, we are in the … clutches of monopolistic enterprise. If you do not admit this, ask any small businessman…. We brag about our educational system and then immediately proceed to ridicule our teachers, making it tough as possible to get adequate appropriations for the schools…. We believe in Christianity, but spend our time scheming how we can carve each other up ‘as a dish fit for the Gods’…. Our private electric power utilities proclaim loudly against government subsidy of any kind but they are strangely silent when good old Uncle Sam spends millions of dollars regulating the waters of the Ohio River for their benefit…. We howl against any subsidy to the poor man, but say nothing of the giant subsidies that our leading magazines receive from the post office department…. We seriously classify ourselves into the genus, homo sapiens, man the wise; whereas, in very truth, we belong to genus, homo the sap…we are indeed, a peculiar people.”

The only comment this reporter feels like making is to ask, “Is not more than consistency involved here? Is it not also a matter of morality?”

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And now for the foreign news as time will permit:

In Sydney, Australia, a prominent Evangelist after two years abroad conducting missions in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Middle East, told his congregation that churches in communist-run East Germany are crowded. He said 90 percent of the East German youth belong to church groups despite the fact that this bars them from higher education.

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In Toronto, Canada, the Canadian Council of Churches reported on the success of the biggest Protestant stewardship campaign ever undertaken in that country. Last year, said the council, the annual budgets of 435 churches totaled $8.85 million. This year the budgets of the same churches increased to nearly $11.5 million.

The big increase is the result of a program under which thousands of laymen canvassed the membership of participating churches. The house-to-house canvas was based on the so-called sector plan, an idea first developed by the American Baptist Convention. Participating in the drive were churches of eight denominations.

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In Rome the first copy of the 1958 Vatican Directory was presented to Pope Pius. The new yearbook’s statistics indicate a strengthening of the Catholic hierarchy and an expansion of the church in missionary territories. The number of resident episcopal sees increased the past year by 35. The number or resident archbishops increased by one to 308. Apostolic vicariates increased by seven to a total of 213.

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This last item is of domestic origin, and reports that when the First Lutheran Church of Worthington, Minnesota, held its recent annual meeting, the congregation elected deacons, trustees, a Sunday school superintendent – and a termite committee. Termites have been a problem in the church for several years. This last reflection of my own is made self-consciously, but when I read that statement, I could not but realize that many churches have been plagued by termites for a long time and they are not always confined to isopteran genus.

The Methodist Board of Missions, holding its annual meeting at Buck Hills Falls, Pennsylvania, heard its general secretary for national missions, Dr. W. Vernon Middleton, emphasize that a new church must be built every day for the next five years if the Methodist Church wishes to provide churches for new communities springing up in all our urban areas. The denomination has been spending more than $100 million a year since 1954 for new church buildings, but Dr. Bonneau P. Murphy, executive in charge of church construction, said this does not begin to meet requirements. Some 1,200 new congregations, he said, still are worshiping in temporary quarters.

The Methodist Women’s Division of Christian Service also held its annual meeting at Buck Hills Falls. They adopted a program for world peace and American foreign policy in a nuclear space age. As part of the policy, they urged renunciation of war, exploration of areas of negotiation with Russia, and placing of outer space control in the United Nations.

Nobody is more sympathetic to any policy that will produce or approach nearer to peace than this reporter. However, it is a bit discouraging to relate fairly regularly such pious and well-meaning pronouncements, without any evidence in the news dispatches that the organizations making them are looking at the problem and machinery realistically. (And parenthetically, this reporter feels free to comment on this particular one because he too is a Methodist.)

Many of us can remember and probably more of us have read that back in 1927 virtually all the nations of the world signed the Briand-Kellogg Peace Pact, a short paragraph in which the signatory nations solemnly avowed to renounce war as an instrument of national policy. Naive as we were, and namby-pamby as politicians were – and are – there was great rejoicing in all the houses of Israel. Listening to and reading statements about the virtues of this pact, one would have thought that the millennium had been miraculously, with signatures of the pens of the nations, brought into existence, and the nations themselves would talk, think, and act about war no more. Four years later Japan attacked Manchuria, and we know the succession of tragic aftermaths.

As to exploration of areas of negotiation with Russia, that the WSCS advocates, well, there does not seem to be anything else we can do but think only of the next war, Mr. Dulles to the contrary notwithstanding. Whether there can be disengagement, constructive negotiations, or what have you, only patience, forbearance, and persistence will tell, but all these are much better than accepting as inevitable the current made race to attain superiority in death-dealing weapons, a race that can end only in catastrophe for everybody. For a next war will certainly not determine who is right, only who is left, if anyone.

The proposal that the nations place control of outer space in the United Nations is wonderful as a sentiment, but that is about as far as realism goes in the matter. It is time this organization, and all others interested in peace, in this country and everywhere else, begin insisting that the U.N. be strengthened to the point where it can effectively control anything. This of course means, bluntly, that the nations will have to relinquish some of that thing called sovereignty. But that is the price that ultimately will have to be paid if effective international control of national ambitions run riot is to be accomplished. It will do no good, as our national politicians, along with those of other countries, go about saying “We are not ready for this.” We shall never be ready for it until and unless we begin to seek ways and means of accomplishing it instead of making excuses for doing nothing about it. Again, bluntly, to do so would mean probably less prestige for national officials, the elimination of many diplomatic posts, the reduction of national armies and cutting some generals and admirals back to colonels and captains. This, of course, is heresy to them. No American, interested in and proud of his country, wishes to see an international Frankenstein monster created that would destroy nations, but we already have such in the monstrous death-dealing machines that man’s ingenuity has created. When will we (or will we ever?) turn that ingenuity to development of political controls at the world level that will make it impossible for war to occur? Methodist women organizations, as well as others, could well ponder this question. Our answer to it may determine the course of history, or indeed, whether there will be much more history made on this planet.

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Dr. James Wagner, president of the Evangelical and Reformed Church, returned to Philadelphia this week from a month’s visit to Africa. Dr. Wagner predicted the downfall of the present government in South Africa because of its racial segregation policy. He said a change in government will come through peaceful political action of the dominant white minority, rather than by a violent uprising of the natives. In South Africa, he said, white Christian leaders meet secretly with native Africans and East Asians. As pointed out here a number of times, a relatively small minority of whites has altered the Union’s constitution and enacted laws thereunder to impose segregation by law. The most elementary rights of the colored peoples there, the natives, have been violated, and in some places they have been removed from their homes much as we moved the five Indian tribes west of the Mississippi in the 1830’s.

While it is recognized that the British Commonwealth is a community of self-governing nations, and that the crown is largely a symbol of unity, but many of us have wondered why the queen has not spoken out against this flagrant violation not only of the basic rights of human beings in the Union but also of the most elementary principles of human decency. Perhaps her critics were right, that she is surrounded by stuffy advisers who are still living in the era of her predecessor, Victoria. We Americans are all too familiar with such Star Chamber advisers at various times in our own government. Certainly, in the case of the South Africans, not only civil rights, but questions of morality also, enter into the dreadful thing that has been happening there. And people of social consciousness everywhere will hope that Dr. Wagner is correct in his prophecy that the current regime will be replaced with one that has not only a more decent respect for the opinion of mankind, but a more decent respect for fellow men.

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In Rome, Vatican circles predicted that little, if anything, would come from a Russian suggestion that contacts be established between the Kremlin and the Vatican. The suggestion was made by Foreign Minister Gromyko in a talk to a group of so-called Italian peace partisans visiting Moscow. Vatican sources indicated the idea was not taken seriously in Rome. Church spokesmen noted that the situation of the church remains very serious in all communist countries.

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In Acapulco, Mexico, a statue neared completion that is destined never to be seen – except under water. It is a 12-foot bronze reproduction of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It is being made in the studios of Mexican sculptor Armando Quezada and will be sunk just inside the breakwater in Acapulco Bay under the title “Protectress of Skin Divers and of all who Work Beneath the Seas.” It is certainly not intended as irreverence to wonder if this applies also to crews of submarines, atomic and otherwise. But to go on, Archbishop Miquel Dario Miranda of Mexico City will proclaim Our Lady of Guadalupe to be queen of the seas that wash Mexico’s shores. And the statue will be blessed under water by a priest who is an expert skin diver.

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A very quotable quote came to me this week which I should like to pass on. It is by Dr. George Fallon, and comes from the Lamplighter. It says that “A great church is no easy thing to build. In fact, a great church cannot be built; it must be created by great people – people great in vision, in courage, in loyalty, in faithfulness, and in their determination to hold high the banner of faith.

The shortage of clergymen has caused much concern among a number of church denominations. Even more alarming is that the shortage is likely to become more acute with passing years. The president of Catholic St. Michael’s College in Vermont, the Rev. Francis Moriarty, had this comment on the situation recently: “In the age-old diocese of Sens, France, there are 520 parishes and only 220 priests. In our own North Carolina, two of our priests have to cover 2,000 square miles. This is a problem to which we must address ourselves.”

Two Protestant denominations are doing just that. The Lutheran Church of Finland has cut one year from the period of study required for ordination in its aim to fill 80 pastoral vacancies, most of them in sparsely settled areas. Theology students at the University of Helsinki will be eligible for degrees after four-and-a-half years of study. The present term of study is five-and-a-half years.

An experimental program also has been inaugurated by the Christian Church, or Disciples of Christ. This program is aimed at recruiting more ministerial students. In California, two pilot guidance and recruitment conferences recently saw 155 high school students undergo tests for psychological fitness after they had expressed interest in church careers. Those making high scores on the tests will be given church guidance in planning their scholastic careers. At the time they become college juniors they will be expected definitely to decide whether they wish to make church service their careers. The director of the Christian Church’s United Christian Missionary Society, the Rev. Jay Calhoun, emphasizes that the present complement of 3,400 full-time ministers must be increased to at least 4,500 by 1975. That is necessary, he says, if the present proportion of ministers to church members is to be maintained.

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Charlotte, North Carolina: A South Carolina attorney has told a Methodist Church fact-finding panel that Southern Methodists will not integrate their schools or churches. Hugh S. Sims, of Orangeburg, South Carolina, said, “Very frankly it doesn’t make any difference what the Supreme Court or the Methodist Church does. The attitude is not going to change.” Some others, however, disagreed. The Rev. Jack Crum, of Raleigh, North Carolina, said, “Segregation is wrong. I am opposed to segregation in our church. As a Christian, I can no longer sit in silence as my church denies the power of Christ’s love within its bounds.”

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Indianapolis, Indiana: A Denver minister warned members attending the American Urban Convocation that the sins of segregation are weakening in the churches of America. The Rev. Wendell Liggins said, “Communism feeds upon inconsistencies and hesitancies and confuses our youth.” The racial problem in the United States, he said, is the foremost issue in the world today.

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Cleveland, Ohio: A prominent church leader of New York City has urged that large American foundations join the government in sponsored student exchanges between American and Russian higher educational institutions. The Rev. Dr. Ray Gibbons recently returned from a tour of Western Europe and Russia, and said, “There is genuine desire among the common people of Russia for peace with America.”

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Vatican City: The Roman Catholic Church has decreed that young men must fulfill their military obligations before they take permanent religious vows. The Sacred Congregation of the Religious, in a decree published in the official Vatican news bulletin, said the measure was adopted because military service often affects a young man’s mind about monastic life.

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Again Indianapolis, Indiana: A Baptist leader says three press associations, four radio and three television networks dominate much of American thinking. The Rev. Paul O. Madsen, of New York, addressing the Baptist Urban Convocation, said the press associations and networks have taken over the role of shaping the mind, morals, and thinking of the nation. This, he said, once was the function of ministers.

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Vatican City: Pope Pius will go to Rome from his summer villa at Castel Gandolfo next week to attend the annual Requiem Mass held in memory of the cardinals who have died during the past 12 months. Those to be commemorated are Jules Saliège, of Toulouse, France, and Pedro Segura y Saenz, of Spain.

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St. Louis: 30 Protestant denominations having a total of 37.5 million members discussed a wide range of subjects this week in the General Assembly of the National Council of Churches. Of the many significant resolutions approved at this supreme policy-setting conclave, one stood out. In the light of the new age of rockets, nuclear weapons, and satellites, the General Assembly called for greater effort to achieve worldwide disarmament. It pointed out, quite rightly, that the present arms race can lead to nothing but a war which conceivably could destroy civilization. In the words of the assembly, “Efforts must be redoubled to realize the final goal of worldwide disarmament in the framework of the United Nations.” Well, few would disagree with the desirability of disarmament, but whether it will ever be possible under the U.N. as presently constituted, there is certainly no consensus.

In other actions, the assembly adopted resolutions:

1. Calling for more help to refugees.
2. Urging increased world trade.
3. Terming a menace to our liberties recent attempts by some local and state governments to suppress certain voluntary associations by forcing them to name members – a blow dealt to some chapters of the NAACP.
4. Protesting that Negro delegates to the assembly have been refused service by some St. Louis restaurants and taxicabs. Then promptly took action not to hold another such meeting anywhere that delegates will not be treated with the same courtesy regardless of their race.
5. Voting to admit four new denominations to the council. One of them is the Polish National Catholic Church in America, the first nominally Catholic church to join. They bring the total of 34 Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic denominations to 38 million members.
6. Sending a telegram to the AFL-CIO Convention in Atlantic City commending it for working to oust corrupt and racketeering elements.
7. Suggesting a Senate committee conduct a full inquiry into malpractices of management.
8. Renouncing racial segregation as contrary to the teachings of Jesus and the gospel of love, and appealed to local churches and citizens to do more to end it in schools and elsewhere.

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On the matter of church integration, the Rev. Dr. Liston Pope, Dean of Yale Divinity School, said the churches are making slow but steady progress toward ending segregation. Dr. Pope informed the assembly that about 10 percent of America’s congregations are now integrated, five times the percentage in 1947. This would indicate that about 30,000 churches are now integrated. Contrasting reports were heard by the assembly on this point. A Presbyterian layman and president of the Virginia Council of Churches, Francis Pickens Miller of Charlottesville, said race relations in his home state and other Deep South states are steadily deteriorating.

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My report and comments two weeks ago evoked considerable discussion and apparent disagreement among some of you listeners. That is good, and is exactly what I had hoped, for I was dealing with the question of revelations, the firm belief held by Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mohammedans, and others, that their bibles were the result of revelation, and that in each group there are some who insist that their bible only is right. This would be fine if all revelations were the same, so it seems hardly reliable to depend upon revelation as a basis for religious insight.

It would, indeed, be convenient if we could get such revelations from some other world, so we could know on what horse to bet, what job to take, in what to invest our money, what girl to marry, and so on. Unfortunately, there is no such easy way. It would be wonderfully convenient for those too lazy or too pleasure-loving to think and study if they suddenly could find themselves in possession of such truths. But I have not yet met such a person. I have met a number of deceivers, but what they claimed as revelation was not knowledge at all but mostly imaginative nonsense. It would appear that you have to study, work, and think in order to be wise in any field, and religion is no exception. There is no miraculous substitute for honest endeavors and hard work in the field of learning, as the educationists are being told by about everybody in these Sputnik days.

Scientists tell us all knowledge, that is, all awareness, comes to us through the sense as sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and the like. There is no such thing as non-sensory experience, or revelation. There are no ways of discovering or apprehending truth unique to the field of religion. Religious knowledge is not acquired in any other way than is knowledge of any other field. Progress can and will be made in religion only to the extent that it is given the same kind of critical thinking that is applied to other areas. It is no good to think scientifically in terms of cause and effect all during the week, then on Sunday, park your brains in the vestibule, along with your hat and coat, and enter an atmosphere where all sorts of impossible things happen.

Through all history, people, some sincere and some not sincere, have believed they received special revelation. They have claimed visions, dreams, trances, illuminations, and many of them insist that such experiences came from God. But it is equally true that drug addicts, alcoholics, and the mentally ill have such experiences also, and it is likely that the revelations of the latter have about as much foundation as those of the former. They are worth nothing because they bring us no important knowledge.

This reporter has yet to learn of any great truth benefiting mankind that was arrived at in a non-human way. Great truths are the result of careful experiment and patient observation. The great laws of the universe to which we must make adjustment were not revealed. They were discovered. The great marvels of human achievement did not come by revelation, but they were built on discovery. Few of us doubt that God is in and through it all. He is both law and author of law. Man, by use of the intelligence that God has given him, may progressively discover these laws and make adjustment to them. If he does not, he will perish. All of this is intended to indicate that there is no shortcut to heaven, no cheap and easy salvation schemes, but to study religion, society, and self, that we make the largest possible contribution to human enterprise. This may not be – it is definitely not – orthodox; it may not accord with the fine-spun theology. But it does offer a working hypothesis that will enable one, building on it to make progress, whether it is in the field of more mundane everyday affairs or in the loftier realm of man’s experience that we call religion.

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Newspapers are dreary reading these days – mainly about bigger and better ways of killing people. Friends talk about this competition in devilish instruments of destruction much the same way they did about the last World Series. Education is urged not to make people better, but to produce scientists who can contribute to carnage. The advisers of an amiable but befuddled president have launched a great campaign to get the American people to give the government an ever-increasing part of their subsistence for what may literally destroy them. I am old enough that I can remember when it was not only respectable to work for peace but it was thought to be a religious obligation to do so.

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Christmas is only 17 days from now. I wonder if those responsible for doing so have ever thought of giving the citizens of Washington County a Christmas present by bringing to justice those responsible for the April 30 dynamite slaying in the Sulphur Springs community. They will have had a long time in which to perform this duty.

A somewhat curious thumbnail profile was reported this week of a captain of industry in New Jersey who always wept during Mother’s Day services. Yet he voted against … suffrage for women; was opposed to limitation of hours for women in industry and state supervision of working conditions in his facility, the minimum wage law, accident and unemployment insurance, and maternity and retirement compensation. He was doubtful of coeducation. He openly branded as “communism” any effort to remove the legal disabilities of women. He was opposed to conception control, urging prayer in its stead. Yet he meant to be a good Christian and was sure he was “saved.” In the face of all this, one well could be excused for asking, “Just what is religion, anyway?”

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A somewhat cynical comment comes from a minister who observes that most Protestant ministers have two theologies: one they learned in theological school, and another that laymen permit them to preach. If this is in any sense true, it is a sad commentary on us laymen. For if they learned truth in theological school, it means we do not want to hear it. On the other hand, if what they learned is not truth, it may be just as well that they do not preach their learning.

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One of the great commandments is that “Thou shall not bear false witness.” All of us can remember, but it is likely that few are proud of, the days not so long ago when inquisitions were the order of the day; trial by headline took the place of jury and courtroom; accusations, distorted and unsupported by evidence, took the place of the grand jury and the witness stand. The late juvenile senator from Wisconsin was a master at this sort of thing, and he and his supporters, largely the lunatic fringe, whipped this nation into a hysteria from which it will take a long time to recover. Even then, the pages of our history of that time will not be ones to which we will point with pride or about which Fourth of July speakers will orate. Comes now a book which this reporter has not read, but which he intends to do, entitled “False Witness,” which, according to Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, one of the abler members of the United States Senate, is at long last the “shining truth about the false accusers, the half-truth artists, the professional fabricators, the prevaricators for pay”; a book which “cuts through the dark and ugly clouds of doubt” the purveyors of false testimony “have so evilly blown up.”

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It would appear that some, perhaps most, people seem to need to feel superior to others, not because of their own intrinsic or developed merits, but superior period. A little digging throws some interesting light on this. For whenever there is talk of brotherhood or the equality of men, there is almost invariably an opposition voice which cries out that brotherhood is a fallacy and we often hear it said that if providence had intended men to be equal, it would have made them that way. Even a brief review of history would seem to indicate that the fallacy is in the argument of those who claim superiority. A writer in the International Journal of Religious Education points out that Cicero warned his followers not to obtain slaves from Britain. He said, “They are stupid and dull, an inferior people.” In the 14th century, a moor wrote of the Germans, “They are tall of stature and light of skin. But I have heard it rumored that they do not take baths, and are altogether a hopeless strain.” In this country, when the Ohio Territory applied for statehood, a member of the United States Congress said, “They are so rude and unlettered they will never make good citizens.” The truth is, of course, that the British developed an empire which has stood longer than any other in recorded history. They, along with the Germans, have been outstanding in science, philosophy, music, and art. And Ohio, the territory of the “rude and unlettered,” has given the nation seven presidents. History is filled with many similar instances. Concluding, the journal writer asks, “Who are we to draw sharp lines between groups … to shut ourselves out from fuller fellowship when the world’s new trend must not be toward brotherhood, whether we like it or not.”

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Some of you have apparently been disturbed over the statement on this program some weeks ago to the effect that both the Hebrews and the Mormons claim to have had their bibles handed to them by the deity and that there was about as much evidence for one as the other. It is good that people become disturbed, for only then are they likely to become curious, to think, and to search for answers. Anyway, the statement was the truth and I have no inclination to retract.

Let us be honest with ourselves and look at some facts. The history of religions reveals that there have been a great many religions that claim to have been founded by a message from a god or gods to man. While these religions have some points in common, they do not agree on the messages. It is queer that God revealed so many different religions. The religions of Arabia, China, Greece, India, and Japan, e.g., do not agree with that of the West. Yet in each there have been those who claimed their religion was the only true one because it was delivered to man directly from deity. These same religions do not agree as to the name and nature of deity, on whether there is a life after death, or what happens in that life, or how to avoid punishment and reap reward. Nor is there any agreement as to the climate in those places, or their location, or the occupation of the inhabitants. All these many religions claim to be the result of faith delivered to the saints. The orthodox faithful are urged to accept this on faith. Indeed, it is held by some that there is merit in accepting in faith what is hard to believe simply it is hard to believe. Does this make sense?

It is about time that we come to realize that experts in the field of religion have just about abandoned the idea of revelation. Students of comparative religions explain that belief in revelation came about because early man had so many needs and the normal ways he had of getting information were so limited that the crafty were tempted to claim revelation. The people demanded revelation and the priests delivered. One might define so-called revelation as “non-human communication of truth,” or what passes for truth. The modern science of religion says there are not two kinds of truth – revealed truth and the ordinary kind. Truth is truth. Some forms of this so-called revelation have been (1) significant occurrence (as in the racket called astrology); (2) casting of lots (much employed by the ancients); (3) examination of the intestines of slain animals; (4) oracles or communication through eccentric or deformed persons, or the head of a church who is believed by the faithful to be the source of all earthly truth; (5) dreams; (6) ecstasy, or a trance in which a person is believed to be invaded by some spirit; and (7) sacred literature.

As a people come to know more, these superstitions tend to disappear. Yet, in the United States, after a century of public school education, many people believe in non-human communication of truth; in short, in revealed truth. Of course that is an easier method of arriving at a decision than the difficult but surer one of testing every idea, religious or not, by the only reliable way of arriving at truth, i.e., the scientific process. It is easy to believe that God dictated the contents of the Bible to human beings. The only trouble with that is that Buddhists, Mohammedans, Hindus, and a lot of others believe that of their respective bibles. And each believes, just as devoutly as the others, that his is the only true revelation. Very confusing, isn’t it? And where does all this leave us? About where we came in, I suppose. But keep on thinking. Such has never known to prove fatal to anyone.

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I still wonder what Frankie and Johnnie are doing these days. They still have shown no signs of catching bomb riggers whose fiendish device blew a man into eternity.

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The nation’s largest religious organization, the National Council of Churches, opens its week-long annual general assembly today at St. Louis. Some 2,000 delegates will undertake the job of planning the future of 75 programs the nation’s churches conduct through the council. Since its inception, the council has become a very versatile institution. Its records of achievement include all sorts of public and pious works and illustrates that church business today is big business. The council and its working subsidiaries extend into scores of activities far beyond the pew and pulpit, including radio and television broadcasting, teaching illiterates to read, running health clinics, training marriage counselors, finding homes for refugees, prodding politicians, printing books, analyzing community problems, etc. The council stresses that it is not a church, though it includes 30 denominations. The common denominator for the council is a belief in the divinity of Christ. There, creedal identity ends, the council leaving to the churches concerned the wide range of ideas about baptism, communion, and other tenets.

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A group of Lutheran laymen reports continued success in its annual drive to keep Christ in Christmas. The campaign is aimed at inspiring an ever-widening appreciation by business houses and community groups of the real purpose and spirit of Christmas. Especially active in the campaign are two New York City laymen, Julius Nickleburg of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, and Henry Jaburg of the United Lutheran Church in America. Some suggestions of their effort include attending church services and urging others to do the same; recommending the use of nativity billboards, window displays, and articles in religious and secular publications; and the encouraging of outdoor singing of Christmas carols.

Is it not rather ironic, to put it timidly, that there should need to be an effort to keep Christ in Christmas? How much farther are we going toward making Christmas just an annual holiday on which we exchange merchandise, and calculate how much to get whom on the basis of how much whom is going to give me?

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The 17th biennial convention of the National Federation of Temple Brotherhoods opened this week in Pittsburg, and will continue through today. The federation is the layman’s branch of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the parent body of 550 Reform temples in the USA and Canada. It has a membership of more than a million.

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New York: The Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds has awarded two Jewish organizations in the 1957 William J. Shroder Memorial Awards. Winners are the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland and the Jewish Hospital Association of Cincinnati. The awards will be presented at the 26th General Assembly of the council at New Orleans next weekend. The awards are given in recognition of superior initiative and achievement in the advancement of social welfare.

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South Bend, Indiana: The University of Notre Dame is lending a helping hand to Ottumwa Heights College in Iowa whose only building was destroyed by a fire a month ago. Hundreds of books, plus equipment and supplies are being shipped from Notre Dame to Ottumwa Heights College, which is run by the Sisters of the Holy Humility of Mary, a Roman Catholic order. Many Notre Dame professors sent books from their private libraries.

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London: Radio Moscow has broadcast an appeal for peace by leaders of the Roman Catholic Church of Latvia. According to the broadcast, the bishop of Riga urged all nations to raise their voices against war and emphasized that atomic and all other energy should not be used to destroy people but should be used for the good of humanity. Latvia was taken over by Russia and incorporated as part of the Soviet Union. Everybody agrees with this in principle, but precious little is done about it in practice. What about convincing the USSR to do this? And this does not imply there are no warmongers in this country.

 

 

Throughout U.S. history, major religious bodies have been in conflict over various aspects of American life. But at last, Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish leaders are talking over these problems around the same conference table. Previously, however, the general pattern has been for the different groups to remain in their own domains from which they hurled their arguments, and frequent brickbats on touchy subjects. Now the three faiths are tackling an assortment of issues under a new project involving a broad study of religion, its activities, and relationships to freedom and democratic government.

Among the issues are use of public funds for parochial schools, rights and effects of religious pressure groups in such matters as censoring what they deem to be undesirable literature and entertainment, and dissemination of contraceptive information. Prominent clergymen of the three faiths are also studying causes and results of sectarian bloc voting and the part [?] plays in religion.

So far as is known, this is thought to be the first time such full scale, joint discussions have been held. The editor of The Boston Pilot, a Roman Catholic weekly, says to his knowledge this has never been done before. The Right Rev. Francis Lally adds that he has never heard of such an effort on this level. A top Protestant theologian, the Rev. Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr of Union Theological Seminary, said mutual talks on limited phases of the various subjects have been held but that substantive issues have not been discussed.

The Fund for the Republic, Inc., one of the Ford foundations, is sponsoring and financing the project, which will require about a year to conclude. It includes the commissioning of special research from qualified individuals and institutions. The chief coordinators of the project are Dr. Niebuhr and the Rev. John Courtney Murray, a leading Catholic scholar, of Woodstock College, Maryland. Among the key consultants are Rabbi Dr. Robert Gordis of Jewish Theological Seminary, Dr. F. Ernest Johnson of the National Council of Churches, and Mark de Wolfe Howe of Harvard Law School. Non-religious representatives are also included.

Coincidental with the opening of this unusual interfaith study, a Jewish scholar, Dr. Will Herberg, commented that the Catholic Church was right in principle, in calling for public support of parochial schools. He expanded his position as follows: “Parochial schools are, in fact, public institutions though they are not governmentally-sponsored. They have full public recognition as educational agencies. Their credits, diplomas, and certificates have exactly the same validity as those of public schools.”

Jewish groups, generally, have in the past been opposed to government benefits to parochial schools. Catholics, however, have advocated that their schools should share in such benefits as transportation, health services, textbooks, and school lunches, but not direct support. It is highly likely that Congress will be eager to depart from its long tradition of being reluctant to appropriate money for private education. Furthermore, it might be pertinent to suggest that if Dr. Herberg is correct in his view that private schools are really public, those states in the South that have threatened to turn their public school systems over to private agencies to escape integration are going to have to re-think their procedures and come up with something else. But even should Congress relax its stand on public money for private schools, the courts have in recent years been especially sedulous in drawing the line even more clearly to keep church and state separate. Even the so-called “moral guidance” programs which in some cases have become mere cloaks for religious teachings, have come under judicial ban in a few cases. And released time for religious instruction is definitely not legal, though some over-zealous people, especially here in the Bible Belt, are going on with such stuff, despite its illegality.

Of course, the ridiculous, and sometimes uncomfortable, position they take is that if anyone opposes teaching of religion in the schools, as does this reporter, he is thereby opposed to religion, which this reporter definitely is not. This is about as sensible as saying that because one does not want to wear his shoes in bed he does not wear them anywhere else either.

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The unity or teamwork they derive from prayer and living Christian lives is credited by Coach Bud Wilkinson and his Oklahoma Sooner football team for this aggregation’s great string of victories. (It might be though sacrilege by some to wonder in passing why the coach does not then give up training rules and devote all his time and that of the team to prayer and doing good. deeds.) Anyway, before yesterday’s game they said a prayer, uttered another at half-time, and a third when the game was over. A leader in this movement to bring prayer sessions to college football has been Guard Bill Krisher a 216-point Hercules who is candidate for All-America Guard. Says Krisher, “We never pray for victory. We let that take care of itself. We do pray that both teams can play their best.” Krisher believes praying gives the team unity and says the players feel better when they pray. That praying and Christianity are considered important is indicated by the fact that when a new athlete reports to Sooner coaches, he is first asked whether he knows the locality of his denomination’s church. During a game, Krisher is a hard-hitting lineman. He says he puts forth even more effort when opposing a player who resorts to the use of foul language. There is no place in football for profanity, he notes, because it does not make the player any better and accomplishes nothing.

Well, there is more of the same stuff, but it is still the same stuff. No psychologist would be likely to dispute the therapeutic effect of a frame of mind which causes one to believe he is fighting in a righteous cause, but the whole idea sounds like the line continually put forth by the Graham-Peale-Sheen axis, much of which is charlatanism simple, if not so pure. Moreover, such an attitude and practice sort of puts God squarely in the middle in an earthly contest. Remember how the gods came down from Olympus and aided each side in the Trojan War? Unfortunately the Sooners and their opponents, presumably, have but one God and it would require a schizophrenic one to aid both sides at the same time. How silly can we get in the name of religion?

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And while on the subject of Graham, a not altogether pleasant one, I will admit, The Atlantic Monthly for July had an article by R. E. Robertson on “When Billy Graham Saved Scotland” that was a literary masterpiece. The September issue of the same magazine has a defense of Billy Graham by David H.C. Read that is not a masterpiece. Mr. Read, like all defenders of Graham, uses considerable space asserting Billy’s sincerity. I wonder why Graham’s friends feel that is necessary. You’d think that his sincerity might be taken for granted and not be imputed to him as righteousness. Moreover, the alleged fact that Graham has a pleasant personality does not appear to be relevant. The defense rests upon the undisputed fact that Billy attracts crowds and makes converts. If he, at the same time, and in the process, teaches a shallow gospel, making full use of the myths and superstitions of an outgrown theology, but gets people to accept the same, is it good or evil he is doing? Can you imagine a group of astronomers, e.g., allowing meetings for an astrologer and justifying the movement by attendance figures? Are not the clergymen backing Graham a cynical lot? Their attitude seems to be, “Of course it’s not true, but he increases church attendance and church income and we hope he does some good.” I am not unaware that this current comment may be looked upon as heresy (by the superstitious at least), but I believe it stands the test of logic and at the same time is a reasonable conclusion from the evidence splurged across the newspapers and through the air about this truly remarkable figure.

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A quotation that is worthy of quoting again came to me this week. It is from a statement by the Rev. Harold Schmidt in Van Nuys, California. He says that “Little has been done to help the man in the street to understand the new world he lives in, to help him see how utterly different it is from yesterday’s worlds; even how different he is in personality from any of his ancestors; to help him see how costly it is in life and wealth to himself and his children to pack around in his head images of worlds that have died. Little has been done to give him a fuller, more accurate image of the world that is and can be. The liberal should not be surprised when so many people fail to respond to his thinking or his leadership. They do not share with the liberal the new worldview from which our new social thinking stems. Hence they keep a grandfather thought of God as a part of the furniture of [their] mind.”

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To supplement Dr. Schmidt’s rather penetrating analysis of the unnecessary and no longer useful furniture we hold onto in our minds comes to my mind the fact that among many people, and this includes some ministers, we still hear a lot of nonsense about the so-called conflict between science and religion. With our normal acceptance of religion, this imputes an evil quality to science. Perhaps in the minds of many, this evil quality has been emphasized by the identification of science and materialism.

But let us remind ourselves that religion is the best that man knows about God, while science is the best of man’s knowledge about things in God’s world. The assumption that scientists find no place for God is simply not true. On the contrary, the more objective a scientist is, the more likely he is to fall back on a “first cause” which is in effect, a creator. Furthermore, many, perhaps most, scientists attend church, serve as Sunday school superintendents, lay ministers, deacons, or other active workers in their denominational groups.

The scientist starts with the assumption that knowledge about God’s universe is good. It should aid in the understanding of God and his ways. It is said of the great biologist Louis Agassiz that he would say to his class at the beginning of an experiment, “Gentlemen, we are about to ask God a question.” It can and should be – probably is – in a somewhat similar spirit of reverence and humility that scientists do their work today.

Perhaps still another reason the uninformed or ill-informed assume there is a conflict between science and religion is that discoveries that scientists make inevitably change the previously prevailing concept of God. This is not denial of religious insight, but rather an amplification of it. Men sought to know about God and his way from earliest times. It is natural that they should impute to him wondrous creative powers in terms of their current conceptions. “In the beginning God created the heavens and earth” is a beautiful and universal concept. Thus it was that Ussher attempted to date the Old Testament using recorded chronologies and genealogies, placing the date of creation at 4004 B.C. In later years many discoveries in the areas of geology, anthropology, and chemistry showed that there must have been many, many omissions in these records. This in no wise diminishes man’s concept of the creative power of God, but it does change his ideas of how and when God created. The truth is that religion can have a great future in the acceptance of the expanding concept of God that science makes possible. It is the duty of science to make these explorations in the spirit of asking God a question.

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It has been about 200 days now, more than six months, since the life of a Washington Countian was snuffed out by an automobile starter rigged with a homemade bomb – time enough for the forces of law and order here to find a guilty party or parties, or call in more expert aid to do so. A trial, called by the local newspaper, “A Farce, A Fiasco” was held. This week the Knoxville News Sentinel carried an item with a Johnson City dateline saying that investigators Peterson and Shoun were reentering the case unless a special investigator for the National Board of Fire Underwriters, who has done much talking but presented little information, produces concrete results. No published evidence has appeared indicating any activity on the part of the local sheriff and attorney general in trying to apprehend the guilty. Has it become safer from the standpoint of punishment, for one to kill a man than to steal his automobile? There is not only a legal but also a moral obligation for the two chief law enforcement officials to produce results or to procure someone who will.

This coming week will see thousands of Protestant churches throughout the nation holding special Thanksgiving services, the occasion being used to launch the 1957-58 Share Our Surplus food program. This is the project through which the Church World Service hopes to gain 300 million pounds of food from our national surplus stocks for free distribution to the world’s needy people. Three major observances will be held simultaneously this afternoon in Washington, D.C., Manhattan, Kansas, and San Francisco. Millions of Protestant Americans of all denominations will, during the course of the week, have the opportunity to express their gratitude for the abundance with which this nation is blessed. The Share Our Surplus, also called S.O.S., was inaugurated in 1954. By the end of 1958 about 8 billion pounds of U.S. government surpluses will have been distributed free to hungry people in many nations. The S.O.S. appeal to the people of American Protestant churches of the 35 denominations is for funds to cover overseas distribution, administration, and other handling expenses.

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It’s a crazy world in which we live. The nations get together and spend months in a so-called disarmament conference, when actually none of them wants to disarm. In this country we spend $60 billion annually trying to find more terrible ways to kill people, and we do this because mankind has not solved the problem of learning to live without war. Nobody apparently wants to find it; they had rather go on trying to patch up an old system that never has produced, and will produce nothing but war. That $60 billion alone would do much to buy housing, education, medical services, etc., for people who need such things far more than they need guns or to be killed. But I suppose vested interests would call the last under that vague and meaningfulness thing “socialized medicine.” Then here at home we take money from all the taxpayers to provide subsidy to farmers to grow more than is distributed. Then we go back and bombard those same taxpayers to give money to distribute to the world’s needy that which they have already partially paid for. At the same time we put on a so-called “United Fund” drive to help the needy here at home. I could go on, but how mixed up can we get?

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This past week saw the dedication in New York of the nation’s first Protestant Interchurch Center. The 19-story building, costing nearly $20 million, is scheduled to be ready for occupancy by the end of 1959. Its tenants will be 19 denominational and church-related agencies. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., whose generosity in the interests of civic and religious projects is well known, made the block-square site on Riverside Drive overlooking the Hudson River available on a 99-year lease, rent-free basis. In the dedication address, Dr. Clarence Cranford, the American Baptist Convention president, said, “To this site, the eyes of millions will turn with new hope because of this practical demonstration of unity.”

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In the neighboring state of North Carolina, a conflict between youth and the older generation, between modernists and fundamentalists, exploded on the campus of Wake Forest College at Winston-Salem, and, to a lesser degree, at Meredith College for Women in Raleigh. In 1937, the overall governing convention board imposed a ban on dancing at the colleges. In recent years the trustees of the two colleges took action to permit such activity. But pressure, apparently mostly from rural pastors, was soon brought to bear. Parishioners sending in donations to the church from the congregations of these ministers were adding a note that none of the money was to be used for the two colleges because dancing was permitted. The trustees now reversed themselves and imposed the ban again. A poll of the parents of the students showed that 80-90 percent favored campus dances under the auspices of the college. The trustees now changed their minds and permitted dancing. But this week the convention board was adamant – no more college dances.

This action touched off the fireworks, literally and figuratively. Mass protests were staged by the student. The president was hanged in effigy. Students walked out of the assembly program, and shouts of derision were heard, not only about the board and the president, but also about Baptists in general. A reported jitterbug dance – though it was probably more of a rock and roll affair – was held on the campus and a larger one in a square downtown, to the music of radios. That is about where the matter stands as of now.

It would be very easy to condemn the backwoods ministers for their mossback ideas; or the youngsters for their alleged waywardness, if that is what it is. The former are doubtless sincere in believing that dancing is immoral, and none of us parents would teach or advocate anything that would undermine the morals of our children. They hold to the idea that God and religion are fixed, unchanging concepts, and any deviation from what they learned as they grew up is a sin. They are not only unwilling; perhaps they are unable, to reconcile their life-long held ideas to something else.

The college students are normal youngsters of another generation. They look out upon the world with 1957 eyes, and, like their fathers, are fashioning their own pattern of values. That pattern is, quite naturally, not identical with the one of their elders. It is unfortunate, perhaps, that this conflict exists, but it has existed throughout history.

What the elders fail to grasp, or to admit, is that society is ever an ongoing concern. And while some of us might not like the direction it is going, society is bigger than we are, and there is little we can do. Certainly, to try to stop change would be about as effective as King Canute ordering the tide to roll back. It may be true that God does not change; but man’s conception of God changes, and few of us would go back in social matters to the rigid rules and regulation laid down in Leviticus, however appropriate those rules were for the Hebrews at the time. If we did, we would all stop brushing our teeth, for nothing is said there about this practice or about seeing your dentist regularly.

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A controversy which has been brewing for several months at the Haverford Quaker College has been settled by the turning down of Defense Department money for science projects on the ground that the philosophy of the department is inconsistent with the peace principles of the Quakers, and, in the words of the college statement, there “is increasing military control of research funds” which the college sees as a threat to free academic inquiry in America.

This all started when last autumn, three members of the science faculty at the college indicated their desire and intention to seek research grants from the Defense Department. One, a chemist, applied to continue study of unstable molecular fragments; and members of physics and mathematic departments wanted to secure funds for pure research. The debate that followed deeply stirred the campus. Haverford is proud of its pacifist tradition, which has been a mark of the Quakers for 300 years. And many feared that if the college became dependent on military funds, it would no longer be free to criticize and oppose war and war-like actions by the government.

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From the mess that has been permitted to develop around integration efforts in some places comes occasionally evidences that moderate, straight-thinking elements are merging. In a city election for membership on the governing board in Little Rock, Arkansas, some days ago, six out of seven candidates who stood for law and order instead of mob rule won out over opponents who were segregation die-hards. This does not mean that those six wanted integration; it probably means that they represent those of the population who prefer rule of law with integration rather than violence without it.

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Comes also additional evidence now from white students meeting for the sixth annual Youth Institute on Human Relations at Asheville, North Carolina. Stirred by disorders attending integration at Little Rock, Charlotte, North Carolina, and elsewhere, student delegates appeal to President Eisenhower to call or sponsor a national conference of high school youth as a counter measure to violence. In their statement they emphasize that they “are concerned with youth’s responsibility of making our schools a living example of democracy and brotherhood.” They go on to state “how saddened and disappointed we were when a few young people of our age group participated in acts of violence in their schools at the beginning of this school year, thus damaging intergroup relations within our community and unwittingly giving aid and comfort to America’s enemies….” Their recommendations went on to state that it is the belief of the delegates that the overwhelming majority of American youth judge each other on individual merits rather than on distinctions of religion, creed, race, or color, and believe that the law of the land should be obeyed without reservation. The students urged also that each school form a committee on friendly relations to promote intergroup harmony and understanding.

It is more than likely that most of us who are concerned with human betterment, without regard to prejudice, are convinced that if prejudiced parents would refrain from trying to project these prejudices into the lives of their children and let the young folks settle this integration hassle among themselves with a minimum of interference, it would all work out much better. After all, these young people are going to live out their lives in a world far different from that in which their parents grew up, and it is apparent that in that world, such prejudices are a luxury that cannot be afforded. The parents may not admit this, but it is also likely that if they did realize the importance of this truth, they would hesitate to perpetuate a prejudice that will be a handicap to children’s well being in the world that is emerging.

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In Nashville this week, the Tennessee Council of Churches came out for racial integration of the state’s public schools. It adopted a resolution urging that the state’s school system be brought into harmony with the Supreme Court decision of May 1954. Specifically, among other things, it stated, “In terms of Christian perspective it is our desire that we may be of service to the state and local agencies in working within law and order toward the fulfillment of requirements of the … decision.” The council represents 13 Protestant denominations with over 600,000 members in Tennessee. School and other people might take note of this number, for it provides a nucleus at least for developing a civic attitude among the public generally that will permit integration to come about without going to the disgraceful extremes that characterized Clinton, Tennessee, and Little Rock, Arkansas.

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And out in Los Angeles, the Rev. Nelson Higgins, a Negro who was appointed pastor of a white Methodist church, as reported here some months ago, has managed to galvanize the community into increased religious activity. From membership of only 43 at the time he took over, most of whom left because of the race of the pastor, it now has an average attendance of around 200 at Sunday school, and a corresponding increase in attendance at the church service. About 40 percent of those attending are white, while the rest are of various non-white racial groups.

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Ladies and gentlemen: I am reluctant to permit this last item to become something like the lone beat of the piano note in a rock and roll number, but there is still no evidence that the sheriff and attorney general are trying to find those who murdered Everett Jenkins. WHY?

The Bible continues to be the world’s all-time bestseller. Recently disclosed figures put total world circulation of the Bible, Old and New Testaments, and portions of the scriptures at just under 27 million at the start of 1957. That’s nearly 1 million more than for 1955 and almost 3.25 million more than 1954. At the close of 1956, at least one whole book of the Bible had been published in 109 languages, including many now obsolete. However, during the past 25 years some portion of the Bible has been circulated in between 600 and 700 languages.

Figures furnished by the American Bible Society and other agencies show the top five nations in the sale of complete Bibles are the United States, Germany, England and Wales, South Africa, and Brazil. The Rev. Dr. Frank Price, who directs the missionary research library maintained by the National Council of Churches, points out that the Bible continues to be published, circulated, and studied in Communist China, where seven Bible houses are maintained in major cities. Dr. Price notes that since 1949, more than 171,000 complete Bibles and 170,000 New Testaments, and more than 3 million portions of the Bible have been distributed in Red China, in addition to 43 editions printed from old plates already in the country.

These are not merely cold statistics, Dr. Price declares, but living and inspirational facts which show the Bible to be a truly universal book in a world that still possesses a babel of tongues.

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Professor Walter Freytag of Hamburg University in Germany says his recent three-week tour of Communist China impressed him because the people seemed to have a new spirit of self-respect. Dr. Freytag, who is professor of missions at the Hamburg University, made the trip at the invitation of the Chinese churches.

In Shanghai he reported seeing 50-100 percent of church members in six separate churches on one Sunday. He also disclosed that some splendid churches had been built recently and many others had been enlarged or restored. Dr. Freytag said, however, that fundamental criticism of the political system in Red China was noticeably absent. Anyone who becomes a Christian, he declared, automatically cuts himself off from the Communist Party and joins a minority which is respectfully tolerated at best.

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The role of the religious counselor was the subject of a recent survey by Wellesley College in Massachusetts among social workers and both Protestant and Catholic clergymen. At a later date a similar study will be made among Jewish, as well as other, clergymen.

The survey by two sociologists showed Protestant ministers to be unanimously agreed that the counselor’s role is expressive of their parishioners’ wishes. They felt that a church member turns to the pastor because he represents the concern of the religious community. Also that parishioners expect their minister to understand fully and appreciate their inner feelings and spiritual needs. (Perhaps this is expecting the impossible.)

Catholic priests interviewed said generally that the pastor’s role as counselor derived from the priest’s intimate relationship with God. They felt that it was their duty to remind the parishioner of religious duties and to explain particular religious points involved in his problem. When these objectives have been accomplished, they said it was the priest’s duty to refer the church member to the proper church agency for further help.

The study disclosed the social workers were not inclined to give the pastoral counselor a place on the team. They criticized clergymen for overestimating their own resources and capacities. However, the social workers conceded there is a role for the minister or priest in psychiatric cases having a religious compulsion of some sort, or where a clergyman might persuade a religious person to enter a hospital or other institution.

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It looks as if the Whitley County, Kentucky, grand jury has joined neighboring Knox County [Tennessee] book burners. That grand jury criticized circulation of a book written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and asked for further investigation as to why the Corbin Public Library was circulating it. In the words of the jury’s final report, the book entitled “The Big Sky” by A. B. Guthrie, Great Falls, Montana, contained indecent language. The Kentucky case, however, is more to be accepted than that of the Knoxville Board of Censors. In the latter case, it is a group of laymen set up to determine what the public shall be permitted to read; in the Kentucky case, it may be that the case is headed for judicial hearing, where the volume in question will be examined in the light of statues governing obscenity. That is how it should be, but newspaper reports indicate that the librarian, Mrs. Edward Cummins, is also tried by public opinion in the community before legal proceedings are through. Understandably, when questioned about the matter she had no comment. A book, as well as a person, has a right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty. And the librarian should suffer no condemnation in making the book available to the public. That is prejudging according to ignorant prejudices.

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An item that did not receive much attention in newspaper coverage was a late summer meeting in Nova Scotia by 20 renowned scientists from many different countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Their purpose in meeting was “to assess the perils of humanity which have arisen as a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction.” At the end of their meeting they issued a statement which is, or should be, of great importance not only to those interested in science, but to the layman as well. Recent satellite developments by Russia underscore the importance of their report.

The scientists spent part of their time reviewing the hazards of radioactive fallout; but wisely, they did not stop with this. They went on to emphasize that nuclear war, and not merely fallout, is the true danger. “We are all convinced,” they said, “that mankind must abolish war or suffer catastrophe; that the dilemma of opposing power groups and the arms race must be broken down.” Beyond this, they raised the question: What is the responsibility of scientists in the face of the dangers which confront humanity? Their answer is a complex, and an incomplete one. They say that scientists can help prevent war “by contributing … to public enlightenment on the destructive and constructive uses of science and by contributing … in the formation of national policies…” What they do not say is just how they shall contribute to the formation of such policies. Men of science, it would seem, are now well aware that the fruits of their labor are of paramount importance for the future of mankind; indeed, the uses to which such fruits are put well may determine whether mankind has a future. They point out that war would leave no country untouched; that arms limitation is not enough; that so-called small wars are now the greatest peril, for they would almost inevitably invite participation by the great powers and bring on a general holocaust; and they go on to enumerate what, in their judgment is the political responsibility of scientists.

This responsibility involves, they say, more activity on the part of scientists in influencing political leaders; stressing ways and means scientific and technical progress can be used constructively; that science must be completely free from dogma; and so on.

Well, it would seem that scientists have begun to worry about the potential dangers of what they have created, and this is well. The discouraging feature of the picture is two-fold: Few scientists have or seem to have much influence over the politicians, and politicians insist upon worn dogmas that have little realism in today’s all too realistic world. It is trite to point out again here that 170 years ago 13 struggling, weak little states solved the problem of lack of strength by developing a federal union which, despite its imperfections, has through the years made us into the people we are. Politicians don’t like even to mention such a possibility in the international field, but it is difficult to see how there is any other solution to survival of freedom in a world that is overshadowed by the power of an atheistic, ruthless, dictatorship.

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Alabama Polytechnic Institute, Auburn, Alabama, recently fired a professor because he advised obedience to the Supreme Court desegregation of schools. It is, indeed, passing strange that the trustees of a state institution of higher learning should be subversive of law and order. It is not only strange; it is both immoral and treason to their trust. The interference of a board of trustees with the matter of faculty personnel is, of course, outrageous in any college or university, and presents a practical problem. But it can be met courageously, and has been so met in many institutions as at Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and elsewhere. Theological seminars have had to battle against brainwashing. If the administration and faculty stand firmly for freedom of thought and expression, they can win. If freedom is denied at Alabama Polytechnic Institute, it becomes just another hillbilly institution. It is not a question of segregation or no segregation; it’s whether it can be discussed or whether the subject is taboo. When primitive taboos hit a university it is no longer a university and no longer entitled to respect.

In the Sweezy case, Justice Frankfurter said, “In a university, knowledge is its own end, not merely a means to an end. A university,” he goes on, “ceases to be true to its own nature if it becomes the tool of church or state or any sectional interest. A university is characterized by the spirit of free inquiry, its ideal being the ideal of Socrates (who said) ‘to follow the argument where it leads.’ This implies the right to examine, question, modify, or reject traditional ideas and beliefs.”

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Had you ever realized that the question, “Are you a communist?” is an emotional response to ideas of which the question is ignorant?

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So far, there is no published evidence to indicate whether Sheriff Deakins and Attorney General [Frank] Hawkins are still trying to bring to justice the person or persons responsible for the murder of Everett Jenkins. Until they do, the record of Washington Country looks pretty bad.

 

Plans for a study were outlined in New York this week by the Rev. Marvin Halverson, an executive of the National Council of Churches. It will attempt to determine the what’s and the why’s of popular arts in contemporary American religious life. For example, they will try to ascertain why people wait in seemingly endless lines to see motion pictures such as “The Ten Commandments” and “A Man Called Peter.” They will also try to find out why songs like “Somebody Up There Likes Me” and “I Believe” make the top 10 on the nation’s juke boxes. In short, they will try to learn whether religion is box-office, and if so, why. The study will include opera, radio, and television. A tangent of the survey will be the effort to see to what extent our 29th century popular arts are genuine American art forms and what makes them popular. As the Rev. Mr. Halverson observed: “People usually think of the Negro spiritual as our only real folk art with religious inspiration. It is important to know what the religious values of people are today, and if the current popular songs debase them.”

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Contributions to churches in the United States have passed the $2 billion mark for the first time in history. The total reported by 52 Protestant and Eastern Orthodox church bodies was $2,041,908,161. Better than 81 percent was for local congregational expenses. Contributions for benevolent purposes, including overseas relief and foreign and home missions amounted to nearly $387 million, or about 19 percent.

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It is always gratifying to discover that your point of view is shared by others. Last Sunday I commented upon the fact that the U.S. Bureau of the Census is considering including in its questions for the 1960 census some dealing with religious beliefs and affiliations. This week the Associated Press carried an item of some length, the gist of which is as follows: “On the grounds that it would violate the principle of separation of church and state, the General Council of the American Baptist Church has announced its opposition to including any kind of religious question in the 1960 census. The council’s attitude was announced by a spokesman who said the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, with headquarters in Washington, reported the government was thinking about including this question: “What is your religion?” The General Council is the governing body of the American Baptist Church between conventions. It represents 1.5 million members in 6,000 churches in 36 states.

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At the age of 67, Neill Robertson of Parkman, in northern Maine, has written finis to nearly a half century as a railroad telegrapher to become a country parson. Robertson became a station agent telegrapher for the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad when he was 25. As a sideline he filled in frequently for ministers unexpectedly called from their pulpits. He memorized sermons that could be delivered anywhere, anytime, and was always ready to help. Twice he was offered pastorates but turned them down because of his wife and seven children and because he felt that his grammar school education was insufficient. But he resolved that upon retirement he would try to find a church unable to afford a full-time pastor. Last June, Robertson found his spot: the United Baptist Church in Parkman. Only 32 persons were in that church the first Sunday. Now there are 72 parishioners. A modest man, Robertson says he has only one strong point as a preacher. He puts it simply: “I am done in 20 minutes. It makes no difference what I may have prepared; when that 20 minutes is up, I’m done.”

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As suggested here more than once, religion is native, natural, intrinsic, unavoidable, a primary part of man. And Christianity is only one of the many interpretations of that phenomenon. From the standpoint of sociology, the persistence of super-naturalism as an explanation of this natural phenomenon of religion is striking. Perhaps it is a commentary on the lack of integration of knowledge, but it could be due to the lack of a carryover in education. To illustrate, a careful ands competent teacher who lectures on the evolution of the beetle on the days of the week, goes to church on Sunday. He parks his brains with his umbrella and enters into a new and strange supernatural world where all sorts of wonders happens: axes float on water, the dead come to life, men become gods and vice versa. The man in the laboratory or the classroom demands step-by-step evidence, but in the field of religion he is likely to transform into a sentimentalist.

Not only did the early Christian religion claim more and better miracles than were previously available, but Christians condemned non-Christian miracles. In fact, some of the writers achieved more consistency, but at the same time more bigotry, by condemning all mystery religions but their own. According to the book of Acts, the disciples in Samaria put a professional miracle worker named Simon wholly out of business. Paul was so angry at the miracles of a magician named Elymas that he struck the poor devil blind. The whole history of heresy has in it a great deal of jealousy in respect to who had supernatural power. Catholics have discounted and denounced Protestant miracles and Protestants have made fun of the great miracle healing resorts of the Catholics. Even the state has forbidden the handling of poison snakes and has taken children from homes where miracles were relied upon instead of biotics.

In much the same manner, Christians have denied that there was any revelation except Christian revelation, and if you look at all the different sects you see the Christians cannot agree on what it was that God said. Revelation by definition is the importation of knowledge to a human or humans by supernatural means. But we are not consistent about this. We accept easily that a supernatural power delivered stone tablets to Moses, but we refuse to believe that golden plates were delivered to Joe Smith, who founded the Mormon Church. There is about as much evidence for one as the other, if we are honest with ourselves and look at the evidence and draw our conclusions from it.

Not only have Christians denied other than Christian miracles, and on occasion condemned to death witches and people possessed of a devil and dealers in magical power, but they have turned upon their neighbors and slaughtered fellow humans who claimed a revelation other than the Christian revelation. Thus Catholics have tortured, burned, and hanged Protestants and heretical Catholics. Protestants have amply repaid the compliment to their Catholic colleagues.

The ancients explained phenomena in terms of super-naturalism because they had no other explanations. The tragedy is that today, after the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the tremendous advances in all fields of knowledge, on Sunday people, otherwise normal, accept super-naturalism as a respectable and satisfying interpretation of religion. The ancients had no telescope on Mt. Palomar through which they could read secrets of many worlds. They had no compound microscope by which they could lay bare the mysteries of nature’s vital processes. The only way the ancients had of establishing truth was to have it supernaturally guaranteed.

And thus it is that even where wild super-naturalism has been greatly modified or rejected by scholarship, the masses today as they always have, love, enjoy, defend, and will pay for the preaching of super-naturalism as a worthy interpretation of religion. Yet, in actuality, sociologically, if not theologically, religion is man’s response to the totality of his environment. Theologies are merely interpretations of something that is native and natural. To take this point of view is in no sense to tear down or disparage religion, for it is intrinsic and unavoidable, indestructible. But we should examine interpretations of it. To show the error of an interpretation of religion is not attacking religion; it is protecting it. It is not meritorious or spiritual, or even pious, to believe something that is in an ancient book, or because a lot of people have believed it, or to hold, as Tertullian did before he backslid, that it is true because it is unbelievable. For many, a technique of religion is to believe something that is difficult to believe. Perhaps the most backward of our social institutions today is the church itself. It could do much for the happiness of the race, for righteousness, brotherhood and love, if it would abandon much of its pretense of super-naturalism and demand the same kind of careful investigation and evidence that is demanded in other areas. We have the known conclusions of all the fields that known scholarship has revealed. The function of the church should be to take these conclusions, weigh them, and build a philosophy of religion that is valid, historically proportionate, and emotionally satisfying. Such a synthesis of knowledge in the light of moral values would, or could, make an unlimited contribution to the happiness of mankind. Such an interpretation of religion would always be subject to revision, open to change, as our methods of achieving truth improve and as the sum total of truth increases.

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There came to my attention this week a list of books, some of them exceptionally good, but which are banned by the Catholic Church. It would appear that that church is in favor of lots of children but is not in favor of sex. Wonder if they do not subscribe to the recently popular song that went something like this: “Love and marriage, like a horse and carriage, go together; you can’t have one without the other.”

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From a pastor comes this bit of wisdom that seems worth passing on to you. He says, “I am tired of hearing that old chestnut, ‘you cannot legislate morality.’ It is usually used as an alibi for not rectifying an evil condition…. Of course, we do not legislate morality. Who said we did? But immorality can be outlawed and punished.”

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One reassuring note in the news this week is that, though we do not have a Sputnik, the Defense Department announces that we have stockpiled enough H-Bombs to blow up the earth three times. One can be pardoned for wondering why three times. After a third were used, there would be nothing to use the other two thirds on.

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It is reported that the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, Auburn, Alabama, fired a professor because he advised obedience to the Supreme Court in the matter of desegregation of schools. It seems that the trustees of a state institution of higher learning should not be subversive of law and order. Simply because tensions and emotions run high is no reason for an academic institution to suppress an honest minority opinion. The interference of the board of trustees with the matter of faculty personnel was, of course, outrageous, and would be in any college or university. What is the school trying to do, educate or brainwash? That is a technique of dictatorships.

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In the Johnson City Press Chronicle for November 1, appeared under the heading “A Farce, A Fiasco,” the following editorial, in part: “Of the Jenkins murder trial, perhaps the least said the better. It was a farce, a fiasco. It will not be written into the records that way, but that is what it was. The jury returned the proper verdict: acquittal. On the basis of the evidence, any other verdict would have been simply a travesty. The state simply had no case…. Why such a state of affairs? Go back to the beginning. Recall the jealousies, the bickering, the intrigues among rival investigating officers. Remember the false starts and strange finishes…. Can there be any wonder that nothing meaty and substantial came out of such a welter of confusion?”

There is more, but this much is sufficient. The simple fact is that Everett Jenkins was murdered six months ago. The people of Washington County have a right to look to their elected sheriff and attorney general to bring the perpetrators of this murder to justice. They have not done so. There is wonderment in the minds of many as to whether they have exhausted the resources of their offices in trying to do so. Until something more tangible is produced, that wonderment will continue. What about it, gentlemen?

 

Today is seeing thousands of churches across the nation marking the 440th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. The song of the day will be “A Mighty Fortress is our God,” the great hymn of the 16th century reformer, Martin Luther. It must be noted, however, that the revolt touched off against the Roman Catholic Church of that day is no longer the central theme of the observance. The lasting principles, though, are still in action. One of New York City’s leading Episcopal clergymen, the Rev. Dr. James Pike, says the word “Protestant” would be a negative and not a particularly honorable term if the occasion were considered merely the recollection of a time way back in history when Protestants broke with Rome. Dr. Pike adds that a truly Protestant church is not one that can look back to a Reformation, but rather one that recognized its need of reformation today. And, this reporter might add, few thinking people will be likely to disagree with that.

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Not the least of the many festivities in many places scheduled today is one which is not officially a part of the Protestant observance. This is the second annual NATO Naval Chaplain’s Conference being held in the United States. It includes chaplains of Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox faiths. Serving in Eastern pulpits as guest preachers will be 40 Navy chaplains from 14 countries having membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

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A church world service committee was told recently that critical repercussions are likely unless there is strong support for the United Nations relief efforts among Arab refugees. An internationally renowned churchman, Dr. Tracy Strong, said the whole Middle East situation could worsen dangerously unless the United Nations’ Relief and Works Agency is permitted to continue its food and distribution program among the more than 900,000 Arab refugees. Dr. Strong pointed out that the United States has pledged 70 percent of the money for a projected $23 million U.N. fund for Arab relief. Britain has pledged 20 percent and the other nations 10 percent. But Dr. Strong noted that a lag in payments by other nations might hold up the entire program since Congress has made U.S. payments contingent upon those of the other countries.

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Conviction was expressed this past week that a new kind of missionary is needed to fulfill the requirements of a new era in missionary work. The first Indian to be consecrated bishop of an Evangelical Lutheran Church in India, Dr. Rajah Manikam, made the pronouncement upon his installation as this year’s Harry Emerson Fosdick Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He declared that the French and Russian revolutions are pale in comparison with the changes going on today in Asia and Africa. Never before, he said, have so many millions of people taken part in such a rapid and radical social upheaval. He called it a revolution of the masses, who are demanding political independence, economic justice, social equality, and religious motivation of life. Practically extinct, he declared, is the missionary of a previous generation who was a superintendent, a director, or a boss. He said the day has now dawned for the missionary who is a friend, a philosopher, and guide of a young church. This new type of missionary, he added, must be a man who is willing to get behind the cart and push it along rather than pull it from the front.

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One of the curious things about the mystics and revelators is that they claim to receive information from God that is superior to ordinary knowledge. They claim that this information is ineffable and indescribable. Then they write many books and make many speeches describing the indescribable. Does this make sense?

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One point seems to have been overlooked in the prolonged discussion of the Little Rock debacle. Was it proper for the president to go over the head of the federal court and [?] with a governor who was violating a court order?

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Some of you have taken issue with the opposition expressed on this program to censorship by self-appointed or officially appointed board of censors made up of lay people who pass upon whether literature offered for sale is obscene. This reporter has never advocated obscenity. On the contrary, he has opposed it, but has insisted that determination of what is and is not obscene was a matter for the courts to determine, and not for a bunch of neighborhood Madam Grundys who probably know little of what it means other than their own prejudiced definition. Comes now a report that the Rev. Irving R. Murray, chairman of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the ACLU, took issue recently with the widespread notion that so-called obscene literature fosters juvenile delinquency. He pointed to a study completed not long ago by the Colorado legislature showing that literature, decent or indecent, is without effect on juvenile delinquents, practically none of whom read anything. He went on to call upon the legislature to reject bills dealing with alleged obscene literature and to leave it to the home, school, and church to nurture wholesome taste and moral attitudes in the young.

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Already the United States Bureau of the Census is preparing for its decennial enumeration of the population as required by the Constitution. Reports indicate that this time the bureau is planning to include a number of questions inquiring into the religious affiliations of the people. Now the nature of this reporter’s work is such that he feels keenly the need for accurate and complete data on this subject, data that does not exist anywhere. But he feels even more keenly that it is no business of government to inquire into the religious beliefs of the people. He personally, were it not for the potential evils that easily could result from such questioning, have no objection to replying to such questions. But the First Amendment makes it clear that religion is none of government’s business. As the law now stands, refusal to answer any question of a census taker is punishable by fine or imprisonment, but even if the law were changed to make response voluntary, there would still remain a violation of civil liberties. Even a factual inquiry, when made by a government official, might for some persons under some circumstances be an infringement upon freedom of religion. Again, the mere assembling of information about religious beliefs would aid some or all religious bodies and thus breach the constitutional wall of separation of church and state, for that Constitution clearly states that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” If, then, you believe in this separation, it might be well for you to let the Bureau of the Census, Washington, D.C., know about it. Also, write your congressman and let him know, for bureaus are peculiarly sensitive to congressional attitudes.

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And while on the subject of government, separation of church and state, etc., it is pertinent to point out that a Navy court martial last month convicted a young Seventh Day Adventist in Hawaii of “willful disobedience” for refusing to stand watch on Saturdays, his denomination’s Sabbath. The sailor maintains, quite logically, that his constitutional right of freedom of religion was violated.

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One of the essential elements of religion, any religion, it would seem, is to make practice coincide with precept insofar as possible. American business insists upon its belief in free enterprise (a term, incidentally, that never has been, is not, and never will be accurate or realistic). Nevertheless, business asserts its belief in democracy and free competition. Yet it has no faith in either. Sponsors turn pale when a bobbysoxer registers dislike of a program, and business trembles at the notion that any idea should appear on screen or be heard on the air that is in competition with any other idea. Only this week, for example, a sponsor is reported to have dropped a noted performer who has as a guest star another equally famous name. The trouble was that this guest appeared on another network for a sponsor who also sold watches. Out of this lack of faith in competition and in the practice of democracy, what does the public get on the air and screen? Mostly stupid soap operas, loud noise (miscalled “music”), inane continuity, neutral themes, and still more neutral plots and characters, whose time is severely limited by the lengthening commercials that try to impress upon the public the idea that this product is the newest, best, and only worthwhile product of its kind. How can those whose sole entertainment is to watch and listen to such piffle as an escape from reality improve themselves if they think of nothing but such bosh? On the contrary, how can they go on looking and listening if they do think? For then the discrepancy between practice and precept will become so apparent they probably will lose interest. Is not a matter of morality involved here?

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As emphasized here form time to time, any ideas expressed are put forth for consideration, not necessarily in the expectation, or even the desire, that all of you will agree with them. Indeed, if you did agree with all of them, I would consider the program a failure. What brought this all on is the comment by one of you that the Bible says “Judge not that ye be not judged,” and goes on to suggest that in one of my broadcasts I had indulged in judgment. That is a fine and welcome comment. It shows at least that you were listening and thinking.

My only reply is that the Bible is a large anthology. It contains many curious things, some wise and some foolish. Survival and progress of the race depends on judgment. In writing to me you passed judgment. He who is devoid of judgment is unable to maintain himself in a society and must be institutionalized. I am, like many students, intolerant of error. One can be tolerant of people and yet combat their ideas. I would defend the right to Billy Graham, for example, to preach his doctrines. Yet to me his message is ludicrously over-simplified and I would insist that we do not live in the kind of world he describes. Tolerance does not mean lack of disagreement. It doesn’t mean a “don’t care” attitude. It doesn’t mean everyone is right. It certainly doesn’t mean seeming to agree when you don’t. It doesn’t mean being a hypocrite. Tolerance means willingness to examine honestly evidence from all sources, looking hopefully for new truth. It does not mean embracing propositions that have small or no evidence to support them. In this process, judgment must constantly be exercised if one is to reach even tentatively intelligent conclusions.

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Today marks the beginning of the fourth year of this program. The temptation was great to fill the time today with reminiscences of the high points of the past three years. However, instead, I should like to use this last minute to express my appreciation to the owners and employees of radio station WJHL who have made their facilities and assistance available to me for the program. They have never told me what to say or what not to say. At times, I am sure that some of my materials have not coincided with their own beliefs, but it is testimony to their belief in democracy and free competition of ideas that they have permitted me to go on saying those things. I appreciate this liberal attitude deeply. Also, I wish to thank you who have listened to the programs and hope that you have not felt that it was listening time wasted. If the program has made you think, examine your own tenets and practices with a view of improving upon them, this reporter’s time will have been well spent, for that is what he most hoped for.

 

One of the difficult aspects of our approach to religion, and one that hinders progress in it, is the element of flavor of sanctity which we attach to the magic name “religion.” A person whom most of you know, and whom I call “great” in his religious thinking and approach, Dr. William Rigell, pastor emeritus of Central Baptist Church here, and now professor at State College, once put it this way to me: “When you students enter classrooms, your minds are open to conviction; you are willing to examine and accept evidence, and draw your conclusions.” “But,” he said, “when you enter the church, your minds are already made up, and what most of you wish is for the preacher to say only things that will square with your preconceived opinions.”

It is this unwillingness, perhaps the cultivated inability, to approach religious matters on a thought rather than an emotional basis that has been largely responsible for lack of progress in the field over the centuries. The simple fact is that Orthodox Christianity has operated in different forms for over 19 centuries. It has failed to convert the inhabitants of this world to a peaceful happy life on this earth and has no evidence that it has affected the state of the dead. It has spent more time talking about … an abstract, intricately developed theology that provides an excellent exercise in theological semantics. But all this does not appear to have had much relevance to reality; that is, the reality of the known nature of man and his environment.

Dr. George B. Stoddard, in a statement that reached me this week, points out what he calls five fallacies in religion:

1. That there is a mysterious world beyond the physical;
2. That simply to appease a god is a desirable human state, and to praise him is a sign of virtue;
3. That a god of vengeance represents the highest point in human aspiration;
4. That the supernatural, the superstitious, the magical are permanent in human affairs;
5. That piety is the only basis for ethical behavior.

Well, whether you agree or disagree with his labeled fallacies, they strike at the root of gullible swallowing, but not digesting, anything placed before you and labeled good, or religious. It will be noted that these fallacies are directly counter to the scientific approach in the study of human affairs, and it is through the scientific method that concrete results have come about in our understanding of man, his environment, and the end product of their interaction with each other. Some people who sincerely believe their religion attack science as being godless, and allege a conflict between science and religion. What they really mean is between science and the confirmed prejudices they hold about a particular religion. The blunt fact is that in human affairs, if religious ideas and beliefs cannot withstand the critical and empirical test of science, then they will have to suffer. The scientific method is simply a way of discovering truth, and truth should be the basis of all religion. A great religious figure said many years ago that “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Perhaps to find that truth, we need still another commandment, at least need to keep such in mind. It might read something like this: “Doubt all things, search all things, analyze all things. Yea, accept nothing contrary to evidence because people in high places say it is so, or because you read it in an imposing and ancient or even new, volume.” The other approach is like that told about the old Tennessean who said that if there was anything wrong with the Methodist Church and Democratic Party he did not wish to learn about it until he was dead. He was already dead spiritually, but did not know it. If only through knowing the truth we can find freedom, and if freedom is desirable, why not seek truth, regardless of where it leads or what false little gods we have erected it destroys? I know this is not orthodox, but it was not intended to be.

It was a pagan – if that is the appropriate term by which to designate non-Christians– who said that “Man’s inhumanity to man has made countless millions mourn,” and it is hardly likely that many of you would challenge the accuracy of that statement. A great Galilean spent his life being human toward men. Furthermore, if you are attending adult classes now in your church (Protestant) school, you know the theme of the current lessons is “Religion Applied to Society.” For this reporter, and he presumes to speak for nobody else, that is the only justification for the existence of a religion in today’s world. Anyway, it may well do us some good now and then to take a brief inventory to see how we are doing in this matter of application.

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A heartening note came from Mississippi’s Governor Coleman, even, who recently said, in arguing for a new VA hospital, that “To deny medical facilities for veterans to preserve segregation … is just a little unrealistic.”

But out in Oklahoma the legislature recently enacted what it called an emergency law creating a state literature commission to censor all kinds of publications. Despite the alleged emergency the state attorney general has attacked the law as unworkable and invalid; the commission is having trouble getting financed; and no complaints have been registered yet regarding publications distributed in the state.

Up in Connecticut the State Civil Rights Commission complained to Governor Ribicoff that it is virtually impossible for a Negro to rent in a white neighborhood. At the same time, Alabama State Senator George Little recently charged that some white plantation owners were holding Negroes in virtual peonage through manipulation of welfare funds.

And the Pentagon has revealed that security clearance procedures have been applied to a review of an 1879 book by a Confederate general dealing with the Civil War – we might page George Orwell on that one.

And it is heartening to note that just this last summer the last of six Salem witches was cleared when Governor Furcolo signed a resolution absolving them – only 265 years after they were hanged.

And Texas, being what it is, probably deserves a position of prominence on this last item. The school board of Houston has eliminated from its grammar school curriculum virtually all courses dealing with history and geography – other than Texan. I guess that will learn those blankety-blank Yankees that they can’t hoodwink Houston children by other-world ideas and nonsense.

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The American Jewish Congress has just published a pamphlet entitled Assault Upon Freedom of Association: A Study of the Southern Attack on the NAACP. It is well worth reading, whatever the complexion of your ideas on the organization is.

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Finally, for most of us, it is only human to be human, and this reporter trusts that he is no exception. It was [Alexander] Pope who said that to err is human; to forgive, divine. If that is true, this reporter has been more than human more than once, but he always regrets his errors. Anyway, the human breaks through in that, like all of you, he cannot help but have a special feeling and regard for the small group related to him or close to him, or those he wishes were close to him. The point of all this is that a person very important to him is observing her birthday anniversary next Wednesday. It will not be the kind of observance I would wish for her, but I am not selfish enough to neglect to wish that it be the kind that she wishes for herself. So, to that special person, may I use this medium of conveying to her sincere wishes not only for a happy observance of that day, but of all the days to come?

 

Religious leaders are gravely concerned over the spreading use of tranquilizing pills. The director of the Academy of Religion and Mental Health, the Rev. George Anderson, calls the problem a new aspect of the age-old subject of morals and medicine. What seems most disturbing to ministers is this question: Are people employing drugs to dull conscience and shun realities, to avoid what he calls the God-ordained crucibles that forge character and spiritual strength? The Rev. Dr. John Thomas, who heads the American Baptist Council on Christian Social Progress, stated emphatically, “You can’t overcome the tests and problems of life by trying to find a way out of them through drugs.” Clergymen concede that under careful medical controls, tranquilizing pills can be helpful in the treatment of cases involving serious emotional illness or exaggerated anxieties. But they point to the increasing volume of sales of the so-called “peace” pills throughout the nation. Churchmen fear the pills are often used to deaden sensitivities and stifle responses necessary for inner growth. Another commentary on the situation is that by the Rev. Charles McManus of New York’s Roman Catholic Chancery Office. He says that when rashly used, the pills could become a means for a person to suppress feelings that, in his words, “have a providential purpose in his life.” Father McManus adds, “It is something less than following Christ when we try to duck all anxiety. He promised a cross to all. But there will always be those who shrink from it.”

Says Rabbi Dr. Robert Gordis of New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary, “Whenever these tranquilizers are used to the excessive point of blunting man’s conscience or awareness, it runs contrary to religious teachings.” And the only comment that this reporter has is that when the divines have rushed in, he fears to make any tread of his own.

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Although details are yet to be announced, the U.S. Post Office Department soon will issue a special commemorative stamp honoring religious freedom in America. Postmaster General Summerfield discloses that the 3-cent stamp will be sold first at the Flushing, Long Island, New York, post office December 27. It will mark the 300th anniversary of the signing of the Remonstrance, a protest by Flushing citizens against a law imposed by Governor Peter Stuyvesant. The Stuyvesant edict was regarded by those early Flushingites as violating the principles of religious freedom.

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And over in the neighboring city of Elizabethton this week, the Watauga Baptist Association deplored the wearing of shorts by both men and women on the streets of cities in Upper East Tennessee. The resolution finally adopted declared that “We believe this practice to be below the moral standards of teachings of the Bible and Christianity.” Well, without casting any suspicion or doubt as to the sincerity of those resoluting on the matter, if they are going to be literal about this thing, let’s employ historians to prescribe as accurate as possible replica models of the costumes worn by Hebrews during Biblical times and then all of us proceed to tog ourselves accordingly. On such matters as this, it is very difficult for this reporter to decide whether immorality is in the object or in the minds of those viewing that object. All of us, theoretically at least, are, like Cal Coolidge’s preacher, against sin, but we just don’t agree on what it is. Anyway, winter is acomin on and we will be more concerned in the months ahead with the long rather than the short of it in wearing apparel.

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The problem of racial integration was one of many discussed this week by the Oklahoma Synod of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. At its meeting in Oklahoma City, the synod asked each church in its jurisdiction to report on progress toward eventual elimination of racial lines within the church. Also approved was a resolution urging support of President Eisenhower’s action in the continuing Little Rock school integration controversy. The resolution, however, deplored what it called “the necessity” for calling out federal troops. Worthwhile to note is that both resolutions were drawn up by William Einsfield [Enfield?] of Bentonville, Arkansas, a laymen and attorney. Little Rock and Western Arkansas are part of the Oklahoma Synod.

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And on the subject of Little Rock, integration, and religious attitudes and practices, an event occurred yesterday in that city and more or less throughout the state that indicates how illogical we approach the relationship between our own shortcomings and religious belief, if there is any such relationship. Anyway, yesterday 85 churches and synagogues in Little Rock held services to pray for the end of integration troubles at Central High School. At these services, Negroes and whites, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews implored the deity to do something about the mess things are in there.

However, 24 Baptist churches, segregationist-minded, held their meetings separate and asked for divine approval of a plan to keep segregation. The Rev. M.L. Moser, Jr., of the Berean Baptist Church of North Little Rock, conducted the meeting and intoned a prayer that included, “We pray that our national leaders might follow constitutional law and remove federal troops, rather than follow political expediency … We thank thee … especially for Gov. Orval Faubus. We feel that he has been raised up for just this hour…” There is more, but these will suffice to indicate the general trend of this group.

Other church groups prayed for “forgiveness for having left undone the things we ought to have done; the support and preservation of law and order; the support of our leaders, community, state, and nation; the casting out of rancor and prejudice in favor of understanding and compassion…” Again, this will suffice.

But let us look at what we have in what is to some of us a ridiculous performance. It is not much different, if any, from the Greek and Roman concept that the gods actually step down and interfere in the affairs of man. Read Homer’s Iliad about the Trojan War for an example.

Moreover, here we have segregationists and those who would uphold law and order praying to God for him to step in and settle matters. But their supplications are conflicting, and it is impossible to see how the deity could answer yes or no to both requests. And one can observe without sacrilegious thoughts that to do so would require an advanced case of schizophrenia. Far be it from this reporter to arrogate to himself any assumed right to suggest what the divine thinks of such things. We not only put God in the middle, but we also use Him and our supplications to Him as something of an escape from facing the realities of a problem that only we can solve. And this is certainly said without any disparagement intended toward either the virtue of praying of the efficacy of prayer.

Abraham Lincoln dealt with the same dilemma when, during the Civil War, and in his second inaugural address, he said of the North and South, “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.” And here I paraphrase to suit the present occasion, “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in denying to their fellow men a right that is theirs by nature’s God and by the laws of the land.” But, Lincoln goes on, “The prayers of both could be answered …” but “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

But of course the Little Rock performance is in complete accord with the Graham-Peale-Sheen philosophy, if it can be so dignified, and they are making millions on such stuff.

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Last Sunday I devoted a portion of the program to introducing the fact that a state-wide educational survey is about to be completed, that during the months ahead Tennesseans are going to be required to make fundamental decisions regarding education in the state, and that these decisions are important, not only for secular education, but also for the perpetuation of our ways of freedom, including that of religion. Today, I should like to pursue that a little further, insofar as time will permit.

Crowded classrooms, increasing enrollments, insufficient staff of qualified teachers, inadequate income to support education – there are the basic ingredients of the problem. And over it all is the fact that Tennessee is passing out of the agrarian society stage into one that is increasingly urban and industrial, and this fact calls for not only enriched, but much more highly diversified types of educational training. Already we have heard that “vocational schools” are the answer; consolidation is the answer; merit ratings for teachers (a vicious proposal to which I shall give attention later) [is the answer]. And countless other panaceas have been or will be proposed as the answer. Disconcertingly little is being said about some basic, fundamental considerations. All the above are merely twaddling with educational problems, not the real problems of education.

The simple fact is that business, and by that I mean employers of all kinds, is reaching out more and more for people with broad training, people deeply infused with the ideas that can come only from a sound liberal education program, and with ideas that arise out of association with great minds. By this I do not mean only learning for learning’s sake (though I know of nothing intrinsically wrong about that) but education to attain the mind to think, to reason, to explore, and above all to continue to educate itself so that there will be created a well of knowledge from which to draw not only inspiration but the technique of performance and production.

It must be kept in mind that the years of youth allotted to man are short, and that they should be filled with wholesome and lasting experiences – and these can be provided only by capable teachers devoted to the task of real education.

A liberal education is not the mere ghostly shadow of things that some persons imagine it to be; it is real and substantial. No matter how glorified the science may be or how practical the technology, it needs an arterial connection with basic education if it is to live. As I mentioned last time, engineers, scientists, and other technicians in this age should have a grasp of the humanities grounded in the liberal arts as well as the techniques of their profession.

We are misguided if we think of one curriculum as being suitable to prepare men to be leaders, and of another to be suitable for specialists in techniques who are to be the servants of the policy makers. Yet, some will clamor for a public service sort of institution, poking into the whole range of practical activity, carrying out industrial research, turning out materialistic technicians, testing guided missiles and missing the guidance of intellectual development. To such people an education is a sort of union card (and I belong to a union). The fact is that the course of our technological development has been such that increasingly grave social responsibilities are falling upon the shoulders of men who are only technically trained. There is more than considerable reason in education today to discourage specialization which is designed only to enable the student to take his place in a given industry with a minimum of delay. The necessary factual information, in most cases, can be picked up on the job. What is wanted, certainly above the high school level, is training in basic principles. There is no reason why the specialist should not also be an informed and cultivated citizen.

Higher education will suffer an irreparable loss if it ceases to educate the mind of man and not merely his fingers for handling gadgets and his eye for reading charts and his mental capacity for interpreting blueprints and slide rules. It is sad, not only for the man, but it is tragic for society when the technically trained man comes along in his vocation to the point where he is called upon to make plans, to direct the work of men, and to put into words the visions he sees of improvements and advancements in his craft – only to discover that he has neither the background nor the faculty to do so. He cannot relate the past to the present; he cannot draw the most in effort and interest of men; he cannot express in a constructive and telling way the great thoughts that are, or should be, in him.

Our colleges and universities are, for the most part, free institutions in that they affirm the worth and dignity of the individual, which is the fundamental concept of true democracy. A university or college is not, or should not be, a class nursery, but the resort of young men and women of all races, classes, and creeds who seek what these institutions have to offer. To the traditions of all the peoples of the ancient world, reaching back to Greek and Romans, we have added the cultural heritage of Western Europe and many others. These rich experiences in the arts, and talents and science, have become part of the resources of our institutions of higher learning. These institutions are not planned on the outskirts of life, but are or should be pursuing broad and important objectives in everyday affairs. Higher education is part of our general culture, producing well-educated people who in the words of the director of extension of the University of Montreal, “whatever may be their language, race, or religion, will be excellent citizens.”

America – and this includes Tennessee – and for the time being at least, Arkansas – has the resources with which to build an educational system that will in turn develop a greater civilization than we have had in the past. Such an education should provide for development of individual excellence, physically, mentally, and morally. It should cause these individuals to wish to develop a society of equals; to perpetuate and improve such a government of and for free men; to seek the development and maintenance of an economy of security and plenty; to promote a civilization of beauty (billboard advocates take notice); and it should make them capable of and desiring to develop an enduring civilization in a world community.

Time has forced me here to deal in what seem to be basic generalities, underlying the development of any program of education suited today’s world. However, if these things be sound, think upon them, for you are going to have to make some important decisions on the subject soon.

 

Christians around the world gathered at the communion table today for the 18th annual observance of World Communion Sunday. Since its founding 21 years ago by a small group of ministers as an effort to meet spiritual needs during the Depression, the event has grown into a worldwide observance in more than 50 countries. The observance began at sunup in the Fiji Islands and New Zealand – which are closest to the international date line, then continued westward around the world. Services will be held at sundown in Alaska and the Aleutians. Sponsoring the event is the National Council of Churches. The council’s director of the Department of Evangelisms, the Rev. H.E. McConnell, refers to the occasion as one of the high points of the Protestant church calendar. He calls World Communion Sunday a day of re-dedication which, in his words, “brings Christians together in the realest sense as they partake of the cup and break the bread together in God’s name.”

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From now through November is also another important period for the nation’s Protestant churches. Known as Harvest Festival Time, the period will be marked by special services in many denominations, just as they were in Biblical times.

Many churches have continued to celebrate the occasion of Harvest Time, which stems from the primitive folk festivals combined with the Hebrew tradition and the Christian observance. Typical of the expressions of joy marking the harvest’s end were pageantry, sports, singing, feasting, and the general good fellowship between the farm owners and their workers.

In some communities the emphasis has shifted to Thanksgiving Day in late autumn and the remembrance of national blessings, with little mention of the bounties of the harvest. Just as the Pilgrims did on the shores of New England, many parishes now hold an all-day service of Thanksgiving for the Harvest Festival. Often participating are various agricultural groups, such as 4-H clubs, Future Farmers of America, the Farm Bureau Federation, National Grange, and the Farmer’s Union.

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Significant developments back-dropping the Little Rock school integration case this week were statements by the executive committee of United Church Women and the integrated Greater Little Rock Ministerial Association. The Church Women sent a telegram to President Eisenhower commending him for his action in Little Rock. The message called the president’s action consistent with the statement of the National Council of Churches on the occasion of the Supreme Court decision on integration of public schools. It also stated that it was imperative that the governors recognized President Eisenhower’s responsibility for upholding the Constitution of the U.S. in maintenance of law and order throughout the nation. The United Church Women represents approximately 10 million women in the nation’s Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches. Of its 2,200 state and local council affiliates, 12 state councils and 425 local councils are in the 12 Southern states. The other significant development was the statement by the Rev. Dunbar Ogden, Jr., president of the Greater Little Rock Ministerial Association. He declared: “We all share responsibility for what is happening at Little Rock.” The clergymen called on Little Rock citizens to pray for peaceful integration. Ministers of several denominations throughout the Arkansas capital immediately responded with sermons underlining the Christian’s obligation to the spirit of law, order, and justice.

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Starting at sunset next Wednesday, the Jewish holiday of Sukkos will be celebrated in synagogues and homes the world over. For traditionalist Jews, Sukkos lasts for nine days; eight for reform Jews. Sukkos is history’s first thanksgiving festival and its origin dates back to biblical times. In the Hebrew language, Sukkos means “huts.” It recalls the gratitude felt for giving protection when they had lived in fragile homes during their long journey through the desert. The president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath, has this to say upon the significance of Sukkos for modern times: “We need constant reminders today that no individual is self-dependent. We are indebted to Almighty God for the countless favors we enjoy daily…”

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This program has stressed so often that our freedoms are indivisible that the reaction of some of you, as revealed in your correspondence, is that the reporter has gone far afield from religion. And yet, he reiterates that it is true that if we are denied even one of our freedoms, all are endangered. This topic is stressed currently by an editorial appearing in the local press Thursday of this week under the caption, “Church and Press Rise and Fall Together,” and the occasion for reminder is that this is National Newspaper Week, and today is specifically “Religion and the Press Day.” For once, this reporter finds himself in complete accord with the editor, his good friend Mr. Kelley. The editor says, in part:

“In a very real sense, the press and the pulpit are partners. It may seem at times that the two are far apart, but in a deeper sense they are not.

“You have heard it said that churches and newspapers rise and fall together. In every land bent under a tyrant’s yoke, two things stand out: (1) a controlled press and (2) an intimidated church. You may put it down for a truism that there cannot long be a free church in a nation which has a slave press. By the same token, a free press will not endure alongside an imprisoned church.

“The two thus are dependent on each other and complementary to each other. The press maintains freedom of the mind, and the church preserves freedom of the spirit. Take one away and the other is sorely distressed
“Perhaps it is significant that the first article of the Bill of Rights recognizes this church-press partnership by providing specifically that Congress shall make no law (1) respecting the establishment of religion and (2) abridging freedom of press of speech…

“As newspapers of this nation observe their “week” and dedicate themselves to the cherished task of keeping the people informed, they salute the churches of the land for their transcendent responsibility of keeping people faithful to their religious beliefs….”

And anything that this reporter might add to that simple but profoundly important statement would, indeed, be superfluous.

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In this connection it is sobering to reflect that doubtlessly sincere, but equally doubtlessly misguided, people in our midst do not really believe in a free press. In the week’s news comes further information about the City Board of Review of Knoxville, to which august body this reporter has not infrequently paid his disrespects. This time the whipping boy (or, more accurately whipping girl) is the current issue of Life Story, which according to the arbiters of literary good taste in our neighboring county, is banned for girls because, according to reports, it contains a number of stories about “hard luck” girls. Numerous other magazines came under the censorship of the book burners. November issues of Sir, Bedside Reader, and Caper, as well as the October issues of Playboy, Tan, Night and Day, and Vol. 1 of Men’s Digest. Apparently members of the board had a good time debating among themselves what is and is not obscenity. Ho hum! I have not read or looked at any of these magazines, nor can I afford to buy them, but this publicity about them does arouse my interest, and probably that of everybody who read the item. Much, perhaps most, of the stuff appearing in such magazines is, to this reporter, merely trash. But it is probably equally true that those who like such magazines would give his reading material the same label. Publications that violate obscenity laws are a matter for consideration and decision by the courts, not by self-appointed or even locally appointed do-gooders who think that they and they only know what people have sense enough to be permitted to read. It is likely that most of us Americans resent the idea that we cannot be trusted to determine our reading menu for ourselves without the help of Madam Grundys, however well-meaning such people may be.

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The next comes under the heading of how mixed up can you get department: The subversives in Hungary are trying to overthrow communism and establish capitalism. Subversives in the U.S. are trying to overthrow capitalism and establish communism. In both cases the governments are scared silly. And in Cyprus: Greece says it is Greek; Turkey says it is Turkish; Britain says it is British. What the people of Cyprus say definitely does not count.

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Without attempting to classify this next, I pass it on to you for what it is worth, if anything, which is highly doubtful. The National Association of Evangelicals, a fundamentalist group, sometimes referred to by the caustics as “Ignorance Inc.”, endorses the Walter-McCarran Act. Its release admits, “Only the National Association of Evangelicals has consistently supported the national origins system.” Some of the members of this thriving religious organization believe the Earth is flat and that virgins have babies.

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Well, we Americans are a peculiar people. Americans fought World Wars I and II because they were shocked and outraged at the absurdity of any other people claiming to be superior to Americans in anything. Today our quarrelsome State Department gets its greatest support from resentment that any other people can produce bigger and more devilish instruments of death than can Americans.

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Anyway, the pessimist has a great advantage over the optimist. He doesn’t kid himself. He does not pretend a pimple is a dimple. He is prepared for trouble. So he receives unexpected blessings. The optimist is never prepared for reverses. He is condemned to an endless round of disappointments. The stoics are the happy people. So it would seem that the answer is to be a happy, cheerful pessimist, for if anything pleasant happens, you will be surprised.

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Since the days of our New England forefathers when education was designed to be the best safeguard against snares from the devil, Americans of religious belief, and many who were not religious, looked upon education as an important ingredient not only of a religious society but also for a democratic one. During the next several months, Tennesseans are going to be called upon to make decisions with respect to education in the state that will have far-flung implications, not only for today but also for the future. The legislative council is about to complete a rather searching survey of state education and its findings will soon be available. Already the state commissioner has warned against our jumping to conclusions that trade schools are the panacea for our educational ills. I should like to take what few minutes remain of today’s time to comment briefly upon this subject, reserving for next Sunday more extended comment.

Far too many people regard liberal education as a ghostly shadow of things. Instead, it is real and substantial, for no matter how glorified our science and how practical our technology, both need an arterial connection with basic education if they are to live. A liberal education is practical because, if for no other reason, it provides experience in formulating judgments about concrete contemporary problems. While it probably will not do a complete job of preparing young men or women for life, it does initiate the sort of personal growth that leads to maturity. It encourages wisdom, judgment and perspective, three qualities badly needed in facing the daily decisions of life. It is all-important, according to Dr. James R. Killian, president of M.I.T., that engineers, scientists, and other technically trained men in this atomic age have a solid grasp of the humanities, being well-grounded in the liberal arts as well as the techniques of their profession. For no matter how clever a scientist may be, he still must live with them, work with them, and participate in the responsibilities for the human qualities of life, by providing the student with knowledge of himself and others, of the physical and biological world, and of his own and other cultures. It gives him an historical view of man’s achievements and of his religious and philosophical heritage. It helps keep him in balance.

The story is told that the middle-aged Tennessean said that when he went to school they learned him to figure but not to read, and now when he went down the road and saw the signs he could tell “how fur but not whar to.” Technological education can teach one “how fur.” But is it not about time that we learned not only” how fur” but “whar we are a goin?” More of this next time.

 

At the top of “Religion in the News” this week is the beginning of the Jewish New Year, observance of which began at sundown last Wednesday and continues for 10 days. This season of penitence and prayer began with Rosh Hashanah, and will end with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The Jews received a special message from President Eisenhower, in which the chief executive said, in part, “It is fitting for all to give thanks for the past 12 months and to look to the future with confidence born of the mercy of God … The blessings of life and the freedoms all of us enjoy in this land today are based in no small measure on the Ten Commandments which have been handed down to us by the religious teachers of the Jewish faith. These commandments … provide endless opportunities for fruitful service, and they are a stronghold of moral purpose for men everywhere. In this season, as our citizens of the Jewish faith bow their heads in prayer and lift their eyes in hope, we offer them the best wishes of our hearts.” And that, this reporter might add, is a wish in which most of us join the president of the United States.

Incidentally, it might be pointed out, Touro Synagogue, built in 1763, and now a national monument, is America’s oldest Jewish house of worship and is located in Newport, Rhode Island, near where the chief executive is vacationing.

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At a recent meeting of the National Home Demonstration Council at Ohio State University, a rabbi declared that “Responsibility is the price of opportunity.” Rabbi Jerome D. Folkman of Columbus, Ohio, also told the women gathered from all over the United States that irresponsible individuals are dangerous in such a society as ours. He added that some persons would solve the problems thus created by restricting the opportunities of many. But, Rabbi Folkman states this is not the American way. He sees our way of life as one that teaches responsibility. And that, he declared, is why education is so essential to us. He asserted that full education requires the cooperation of home, church, and school, and not through force, but through a mutual recognition of their common responsibility.

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The U.S. lost one of its nationally known pastors and religious leaders this week. Dr. A. Powell Davies, minister of All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, D.C., died unexpectedly of a heart attack Thursday. Dr. Davies, a native of Britain, was a Methodist minister there and in the US until 1933, when he became a Unitarian. He was an outspoken liberal, and often based his sermons on current news. He had been chairman of the Emergency Conference on Civilian Control of Atomic Energy and president of Food for Freedom.

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Some of you listeners have taken me to task for the persistence and consistency with which I have presented items and comment supporting separation of church and state. A few have seemed emotional about the matter, asserting that ours is a nation founded upon Christianity. Well, in the first place, few arguments are settled by emotion; even religious problems. And in the second place, even a casual familiarity with the basic framework and trends of American history refutes the claim that ours is a nation founded on any particular religion, though, admittedly, more of us affiliate with some one of the Christian faith than we do with non-Christian ones.

But as for the assertion that historically, our nation was grounded in the Christian religion, let us look at a few facts. In 1787 in Philadelphia, when someone suggested that the Constitutional Convention be opened with prayer each day, Alexander Hamilton, somewhat facetiously perhaps, emphasized that the convention was there to handle problems relating to the United States, and he felt that this could be handled by the delegates without the intervention of any foreign power. Apparently, this was the consensus of the convention, for there were no daily invocations to the Hebrew God or to any other.

George Washington, who was also at the convention, remarked on June 10, 1797, in connection with the treaty of peace and friendship with Tripoli, that “The government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion.”

James Madison, called the “Father of the Constitution,” and the fourth president of the U.S., said in his tract entitled “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” in 1787, that “Religious establishments … have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny … upholding the throne of political tyranny. In no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people.” And, I might add, this was a battle to keep the church from dominating the schools, and yet there are among us some sincere but simple souls who would have religion taught in the schools.

Jefferson was more bitter and less diplomatic in 1794 regarding his hope for the revolutionary armies of France, when he said that he hoped they would “kindle the wrath of the people of Europe and bring … kings, nobles, and priests to the scaffolds which they have been so long deluging with human blood.”

There are others, but time does not permit their inclusion. It is about time that we stopped using religion, of the Christian or any other variety, as an element of nationalism and a part of national policy.

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In this connection, it is pertinent to call your attention to an article appearing in The Christian Century of September 11, by one Virgil M. Rogers, teacher, high school principal, and city superintendent of public schools in Colorado, Illinois, and Michigan, before going to Syracuse University as the dean of the school of education. Calling his article, “Are Public Schools Godless?”, Mr. Rogers said, “The American concept of separation of church and state is, I believe, the supreme protector of all our individual freedoms.” Again, “The public schools are not ‘Protestant schools’. They are the schools provided by government for all the children of all the people by virtue of common citizenship in the USA. As such they and they alone are to be financed from the public treasury. They must of course be secular. There is nothing sinister and unclean about that word … It is not to say godless, anti-religious, in league with evil, but merely secular, like the courts or the presidency.”

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Two major items in the news for some time contain moral and ethical elements, and some of us believe they have heavy religious overtones as well. I refer to the perhaps forthcoming election of a Teamsters Union president next week, and the “Faubulous” situation in Arkansas. In both situations, much remains to be desired.

For months now the Senate committee investigating corruption in labor unions has uncovered item after item that leaves a foul smell on the administration of the out-going president, one Dave Beck. The odor is not much more delightful regarding his would-be successor, James Hoffa. The revelations have become so serious that the AFL–CIO Council has given the Teamsters so many days to clean house or get out. Now it appears there is evidence to rig the Florida convention and elect Hoffa by handpicked delegates, delegates that do not represent the wishes of the rank and file of the membership. Whatever the outcome of the convention and further investigation by the Senate committee, the Teamsters, or any other union, will enjoy the confidence and support of the public only so long as it operates honestly, respects and practices the democratic process, and is in control of officials who feel keenly their responsibility not only to the majority of the membership, but also to the American public as well. Labor unions are a necessary concomitant to our industrial growth and development. There is no more room for skullduggery in a labor union than there is in the National Association of Manufacturers. Unfortunately, over the years, there has been evidence of far too much in both, but the two wrongs do not make a right. This reporter feels the importance of this matter keenly, for he has long been a member of the American Federation of Teachers, an AFL affiliate. But he has no defense to make of this or any other organization that permits itself to get into a position where such suspicions and evidences exist.

As for the Arkansas situation, many of us who have followed it carefully from the first have been amazed at the continued succession of blunders. Not only that, but distortions, misrepresentations, etc. It is deplorable that federal troops were sent into Little Rock. But given the condition of things last Monday, the fact that the matter had been allowed to drift as it had, perhaps the federal action was about the last resort. There are two disturbing questions that have not been satisfactorily answered about the whole affair. One is, why did fabled Faubus order the National Guard to surround the high school and prevent the law from being enforced? He talks sanctimoniously about his regard for the constitution of the state of Arkansas and that of the United States. Yet, when he took the oath of governor, he not only swore that he would uphold the state constitution, but also the federal one as well. He violated that oath when he used force to prevent the enforcement of provisions of the federal Constitution he was sworn to uphold. There can be no excuse, no defense for that. Segregation or integration has nothing to do with this central question. The local federal court had made its decision and the matter was then on appeal to the Circuit Court of Appeals. Until the higher court ruled otherwise, the edict of the local judge was the law, and that law Faubus was sworn to uphold. Instead, he used all the force at his command to defy the law, and this defiance was a green light to all the rabble-rousers and hoodlums to do as they please. And they did that last Monday.

The next question that remains unanswered is: What went on between Faubus and Eisenhower in their conference about the Little Rock situation? Some of us hoped we’d find out right after the conference, but both governor and president said nothing that meant anything. From both, the essence of their statements was that a great deal of “constructive” discussion went on. This is diplomatic double-talk that quite often means nothing important happened.

Again, we hope that the president, in his address to the nation this week, would let us know. It appeared that he was going to do so by saying that he would trace the sequence of events that led to the sending of troops, but he stopped short of saying anything about his conference with the governor. We cannot help but wonder if things would not have gone differently if the president, at the Ike – Orval conference, had said something like this: “Governor, the courts have approved the plan of integration in Little Rock and have said it is to go into effect immediately. You may not like that, and I may not. But until or unless this decision is overruled, it is the law of the land and will be enforced. It is in the American tradition that law enforcement should be done at the local level. But if that fails, and if the state enforcement machinery does not enforce the law, then the federal troops will. Make no mistake about that.” Maybe this was said, but the president has not said so.

It is true that many, perhaps most, of the citizens of Arkansas, and of Little Rock, prefer segregation. If that is true, if enough Americans agree with them, then there is a legal, a constitutional way, to change things through a constitutional amendment. But unless law and order are upheld, our whole structure of government collapses and anarchy results. And the ethical and moral aspects of the whole problem is simply that we the citizens have a right for elected officials, governor and/or president, to respect their oaths to uphold the law. Somebody failed to do so in this case. Of Faubus we can be sure he did; of Eisenhower, we wait for him to let us know what happened.

Name-calling, evasions, and assertions – all have been resorted to by assorted individuals of various political hues and persuasions. But neither the misrepresentations of Sen. Russell Johnson of South Carolina, Talmadge of Georgia, and other of like ilk can remove the fact that American citizens of the colored race were being denied their rights to go to school at Central High School. And perhaps it is more than a token of the difference between the value of things in our democracy that we are willing to invoke the aid and majesty of the federal government to protect the rights of nine colored students, for a great man a long time ago said that “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me.”

Three Massachusetts women are happy about their non-paying teaching jobs in Rock Hill, South Carolina. They are donating their services for one year at St. Ann’s parochial school. Two are recent graduates of Regis College, in Weston, Massachusetts – Miss Marie Lynch and Miss Maureen Burgin. The third is a retired Boston teacher, Miss Mary Magner. Miss Lynch, from Newton Center, explains that 17 members of her graduating class volunteered to donate one year to some Roman Catholic school that could not afford to pay teachers. Others went to such places as Texas, Virginia, New Mexico, and Jamaica. Miss Lynch explains the Catholic lay apostolate teaching program began among Catholic students about seven years ago. Miss Burgin, who is from Somerville, Massachusetts, says four other girls in her education class offered their services for one year. The retired teacher, Miss Magner, stated she still could have taught in Boston. But, she says, she wanted to give this year while she still has time.

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The Champlin, Minnesota, Methodist Church, a white congregation, has called a Negro minister as its pastor. Church authorities believe that the Rev. Dr. Charles Sexton is the first of his race to hold such a position in the upper Midwest. Dr. Sexton was pastor of the Minneapolis Negro Methodist Church that merged by invitation with a white congregation, also in Minneapolis, last December.

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A world Baptist leader has told Southern Baptist men that Christ should be an active partner in the business life of Christians. The statement is from the Rev. Dr. Theodore Adams, president of the Baptist World Alliance and pastor of the First Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia. The 6,000 delegates to the Oklahoma City meeting represent Southern Baptist men’s groups in 40 states.

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A Methodist clergyman from Charleston, South Carolina, has been elected national chaplain of the American Legion. The Rev. Feltham James was chosen unanimously at the Legion’s Atlantic City, New Jersey, convention this week.

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Youthful rabbis are being sent out from New York’s Yeshiva University to suburban areas and they usually have to build their congregations from scratch. A prime example of the new program is Rabbi Jack Sable, 29 years old, and a former Air Force chaplain. In Riverdale, a New York City suburb, he began three years ago with a slip of paper with some names. Soon he had the Riverdale Jewish Center operating – a post office box at first, but quickly an 18-family group and a Hebrew school in an apartment. Then a basement was converted into a sanctuary for Sabbath services. Rabbi Sable became fundraiser as well as chief organizer and holder of other titles. And today, the Riverdale Jewish Community will hold its first services in its new $500,000 synagogue and social center. Rabbi Sable and director Victor Geller of the Yeshiva University Community Services Division say such experiences point to an Orthodox resurgence in American Judaism.

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And while on the subject of Judaism it is pertinent to observe that next Wednesday the High Holy Days of the Jewish faith will begin at sunset. These days have been called the most holy in the Jewish calendar and a time for spiritual inventory. The 10-day period that follows extends from Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. At both services rabbis will stress the theme of penitence and the possibilities of moral regeneration. Typical of the prayers that will be offered is the following, taken from the Union Prayer Book: “O Lord, hasten the day when all evil shall be destroyed and wickedness shall be no more. Quicken us to work with the righteous of all nations and creeds, to bring about thy kingdom upon earth, so that hatred among men shall cease, that the walls of prejudice and pride, separating peoples, shall crumble and fall, and war be destroyed forever.” It would be difficult to find a prayer, in Christendom or elsewhere that surpasses this in merit.

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It was reported this week that archaeologists have uncovered the biblical Pool of Gibeon and that the spring of ancient Israel is flowing again after 25 centuries. This was announced by the University of Pennsylvania Museum. This discovery confirms the biblical tradition that the men of Gibeon, now called el-Job, were literally “drawers of water.” The archaeologists also uncovered a mass of evidence indicating that wine-making was a flourishing industry before Gibeon and its environs were laid waste by King Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BC. The Bible refers to Gibeon as the place where the sun stood still and stones rained down from the sky as Joshua routed the invading Amorites.

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For some time recently considerable discussion pro and con has developed regarding the deletion of certain racial and ethnic materials from songs, especially those of Stephen Foster. Those supporting such deletion say that such words as “darkies,” “Massa,” and the like, are resented by colored people because they remind the world that we, the whites, once held them in slavery. Last Monday the issue was focused locally by editorial in the Johnson City Daily Informer, under the title “Pious New York Has Started Burning Books.” Particular attention was given in the editorial to removal of Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” from the public school book list because in that book the author has his characters use such words as “nigger.”

Today, the same newspaper runs, on the editorial page, a lengthy letter from a reader who resents this deletion, apparently mostly because, according to her, it is done at the instigation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. It is a well-written letter. You are urged to read it.

Now this reporter takes second place to no one in his desire to protect, scrupulously, the rights of all people, regardless of their race, color, or other artificial insignificant differences. However, he too has shared the concern over the emasculation of literature in the name of minority rights. The Jews have complained about Shylock and parts of the “Merchant of Venice” have been changed. They objected to Fagin in Dickens’ “Oliver Twist,” and parts of that great novel were deleted or changed. Catholics objected to the moving picture “Martin Luther,” and in some cities censors moved in and prevented it showing. Now it is the songs of Stephen Collins Foster and the novels of Mark Twain that are to be distorted in the name of civil liberties. Where is it all to end? These novels, songs, plays, are now a part of history. If there was or is any derogatory aspects about slavery (and there was) the onus rests upon the white man, not the Negro. So why should any thinking Negro object? If what Martin Luther said and did is objectionable to the Catholics, it is equally true that what a number of popes and other high-ranking Catholic officials have done down through the ages is equally offensive to us Protestants. If the Jew thinks that Shylock is bad from the Jewish point of view, let him read the process by which the author is supposed to have settled upon Shylock as one of his main characters, and he will find it was not with any necessary intent to disparage Jews as such, but to create a major character in the plot.

Members of minority groups would do well to stick to essentials in their commendable fight for equal rights, and forget about the happenstances of the past that make up much of our cultural history. It is true that ignorant, unthinking, unscrupulous people use Foster’s songs, Shakespeare’s play, and Twain’s and Dickens’ novels and other literature as vehicles to vent their prejudice towards others different from them. But if we are to embark upon a course that deletes from the press, radio, television, movies, etc., everything that might possibly offend someone, we are not only becoming a nation of sissies, but we are letting our concern for the incidental cause us to destroy the fundamental. Ours is a colorful culture and history, and all races, creeds, colors, nationalities have contributed to it: all should be proud of the contribution of each and every one of these. It should not be subjected to pernicious anemia because of the thin skins of the NAACP or any other minority group organization, and this reporter has great respect for the objectives and most of the accomplishments of the NAACP. Simple respect for the facts of history should cause us to have more sense.

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Probably most people who reflect on the subject would agree that religion, like many other areas of living, consists largely of a scale or pattern of values with respect to themselves, other people, and life in general. Someone has said, with considerable pertinence, that a person’s life can be evaluated by looking at his checkbook stubs, for they reflect the things that person considered most importance in life. Be that as it may, one who has a social consciousness cannot help but speculate occasionally about the pattern of values that causes people to bestow so much so frequently upon animals when such beneficence is totally unneeded. And this at a time when human beings in every community are in dire need of material comforts. Take the case of the Reading, Pennsylvania, woman who willed her dog a three-room apartment with air-conditioned bedroom, living room chair, a practical nurse, and $50,000. Or the Murray Hill, New Jersey, man who paid a carpenter $3,000 to finish the house with a glass-bricked roof, cedar and knotty pine walls, fluorescent lighting, and an electric blowing system. Then turned the whole thing over to his four Doberman Pinschers. Or the New York Life Insurance Company, recently chartered; its only policy holders: dogs. This reporter is fond of dogs and assorted varieties of other animals, but how many of these people for providing so lavishly for their pets will contribute 50% as much to a milk fund for undernourished children? Not only is the country going to the dogs in such cases, but, to put it biblically, it would seem that such persons are casting their pearls before swine.

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One of the virtues in any philosophy of religion framework is that of honesty; that is, being honest with oneself, as well as with others. Those of us who have studied and tried to understand the Russian system have long since given up the hope of finding honesty intentionally displayed by those who espouse the Moscow line. However, the recent hullabaloo in a few places in the United States over segregation, and the heyday the Russians are making of it has impelled one nationally-syndicated writer this week to point out that while in most places in this country, segregation under law is not practice, in Russia, segregation of the races for educational purposes is the order of the day, and that under not only statutory but under constitutional law. David Lawrence, the arch-conservative of the columnists, observes that Russia defends her segregation policies on the ground that she wants to preserve the literary tradition of the groups. Five of the so-called Soviet republics are in Central Asia, and there, according to evidence presented by Mr. Lawrence, “The Russians maintain one set of schools for their children and one set for the children of local people. It is a segregated system.”

Officials insisted, as do some of our southern Dixiecrat segregationists, that the “People like their own schools,” part of which may be true in both cases. It should be observed in passing that the Russian are European and white, while the Asians are Mongolian and dark. But what does all this mean for the argument put up by some segregationists here that integration is a Russian scheme? Well, it may be, for the communists will promote any idea, however inconsistent with their Marxian dogma, if they think it will cause confusion and trouble in the free world. Communists care nothing really about the civil rights of Negroes or anyone else but their own ilk.

And, what does it do to the Russian propaganda line that they invectively hurl at their own people and the world via their newspapers, radio, and other communication media?

There is a rule very old in the idea of Anglo-Saxon equity, namely, that’ he who comes into court should do so with clean hands. Or, to put it another way, he that would seek justice must be just himself. Obviously, two wrongs don’t make a right. If segregation in schools is wrong in this country, then it must also be wrong in Russia and vice versa. Christ put it much more succinctly when he said, “He that is without blame, let him cast the first stone.” But of course the Russians probably do not read the Christian Bible.

 

At Sewanee, Tennessee, the House of Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church opened its 105th meeting yesterday. The Rt. Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill presided. More than 100 of the church bishops from the United States and the Panama Canal Zone were in attendance. This meeting is being held in conjunction with the 100th anniversary observance of The University of the South in Sewanee. The university is owned and operated by 21 dioceses of the Episcopal Church. Dr. Edward McCrady, vice chancellor and president of the university reviewed the history of the school at a dinner meeting last night. A formal reception held at the home of McCrady followed the dinner. Today the Rt. Rev. Sherrill received an honorary doctor of civil laws degree. The Rt. Rev. Thomas N. Carruthers, bishop of South Carolina and chancellor of The University of the South presented the degree.

The main business sessions will begin tomorrow and continue through Wednesday. Among those on the program for tomorrow are Dr. W.A. Visser ‘t Hooft, executive secretary of the World Council of Churches, and Dr. W.G. Pollard, executive director of the Institute of Nuclear Studies at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

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In a report on religious items of current significance that ignored the developments in Nashville, Tennessee, and Little Rock, Arkansas, during the past two weeks would be ignoring one of the most pressing and important social problems with which all citizens, religious or not, prosegregationists or desegregationists, must be concerned. For cutting across the internet using the whole legal, political, and otherwise model crosscurrents, lies the simple consideration of the rights and dignity of the individual, and that, regardless of race, religion, nationality, or socio-economic status.

Today I should like to explore some basic facts in the matter as well as to suggest certain long-range, ideological implications of the problem, and this without regard to personalities, political, religious, or otherwise.

Our culture here in America is deeply rooted in the Judaeo-Christian ethic, and many of our mores, customs, and traditions stem from the beliefs and teachings of the Hebrews, from Genesis to Revelation. It was the Master himself who violated the current social taboos by demonstrating his respect for the individual. The little children whom he insisted be permitted to come to him; the lepers; the blind; the tax collector, an insidious individual in Palestine at this time; the woman of Samaria; as well as the more “respectable” Pharisees and others of the time. There is no mention anywhere in the scripture that he asked one his race, his nationality, or his economic status before ministering to him. The Hebrews themselves are not a race in the sense we use the term today, so we have no way of knowing which racial group Christ himself would best have fitted into.

Stemming from this recognition of the importance of the person as a person, philosophers who envisioned a better social order than existed in their time, generally advocated a system wherein there was a high degree of personal freedom and rights. It must have been this basic ethic back of Jefferson’s thinking (which, incidentally, was in no sense original with him) when he wrote those revolutionary but immortal words that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” Time does not permit exploring the social context of society at the time he wrote those words, nor does it allow discussion of the semantics of the terms used. But throughout our history we have adhered to this philosophy in principle, however much we have departed from it in practice – which, unfortunately, has been all too often.

It is a very simple faith. It holds that man is not only equal in the sight of God but that he has (or should have) the same equality before the law. It was to bolster this principle that the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution after the War Between the States, forbidding a state the right to abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens or to deny to any person the equal protection of the law. It is, in the main, controversy over the meaning and application of this constitutional passage that the problems have arisen in Nashville, Little Rock, and elsewhere.

The sociologist recognizes at least three levels of social problems. One is where everyone, or almost everyone agrees on the existence and nature of a problem, and there is a high degree of agreement upon the desired solution. Integration, obviously, does not fit into this category.

The second level is where there is general agreement upon the existence of a problem, but no consensus as to the desired solution. The third is where only a vocal few insist there is a problem, but the majority do not recognize its existence.

It is the second level with which we are concerned here, namely both pro-and anti-integrationists agree that there is a problem, but there is no agreement upon a desired solution. Hence, we are going through the turmoil of seeking a solution in harmony with prevailing community opinion and also with existing constitutional requirements, a solution that it is impossible, in the present situation, to find without compromise or acquiescence. One or the other must give – perhaps both.

Through it all runs a continuous, unchallengeable thread: Ours is a government of law, not of men. And if enough citizens are of the opinion that the law, as interpreted by men, is inadequate or unjust, there are constitutional ways to rectify the matter. The Georgia proposal for resettlement of southern Negroes in white communities is no solution, though in a few instances it might lessen the acuteness of the problem in some communities if it could be made to work without doing violence to the rights of the individuals concerned. The use of the National Guard to defeat the orders of a federal judge is no solution. If enough Americans wish to amend the Constitution to provide for racial discrimination, there is a way by which this can be done, but it is a safe assumption that few would admit they would like to see this happen.

But the whole issue is even broader than merely national constitutional requirements, for it involves an ideological division among Americans that seems confusing to about everyone except the voter. He continues to recognize that which makes democratic order and that which does not. And while the connection may be incidental (more likely, co-incidental), there is a relationship between the Kasper-like advocacy of racial supremacy in this country and the autocratic orders that have developed, still exist in some places, and are still developing in some parts of the world.

Leadership in churches, government, education, management, farming, etc., seem to be divided, roughly at least, along liberal or conservative lines, i.e., the so-called left or right. But the American voter has seemed to sense that he cannot really be liberal without at the same time being conservative, and vice versa. That is, though liberal, he wishes to conserve the best that has been proven good in American life; and while being conservative, that there is need to recognize that change is inevitable. Sometimes to oppose change is good; at other times actively to promote it is better. So, he goes along with this leadership, making his daily decisions according to his own pattern of values in the light of his understanding of our past history, present condition, and future probabilities and possibilities.

The voter seems to feel instinctively that two world wars, particularly the second, were fought between kinds of autocratic order that in principle were left and right ideologies that had gone to maturity. Expanding imperialisms competing for limited world markets were primary cause for World War I. From the American viewpoint, both original opponents in that war were autocratic to a relatively high degree. When the security of American democracy became threatened the American voter demanded that his country enter the war against that particular group of nations which clearly threatened that security.

Again, in World War II, both original opponents were in many respects autocratic, from our own conception of democracy, and the American voter had little choice but to enter the war when it became clear that the security of his kind of democracy was threatened. And it is more than significant from the standpoint of segregation versus integration to reflect that the opponent we faced was one that had come to power mainly upon the vicious doctrine of racial superiority.

So it is today that the memory of the voter is not as short as many let themselves believe. He recognizes that within our own generation two world wars have been fought to uphold our conception of a democratic order, one in which the dignity of the individual is stressed, where there is free speech, freedom of religion, and all the other freedoms. He recognizes that we live today in a world of rapid change and pyramiding danger. This is reflected in the results of a poll just conducted by the American Institute of Public Opinion in which the voter was asked, “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” The replies, in this order, were: keeping out of war, 34%; high cost of living, inflation, 22%; and integration problems, only 10%. It’s highly unlikely that a mere 10%, however vocal and vociferous, will sway the course of the nation away from the basic commitment to the belief that “All men are created equal.” And it becomes increasingly difficult for us to pose as the leader of the democratic, free world, striving for a world in which all men can be free, and at the same time deny basic rights to a racial segment of our own people.

It is true that ours is far from an ideal society, but it is one developed within a framework of law that permits orderly revolution constantly to take place. We need to recall only such things as removal of religious and property qualifications for voting; abolition of slavery; the granting of the ballot to women; and similar changes, to realize that we have come a long way from the tiny nation of 3.5 million souls who founded what they hoped would be a “more perfect union.” At that time, one out of every five in the population was a Negro; today only about one in ten belongs to the colored racial groups. Ours is a society of classes, yes. There are social classes in any society; but perhaps our own is based more nearly than any other on an aristocracy of ability, industry and thrift – not upon inherited nobility or royalty. The greatest advocate of social change of all, as he walked by the Sea of Galilee, recognized only the worth, potentialities of the individual. So He saw possibilities in Matthew, a publican, who wrote the first Gospel; in Peter, a lowly fisherman; one Judas Iscariot – he believed in giving him a chance to prove himself.

So today, in the midst of a temporary turmoil, proponents and opponents of integration would do well to recall American history and the principles upon which our nation was founded. A reporter cannot tell whether what he says makes sense to his listeners, but he can think at this junction of no better injunction than that of Paul the apostle who urged the Philippians in these words, “… Brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just… think on these things.”

 

In the last broadcast, I cited a United Press dispatch to the effect that school administrators are feeling steadily increasing pressure to add a fourth “R” to the traditional “readin’, ritin’, and rithmetic,” namely “religion.” Jews and other (mostly minority) groups insist upon a hands-off policy in this respect. Protestants and Catholics are largely the ones who urge that if the schools ignore religion they discriminate against the majority of Americans who, they say, believe in God. Some rock-ribbed fundamentalists have gone so far as to propose that the Constitution be revised to permit schools to teach Christian religious doctrines. A segment of the agitants has suggested schools teach children the basic elements common to the major faiths. But here, by “major faiths” they usually mean the Christian faiths. Few would include, for example, the common elements contained in the Moslem religion. Still others recommend teaching the pupils “about” religion, insisting this can be done without teaching religion “to” the students.

All these proposals have their appeal to many people, and many of them take the position that unless schools do teach religion, they are godless institutions, implying or asserting that they must therefore be anti-religious. This reporter has worked with and in a number of schools where this pressure was exerted and can understand the dilemma of school administrators and teachers as well as the seeming sincerity of the proponents of the idea. The fact is, however, that those who propose religious teaching in the school mean “their” religion, i.e., they would have the schools tinge whatever teaching they do with a slant towards the Baptist, the Methodist, the Presbyterian, or the Catholic faith. They won’t admit it very often, but push them hard enough, and they admit it, inadvertently or otherwise.

And certainly they mean by “religion” the Christian variety, and here in the so-called Bible Belt of the South they certainly in 99.44% of the cases, they mean the Protestant religion. The teacher here who had anything good to say about the Catholic faith in classes in religion would soon find himself the target of suspicion, opposition, and perhaps worse, by many of the parents.

Few doubt the sincerity or the well meaning of proponents of religion in the schools, but many of us doubt their fairness or common sense judgment about the matter. Two or three facts stand out stubbornly in this controversy. The most immediate one is that preachers, priests, and rabbis who are strongest for embarking upon such a course admit by their actions that their messages in church do not have enough of a compelling attraction to hold a congregation, hence they wish to invoke the aid of the state to force students, who must attend the public schools, to spend part of their time listening to a religious instruction which they cannot escape. Some minister and priest friends of mine have finally admitted this when driven to do so. I must admit they have done so ruefully and reluctantly.

Another fact is the one mentioned above, namely that when these people say “religion,” they mean their own particular brand of it. They would be very disturbed if they heard that teachers were taking turns about reading devotional lessons from the Mohammedan Koran bible, or the Mormon “Book of Mormon” bible, or any other bible but their own.

A third fact, and one that cuts across all the others is that such a program runs counter to our whole history and tradition as a nation, i.e., separation of church and state. To use a statement that Christ made, we have tried to make a distinction between things that are Caesar’s and those that are God’s, though the line has not always been easy to draw. We have said that religion must survive or perish on its own appeal merits; that we had, and have, no place in this country for an established church; that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Those who urge teaching of religion in the schools ignore or are ignorant of that well-established fact. The public schools are charged with instruction of children of all faiths and those of no faith, for one does not have freedom of religion unless he at the same time has freedom from religion. To depart from this basic fact is to venture into a quagmire of danger that would embroil the school and community in controversy and would do violence to the conscience of many young school citizens.

The public schools have no responsibility to be either godly or godless. Certainly religion must come in for considerable consideration in the course of public school instruction. One cannot understand much of the impetus back in early colonization without learning of religious persecution, which the Puritans, Catholics, Quakers, and others sought to escape by coming to America. One cannot understand the founding of Rhode Island, for example, without knowing why Roger Williams disagreed with the Puritan fathers of New England. A knowledge of religious bigotry is indispensable to understand the Know-Nothing movement in American history that reached its climax in the 1840s and 1850s, especially the ridiculous and fictitious but harmful “awful disclosures” of Maria Monk that inflamed people against Catholics and set off a chain of persecution. There was an element of religion also in the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, at least to the extent that Klanism was opposed to Catholics, Jews, and other non-Protestants. The schools do teach these things, as a part of our history, and to leave them out would make of history instruction an unbalanced, incomplete program.

To teach these things in the natural course of instruction is necessary and desirable; to embark upon a program of teaching religion in the public schools is quite a different matter entirely. The courts have made this quite clear in an unbroken line of decisions, highlighted in recent years by the celebrated McCollum case in Illinois. Despite all this, schools, and some colleges, go on year after year violating the law. They hold baccalaureate services in high schools, which, incidentally, the court held, in at least one case, to be a violation of religious freedom if students were required to attend as a requisite to graduation. In one school which I know, there are (or were last year) at least two teachers in the elementary division who, each Monday, asked their pupils whether they attended church or Sunday school the day before. All who did were commended, were given stars, or other insignia of merit, while the little fellows who did not soon caught on to what was happening and several of them admitted they told the teacher thereafter they had gone to church, whether they had or not. Those teachers should have been told in no uncertain terms to stop this outrageous practice.

Schools do have an obligation to stress the importance of such basic elements as truth, honesty, fair dealing, respect for the rights of others, sincerity, and all the other generally recognized factors that go into the making of commendable characters. But this can and should be done without any religious and sectarian flavor. If preachers and zealous laymen who urge upon the schools the teaching of their particular brand of religion would confine their efforts to improving upon the religious program and appeal of their respective churches, they would be doing not only their churches a service, but would not be violating one of the most consistent traditions of the American people. Moreover, they would not be cluttering up the schools with nonsensical advocacy of an un-American course of action by these schools. One can admire their sincerity; it is difficult to have much respect for either their sense of fairness or their knowledge of and respect for our basic constitutional principle of church and state separation. I am a Methodist, but I do not want any school teacher trying to make a Methodist out of my children; neither do I want them to be in a classroom where disparaging remarks are made, by implication or otherwise, about any religion. And that goes for all religions, non-Christian as well as Christian ones. Schools and teachers are simply getting out of their province when they do this. Preachers and others should know and respect this fact.

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Fairfield, Connecticut: The Rev. Joseph F. Mulligan, of Fordham University, has been elected president of the Eastern States Division of the American Association of Jesuit Scientists. He was elected at the close of the organization’s 32nd annual meeting at Fairfield University.

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Chicago: A Roman Catholic priest has criticized the Knights of Columbus on charges of racial discrimination. The Rev. Louis Twomey, of Loyola University in New Orleans, charges that the K of C has (in his words) “a policy that forced Negro Catholics to form a separate organization. The Knights of Columbus wouldn’t take them in.”

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Rome, Italy: A General Congregation of the Roman Catholic Jesuit order will be held in Rome starting next Thursday, September 5. The General Congregation, which is the guiding authority of the order, meets only to elect a new superior-general who is chosen for life, or when important problems of general character arise affecting the society as a whole. It has met only 30 times in 400 years.

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New York: Billy Graham, an itinerant preacher who has already received considerable publicity recently in New York, has compared today’s young hoodlums with Belshazzar, the corrupt, immoral, and bullying biblical ruler of Babylon. Belshazzar, who succeeded his father, Nebuchadnezzar to the throne, is the one who witnessed the handwriting on the wall and later was killed by the conquering Persians and Medes. Well, even a minister, I suppose, has a right to let his imagination help make a colorful impression. Anyway, comparisons are hazardous, as well as sometimes odious. Besides, such analysis does not take into consideration the differences in statuses of today’s delinquents with that of the king. And finally, one can find almost any kind of character in the Bible to compare to about anyone he meets on the street anywhere today.

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Washington: The head of the South’s largest religious denomination says church members have three clear duties to perform in seeking a Christian solution to racial problems. Representative Brooks Hays of Arkansas, recently elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention, says the first duty is to keep free the prophetic voice of the church (whatever that means); second, he said, is to throw all the influence of religion on the side of a non-violent adjustment of racial tensions; and third, church members must display imagination and Christian courage in correcting specific situations where the actual practice of the community has produced injustice.

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Mackinac Island, Michigan: The prime minister U Nu of Burma has sent a message of support to the Moral Rearmament Assembly of Nations meeting at Mackinac Island. Said the prime minister, “The world has need of the lead that is being given by moral rearmament in the moral and spiritual realm. The standards of honesty, purity, and unselfishness and love forming the basis of this ideology, if universally and sincerely accepted, will insure a safe and happy future for humanity.” Well, it may not insure such, but few there are who would argue that it would not help to bring such a future about.

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Canterbury, England: Church authorities are preparing a report for the archbishop of Canterbury on an Anglican priest who won’t stop using the word “bloody.” The Anglican priest, the Rev. Frederick Richmond, says he sees nothing wrong in using what he calls “a 17th century word.” But the word in England is considered vulgar and a cuss word. But at a trial, after his automobile had hit a truck, the Rev. Richmond admitted he used the word four times. He was fined $30 and lost his driving license for a year. And the archbishop wants a report of the whole affair. Of course it is easy to poke fun at our British cousins, but one cannot help but wonder what this world is a comin’ to when brethren of the cloth use such bloody words.

Washington: The Federal Census Bureau has a religious problem. The bureau is compiling a new questionnaire for census scheduled in 1960. And it is debating about including one question in the form: “What is your religion?” One faction in the bureau contends some factual data should be collected on the religious affiliations of Americans. But others claim it would be a bad mistake and that many citizens would resent the question as an invasion of privacy. No such question has ever been asked before in a census. The bureau has not yet made a final decision. All of us who have had to teach materials on religion – not a religion – but religion, period, have felt keenly the need for accurate census data on religious affiliations and have, from the teacher’s viewpoint wished for more nearly reliable figures. However, for government to nose its way into religious beliefs is treading on undesirable grounds. If any such question is used in the bureau’s questionnaire, the individual should be entirely free to answer it or not as he chooses, and there should be definite provision for recording his reply as “declining to answer.” As much as I wish accurate data as a teacher, I suspect that my reply would be under this category, for really it is none of the government’s business.

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New York: Some 88 sessions have been held in Madison Square Garden in the current emotional binge under the auspices of Graham and Company. These have attracted more than 1,650,000 persons, resulting in some 51,000 of what the star performer calls “decisions for Christ.” This reporter has no comment, for he is reluctant to judge lest he be judged.

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Minneapolis: The Rev. Dr. Franklin Clark Fry of New York, president of the United Lutheran Church in America, has been elected president of the Lutheran World Federation. Dr. Fry, who is 56, was elected at the organization’s Third Assembly. The Lutheran World Federation represents a membership of 50 million Lutherans all over the world.

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In Vatican City, Giovanni Cardinale Mercati, librarian of the Roman Catholic Church, died at his residence Thursday night. He was 91 years old. The death of this cardinal reduces the rank of the Sacred College of Cardinals to 58. There are now a total of 12 vacancies in the college.

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And in Rome this week some 30,000 Catholic youths from 87 nations and territories gathered for the First World Assembly of the International Young Christians Workers. The climax of the gathering takes place today when the youth pay homage to the pope in a colorful ceremony in St. Peter’s Square.

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….

The federation may complete its work this weekend on a set of basic principles setting forth a stronger partnership among Christian churches. The project is described as one of Lutheranism’s major goals. It is the hope of the federation that this set of principles will constitute an expression to the world of the nature of Lutheran thinking on major problems confronting the church. During discussion of the various proposals offered by leaders of 20 discussion groups, emphasis was given to one calling for restoration of what was called “right God relationship.” The outgoing federation leader, Hanns Lilje of Hanover, Germany said this relationship has been lost in some areas of the world due to fear and anxiety. The German clergyman acknowledged that the church is restricted in seeking greater freedom in those areas by a broken humanity. In such a predicament, he stated, man needs a deliverer who is more powerful than everything that is wrong.

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Oberlin, Ohio: The issues of Christian unity will be dealt with directly when U.S. and Canadian churches hold the first North American study conference opening at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, starting September 3. The theme of the conference will be “The Nature of the Unity We Seek.” Preparations for the meeting have been under way for two years. These plans involve more than 300 inter-denominational discussions, with working papers submitted by 16 regional groups. The final phase was a selection of 285 official delegates by 34 U.S. churches – Orthodox and Protestant – and five Canadian churches. The meeting is sponsored by the Canadian Council of Churches in conjunction with the U.S. conference for the World Council of Churches, and the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. The conference runs from September 3-10.

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Chicago: The Greater Chicago Federation of Churches is making an effort to see that newcomers to Chicago’s vast metropolitan area are not without friends willing to give help and understanding. The federation has set up what is called the “Newcomers Commission.” Members of the agency, which is a unit of the federation’s social welfare department, undertake the task of finding homes for the newly arrived family from Puerto Rico, the Indian used to life on the reservation, the Chinese, the Negro, or other type of family unused to city living.

The commission’s chairman, the Rev. James Caskey, says its activity represents a major effort by Chicago’s churches to give resettlement assistant and encourage church membership. In general, its task is to help the newcomer adjust to city life. The department’s newly organized Latin American committee is concerned with the needs of Chicago’s 100,000 Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Among other things attention is given to problems of credit buying and rentals. Work is also aimed at passage of bills in the Illinois legislature designed to improve living and working conditions for the new residents.

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The persistence with which some newspapers and newspaper editors insist upon being concerned about something much, much less important than they tried to make it is being revealed these days by pronouncements regarding the effect of Supreme Court decisions in recent weeks upon secret, raw, unconfirmed, gossip files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Some two months ago, in the Jencks case, the courts ruled that a person on trial for criminal charges could not be convicted upon evidence contained in these gossip files until or unless he and or his attorney had access to them and to the evidence contained therein.

Squawks from pipsqueak law enforcement officers, which would include everybody from Brownell, Hoover, and company up or down, whichever way you want to go, would lead the unthinking to conclude that unless something were done to preserve these precious files that the fate of the U.S. will be sealed beyond redemption, at once, and forever. The Knoxville News Sentinel, which I read regularly and more or less religiously, devoted a blunt editorial to the subject this week imploring Congress before it quits to act upon what it calls “an emergency problem of law enforcement.” The local paper has also wasted some space and many words to the same issue and along the same line.

Now let us be sensible and unemotional about a very important real matter. Nobody but the ones who were loyal to a country other than the United States would wish to do anything that would weaken our system of things here. But a very important part of that system is regard for the rights and integrity of the individual. Convictions of the accused based upon secret informers and secret evidence are trappings and techniques of the dictatorships, not of the democracies. Amendment VI of the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights, reads in part as follows: “In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right … to be confronted with the witnesses against him…” There are no modifying or qualifying words in this amendment. What the FBI does in an investigation is to take down every scrap of comment one individual may make about the person being investigated – known facts, rumors, suspicions, hearsay. All this is put into what the bureau calls its raw files. All of it is what it terms “unevaluated” data. Yet it is just such data as this that Brownell, Hoover, and The [Knoxville] News Sentinel and other editors want to keep secret from the person accused. Hoover says to reveal these will dry up sources of information. Well, why should one be convicted upon what a jealous neighbor or associate may say, spitefully or otherwise? Why should unevaluated materials be used? All the court said in the Jencks case is that such material should be brought into the courtroom and there evaluated. If it is found to be true, then let it be used without reservation to conflict; if it is false, brand it for what it is and let the chips fall wherever they may. Many people would talk long and freely about things they do not know but suspect would have little hesitancy as long as they can keep their identity secret. But if they knew that their words may later show up in a courtroom and they might have to back up their words, they’d probably be diligent in adhering to the truth. Do the Justice Department and the FBI wish to convict people upon untruths, half-truths, or pure fiction?

We have heard a great deal, too much, in recent weeks about the Fifth Amendment. But what about the Fifth Commandment in this connection? Does it not fit into this case, and is it not reinforced by our own Sixth Amendment to the Constitution? Those who deplore the sad state of affairs well could consider this, for it reads “Thou shall not bear false witness…” Do they wish to violate both the Sixth Amendment and the Fifth Commandment in their zeal to get headlines by convicting whomever they bring into court? I know of at least one court case where the outcome was based entirely upon false witness, but the person witnessing brought less credit to herself than blame against the one testified against. It is about time that the powers that be take another look at this whole subject and reconcile their efforts and pronouncements to American constitutional provisions, traditions, and good common sense, as well to religious and moral concepts involved.

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In Barbourville, Kentucky, this week the Kentucky Conference of the Methodist Church unanimously approved a constitutional amendment to allow Negro churches to apply for membership in white conferences. This is probably the second such act in the Methodist denomination, our own Holston Conference here in Tennessee being the other. Under the proposed amendment Negro churches must get a two-thirds consent from their conference before they can transfer. It will also be necessary for the white conference to give a two-thirds approval. However, it is a step in the right direction, i.e., to erase racial discrimination from the institution that should never have had it in the first place, for if racial groups cannot be united before the altar of God, then what hope is there for the Christianity we talk so much about in non-religious areas?

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Washington: The United Press reports that school administrators are caught in the middle of steadily mounting pressures on the subject of a fourth “R” – religion – as they prepare for the coming fall term of school. Jews and other minority groups want a hands-off policy, leaving religious training to the home and church. Protestant and Catholic officials say if the schools ignore religion, they, in effect, discriminate against the majority of Americans who believe in God. Some fundamentalists have proposed that the Constitution be revised to permit schools to teach Christian religious doctrines in the same way they teach political doctrines of democracy. Opponents claim that this would destroy the walls of separation between church and state. Another proposal has been to teach a so-called “common core” of religious beliefs held by all the major faiths. But opponents of this say that it would dilute religion so much as to be meaningless. Another solution, which has won the backing of many so-called, and probably self-styled educators, is to treat religion as politics and economics are treated – as a subject that is controversial but important to understanding American history and culture. The backers of this plan say the constitutional ban on sectarian teaching “of” religion does not prevent objective teaching about religion.

Unfortunately, time does not permit a further comment on this subject today, but since next Sunday will be the eve of the beginning of most school terms, and since the subject is an important one to all, opponents and proponents alike, I shall treat it in more detail at that time.

Some rather curious pronouncements have emanated from a Southern Presbyterian conclave meeting this week at Weaverville, North Carolina. Specifically a former mayor of Atlanta and a prominent layman said in addressing the meeting, that “When churches set up human relations or religious relations departments, they are intervening in fields that are very controversial.” And the speaker went on to decry what he called a trend toward the social gospel, asserting that it is a mistake for the church to get into in this field, for, in his words, “The devil must laugh with glee when he sees this present trend.” Further on the speaker opposes the idea that the church should make public pronouncements about segregation and civil rights, for they, according to him, “stir up strife and disunity.” The church then proceeded, through its organ, The Southern Presbyterian Journal that “Much today which purports to be ‘Christian race relations’ has nothing to do with biblical Christianity, but works towards destroying racial integrity as it has developed in the province of God.” “We deplore,” the writer goes on, “the fostering of social contact in the name of Christianity where such contacts are unnatural and forced. Therefore, we affirm that voluntary segregation in the churches, schools, and other social relationships is for the highest interest of the races, and is not un-Christian.” There is more, but this is enough to state not unfairly the basic viewpoint.

Well, at the outset, this reporter emphasizes that in our scheme of things the Southern Presbyterians or any other group has a perfect right to state freely what it believes on things – and to do so without fear of unwarranted penalty for doing so. However, a consideration of history and of current facts makes such pronouncements rather anomalous. If by biblical Christianity they mean restricting Christian religious scope to the confines of the lids of the Bible, they are talking about something that never was and most of us think never should be. Christ himself was the most controversial figure of his time. He sat, talked, ate, and otherwise associated with Samaritans, publicans, sinners, and all kinds. There is nothing in what he said or did to indicate that he cared for race, color, or nationality. His injunction to his disciples to “go ye therefore into all the world and preach my gospel to every creature” contains nothing about setting this or that race or other group apart and preaching it a little different to them than you do to others. The Master attacked smugness, egotism, wherever he found them. The Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like other men received little commendation from Christ, while the poor publican who admitted his sinfulness went down to his house justified more than the former. Paul emphasized that faith without works is dead, and it is not possible to see how Christianity, by its very nature, can be confined to the lids of the Bible. It has flourished across the centuries only as it has been a live, growing, even controversial doctrine that preached and practiced the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men. When it ceases to be this, it will become an embalmed figure in the mausoleum of history, to be looked upon by future generations as a quaint, academic, inert philosophy of the past that died from pernicious anemia because it had little real meaning in the lives of people. There is no such thing as racial integrity in today’s world, and the good mayor is talking about something that never was, is not, and never will be, for no friendly, Christian contact and relationships between the races are, as the Weaverville spokesman put it, “unnatural in the province of God.”

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It became apparent that some 40 Americans this week planned to visit Red China after attending the Moscow so-called Youth Festival, and to do this in the face of the stern warning from our State Department that to do so would be to violate U.S. foreign policy. Perhaps too much has already been said here about this policy that holds, by implication at least, that Americans generally do not have sense enough to go to Red China, see and talk with the people, and come back home without becoming sold on the idea of Chinese communism. And that only the super-beings that head the State Department know what is best for other Americans too dumb to agree with those same department heads. All this is a bit of egotism, arrogance, and paternalism that is anathema to American tradition, spirit, and good common sense. It assumes that I cannot see a murder committed without avidly desiring to commit a murder myself; that is not possible for me to read a book without agreeing with everything the author says; that I cannot talk with a person who disagrees with me without becoming converted to his way of thinking; that America is a ghetto from which nobody will be permitted to leave for travel or other purposes without having some bureaucrat tell him where he can go, with whom he can talk. It is difficult to imagine greater nonsense.

Of what is the State Department afraid? Americans generally have a mind of their own. In a democracy, it is a responsibility of every citizen to do his own thinking. Nobody but the communists and other anti-democratic elements would deliberately do anything that would undermine the security of this country. However, it is difficult to imagine anything more likely to make Americans appreciate our own freedom of religion, speech, association, etc., than to travel among and see firsthand what is being wrought under the ruthless hand of communism, in China or elsewhere. And those of us who believe in real democracy can imagine nothing calculated more to reveal to those behind the Iron Curtain the fruits of democratic freedom than to open our doors to young people from China, Russia, or elsewhere to let them come among us and see what life is like here. It is hardly likely that they would go home so willing to believe that America is a land where the toiling masses are ground down by the evil heel of Wall Street capitalists. But perhaps it is too late to hope that those in charge of making our foreign policy are ever going to see such simple facts. As the senior senator from Tennessee put it this week on a national radio broadcast, “The more our young people see what’s going on in other nations, the more they will appreciate the United States.”

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Nobody appreciates the United States Senate more than does this reporter. However, few could dislike hypocrisy more than he does. He cannot help but wonder how much hypocrisy there was in the proceedings this week in that august body that eulogized the late Sen. McCarthy, the same body that so roundly condemned him a scant three years ago. The Associated Press dispatch this week recounts that “Men with whom McCarthy fought, as well as those who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with him during his stormy career … joined in a session of tribute to their former colleague.” Led by Democratic Majority Leader Johnson, all the good little boys in the Senate got up and said how much and for what reasons they liked their former colleague. Such adjectives as courageous, effective, and such nouns as adulation, rare quality, respect, liking, etc., poured forth ad infinitum into many of us ad nauseam.

Most of us remember all too vividly that McCarthy cared nothing about whose reputation he wrecked by reckless smear charges which he never offered an iota of proof to substantiate. Many of us who wish to be honest with ourselves deplore the suspicion and hysteria, aroused and kept agitated by the same Joe McCarthy. Many of us cannot help but recall the dangerous wave of emotionalism, unreasoning suspicion, that was generated among the lunatic fringe that so easily could have been fanned into a totalitarian movement that would have brooked no opposition and would have given nobody a place to speak, think, or act except within the context of an un-democratic, fascist-like framework constructed by the master performer himself. It may be the polite thing to do to leave such things unsaid. The Romans had a saying that went like this: “Speak only good of the dead.” But Shakespeare put it more realistically if less delicately when he has Mark Anthony say at the bier of Caesar, “The bad that men do lives after them; the good is often interred with their bones. So let it be with Caesar.” Elsewhere Shakespeare said that “He who steals my purse steals trash, but he who filches from me my good name takes that which enriches him and leaves me poor indeed.” And all the pretty speeches of the Senators cannot change the history of the McCarthy period, and much of that period is not very pretty because of the things he did and said.

At the closing service of the World Council of Churches, meeting in New Haven, Connecticut, the delegates from 165 Protestant and Orthodox denominations from 50 countries heard a plea for closer bonds among all Christians. They felt it appropriate also to give thanks that, as they see it, such bonds are now being forged. The 14 members of the council’s executive committee were re-elected in a body…. The council also urged governments to act on their own to stop nuclear bomb tests for a trial period.

Some Roman Catholic spokesmen see discussions about religious liberty at the council meetings as greatly damaging world Catholic-Protestant relations. Debate at the meeting had arisen over a proposed resolution about Protestant difficulties in Colombia, South America, where, it was charged, Catholics persecute and harass Protestants. But a demand that the council charge Catholicism with suppressing religious liberties in some countries was dropped. Instead, the group’s executive committee was asked to study religious liberty in all nations. Executive Director Martin Work of the National Council of Catholic Men says so much more might have been done had the World Council leaders addressed themselves to matters of common spiritual and moral concern. Does the director intend, by this, to suggest that religious liberty is not one of the most important of matters that should be of common spiritual and moral concern? How academic can one become about religious matters, anyway?

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A prominent Quaker has told 1,000 Methodist Sunday school leaders that religious life outside the church is possible but not probable. Dr. Elton Trueblood, philosophy professor at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, has added it is almost impossible to be a Christian alone. He says the church is a fellowship, and it has kept Christianity alive from the time it was established as a little body of ordinary men and women seeking to demonstrate their faith.

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The Third General Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation, which opens this coming Thursday in Minneapolis, will have on its agenda such issues as how the church should deal with communism, colonialism, and national policies, as well as how rifts might be healed among various Lutheran bodies. Among delegates from Lutheran churches in at least four Iron Curtain nations – East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia – will be Hungary’s Lutheran primate, Bishop Lajos Ordass. He has been described as one of the world’s most courageous religious leaders.

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President Eisenhower has proclaimed Wednesday, October 2, as National Prayer Day. He urged all Americans to pray on that day for enduring peace. How silly can we Americans get about setting aside days for this, for that, for everything under the sun? The president didn’t say what we should pray for on other days, but doubtless it would not make much difference if we jumped the gun and started praying for peace before the second of October.

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The Association of Catholic Layman of New Orleans has appealed to the pope to stop Archbishop Joseph Rummel from enforcing racial equality in Catholic parishes in the city. The association asked the pontiff to rule that racial segregation is not morally wrong or sinful. The archbishop has said that segregation is morally wrong. The petition was aimed mainly at stopping integration in parochial schools rather than in the churches themselves. Archbishop Rummel said the laymen have the right to petition the Holy See, but he declined to make any further comment. Whether one thinks discrimination through segregation is morally right or wrong is, of course, a matter for one to conclude out of all his scale of values with respect to human beings. But this reporter cannot help but wonder if those same rabid segregationists expect that in the heaven they anticipate, there will be a roped off area for members of the colored race. How can you believe that all of us are children of God but that skin color determines whether you are a child of the first class or some lower class?

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And speaking of segregation, it looks as if the most notorious segregationist at the moment is getting the kind of treatment that probably hurts most; he is being ignored. The hate-mongering secretary of the Seaboard White Citizens Council descended on Nashville last week as if he expected to be a conquering hero. He announced his purpose to be to save our state capital city from desegregation in the public schools. It appears of now that few citizens care to listen to him. His audience of last Sunday attracted only some 300-400 listeners, at least half of whom seemed to be attracted out of mere curiosity. Then he was refused a board permit to use the park for his fascist harangues. In his speech of last Sunday he tried to court the favor of Tennesseans by telling them they were more aware of their civic rights than were citizens of other states. Most of us probably take this as a cheap trick of a small time politician to butter up his listeners; also most of us probably look upon this as an effort to deceive – for he probably means that we are dumber than citizens of other states and don’t have any more sense than to fall for his hate-filled nonsense. Anyway, he attacked communists and communism so much that he practically outdid Khrushchev and company in his mention of the words. Nashville newspapers have almost completely ignored him. One sent a reporter to interview him, and the subsequent write-up revealed the polite boredom the reporter felt as he listened to this headline hunter. The other Nashville paper has so far ignored him completely. [John] Kasper cannot stand this. Like McCarthy, he thrives on newspaper headlines, and when these are not longer forthcoming, it is not unlikely that he will fold his tent, put his tail between his legs and silently slink away.

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Washington: United Press religious editor Louis Cassels says a little-publicized “prayer cell” movement is turning into one of the most significant developments in America. The movement consists of small groups of laymen who meet to pray and read the Bible in each other’s homes, usually once a week. Episcopal Bishop Austin Pardue of Pittsburgh says more than 100 such cells have sprung up in Pittsburgh alone, and there are thousands throughout the land.

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New York: The first of a series of religious services is being held today aboard the Mayflower II in New York Harbor. The service commemorates the piety of the original Mayflower pilgrims. The service includes responsive scripture readings led by the Mayflower’s Australian skipper, Capt. Alan Villiers, and a sermon by the Rev. Dan Potter, president of the Council of New York.

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From Buffalo, New York: It is announced that one of the biggest pilgrimages of American Catholics to the healing shrine of Bernadette at Lourdes will sail next January on the Queen Elizabeth. The Most Rev. Leo Smith, auxiliary bishop of Buffalo, expects to have more than 200 pilgrims. They will go from Lourdes to Rome for audiences at the Vatican.

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A Methodist bishop who has spent 46 years in India as missionary, teacher, administrator and episcopal head, Bishop Waskom Pickett, says that America should be fighting as hard for her future now as at any time in her history. He goes on to say that we can lose or win our foreign policy on whether we win or lose in Asia. Bishop Pickett has known Indian leader Nehru for some 40 years and describes him as the greatest bulwark against communism in Asia. He says that the greatest tragedy of our time was when India so eagerly sought our friendship and modeled her new government after our own, but we, for ill-conceived military reasons, held aloof from her. But we go on negotiating for and succeeding in getting, airfields from Pakistan in return for arms and equipment with which the country can threaten aggression against India in Kashmir. And this last is said without in any way passing upon the merit or lack of merit in India’s claim to the whole of that province.

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Dr. B. E. Holiday, professor of educational psychology at the University of Tennessee says there is a strong religious feeling existing among the people of Yugoslavia. Describing a recent trip through the Balkans which he made, Dr. Holiday says that religion is living on despite all attempts of the communists to destroy it. He saw large groups attending churches despite communist disapproval.

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Our Bible, and most other bibles, are replete with references to the importance of justice as well as mercy. An editorial in today’s local newspaper is worth calling to your attention in regard to the demands for justice in a situation about which we all know. This reporter has not failed to criticize the local newspaper when items in it, from a moral or ethical standpoint, seemed to call for such criticism. Moreover, he has made references at least twice to the case with which the editorial deals. From the response of you listeners, he feels that such references were not without merit. Anyway, the editorial reads as follows:

“East Tennesseans in growing numbers are becoming disgusted at the continuing battle of works among the assortment of officers, special investigators and attorneys participating in the Jenkins dynamite case.

“We believe we speak in the public interest when we call for a cease-fire in the forensics and an open-fire toward the kind of earnest and concerted effort needed to remove what, as of today, is an ugly blot upon the face of Washington County. Let’s cut out the grandstanding, gentlemen, and get down to the point, which is this:

A man has been killed, horribly killed, and the public is interested in seeing justice done – in an orderly, efficient and dignified manner. The public is not interested in competitive stage-play among those who, either by official responsibility or by invitation are charged with getting on the task at hand.

“This is Operation Murder, gentlemen, not Operation Sound Off!”

Do any of you listeners disagree with the rightness of this concise statement of the matter?

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It looks at the time of preparation of this broadcast that the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate Conference Committee are doing their best to effect an acceptable compromise between the different versions of the civil rights bill that is now before it, a bill that has seen and heard more heat than light in the Senate, the newspapers of the country, and radio and television stations of the nation in recent weeks.

Much that we have seen and heard on this important subject from senators simply cannot be true, and truthfulness is, or should be, one of the characteristics of a worthy public official. From a bill applying to civil rights generally, the present version would limit its scope to voting rights only. Which raises the question of how much do the voting rights of Negroes need protection? Well, the white parade of the Klansmen has all but disappeared as a threat to potential Negro voters. Lynchings have become largely a matter past history, thank God; but the pattern itself has merely changed, not disappeared. More subtle methods are used: jobs are threatened and in some cases taken away; threatening telephone calls are made to Negro leaders before election, calls that indicate dire things to happen if Negroes in the community vote. And the caller never gives his name, or at least his right name. Credit is withdrawn from Negroes who have the temerity to vote, or even to register to vote. Resort is even had to violence in the bombing of homes. Difficult examination questions are asked of Negroes; simple ones to whites, if the latter are questioned at all. These and other methods are parts of the intimidation pattern in the South of 1957. Wonder if those responsible ever took seriously the biblical passage which says that “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

New Haven, Connecticut: The general secretary of the World Council of Churches has attacked what he called the “misrepresentation of the council’s attitude and policy” as shown in many parts of the world. The council resettled 27,000 refugees in 1956 with the aid of about $700,000 contributed by churches around the world. The secretary, Dr. Visser T. Hooft, of Geneva, Switzerland, was referring to reports … which were published in East Germany and China about the council’s action in Hungary.

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Again, New Haven: Two members of the World Council of Churches called for a middle-of-the-road policy in commenting on world affairs. The archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, and Dr. Hanns Lilje, of Hanover, West Germany, both called for moderation at the New Haven meeting, which is the 10th annual meeting of the Central Committee of the council.

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Rome, Italy: Samuel Cardinal Stritch of Chicago left Rome last week for Paris after a two-week visit in the Italian capital. In Rome, he was twice received in private audience by the pope. The cardinal also visited the pontifical North American College, where he studied many years ago. He paid a visit to U.S. Ambassador James Zellerbach and visited Italian children camps.

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Cairo, Egypt: Egyptian astronomers and Moslem religious leaders failed this past week to agree on when the new Moslem year started. Scientists said the new years day was last Sunday, while the mufti of Egypt said it was Monday. Because of the dispute, government employees benefited, for they received two days off instead of one.

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Jerusalem, Israeli sector: An Israeli archaeologist says a study of the Dead Sea Scrolls shows St. Paul’s epistle to the Hebrews was addressed to the sect which wrote the scrolls. He said Paul wrote the epistle in the first part of the second century. He added that the Dead Sea Jewish sect had become Christian by that time but had not accepted Pauline Christianity.

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In Northfield, Minnesota, Bishop Hanns Lilje of Germany has answered charges that Iron Curtain delegates to the Lutheran World Federation Assembly are secret appointees of communist governments. The bishop said, “We will not be fooled.” He is president of the world organization and will preside over its session when the assembly meets in Minneapolis from August 15-25.

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Eastern Orthodox churchmen have charged the Christianity movement would be disrupted if a Protestant-run missionary group were brought into the World Council of Churches. A prominent Orthodox theologian, the Rev. Dr. Georges Florovsky, has also declared it would be a move in the direction of one-sided Protestantism. The clash has come over a proposal to make the International Missionary Council a part of the World Council, which is meeting at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. The Missionary Council itself is a federation of national and regional Protestant groups, includes 165 Protestant and Orthodox denominations in 50 countries, and thus embraces most of Protestantism and Eastern “Orthodoxy.

The ecumenical patriarchate in Istanbul, Turkey, has instructed its delegates at the meeting to oppose the new plan.

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A controversial religious group in Boston has brought a large colonial residence and 20 acres of land in Worcester County, Massachusetts. The group is St. Benedict’s Center, an organization in Cambridge founded seven years ago by an excommunicated Roman Catholic priest, Leonard Feeney. The black-garmented members are now said to total about 170 men and women. Feeney was excommunicated after a controversy with the Vatican over church doctrine. As a priest, he had insisted that only Roman Catholics could be saved, where the church holds that nonbelievers can also achieve salvation.

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Hungary’s communist government has accused a group of Roman Catholic priests of aiding the rebels in last autumn’s tragic revolt. All are under arrest are to be brought to trial soon. The statement of charges against the group also accuses Josef Cardinal Mindszenty in one instance. This relates to what the Hungarian government says was looting of its religious affairs office by armed persons led by the cardinal’s secretary. Cardinal Mindszenty is still in asylum in the United States Embassy in Budapest.

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City Judge Frank J. Stich of New Orleans has issued a temporary injunction that forbids men and women to sit together in an Orthodox Jewish synagogue. The Chevra Thilim Synagogue had started a policy of allowing them to sit together last January. But several of the congregation went to court to force a return to the former policy of separate seating. Judge Stich has ruled that family or mix seating in the synagogue is contrary to and inconsistent with the Orthodox Jewish ritual. All Orthodox synagogues traditionally have separate sections for men and women. But temples of Reform congregations, a more recent branch of Judaism, permit them to sit together. What bothers this reporter is this question: What business is it of the city judge, or any other officer of the state how seating arrangements are carried out in any church?

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When queried by newspapermen this week about a possible conflict of interest in his accepting gifts while in office, the chief executive replied that since he had was an elected official the law did not apply to such gifts as a $4,000 tractor with a cigarette lighter, a prize bull with $1,000, and numerous other gifts. The president may be technically correct, but is likely that the American people, if they know the facts, think otherwise. Remember a few years ago about the row over deep freezes and mink coats that were alleged to be gifts to officeholders? Anyway, a few years ago an employee of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, an underling at that, was fired for accepting a 12-pound ham as a gift. In our scheme of things, not even the president is above the law, and if he uses technicalities and complying with its letter, he may – and probably will be – rightly held responsible for violating its spirit.

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It is a safe assumption that the mass of people everywhere desire peace and fear war. FDR once said that “90 percent of the wars are caused by 10 percent of the people,” and few serious, honest students of world affairs would challenge that. If this is true, then, the problem of war or peace revolves around 90 percent of us devising a way under international law to control the rash and selfish actions of the 10 percent. This week in London, Sir Winston Churchill, addressing the Bar Association, urged that the U.N. charter be revised in such a way that the small countries in the General Assembly not have equal representation with the larger ones, that Costa Rica, for example, not have the voting strength of the United States.

Nobody is more sensitive to the rights of little people or little countries than this reporter, but he has been one of those who have pointed out the ridiculousness of this situation from the inception of the United Nations. However, Sir Winston’s recommendations are only one tangent of a comprehensive problem that must be solved if we are to have peace. The U.N. charter provided that at the end of 10 years, i.e., in 1955, there would automatically be held the convention to consider needed charter revisions. This reporter watch carefully, at once even hopefully, for some sign that the great powers, including ourselves, were willing to learn anything from experience. He even wrote the State Department asking specific questions about what we were or were not ready to recommend regarding charter changes. The replies received told him neither yes nor no, neither perhaps nor maybe. They answered none of the questions; they ignored most of them entirely. Instead, the letters were filled up with double talk, the kind to which we have had to become accustomed in recent years.

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For some weeks now a mis-called “disarmament conference” is going on in London. Only the most naïve expected anything concrete to emerge from these talks, concrete that is, unless you can call a still further crystallization of nationalistic maneuvering for individual advantage “concrete.” It took our own special representative weeks to unfold the so-called American plan, and many of us were made to wonder if we had any plan or simply improvised as we went along.

We spend billions of dollars in foreign aid each year, much of it going for military purposes to put guns in the hands of natives around the world who neither know nor care what the shooting is likely to be about but are willing to go along for the ride in order to get a steady income and clothing and shelter while they are in the military.

Veritably the gentleman cry peace, peace, but there is no peace. Nor will there be any until and unless we, and that includes at least all the so-called free peoples of the world, are willing to recognize that we can have peace only under law; the law cannot come into existence without a duly constituted law-making body; and that this will not happen until a world organization, having its roots in democratic expression of free people everywhere, is brought into existence to provide such a legislature. It is more than amazing – it is alarming – that the so-called leaders of the free nations will go so far out of their way to avoid seeing and meeting a problem whose base is a relatively simple one. In the meantime, national armaments become more terrible in their potential destructiveness; do-good-ism organizations are born, flourish, and die almost aborning; and international anarchy goes on. Truly it is a wonderful world we live in, its wonders never cease; all civilized people are threatening war; and savage nations are at peace.

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Some of you listeners have indicated that at times I have belabored too much the billboard problem on the soon-to-be-started 41,000 miles of federal highways. Reports this week indicate that even a mild bill seeking to secure some federal inducement to get the states to restrict highway billboard advertising is lost for this session of Congress, which means the billboard lobby has one. Even some labor unions fought the bills because they wanted employment defacing our highways with ugly signs. The best satire, even sarcasm, this reporter has seen on the subject appeared in the local paper this week by the noted cartoonist Herblock. It depicts a huge sign along the projected highways which reads: “The eyesores along this highway come to you through the courtesy of the following Congressmen, devoted servants of the billboard lobby. Local billboard Congressman is J. $. Crawlwell.” Do you know how your representatives in Congress voted on this issue? It might be illuminating find out. It will reveal whether they represent the public that values the beauties of nature in this country that God gave us, or the crass, commercialized billboard lobby.

A forest draping slope and stream are more than timber for the mill. A river winding through the hills is more than power for industry. And as a mountain pushing its snowy peaks into the clouds is more than ore for the smelting furnace, an orchard in blossom in springtime is more than fruit for the canner in autumn. Or as a field of ripening wheat waving and billowing in the breeze is more than grain for the oven, so this land with its “rocks and rills,” it’s “woods and templed hills” is more than a source of our livelihood. It is our home, our dwelling place forever – the place where we live and love, work and play, grow old and die. It was a beautiful place as it came from the hand of nature, beautiful in the grandeur and majesty of its great distances and proportions, in the contours and settings of its brooks and rivers, it’s ponds, lakes and seas, in the lines of its valleys, hills and mountains, in the rhythms of its calms and storms, of its days and seasons.

We are fortunate to possess it. Our major duty now is to try to repair the scars that have already been left by greedy exploitation for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. It is not too much to wish that the millions who drive the highways now planned can do so without having their view of this beauty obstructed by unsightly, trashy billboards the represent hucksterism at its most disgusting extreme.

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A headline in today’s local newspaper reflects the final fruits of hypocrisy and double talk, both of which are anathema to religious morals and ethics. It reads: “Washington County faces critical teacher shortage,” and the article goes on to point out that many key teachers in the county are leaving for other states where there is greater economic rewards for their efforts. It is highly likely that this is not only happening here, but also in the other 94 counties in the state.

This is a classic case of politicians’ chickens coming home to roost. [Governor] Clement and Company, including Washington County’s own representative, boasted while the legislature was in session of their victory over the teacher demands for a modest annual increase in salary. They now are finding that it was a pyrrhic victory. Political demagogues are fond of stating, for campaign purposes, that our children are our greatest resource, then when in office, proceed to give more attention to roads, migratory birds, and similar items than to the schools of those same children. There is an old East Tennessee-ism that, while slang, is colorful and expressive. It goes like this: “Put your money where your mouth is.” Maybe sometimes Tennessee politicians will learn to do just that and make their practice square with their preaching.

Teachers are not crass materialists. They have to possess a great deal of idealism to remain in an occupation that is comparatively poorly paid, respond to job demands that are infinite, accept the fact that their community prestige is low. Far too many times their just requests have been met with such silly twaddle as “dedication,” “opportunity for service.” Too often they have worked under a grossly unfair, so-called merit system salary schedule. They are at long last realizing that such soft soap does not pay the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker who, inconsiderately, insist that teachers pay their bills like anyone else. It is hardly likely that many teachers will shed crocodile tears over the shortages that now exist. Politicians, both of the legislative and educational variety, will have to accept the idea that if they want to get and keep good teachers they will have to pay for them. Then, and only then, will they demonstrate that they really mean what they have been saying about the importance of our children.

The Lone Star Steel Company of Dallas Texas, one of the major steel companies of the country, has added a full-time minister to its staff as chaplain for its workers. The chaplain, an ordained Methodist minister, is available to all workers for personal counseling and advice. The company has also constructed an interdenominational chapel for prayer and meditation by any of the more than 4,000 employees of the company.

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New York: A new name for the Brotherhood of the United Lutheran Church in America will be proposed to delegates at the organization’s 1957 convention in Pittsburgh, from October 17-19. A change in name, to United Lutheran Churchmen, along with a new constitution and by-laws had their first reading at last year’s convention. The United Lutheran Church in America has reported that it paid a quarterly dividend of 11.8 cents to subscribers to the common investing fun.

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The editor of The Christian Century magazine has raised questions about the lasting benefit of crusading techniques like those of Billy Graham. In an article written for the United Press, Dr. Harold E. Fey says, “Mass-produced conversations fail to endure the test of time. On the other hand, the one-by-one conversions which take place through the churches amount to more than 3 million each year, without fanfare or excitement and with a minimum of loss and disillusionment.”

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Mackinac Island, Michigan: A Philippine newspaper columnist says moral rearmament (whatever that is) is “the only platform for reconciliation between the Asian countries.” Vicente Villamin of Manila spoke last Tuesday to the Moral Rearmament World Assembly.

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Pittsburgh: A segregation law passed in South Africa this month has been described by the Anglican bishop of Johannesburg as, in his words, “a straitjacket of racist ideology.” The Rt. Rev. Richard Ambrose Reeves, speaking in Pittsburgh, said the new law threatens the freedom of assembly for the first time and includes churches. This illustrates clearly that once the people embark upon a restriction of one basic right, such restriction tends to spread until it embraces others, and unless stopped and reversed, ends by turning the country into a concentration camp where no rights exist. We have some in this country who think we can have just a little bit of restriction without harm.

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The dean of the Harvard Divinity School, the Rev. Dr. Douglas Horton, has been elected chairman of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. Dr. Horton succeeds Archbishop Y. T. Brilioth of the Church of Sweden. The bishop of the Church of South India, the Rt. Rev. J. E. Lesslie Newbigin, has moved into Dr. Horton’s former post of Vice Chairman. Delegates to the commission meeting at Yale University Divinity School this week heard their executive secretary declare neither the World Council of Churches nor the Faith and Order Commission has claims of monopoly on matters of Christian unity. But Dr. J. Robert Nelson continued that the commission is unique because it is the only fully international and inter-confessional body that has as its sole purpose the promotion of the unity of all Christian people.

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Northern and Southern Baptists have at least their top officers on a remarkably intimate level. Both belong to the same congregation. The Rev. Dr. Clarence Cranford heads the American or Northern Baptist Convention. He is pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. One of his parishioners is Democratic Representative Brooks Hayes of Arkansas, who leads the Southern Baptist Convention. The two church bodies have been rivals in the past, and still are, but the two presidents have a fine working arrangement. Representative Hayes says, “Happy circumstances find us together. The exchange of ideas is very helpful.” Dr. Cranford states, “We can keep each other informed.”

This top executive proximity happens because of a simple but unusual arrangement in the nation’s capital. The 54 Baptist churches in Washington are duly aligned, that is, they are affiliated with both northern and southern groups. No report yet has been received of development of split personalities as a result of this arrangement.

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New York’s Francis Cardinal Spellman is reported as mentioned very prominently as a possible successor to Pope Pius as head of the Roman Catholic Church. The information comes from the Vatican-approved biographer of the 81-year-old pontiff. The biographer, Seamus Walshe, also says Archbishop Giovanni of Milan is considered a possible successor to the throne of St. Peter. Walshe has written what is described as a “human and personal” biography of Pope Pius XII. He is in the U.S. for a six-month lecture tour. He is an Irish educator on sabbatical leave from the Notre Dame International School in Rome.

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Every minute of every day for the last seven years prayers for easing the problems of the world have been sent up from the Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church in Oklahoma City. The church’s pastor, the Rev. Monsignor John Walde, says that when the prayer vigil began, the Korean War looked as if it might lead to a third world war. There was tension over the whole world. And Corpus Christi Church had its own problems. Vandals had twice entered the church, burned valuable vestments, and ruined sacred vessels. Father Walde adds, “We thought prayer was the answer.” So at least one of the church’s 1,500 members has been in the church praying since that time. But Father Walde sees no reason why the vigil should end. As a matter of fact, no expiration time was set when the praying began.

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A subject of basic import to all Americans who cherish freedom, including freedom of religion, is one that receives little attention in the press, namely the serious restraints upon Americans who wish to travel in other countries. As The Washington Post editorialized not long ago, the State Department is now denying to all American citizens, with a few official exceptions, the right to travel in China, Albania, Bulgaria, North Korea, and North Vietnam. Earlier, and for some months, it imposed a similar blanket ban on travel to Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. Moreover, some Americans are denied permission by the department to travel anywhere, Americans, i.e., who are adjudged (or prejudged) by the department as being persons who cannot be trusted, according to the arbitrary standards of the bureaucrats in the Department of State.

Prior to World War I, passports were not required, but in recent years they have become a kind of exit permit without which one cannot leave the country, and while, in form, they are somewhat like birth certificates, i.e., mere documents of identity and nationality, the department uses them as instruments of policy, withholding them whenever and from whomever it chooses. A serious question exists as to whether these restraints on freedom of movement, whether applied indiscriminately to certain areas or discriminatory in regard to all travel abroad of suspected individuals, do not violate the basic American constitutional right.

It is true that there is no explicit guarantee of freedom of movement in the Constitution, but that freedom has been recognized ever since the Magna Carta in the common law of England and in the traditions of the U.S. as a right of free men. In 1948, the United States signed, but the present chief executive has not seen fit to present formally to the Senate for ratification, a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted unanimously by the General Assembly of the United Nations, and which reads in part, “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his own country.” In recent decisions, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has referred to the right to leave the country as “an attribute of personal liberty” and as “a natural right subject to the rights of others and to reasonable regulation under law.”

However, since 1918 it has been a crime to leave or enter the country in time of war without a passport. Congress gave the president authority, in 1941, to make travel restrictions in times of national emergency. In pursuance of that authority, an executive order forbids citizens to go abroad except in conformity with regulations prescribed by the secretary of state, and in this order designates two bases on which passports may be denied:

1. That travel by ordinary Americans might adversely affect foreign relations;
2. That travel by persons suspected of communist sympathies might impair national security.

Without venturing to comment on the constitutional issue that may be involved here, it is pertinent to question whether, as a matter of national policy, the freedom of Americans should be so drastically limited at the mere discretion of a public official, and an appointed one at that. Power to conduct foreign relations does not mean power to control all acts of Americans which may affect foreign relations. The General Counsel of the American Jewish Congress, Will Maslow, pointed out recently before a Senate committee that American citizens in this country may, by acts or utterances, affect foreign relations more significantly than by routine tourist travel, yet the State Department, thank goodness, has no power to regulate such acts or utterances. The department may rightly warn against travel into countries where danger exists, but to prohibit such travel at the traveler’s own risk is a kind of paternalism – or “father knows best” idea – that is alien to the American tradition. It may refuse protestation; it should not refuse exit.

And as far as suspected security risks are concerned, one cannot help but wonder whether the power to deny passports is not more dangerous to liberty than the travel itself. It is of course true that disloyal persons might serve as communist couriers or might do things abroad that are not to the advantage of the United States. But the danger is hardly as great as reposing in the passport office arbitrary authority to keep Americans at home. Since freedom of travel is a basic human right, it ought to be denied only when the exercise of it would facilitate a violation of law, such as in the case of fugitives from justice, draft evaders, or others seeking to escape their rightful responsibilities. It is more than doubtful that, if they knew the facts, many Americans would subscribe to this paper curtain erected by little men whose egos impel them to tell what other people shall do or not do in the matter of travel; little men who think they know what is good for others and for America. A strong country such as ours needs no such dictatorial nonsense.

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These are stirring if not exactly great days, both on the local and national scene. Last Friday, according to eyewitness reports and newspaper comment, a hearing was held for an accused person in Jonesboro, where the atmosphere must have been somewhat like old Roman days where the crowds gathered to see Christians thrown to the lions. At any rate, the climate of the courtroom was far less than decent decorum of judicial proceedings would require. Whether the accused in this or in any other criminal case is guilty or innocent is a matter to be determined in a calm, judicial atmosphere, not the kind that prevailed in this case. The popular curiosity-seekers, the morbid fascination, etc., are all understandable. What is not understandable is that the person presiding would let such a ridiculous situation continue throughout the hearing.

On the national stage it would appear that everything else has to wait while a handful of Southern Dixiecrats kill off, with administrative backing through vacillation, a bill designed to strengthen the enforcement of basic civil rights of all Americans. The House is stymied until the filibuster fanfare is over, and it looks right now as if the civil rights bill may be carried out of the Senate draped under a Confederate flag. It might be appropriate also for those responsible for its demise to get a few Nazi salutes, which would be in keeping with their ideology of racist supremacy and superiority.

All agree that the legislative program of the administration is bogged down and that little if any constructive legislation is to emerge from this session of Congress. The school aid bill was killed in the House this week. The administration blames Congress and the Congress blames the administration. It is likely that if the chief executive would like to know who is most responsible for this lack of achievement on his proposals, he could first meet that person merely by walking to the nearest mirror.

Denver: The editor of the Episcopal Church news magazine has raised the question whether Christianity can get too “popular.” Dr. William S. Lea, recently chosen dean of St. John’s Cathedral in Denver, says in a special article for the United Press that thoughtful Christians are concerned about relating their beliefs to the real problems of the modern world. He sets forth seven steps for cementing religious awakenings:

1. The parish church has to show forth in its common life what is proclaimed from its pulpit;

2. Evangelism and the church’s mission begin at home but does not end there;

3. Every layman must be a minister;

4. A greater application of the Gospel to all life;

5. The need to recognize the principle of contagion: He says that “Christianity is more often caught than taught;”

6. Jesus talked about God-centered living, not about religion. Religion is not a biblical word at all;

7. The need to proclaim the principle of redemption.

By relating Christianity to these steps, Dr. Lea believes that the current religious revival in America will have a more lasting effect, and, by implication at least, if it is not so related, it is simply superficial manifestation that will soon vanish.

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The president of the National Council of Churches indicates that communist practices call for serious questions about the Western world’s treatment of women. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake says the communists try to treat women as if they were men. He also told a meeting of the World Council of Churches, meeting at the Yale Divinity School, that the Western paternalistic society assumes the man to be the head of the household and the leader in all activities. (An assumption, this reporter should like to interpolate, that is more apparent than real.) Anyway, Dr. Blake goes on to say that the communist attitude raises the question whether the Christian church needs to find an alternative between the two patterns. Ideally, there should be a partnership between men and women on an equal basis, but making use of the special abilities of each sex. He asserts that it would appear a Christian society should hasten on its own initiative to remove legal and other artificial barriers; I should like to add, to both men and women.

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Rabbi Jacob K. Shankman of New Rochelle, New York, has been elected chairman of the American Board of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. Announcement of the election has been made in the biennial convention of the union in Amsterdam, Holland. Rabbi Shankman succeeds Rabbi Ferdinand M. Isserman of St. Louis, Missouri, in the American post.

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Just before the weekly Moslem noon prayers Friday, one of the Islamic world’s leaders was buried in the “Land of the Setting Sun.” The body of the Aga Khan III will lie first in a temporary brick tomb in a corner of the courtyard in the old imam’s villa at Aswan, on the Nile in Upper Egypt. Later a permanent mausoleum will be built for the remains of the 79-year-old Islamic Moslem leader, who died in Switzerland.

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At Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, Bishop William T. Watkins of Louisville, Kentucky, has told a five-day session of Methodist pastors and district superintendents that “We southerners have a fearful responsibility in the matter of race relations, and we must be careful not to consider the same old problem.” “This is a new hour and history has turned a corner to face a brand-new situation when the worth and dignity of an individual, regardless of race or color, is being fully recognized and fought for around the world.” He goes on, “Race relations is not merely a southern or American problem.” But “America’s future and well-being, it’s leadership in world affairs, is at stake in this whole matter.” Few realists would disagree with that.

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Many, perhaps most, of our Puritan forefathers were stalwart Calvinistic Englishmen and of course we are proud of them. But from around 1650 to the present, theology has experienced revolution after revolution: the protest of Pynchon; the concession of Jonathan Edwards; the Arminianism of the Wesleyan revival; the anthropology of Channing; Bushnell’s “Christian nurture”; the social gospel; and today philosophic humanism moving in one direction and despairing neo-Calvinism moving in the opposite direction. Once in a while we need to pause to survey the distance we have come and to envision the road before us. It will suffice little to waste our energies battling for a system of theology, whether it be humanism or Calvinism, and losing sight of the essential nature of religion (all religions) itself.

Religion is man’s response to the totality of the universe. The critical examination of this phenomenon is a philosophy of religion – any religion. The study of religion is a derivative and summative science. Religion has no data that are not also the data of other disciplines. The study of religion is the study of man on this planet from the standpoints of value, meaning, and appreciation. Since these are all involved in human experience, there is nothing in life that is foreign to religious examination. Thus practically religion is the science of life, the art of living. Psychology calls it “adjustment.” Religion can be studied in solitude, but it’s doubtful that it can be practiced in solitude. A. Eustice Hayden helpfully suggests that religion is simply “the shared quest for the good life.”

As one tries to examine the trend of scientific advance and tries to answer the question of whether modern scientific development was inevitable, given the nature of the human species, it is easy to arrive at the conclusion that technical progress is an inescapable necessity, like the law of nature of itself. There is little hope of trying to hold back the unfolding of science. But such a conclusion raises cogently the question of conflict between necessity and freedom, or determinism and freedom of the will. If civilization moves by unchanging laws, then what is the sense in our endeavor to direct it or to give it reasonable purpose? Would it not be better to accept a fatalistic attitude and live gaily from day to day? How can we speak about guilt and collective crime when we have recognized the inevitability of the development from the savage with bow and arrow to the airman with a hydrogen bomb?

One answer may be that the real world, which at times seems to be predetermined, sometimes seems to be a place where free will operates, and may actually be both. Just as light sometimes seems to be a train of waves, and sometimes a group of corpuscles, while both descriptions are really different aspects of the same physical situation, so also the apparent contradiction between predetermination and free will is not a real contradiction. Metaphysicians may proclaim one or the other of these doctrines but common people can accept the dual nature of the universe.

It is true that the hydrogen bomb is a devilish invention and that there is opposition to its manufacture and testing. The man who had directed the production of the first uranium bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, tried to resist production of the hydrogen bomb and was squeezed out of the Atomic Energy Commission for his pains. The principal promoter of the hydrogen bomb, Edward Teller, not only developed the theory of the bomb, but has agitated for its production. Thus he has inscribed his name in the book of world history – whether on the debit or on the credit side, the future will reveal. Teller’s justification of his course ran something like this: If we do not make this bomb, the Russians will. As a matter of fact, the first H-bomb explosion took place only a short time afterwards.

The leading statesman of the big atomic powers are in the habit of declaring that great war has become impossible. But neither their own foreign offices, nor the governments of smaller states take much notice of such declarations. The old diplomatic game, the bargaining and quarreling about small advantages, continue as if nothing had happened. Immensely expensive preparations are constantly being made for a war, which must under no circumstances be allowed to come about. Such is the crazy situation in which we find ourselves. It looks as if our civilization were condemned to ruin by reason of its own structure.

At the present time, fear alone enforces a precarious peace. However, that is an unstable state of affairs that must be replaced by something better if catastrophe is to be avoided. It is not necessary to look far in order to find a more solid basis for the proper conduct of human affairs. It is the principle which is common to all great religions with which all moral philosophers agree: the principle which in our part of the world is taught by the doctrine of Christianity; the principle which Mahatma Gandhi actually carried into practice before our own eyes, in liberating his own country, India, from foreign domination. It is a renunciation of force in pursuit of political aims except insofar as collective force, under control of the community – in this case, the world – is applied in an orderly way to prevent those who would destroy mankind from carrying out their evil purposes.

National sovereignty run amuck is a principal force blocking the development of such a community. Vested interests, in the form of markets, bureaucratic positions, personal and group status and prestige, as well as plain ignorance, combined to distort, misinterpret, frustrate the efforts of those who believe that the free world must rapidly, while it has a chance left, move to develop a world order based on law and democratic process that will curb the Hitlers and Stalins, and others much nearer home, but who here shall remain nameless, who would fasten upon mankind the terrible destructiveness of its own inventions. It is these who regard anyone advocating world order under law as being destructive of the status quo, and they are right. But a great prophet once remarked that “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Vision and action are needed urgently now before inevitable conflict under the present system may well cause us all to perish. I personally prefer one world to none.

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This last item is one that every person in Washington County should have in his consciousness and on his conscience. On April 30, a citizen of this community was murdered in cold blood, premeditatedly. It was almost a month before the first arrest was made in the case. Another arrest was made a week ago. Within this past week, an almost unbelievable series of events have occurred.

Two independent investigators employed by the county have withdrawn from the case, stating as their reason that they did not have cooperation from the chief law enforcement official of the county, an elected official. One report has them stating that he actually impeded the investigation.

To further compound the confusion, a legal firm, one of the best-known in the region, that had been hired by the father of the murdered man to aid the prosecution, withdrew from the case, giving as its reason that it could not get the cooperation rightly expected from the chief legal officer of the county, also an elected official.

To add a touch of something or other to an already chaotic situation, one of the accused has employed the services of a much-advertised attorney to conduct her defense.

In lengthy statements that, to this reporter at least, confuse rather than clarified the basic questions, both sheriff and attorney general avowed their earnest desire to see justice done, the latter saying that he was requesting a special prosecutor from the state capital to conduct the prosecution.

All of these things have left the public disturbed, confused, disgusted. The blood of Everett Jenkins cries aloud and loudly, not for vengeance, but for simple justice. Those to whom the people of this county have entrusted enforcement of the law have failed, either in procedure or purpose, to function effectively, or this sorry mess of affairs would not have developed. The public has a right to a simple and unequivocal answer to the sheriff’s own question when he heard the second arrest had been made: “What’s going on here?”

The Tennessee Press Association, meeting this week at Gatlinburg, continues its fight for the right of the people to know how government is handling, or mishandling, the public business. Resolutions were approved affirming the stand of the association, under the slogan, “What the people don’t know will hurt them.” Is it not ironical that in America, devoted to the government supposedly of, by, and for the people, that elected and appointed officials should consider that the work they are doing in behalf of the people is none of that same people’s business? Boards of education, meeting of administrative officials, and the like, which should be open to the public are being held behind closed doors from which the public is excluded. The press should be commended for its continuing fight for democracy against the stubborn undemocratic attitudes of public agencies that would deny the people the right to know what their government is doing.

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One adjustment to the uncomfortable summer weather in this region is made by the Rosemont Presbyterian Church of Bristol, which began this morning at 8:30 its services normally held at 11:00 o’clock. Sunday school, usually preceding the service, will hereafter be held immediately after the sermon. This practice is intended to continue through the worst heat period of the summer. It is the first adjustment of its kind that so far has been reported in the news.

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A prominent speaker and writer, one Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, writes that God always answers prayer. If you get that for which you pray, that’s proof. If you don’t, he says, “Your prayer has been answered negatively.” This would seem to be a sort of “heads I win; tails you lose” proposition, is it not? Anyway, it is very definitely in the Peale tradition. That should be something, though just what, it is very difficult to say at times.

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A short lesson in theology appeared in the news this week. It goes like this: “Humanism is not a denomination but a philosophy of religion. Unitarianism is not a philosophy of religion but a denomination, providing a framework for many different philosophies of religion. Each person should make his own spiritual adventure. Thoreau said we do not all march to the beat of the same drum.” Make sense, does it not?

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It is gratifying to know that the Ten Commandments for parents that were passed along in the last broadcast struck a receptive note with some of you, and it is a pleasure to pass along the ten for children, which was mentioned then. Here they are:

1. You shall not cause one parent to turn against the other.
2. Remember your parents have the same right as you to enjoy life, secure rest, and to have the fruits of their labor.
3. You shall not ignore your parents’ experience and wisdom.
4. You shall share in the responsibilities and labor of the family according to your ability and according to the need.
5. Your brother and sister shall be your friend and not your rival.
6. Your behavior before your teacher and in the community shall not bring reproach upon your family.
7. You shall respect the privacy of your father and mother, brother and sister.
8. You shall not reveal the secrets of your household nor bring gossip within your gates.
9. You shall observe the routine of your household and need not to be reminded of your daily tasks.
10. You shall learn diligently thy faith, observe its commandments, and attend its worship that you may be worthy of the best life.

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Much has been appearing in recent weeks and months about censorship. Movies, radio, television, newspapers, and even courts have dealt with the matter – not to mention the local busybodies, official or self-appointed, who are always trying to tell someone else what can be read. These same people would resent anyone telling them what they could or could not read. Several times the National Organization for Decent Literature, a Catholic agency, has been mentioned on this program. And some of you listeners have taken offense when none was intended. For that matter, it seems appropriate here to explain again the program viewpoint on the matter. The Roman Catholic Church, or any other private agency has a right to express its opinion on literature. That is merely an exercise of the right of freedom of speech. However, it does not have the right to coerce publishers or bookstores. The government is forbidden by the First and 14th Amendments to abridge the freedom of the press. If Catholics want this organization to tell them what they can and cannot read, that is their business, but it is likely that most of us resent having a priest, minister, or rabbi tell us what may or may not be read. It would appear that the organization’s priests are not in favor of sex. Under its express standards it would be logical to ban the Bible, the Odyssey, and Shakespeare. It would be very illuminating to you listeners, Catholic and non-Catholic, to secure a list of books banned by this organization. You can then see the dangerous quagmire into which such interference with legitimate knowledge can lead.

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And along the same line, it is pertinent to observe that the Supreme Court this week held that freedom of speech and press under the First Amendment does not extend to the obscene. Now probably 95% of Americans could agree upon certain things as being obscene; a similar proportion might be found agreeing upon what is not obscene. But what about the in-between? By what criteria is obscenity to be determined? Any of you listeners want to send in a definition that will fit all situations? It is more than likely that the court is going to have a fine list of cases coming up to it where not even the wisdom of a Solomon can draw a dividing line between the ’tis and the ’tain’t. In most cases it is also likely that whether something is or is not obscene depends upon the inner state of the reader or hearer, and this fact defies even the collective wisdom of the Supreme Court.

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So you have evinced some interest as to why this, a program devoted to current items of religious significance, is concerned so often and so much about various American freedoms, some of which are not exclusively religious in themselves. There should be no wonderment on this. Our bundle of freedoms is indivisible, and an attack on one anywhere anytime is a potential threat at least to all the rest of them. How can one have freedom of religion without freedom of speech? If speech can be curbed in the name of secular ideology, it can also be restrained next, in the name of religion. Without freedom of the press, dissemination of diverse views on religion would not be possible. If men and women were not free peaceably to assemble, if government at any level can prevent today a meeting of a political group, it may tomorrow, with as much logic, interfere with the gathering of a religious body that it does not like. Restriction of any one of the traditional freedoms sets up a chain reaction that can have reverberations throughout the whole range of civil liberties, including that of religion. And yet, some religious-minded people, or people who think they are religious-minded, would, if they could, curb ideas, meetings, or publications they do not like. I personally detest some of the stuff that rolls over the air waves, purporting to be music. To me, it is just noise, and very unpleasant noise at that. But who am I to say that it shall be banned? Some people actually like that stuff. And I could not be consistent in my thinking and behavior if I tried to ban it. Instead, I reach for the knob and turn it off. That is the limit of my freedom to curb. If my neighbor wishes to listen to it, that is his business, not mine.

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All of us are familiar with a supposed saying of a former president that his minister was “agin sin.” Well, the current chief executive, it would appear, is also. At his press conference this week, he was asked for a comment on the recommendation by a federal study commission that Congress make it a crime for private citizens, including newsmen, to disclose secret government information. The president replied that anyone doing that ought to be ashamed of himself. It is comforting to know that he is going to take such a firm and forthright stand on a very critical issue.

In Louisville, Kentucky, this week the Grace Lutheran Church opened its doors for the vacation Bible school. Out in front of the church had been placed a sign which read “All Children Welcome.” The church has been in existence for 66 years as an all-white institution, and it had no apprehension that the sign would be taken literally by non-white children, but that is what happened. Eleven Negro children showed up unexpectedly, and in about half a minute a 66-year tradition had been broken. For the minister, the Rev. Henry Kleckley, and the school director, Mrs. P. E. Davis, decided immediately to take the Negro children into the classes. The church governing body moved to support the decision, and thus this Lutheran Church is believed to be the first all-white church in the Louisville area to adopt integrated vacation Bible classes, and the first of its denomination south of the Mason-Dixon line. Believers in democracy and in Christianity applied cannot but applaud this episode, and hope that there may be more like it –  soon.

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Some time ago there appeared in the local daily newspaper two sets of 10 Commandments: one for parents, another for children. Since this reporter is more of a parent now than he is a child, he has taken the set for parents more seriously and wishes to pass them on to you, in modern day version. They were prepared by Rabbi and Mrs. William M. Kramer of California, and read as follows:

1. You shall strive to banish fear and anxiety from your gates and invite love and security within your portals.
2. You shall see your child as a personality to be released, not as a possession to be retained, praising his accomplishments, judging them according to his youth and gifts.
3. You shall honor and cherish your mate so that love permeates the household and adorns its inhabitants.
4. You shall train your child to respect himself, but in so doing not feel rejected by you.
5. You shall not be cowardly or overly-indulgent lest your child knows not the bounds of decency and good behavior.
6. When you are vexed with the ways of childhood remember, then, the days of your youth.
7. You shall help your child love beauty, uphold truth, walk in friendship, and serve his nation.
8. You shall make your home your child’s home wherein his friends are welcome guests.
9. You shall not exploit, nor compete with your child for gain or for pride or for any selfish end, nor visit upon him your parent’s shortcomings towards you.
10. You shall teach your children diligently your faith, to observe its commandments and attend its worship, prepare him for marriage, and the doing of good deeds.

It is entirely possible, even probable, that not everyone will subscribe to all of these, but it is also unlikely that many will disagree with very much. Parenthood is essentially a responsibility vested in parents, a responsibility which they cannot escape, to provide the best possible environment so that their children may develop in wisdom and stature to the utmost of their physical, mental, and moral capacities. For parents, both of them, to do anything less, is to shirk their responsibilities and to stunt the full development of young lives entrusted together to their care. Parents who put their own narrow and personal desires ahead of the welfare of their children are likewise not living up to their most important obligations.

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Perhaps many of you can recall that about two years ago there was much publicity about the so-called Reese Committee study of the foundations – Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, and others of the large philanthropic funds set aside for particular purposes. Particularly did the Ford Foundation come under fire of the committee mainly because it was making objective and impartial investigations and reports in areas and in a manner that aroused the ire of vested interests with whom members of the committee were very much in sympathy. The Fund for the Republic, a branch of the Ford Foundation, particularly, came under committee attack because it was sponsoring studies in the field of human rights and the American tradition.

An undertaking of the fund initiated within the past year has been little publicized, but is one which potentially could be very productive, and in its nature, is designed to articulate and make more widely understood basic elements of the American scheme of things. It is entitled “The American Traditions Project,” intended to discover and dramatize incidents from daily life, particularly those which might never reach the headlines, in which courage and good sense of Americans had been demonstrating in action our traditions of freedom and justice.

A series of awards was offered for letters reporting true stories of individuals or groups who had successfully defended the rights to think and read freely, and who had applied the principles of the Bill of Rights in concrete human situations against the dictates of expediency. These letters were submitted to a panel of distinguished judges who selected those most worthy of award. The first prize was awarded last year to Mr. John B. Orr, Jr., a native Southerner of Florida, who, as a representative in the Florida state legislature, was the only one who stood up and voted against legislation designed to control school segregation in his state in spite of the Supreme Court decision. This was not only risking a political career, but was undertaking an extreme hazard to his own personal safety. He believed segregation was morally wrong, no matter how long it had existed. So he voted, one in 90 members, against what he believed to be evil. He was running for re-election even as he cast his vote, and while his vote was contrary to the personal statements of virtually all his constituents, the election was a great tribute to him and the good common sense of the voters, for while there were the usual threats, abuse, anonymous telephone calls, he was re-elected because enough of the people in his district admired and respected his courage and integrity.

The second award, while not having the drama of legislative debate on a public issue, reaches deeply into the American tradition that prevails among the masses of the American people. Two women were waitresses in a bus depot in Akron, Ohio. A stranger, an unknown man, had come into the bus depot after attending a midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. He fell asleep there. Some local police came in, awakened, abused, struck, handcuffed him and finally arrested him for loitering, and took him to jail. This man was a recent refugee from communist Poland and had suffered many years in Nazi concentration camps, but the ladies did not know about that. They saw only a stranger who was threatened unjustly. After the man was taken away they drove out to the man’s home in an adjoining town. They spoke to his landlady, to the police, and even went to see the mayor of the town. When they went to court, though their employer had broadly intimated they should not voluntarily testify, they did so in the man’s defense, and as a result of their testimony, the man was released. They did all this for a person whom they had never seen before but because he was a human being receiving treatment that was alien to the American concept of fair play and justice. And had they had not acted in his behalf, he would probably have been thrown in jail and stayed there for a term for something he had not done. These women received the Fund for the Republic award because of their perseverance and insistence on American traditional fair play. Their names are Mrs. Ann Harr and Mrs. Bessie Dick.

Time does not permit enumeration in any detail of the other awards. A third involves a courageous newspaperwoman in Lexington, Mississippi, who, despite deep-seated community opposition, attacked bootlegging in a supposedly dry state. She opposed race violence, and in her forthright editorials made her convictions clear, though she suffered a judgment of libel brought in a suit by a local officer, and was charged with contempt of court. Fortunately higher courts threw these out. She is Mrs. Hazel Brannon Smith.

It is examples such as these that keep the true spirit of American traditions alive. The people involved had little to gain by espousing unpopular causes, but it was such espousal of such causes that created our heroes at Valley Forge. And if America ever reaches the point where such kinds of courageous people with disinterested convictions failed to exist and act, the most vital essence of the American spirit in human affairs will have ceased to exist, and we will be a morally bankrupt people.

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Four Congregational Christian Churches and a number of ministers and laymen have asked federal court action to prevent merger of their denomination with the Evangelical and Reformed Church. The suit, filed last Thursday, asked a declaratory judgment that the basis of the union is null and void and that the idea of a merger at this time is illegal and invalid. The group filing the action contend the Congregational Church General Council does not have the power to conduct the merger. The Congregational churches are described as fully independent and the General Council is termed an advisory body with no authority over any of the churches. However, Dr. Fred Hoskins, minister or head of the Congregational General Council, has stated that the lawsuit contains nothing to prevent proceeding with uniting the General Synod this coming week in Cleveland. The proposed church will have the name of the United Church in Christ, with some 2.1 million members.

These are two of America’s oldest Protestant denominations. The Congregational Christian Churches, descended from the pilgrims who came to New England aboard the Mayflower; while the early German and Dutch immigrants established the Evangelical and Reformed Church in this country in the early 18th century.

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The 171st Annual Conference of the Church of the Brethren has passed a statement on war that says its members should neither participate in war nor learn the art of war. Concern is expressed over what the church terms the nation’s increasing movement toward a permanently militaristic outlook. It urges the Brethren to study international relations and foreign policy and the constructive use of atomic power for the benefit of mankind. The convention has been meeting this week in Richmond, Virginia. This church has a long record of conscientious objection to war, and its actions this week is well within its long-established tradition.

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Again Richmond, the Temple of the Jewish Beth Ahabah Congregation stands only one block from the St. James Episcopal Church. Several months ago, a service was held in the synagogue for the retiring Episcopal rector. The Episcopalians were invited, and saw the Rev. Dr. Churchill Gibson presented with an inscribed Bible. Now the two congregations have gone further. They had jointly bought three of the homes separating their two buildings, and will make a parking lot. This will work out well, for Beth Ahabah worships on Saturday, and St. James congregation on Sunday.

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In Munich, Germany, a Catholic priest, a rabbi, and a Protestant minister have recorded interviews for broadcast behind the Iron Curtain as a symbol of religious freedom in this country. Father Robert Welch, Rabbi Frederick Bargebuhr, and Lutheran minister George Forell are members of a unique religious education experiment at The Iowa State University. They conduct classes in their beliefs at the university’s School of Religion…. The only one of its kind in the United States.

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London: Russia is starting to woo Moslem religious nationalist movements in the Arab world. A policy review in the Russian publication Kommunist urges that special attention be paid to religious sects and leaders in the Middle East.

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Indianapolis: A Methodist bishop says there must be closing of what he calls a “gap of misunderstanding” between Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. Bishop Richard C. Raines, the Episcopal head of the Methodist Church in Indiana, referred to the closing of Protestant institutions in Spain last year. He said this action makes Americans, in his words, “apprehensive lest the Roman Catholic should ever become dominant in the United States.”

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Waterloo, Iowa: Methodist Bishop Gerald Ensley believes the average community thinks ministers are much like Eagle Scouts – nice but not important. He told the North Iowa Conference of the Methodist Church that the community looks on ministers benevolently, but doesn’t take them seriously. This, he added, is worse than being persecuted or verbally attacked.

Today near Nashua, Iowa, is a celebration of the centennial of a song about a church, “The Little Brown Church in the Vale.” It was written on June 14, 1857, by music teacher William Pitts about a spot where a church did not stand. But the place impressed him as waiting for a church to be built there. Pitts saw the spot en route to visit a girl, Ann Warren, and to ask her parents’ permission to marry her. He sang the song at the dedication of the church in 1864. Later Pitts became a doctor. “The Little Brown Church” has its own long-time tradition as a very popular wedding place.

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The United Presbyterian Church of North America has voted to merge with the Presbyterian Church USA next May…. The moderator of the United Presbyterians in their final year is to be Dr. Robert Montgomery. He is president of Muskegon College, in new Concord, Ohio, where the church has been holding its final separate assembly.

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A scholarly yet easily-read book has been published to help tell the story of Judaism. Dr. Bernard Bamberger, rabbi of New York City’s West End Synagogue, stresses in his work the development of the great ideals of his religion. In the book, entitled “The Story of Judaism,” he states his firm belief that the core of Jewish experience is religious. In the core are the God idea; the concept of man and of humanity; the moral law; the future hope; the two foci or centers of synagogue and home; and the system of study, prayer, and observance. But Rabbi Bamberger says the current secular Jewish philosophies are a challenge to Jewish religion and thus must be considered. Still, he adds, the Judaism of today is the Judaism of Sinai. He tells the story from the seeds and roots – as Abraham and Moses and the exodus from Egypt. The Torah is explained. The author terms it more than “law.” Instead, “Torah” means the direction given man by God for the guidance of his life

In other chapters, the author writes of the effects of the Jews, Greeks, and Romans and their religions on each other; of the Jews and their religion up through the middle ages; the combating of discrimination by American and French revolutions; pogroms and anti-Semitism; American Judaism; and the state of Israel today.

Bamberger says that Paul, or Saul of Tarsus, made Christianity a different kind of religion than his and its native Judaism. The author defines Judaism as a religious discipline of acts and duties. “Pauline Christianity,” he declares, is a plan of salvation achieved through faith. Judaism is seen as centered around a divine command, and Christianity around the divine person.

Judaism, he goes on, is the source of another world-religion, Islam. But Islam never had any connection with corporate Jewish life. Although its teachings closely resemble those those of Judaism. Dr. Bamberger says that Mohammed taught a religion derived largely from conversations with Jewish acquaintances. Islam means “submission,” that is, submission to the will of the deity. The author sees the ethical standards of the Koran is fairly high and doing much to lift the Arab moral tone. But he adds that the Koran does not teach the full measure of universalism and sensitive tenderness found in the best Jewish teachings.

Well, that is the evaluation of his own religion and of other religions, and one can forgive him if he is ethnocentric about that to which he subscribes. Is there any of us who is not?

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Two Roman Catholic missionaries from California have been released from four years of jail and house detention in Communist China. The Rev. Charles McCarthy, 45 years old, of San Francisco, and the Rev. John Alexander Houle, 42 years old, of Glendale, expect to be in Hong Kong in about 10 days. By telephone from Shanghai, Father McCarthy has reported that he and Father Houle are in fair health. But he also said that Father Houle has a back ailment for which he is in bad need of treatment.

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A Protestant Episcopal minister charges that evangelist Billy Graham is using Madison Avenue advertising techniques to fill Madison Square Garden every night. The Rev. Howard Graf, of the Church of St. John’s in Greenwich Village, New York, said “There are thousands in the garden who are there because they love a parade, a show, circus, or to watch the fire engines go by.” Graf spoke from the pulpit of his church to about 100 persons. Graham has been preaching nightly to crowds estimated at 15,000 – 19,000 persons. Graham has never been a favorite or hero to this reporter, and many times he has aroused skepticism about many things. But could it be that the Rev. Graf may have a little jealousy also at the contrast in size of respective audiences? Is it not about time we quit throwing stones at each other? It is to be hoped that the net effect of Graham’s activities will be good. Who can complain about one who does good, however small that amount of good may be? It is better to ignore such if you do not to agree with them, then to berate and give them more publicity and perhaps make a martyr them to some.

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Vatican City: The newspaper L’Osservatore Romano has reminded its readers that the Vatican holds that there can be no collaboration between Catholics and socialists. The paper pointed out that the church not only condemns the communists, but has explicit reservations with regards to socialists, even when they have no formal links with the communists. It would be wonderful if labels were accurate and distinctions between right and wrong were always so simple.

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A 46-year-old man who spent 16 years in prison for a murder he did not commit has been ordained a Presbyterian minister. Nearly 450 persons were on hand to see John Cacopardo, of Hackensack, New Jersey, ordained at the Oliver Presbyterian Church on Staten Island. Cacopardo, married, and the father of two children, was sent to prison in 1937 for the murder of a young woman. Later, his uncle, Paul Petrillo, who had been a witness against him, was proved to have committed the murder. Cacopardo was granted a full pardon by Gov. Averell Harriman.

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Vatican City: The primate of Poland, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, returns on Monday, tomorrow, to Poland after a 39-day stay in Italy. The 56-year-old cardinal who was released last October from the communist detention camp had a farewell audience on Thursday with the pope. He will return to Poland by train, by way of Vienna.

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One more brief comment on liberal religion and the attitude of the religious liberal: The liberal is tolerant, hospitable to truth from every and any source. Tolerance does not imply a don’t-care attitude, nor does it mean a mush of complaisance. It does not mean everyone is right, and it certainly does not mean appearing to agree when you don’t. In short, it does not mean being a hypocrite. The liberal would explode superstition wherever he finds it; he would expose error; uncover fraud; stop exploitation of man by man; oppose wickedness; and correct ignorance. It is possible to pursue a gladiatorial attitude towards evil without impairing other values.

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The Walt Disney movie production which this reporter has not seen comes highly recommended in reviews that he has read, and he intends to see it when the opportunity arises. It is about the city of Boston where its citizens revolted when they believed their rights as Englishmen were denied. The review goes on to point out that the picture shows how hard-won and precious is our political heritage. This picture of Englishmen who had to become Americans in order to ensure domestic tranquility and secure the blessings of liberty comes highly recommended.

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It is a matter of increasing concern to many of us who like our system here in this country, and would seek to improve it, that so many take our freedoms, and this includes religious freedom, for granted, and refuse to see that if these freedoms are attacked, it will not be by a frontal assault but by persons seeking in the name of freedom to protect it by their own authoritarian devices and strategy. For example, in some parts of this country and by some elements of the population, both public and private, our Constitution is mocked and the Bill of Rights, disregarded. Within the past few years many reputations have been ruined by government stool pigeons. Citizens’ rights to travel are now being abridged and denied, and a possible new tyranny under the name of “internal security” sweeps over the land. Both private and public-appointed sensors survey the books we read are permitted to read, the magazines we buy, and the friends we have. Reports crop up now and then  – how many more there are that do not get revealed cannot be estimated – of browbeating of the press and intimidating the clergy. The press, on its part, plays up the releases given out by investigating committees and censors boards, and thus participate in character assassination. The self-styled intellectuals in many churches busy themselves with the metaphysical contradictions of Barth, Niebuhr, and Graham, while defenders of our traditional liberties are called suspicious characters and enemies of liberties are given metals as patriots. Coercion at home becomes coercion abroad, and the U.S. could easily become a replacement of Britain as a bully among the nations, telling them what kind of government they can have and what their several foreign policies shall be.

These are not welcome facts, but they are facts. The Pollyannas will keep repeating to themselves that “God’s in his heaven, all’s well with the world,” and maybe some of them will actually believe it. Democracy flourishes only when all are informed and willing to face facts realistically in the face of them. Perhaps it will do us all good to see “Johnny Tremain” and reorient ourselves in the true spirit that activated the people of Boston who made it possible through their acts to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare.

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Some of the materials that crossed my desk this week contained writings of certain neo-orthodox disciples, writings that have very pious sounds. However, if one seeks the meanings behind these sounds, the writings become very confusing. What these neo-orthodox persons are saying in effect is that religious man must give up the idea of human understanding and place his faith in the absurd. To put it in their phrase, “The ways of God are beyond human comprehension; therefore absurdity is the ultimate basis of faith.” Well, if the ways of God are beyond comprehension, how are the neo-orthodox in a position to make any statement about God and God’s ways? Ancient theology, when subjected to a rigorous methodology, can often become incredible and absurd. But the neos, in an effort to hold the line, make a bold pitch for the incredible, the absurd, and the contradictory as the only basis of true faith. There appears little difference between Cadillac neo-orthodoxy and pedestrian fundamentalism.

There is a sense in which the church and believers in it are not free: They are not free to reject sound scholarship; They are not free to deny the valid conclusions of science; They are not free to believe where there is no evidence; And they are not free from mental discipline, whatever men may put into books to the contrary.

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The much-maligned Fund for the Republic, part of the Ford Foundation, recently announced the establishment of a Commission on Rights, Liberties, and Responsibilities of the American Indian. This commission is headed by O. Meredith Wilson, president of the University of Oregon. The purpose of the commission is to arrive at a better understanding of the obligation of other citizens, and the federal and state governments to the Indians. This particular cycle of studies, commissions, surveys, recommendations, studies, etc., infinitum, has been going on now for at least 150 years, and the Indian has shown a remarkable vitality, enough to survive and to make remarkable progress in spite of his continuing role as a guinea pig in a land where he ante-dated the bureaucrats, benevolent or otherwise.

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Expressions of concern expressed on this program regarding censorship of reading materials by both public and private groups have been met with misunderstanding by some listeners; and, it would seem, by misinterpretation by others, perhaps misinterpretation based on misunderstanding. My meaning has always been clearly in mind, even though the words may not always have conveyed clearly that meaning. Any private group has a right to evaluate literature, movies, etc., and to make known its evaluation. That is a part of private freedom possessed by all. However, when an organization, public or private, tries to prevent the public from having access to literature, movies, television and radio programs, it enters a field where only the courts can make decisions regarding what is and is not obscene.

Perhaps the most widely known and publicized private group of this kind is the National Organization for Decent Literature, a nationwide organization whose membership is made up largely of Roman Catholic layman. Its units are to be found in many towns and cities. Its purpose is to campaign against “the lascivious type of literature which threatens moral, social, and national life.” Now few if any will disagree in principle with such a worthy purpose. It is only when it campaigns through use of force, expressed or potential, to prevent the public from reading what it, the organization, conceives to be immoral, and prevents the public from having access to the criticized materials that its work becomes indefensible. The novel, for example, which may be thought of by a committee of Catholic mothers to be unsuitable for a Roman Catholic adolescent may not be so thought of by a non-Catholic. The organization thus becomes a self-selected conscience of the whole country. And at the risk of crowding out other materials today that might well be included, it appears justifiable to observe that the recommendations of this organization have often gone far beyond merely expressing disapproval of a publication.

For example, representatives of the organization … call upon booksellers and ask that the condemned titles not be offered for sale. They inform non-complying booksellers that they will boycott him unless he complies with the request, thus contradicting its own assertion that the list is merely an expression that the publication does not conform to the organization’s code. Newsdealers who agree in advance not to sell anything to which the organization objects, are given monthly certificates of compliance. Lists of complying and non-complying dealers are widely publicized, and the public, both Catholic and non-Catholic, are urged to confine their purchases of all commodities to complying dealers. Check-ups by organization representatives are recommended at fortnightly intervals, thus creating a private-morals police force. And, worst of all, in many cases … , prosecuting attorneys, and military commanders of Army posts have issued instructions or orders that no books or magazines on the organization list shall be sold within their jurisdiction, thus putting the authority of the state in the service of a private sectarian group. For example, the prosecutor of St. Clair County, Michigan, has officially recognized the organization’s list as a guide to what publications cannot be sold in his jurisdiction. Thus the judgment of a particular group is being imposed upon the freedom of choice of a whole community.

Furthermore, many of the titles appearing on the organization’s proscribed list are considered among the most distinguished in literature. Books by recipients of the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award have been made markedly less available to the reading public by the censorship of a private and anonymous jury acting under its own standards of morality and taste. To mention just a few: Nelson Algren, National Book Award winner of 1950 had his “The Man With the Golden Arm” banned by the organization; William Faulkner, prize winner of many awards, had his “Sanctuary” denounced by the group; James Jones, who wrote “From Here to Eternity,” found that book listed among the immoral; Ernest Hemingway’s “To Have and Have Not” met with a similar fate. Works by such famous writers as John Dos Passos, Aldous Huxley, Erskine Caldwell, Kathleen Winsor, Richard Wright, and many others have been banned.

For an organization to let the public know what it thinks of a given publication is one thing, a justifiable action; to decide that the public must not read certain materials, and to use pressure to prevent publication and distribution of such matter, is another, and decidedly unjustifiable, procedure. To defend its right to evaluate is in no sense to support its right to prohibit. Freedom to know is an essential ingredient of the American bundle of freedoms, and no private group, Catholic or otherwise, has a right to impose its conviction and prejudices upon the public at large.

It would be both interesting and illuminating to know who, of those seeking government aid to suppress literature they do not like, are also among the emotional crowd now bewailing recent decisions of a branch of that same government, the federal judiciary, upholding the right of individuals to see the evidence upon which they are being tried for criminal charges. Unless one can separate morals from religion, both are involved here. All the courts have done is to say that a man cannot be convicted in a criminal case on secret evidence. But the congressmen and the Department of Justice have become near hysterical over these decisions and have rushed legislation seeking, as they put it, to protect the FBI files. They ignore or fail to mention that the FBI can protect itself, while the individual, faced with the power of government, is the one who really needs protection, to the end that government itself does not wreak an injustice.

Why are some Americans, who now constitute the most powerful nation in the world, afraid of the magnificent, fundamental liberties nailed down in the last years of the 18th century by a small nation, one that was weak, poor, and exhausted by a victorious war against a great power?

To put it another way, one may ask why should 170 million Americans, armed with the hydrogen bomb, be alarmed by the rights to free speech, press, and religion, won for us by fewer than 3 million colonials who at times not only fought barehanded but, at Valley Forge, barefoot in the snow. Are we so terrified of internal subversion on the part of a mangy political party, whose numbers probably do not exceed 50,000 persons, that we are willing to let civil liberties guaranteed to us by the Constitution go by default? Until the [Supreme] Court in recent decisions called a halt to such attrition, the guarantee in the First and Fifth Amendments were literally going by default. What the court has done is simply to scrape the barnacles off this vital portion of the ship of state.

If those now yapping at the Court for returning to fundamental American precepts want to put the matter to a test, let them have the courage of their convictions and try to get an amendment in Congress to repeal the Bill of Rights. That way we could find out if the American people are running so scared that they will yield up their basic liberties for a false security. Who, minus liberties, is secure? What is security, minus freedom, except prison?

Too often the past 10 or 15 years any unpopular idea, even fluoridation of water, has been equated with subversion and pronounced communistic. The people who established the Constitution had had considerable experience with unpopular ideas, but they were not afraid of them when they wrote the Constitution and, two years later, framed the Bill of Rights.

The record of their fears of unbridled government, i.e., one without a Bill of Rights, is impressive. Both Virginia and New York came to the first session of Congress with separate and long bills of rights. The subject was a major item of business in the first session of the first Congress of the United States. North Carolina even refused to ratify the new document until such a bill was added. Massachusetts and New Hampshire ratified it, but made urgent recommendations that civil rights be spelled out. Until the Court spoke out these past few weeks, these great, fundamental rights were being nibbled away little by little by little people who were afraid of the very freedoms that make America unique among her enemies. Secret trials and conviction by secret witnesses are trappings of the dictatorships against whom we are competing. To emulate them is to become like them and destroy the very reason for competing. To imitate them is to surrender the right to freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion –  and nobody but the commies wish that. And they wish it because they are afraid of it. It is time Americans quit being afraid.

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New York: Two Iowa clergymen report the tremendous postwar prosperity in West Germany has brought with it a decline in religion, while in communist-run East Germany there is a religious revival. Father Robert Welch, a Roman Catholic priest, and Dr. George Ferrell, a Lutheran minister, returned last week from a one-month tour of Germany, France, Holland, and Switzerland. Both men are associate professors in The University of Iowa School of Religion. Dr. Frederick Bargebuhr, a Rabbi, who is also an associate professor at the School of Religion, accompanied them on the trip. Dr. Bargebuhr is now in London. The chief purpose of their trip was to tell students and teachers about the School of Religion. Students who attend their lectures often expressed amazement that clergymen of three different faiths now associated socially but traveled together and spoke from the same platform.

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Mackinac Island, Michigan: Representatives of India, Japan, and South Korea addressed the Moral Re-armament Assembly of Nations at Mackinac Island this past week. Japanese Senator Takeshi Togano called the gathering, in his words, “a testing ground for the atomic bomb of moral re-armament. This fallout, he said, will blanket the world in answer to the fallout of the military bomb.”

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A 10- year-old Lutheran girl and her mother are flying to Lourdes, France, seeking a miracle cure at the Roman Catholic shrine. Neighbors of Lynn Lambrecht of West Allis, Wisconsin, donated $1,000 to cover expenses for the trip. The girl is critically ill with arthritis. Catholic authorities have confirmed the report that many miracles have occurred at the shrine. But the Rev. Adolph Kappes, pastor of the Lutheran church attended by the Lambrecht family, said, “The shrine of Lourdes has no more power to cure than any other church.” So, it would seem that this is a case of “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”

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Dr. Maurice Eisendrath, President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, returned last Friday from religious conferences in England, France, and Switzerland. He also attended the meeting of the World Union for Progressive Judaism in Amsterdam, Holland. His organization is the parent body of more than 550 Reform temples in the United States and Canada, representing more than 1 million congregants.

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A prominent Jewish author died this week. He was Sholem Asch, who had said he tried to demonstrate in his novels the interdependence of the Jewish and Christian religions. That was in the hope that mutual understanding might lead to a better world. Asch left his home in Miami Beach, Florida, about four years ago because of some Jews’ hostility towards his books. They had criticized his handling of New Testament personalities in such works as “The Nazarene.” To persons who said Asch seemed preoccupied with Christianity, the author replied he had never considered leaving the faith of his fathers and never intended to. He admitted his books made him some enemies. But he added that he had shown how deeply rooted Christianity is in Jewish history and religion. He was a fervent Zionist, inspired by the state-building experiment in Israel.

Asch was born in Poland and received rabbinical training. But he decided such spiritual leadership was not for him. He came to the U.S. in 1910 and became a citizen in 1920. He died in self-imposed exile in London at the age of 76.

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This weekend, the Seventh-day Adventists are celebrating the 50th anniversary of their youth department. The meeting is being held on the campus of the Adventist Mount Vernon Academy [Ohio], where the movement was started in 1907. When it began, the department had about 5,300 members. Almost that many, 4,000, are attending this golden anniversary session. Now the youth department has more than 400,000 members all over the world.

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A flying hero says he will now limit his air trips to serving his two congregations. He is the Rev. Lester J. Maitland, former Air Force brigadier general, one-time aide of Air Force General William Mitchell. Friday of this week he was ordained a priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church, and will serve at St. John’s Church in Iron River and St. David’s at Sidnaw, both in Michigan’s upper peninsula.

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.”

Heidelberg, Germany: Episcopal leader, Rev. Henry I. Loutitt, says church attendance among members of the Armed Forces is particularly encouraging. Loutitt, who is Protestant Episcopal bishop of South Florida and chairman of the Armed Forces Division of the National Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church, says attendance of Armed Forces personnel at church services compares favorably with any civilian church.

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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts says he believes a Roman Catholic could be elected president. Kennedy says the people are running ahead of the politicians who say a Catholic would have no chance for the presidency. In 1928, says Kennedy, Al Smith failed in his presidential bid for reasons other than his Catholic religion. He pointed out that Smith did better in the South that year than Adlai Stevenson did in 1952. Well, it is a pretty good bet that any presidential candidate with hopes for election is going to have to espouse civil rights for all on a basis of equality. Al Smith lost many votes because of his religious affiliation, and any candidate of that faith probably would lose votes. Given both an integration declaration and a Catholic affiliation, it is more than doubtful that such a candidate could carry a single southern state. Had this reporter had a vote in 1928, he would have voted for Al Smith, largely because of the bigotry injected into the campaign. There is considerable evidence that anti-Catholic bias has decreased considerably in the last 25 years, but no conclusive evidence that it has disappeared, unfortunately.

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In Montgomery, Alabama, this week two white men, one a teenager, were acquitted of charges of bombing a Negro church. An all-white jury rendered the verdict and a packed courtroom cheered the verdict. The prosecutors told jurors that an acquittal would say that it’s all right to bomb Negro churches and dwellings, and might lead to retaliation. The defense countered with the assertion that an acquittal would serve notice “that we are not going to yield another inch fighting for our way of life.” And what is that way of life? Simply a denial to other human beings, because of the accident of race (which is unimportant anyway and about which the individual can do nothing) those same rights that they, the white folks, demand for themselves? How one person can insist upon those rights for himself, deny them to other human beings, and then say that he honestly believes that God is the father of all humanity? It is impossible to see. It would indeed be a capricious father that would show so much partiality among the children he creates. Perhaps a form of tragedy would have emerged from the trial, whichever way the verdict had gone; but it is tragic for individuals so to try to deceive themselves on such fundamental matters.

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From Chicago and Philadelphia comes more comforting news. In Chicago, the Southern Baptist Convention has urged an end to resistance to integration. It also has demanded in a unanimously adopted report that persons perpetrating violence against Negroes in the cause of segregation be brought to legal justice. And by the end of the autumn of 1958, a fifth Southern Baptist seminary may be admitting qualified Negro students. Thus the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary at Wake Forest, North Carolina, would be added to other Southern Baptist clergical educational institutions – teaching Negroes at Louisville, Kentucky; New Orleans, Louisiana; Fort Worth, Texas; and Berkeley, California.

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In Philadelphia meanwhile, the American Baptist Convention has voted to choose ministers and accept the membership in its 6,000 churches without regard to racial background or origin.

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A noted biblical archaeologist and Jewish leader has gone back to Israel on a twofold mission. Dr. Nelson Glueck, president of the Hebrew Union College, a Jewish institution of religion in New York City, will put final approval on plans for a half-million dollar graduate school in archaeology. The school will be operated in Jerusalem by the college institute. Dr. Glueck also will resume his mile-by-mile exploration of the Negev desert region. Last summer, the theologian-archaeologist uncovered some prehistoric settlements. These pointed to a thriving agricultural civilization in the Negev as long as 4,000 years ago.

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Quite a furor has been aroused in England by the accusation of the archbishop of Canterbury, directed at the Roman Catholic Church there. Dr. Geoffrey Fisher says that the Roman Catholic Church in Britain is hostile to the established church and does not work with it as Catholics work together with other churchmen in Europe. Dr. Fisher, speaking at Wolverhampton, charges that the Catholic Church is waging what he termed “open war” against Anglicans.

The reply came from London by Dr. William Godfrey, Roman Catholic archbishop of Westminster, who declined to reply to the Anglican minister’s charges, but said that he would “rather not make any statement. I prefer to leave it to the good sense of the British people to judge who is waging open war.”

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Back in our own country, something of a tempest in a teapot was aroused by the warning some time ago that Catholics should not attend the so-called Crusade Services now going on in Madison Square Garden, New York City. The Rev. John E. Kelly says in Washington that he was not voicing personal prejudice when he warned Catholics to stay away from Graham’s revival meetings. Kelly, information director of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, says he was voicing a long-established rule of the Roman Catholic Church. Kelly says he has received a lot of mail from Catholics as well as Protestants accusing him of bigotry. And when churchmen wade into such an argument, it is the time for a layman reporter to stay out of the ridiculous mess.

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Last Sunday I dealt with in as much detail as the time permitted with the current schools of thought regarding objective criticism of biblical literature. It is not surprising that it aroused some of you to disagree. That is good, for where there is no disagreement, there is not likely to be any thinking.

The fact is the books of our Bible are not all in the order of events or in the order in which they were written. Thus the first five books of the Old Testament are composed of four separately written narratives composed years apart, and combined and recombined, re-written and re-edited from about 850 B.C. to 250 B.C. The Jews had two Bibles. One in Hebrew was made official about A.D. 100 but no Hebrew manuscript exists that is earlier than the 10th century. They have a Greek Bible that was translated the second and third centuries B.C. So, even when we talk about the Old Testament, we may be talking about either one or both of these Bibles.

In studying any part of the Bible, it is necessary to restore as nearly as possible the actual wording of the original manuscript of the author. This is known as “lower criticism” and fortunately has been pretty well done for the present-day student.

“Higher criticism” includes all that can be learned about a passage and its author that is not included in lower criticism. In considering any part of the New Testament, for example, it is necessary to look for the sources of ideas. One person has identified 11 separate sources for the fourth Gospel, and not all those sources were Hebrew. A part of this higher criticism is to see if a passage in question is supported by parallels in other Gospels and in apocryphal literature. In addition, the careful student, in considering any part of the Bible will try to find who wrote it, when it was written, the cultural pattern at the time of writing, the political situation, the interest of the writer, and the language conveyed to the people to whom it was addressed. It is especially pertinent in the Old Testament to identify the approximate time of writing in order to know the trend of changing religious thought under the impact of political and cultural change due to contacts with alien cultures.

The truth is that the Bible has many literary stereotypes. These may be classified as miracles, legends, folk-tales, parables, naive philosophy or wise sayings, traditions, etc. Moreover, considerable work has been done in separating Jewish from Hellenistic elements.

Today more is known about Bible literature than at any previous time. It is a fascinating literature, and it stands in its own right. It’s moralities, philosophies, errors, and insights find parallels in the literature of many peoples – in English, Chaucer and Shakespeare, for example.

Comments made here on these two programs are intended in no way to detract from the importance of biblical literature; on the contrary, they should make the person who really wants to know something about this great literature more satisfied than ever. In this connection, the book entitled “Origin and Character of the Bible” is highly recommended.

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Allusion has been made here a few times to the incredible situation in South Africa. Now comes a recent issue of The Christian Century that underscores the shocking things happening there. There are about 3 million whites and 10 million Africans. In that unhappy land it is legal to persecute Africans. The theory of the law seems to be that anyone who does not like the government of South Africa as presently constituted is a communist and therefore guilty of treason. This is an old McCarthy trick that the South Africans seem to have imported.

In July 1955, a so-called Congress of the People was called and an alleged “Freedom Charter” was drawn up. Its contents seem innocent. Indeed, it sentiments and propositions might well appear in any Christian sermon on any Sunday in the year. Yet, over 200 arrests have been made charging those who signed it with treason. The barbarous white masters of that strange country have passed laws that zone the whole country racially, register the population by race, forces an education that prepares the Africans as servants of white masters, and controls the movements of the Africans.

In parts of our own country there is race prejudice, but prejudice and discrimination are not elevated into law. The reverse is true; Negroes are legally free to propagandize, educate, and agitate. Also, it is not a case of a minority enslaving a majority.

Of course the South African Union is a part of the British Empire. In theory the parliament of Britain has complete control over all the empire from dominions to crown colonies, but this principle is not applied. Legally the British Parliament could repeal all or any part of the Constitution of South Africa. Probably it would not be politically smart. But couldn’t it do something? If not, is this not something the United Nations might take up under its human rights declaration? It would appear that the great powers of the world are more ready to defend oil and other commerce than human beings.

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the USA was told this week that “In the area of race relations, America is facing a moral crisis such as it has not faced since the Civil War.” Without dissenting voice, the assembly, meeting in Omaha, approved a report which declared “Racial segregation is a problem of such magnitude and urgency that it takes precedence over other social issues in American life today.” This vote was taken in the face of a challenge from an all-white Birmingham presbytery in Alabama which objected to a policy statement that took an entirely anti-segregation stand. Dr. Earle, secretary of the church’s Department of Social Education and Action, declared that “The crisis is characterized by blindness and resistance to the demands of simple justice and fair play.” And any comment this reporter might make on that statement would indeed be super superfluous, and belaboring the obvious.

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The Southern School News this month gave a summation of progress or lack of it in the three years since the original Supreme Court decision. It found that 685 school districts have either begun or completed the integration process, embracing some 325,000 Negro children and nearly 2,000,000 white. As against this, there are about 3,100 bi-racial districts that remain segregated with nearly 2.5 million Negro and some 7 million white children. During the period, legislatures of 11 states adopted more than 130 pieces of pro-segregation legislation since the May 17, 1954, Court ruling. This is legislation which doubtless will delay, but is hardly likely to avoid, the ultimate inevitable adjustment to integration.

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The Hebrews, after coming into contact with Persians, believed in the resurrection of the body. The Hellenistic Greeks believed in the immortality of the soul. Paul wrote about a “resurrection body.” No one, probably including Paul, knew exactly what that meant.

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Current Sunday school lessons for adult Protestants are based on the Old Testament and commentators in the accompanying literature stress the importance of the Bible as the basis of religion. Well, it is true that the Bible has been the basis of Protestantism, but the word “Bible” itself came from the Greek meaning “books.” I wonder if those same commentators are not, consciously or unconsciously, overlooking the fact that our Bible is one of the results of religion; not the cause of it. Were the Bible blotted out, man would still be a religious animal, for the phenomena of religion is not dependent upon any one Bible.

A listener writes, “It seems to me a scientifically trained person must put critical evaluation in moth balls while reading the Bible.”

It is difficult – impossible – to agree with this. Probably more than any other literature, critical examination of Bible is necessary to a real understanding of it. One can read Rousseau, even Kant, with ease and understand fairly well what he reads. But Paul’s book of Romans, for example, is pretty hard going. The fact is that the Bible is a large body of heterogeneous literature of the people of spiritual genius who passed through many cultural, political, and religious changes. It took some 10 centuries for the Bible to be written. Important manuscripts have been lost. Parts have been badly translated and even more badly interpreted. Worst of all perhaps, it has been the football of theological controversy.

There are at least two schools of biblical criticism in the U.S., both claiming to use the scientific method of critical examination. One may be called the conservative school, and it is concerned in preserving the religious values of the Bible. To use the language of some of its members, it sees the Bible “as a revelation of God to man, as man’s talk through this life with God.”

The other school claims that the work of the first is at some points rendered invalid by the theory it holds. The logical conclusions must be avoided if they are in conflict with the theory. It accuses the first school of abandoning the scientific method at precisely the points where it is most needed. It charges the first schools of sometimes bending biblical scholarship to theological ends.

The latter school sees the science of biblical criticism as an independent empirical discipline having no necessary connection with theology. It claims to be wholly objective and if at any point it conflicts with theology, then theology can do the worrying. This school is not out to prove something, or to support something, or to conserve something. Each of these schools has capable scholars within its ranks and both cut across many non-fundamentalist denominations.

The truth is that the Bible is historical material but not objective history. The books of Kings, for example, are told from the standpoint of, and are to the advantage of, the Southern Kingdom. In this day when we are supposed to have developed something of a science of history, we know how prejudiced our historians are in writing about any way in which we have been involved. Few would look upon Kings, for example, as objective history, and only critical examination, without regard to theological theory, can determine the degree of objectivity to be found there.

It not only took centuries to write the Bible, it also took centuries for men to determine what books should be included in it. The process of selection of books that shall be official Bible is called “canonization.” The Roman Catholic Church made a decision that seems to be final. It canonized 11 books of the 14 that were in the Septuagint. The Roman Catholic bibles in any language are based on Jerome’s Latin Bible of the fourth century A.D., which in light of manuscripts discovered later is judged to be a weak work.

Again, there is no single Bible accepted universally by all Christians. There is the Roman Bible, Protestant bibles of various kinds, based on different collections of manuscripts, and those of the Armenian church, of the Coptic Church, and of the Syrian church. All are different – not merely one text translated into different languages. Some English bibles have been printed with 14 apocryphal books between the Old and New Testaments. Today printers leave them out and Protestants lost one-third of their Bible and few of them ever missed it.

The point of all this? Well, maybe you will think there is no point, but here in the so-called “Bible Belt,” it may do us good to take a little broader look than most of us seem inclined to take and make a critical study of how our Bible came to be, how it is like, and also how it is unlike, bibles of other Christian, even other Protestant, groups. The trouble with too many of us, and this reporter is no exception, is that we would willingly die to defend the Bible but we do not know what it is, have never read it, but we take offense when we hear even objective, constructive criticism of it. Could this very lack of understanding not well put us in the unenviable position of being blind people trying to lead the blind?

Clearfield, Pennsylvania: Superintendents of the Central Pennsylvania Conference of the Methodist Church have spoken out against ministers’ wives accepting full-time employment. The report said there is a growing practice of pastors’ wives accepting such employment apart from church work. It added: “This may be necessary sometimes because of low income but it is our conviction that when this is necessary it is a bad practice… There are those who feel that one of the factors contributing to the instability of many homes in our modern lives is a full-time employment of husbands’ wives… Members of our church look to the parsonage as the ideal of a Christian home and family life”

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The Northwest Synod of the United Lutheran Church has reinstated and re-ordained the Rev. Victor Wrigley of Brookfield, Minnesota, who was convicted of heresy and ordered unfrocked last year.

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The Rev. Dr. James Pike of New York City will be given the Universal Brotherhood Award for 1957 this evening. The award goes to the dean of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for outstanding work in human brotherhood and human understanding. The occasion will be of the Universal Brotherhood Dinner of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

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The official Roman Catholic directory says the approximate 34.5 million Catholics in the U.S., Alaska, and Hawaii are a gain of almost a million in one year. The directory says the largest Roman Catholic archdiocese in the U.S. is that of Chicago. The biggest Catholic diocese is in Brooklyn.

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The chief spokesman for a Protestant group, which seldom agrees with a Roman Catholic stand, has defended the right of Catholic students to boycott a public school baccalaureate service in a Protestant church. The incident occurred in Moundsville, West Virginia, where 22 members of the high school graduating class stayed away from the baccalaureate ceremony held at a Methodist church with a Presbyterian minister delivering the sermon. The Rev. B. F. Farrell, parish priest for the 22, had said the school board rules requiring attendance was, in his words, a “violation of the rights of free exercise of religion.” Four other Catholic students in the class of 182 attended the service. Subsequently the 22 were barred from participating in commencement exercises, but got their diplomas. The executive director of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Glen Archer, said in a statement that the school board’s rule, as he put it, “is not quite in harmony with our American heritage.” This is about as gross an understatement as one could imagine. Wonder when or whether school boards and other officials, especially in public high schools, are going to eliminate the baccalaureate services entirely and thus stop violating the First Amendment? Courts have in decision after decision held such things unconstitutional. The “Father Knows Best” attitude, which seems to be an occupational disease with some administrators, feel they are law unto themselves in many things, the Constitution of the U.S. notwithstanding.

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New York: The poll of Methodist ministers shows that those responding oppose by a margin of 5-to-1 the use of hydrogen bomb warfare, even if our government sees no other way to stop communism. The Fellowship of Methodist Pacifists conducted the poll by sending questionnaires to 16,000 ministers. Fewer than 3,000 replied.

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Along the same theme, the president general of the Methodist Church of Australia says future generations would condemn the Christian church if it kept silent today about atomic tests. Dr. A. H. Wood told a Methodist rally in Melbourne that atomic war is suicide, adding, “It is not too late even now to negotiate with Russia to abandon nuclear tests and arrange nuclear disarmament.”

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Providence, Rhode Island: The Episcopal bishop of Rhode Island has criticized the State Department ban against American newsmen working in Red China. The Rev. John Seville Higgins calls the policy “incredibly shortsighted, if not worse.” American reporters, he says, can be trusted to observe life in Red China or anywhere else with an objective eye and report what they have seen and heard.

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New Haven, Connecticut: The Dean of Yale Divinity School charges that the church is the most segregated institution left in America. The Rev. Liston Pope, in a book, “Kingdom Beyond Caste,” says the church “has fallen behind most other major areas of human association as far as the achievement of integration in its own life is concerned.”

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Omaha, Nebraska: The 169th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the USA has taken the first step towards a merger with the United Presbyterian Church of North America. The General Assembly voted unanimously in favor of a merger. The two, if combined, would have a membership of about 3 million.

This is Religion in the News, a program of non-sectarian report and comment on current items of religious significance.

Kiamesha Lake, New York: The Rabbinical Assembly of America has urged President Eisenhower to abrogate the air base treaty with Saudi Arabia because of that country’s discrimination against Christian religious services and American Jews. Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, of Englewood, New Jersey, told the 57th Annual Convention of the assembly that American acquiescence to the discrimination is an insult to the moral integrity of Jewish chaplains and tens of thousands of Jewish servicemen. It is not likely that any positive decision will be made on this request anymore than has been forthcoming on many other kinds from the same source.

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Two proponents of Protestant church unity have predicted that American churches will take historic steps toward unity late this summer. At that time, representatives of 43 denominations will meet at Oberlin, Ohio, to talk over differences in doctrine, organization, and policy which now keep Protestants divided. Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert and the Rt. Rev. Angus Dun say the Oberlin meeting will rank as one of the most important ever held in the long, slow effort to heal the divisions of Christendom.

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Toledo, Ohio: Two Protestant church denominations in Ohio have lowered racial barriers. The Lexington Conference of the Methodist Church approved the transfer of a church in Steubenville, Ohio, from a Negro to a white conference. Presently, to change jurisdiction, the change must be approved by all churches in the new jurisdiction, which will be true in the case of the Steubenville Negro church.

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Vatican City: Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, primate of Poland, received yesterday the red hat and ring of his cardinal’s rank from the pope in a private ceremony. The cardinal was elevated to that rank four years ago, but at that time did not attend the investiture in Rome because he feared he would not be allowed to return home. Yesterday’s ceremony was held in the papal apartment and was strictly private, being attended only by Vatican ceremonial officials and the four Polish churchmen who accompanied cardinal to Rome.

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St. Louis, Missouri: J. L. Sullivan, dean of the College of Journalism of Marquette University, has been named recipient of the 1957 Catholic Digest Award. He was presented an inscribed medallion and a stipend of $1,000.

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Fatima, Portugal: Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world journeyed to Fatima to observe the 40th anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady to three Portuguese peasant children.

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New York: A 150-year-old rule barring women from governing bodies in the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of New York has been repealed. The annual diocese Easton Convention has also voted to allow women to serve as conventional delegates. Last year women were voted equal status with men for serving on vestries and as wardens in churches of the New York diocese. Approval required the consent by two successive conventions. The action by the Episcopal Diocese of New York is not mandatory on the church or the member churches. What is this world a coming to anyway when churches concede that women are equal to men in church affairs?

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Connell, Washington: A 38-year-old father will spend the next seven years training for the Presbyterian ministry. Donald Wright will give up a $16,000 a year income from a prosperous oil distributorship. He says his wife is as enthusiastic about the prospect as he is. They have three children. Wright never belonged to a church before 1946, but he is an elder in his hometown’s First Presbyterian Church, and his wife is Sunday school superintendent. The oilman turning to the ministry says behind his decision are several reasons. They include four years in the Navy in World War II and a later realization that man ceases to exist when he excludes God from his daily tasks. It is barely possible also that he has managed to save from his oil business enough to enable him to devote this time to study and at the same time take care of his family needs.

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Omaha, Nebraska: The 168th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. has elected the Rev. Dr. Harold B. Martin as its moderator. The pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Bloomington, Illinois, succeeds a Maryville, Tennessee, businessman, David W. Proffitt.

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Anchorage, Alaska: Two Roman Catholic prelates have met to compare the sizes of their dioceses. One was Josef Cardinal Frings, archbishop of Cologne, Germany. He can motor from one end of his diocese to the other in one hour. Bishop Dermot O’Flanagan, of Juneau, Alaska, said his diocese is a 1,500 miles wide, from Ketchikan to Kodiak. The churchmen met when the German Cardinal had a stopover en route to Tokyo, after flying over the North Pole.

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Again Kiamesha Lake, New York; A Jewish theological leader says young Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish Americans are rediscovering their ancestral faiths. Dr. Louis Finkelstein has also told the 57th Annual Convention of the Rabbinical Assembly of America that in this rediscovery lies the real hope for the emergence of America as a spiritual force so needed by the world. Dr. Finkelstein is chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. The meeting also heard that the synagogue does not have its former all-inclusive scope in American Jewish community life. Rabbi Israel Goldstein, president of the American Jewish Congress, adds that much of the synagogue’s problem has been taken over by specialized agencies. Rabbi Goldstein also believes that in church-state relations, secular Jewish groups should yield spokesmanship and leadership to Jewish religious bodies.

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An episode in human relations as both it’s sickening and it’s encouraging aspects occurred recently at the University of Texas’s College of Fine Arts in Austin. The college chose as its annual full dress opera last October to present Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas.” Dido was a Tyrian Princess, Queen of Carthage, and its reputed founder, who entertained Aeneas after his flight from Troy, fell in love with him, and on his desertion, stabbed herself.

Chosen to play the leading role of Dido was Barbara Louise Smith, 19, the best soprano in her class at the university. The only trouble was that she is a Negro. However, anticipating no difficulty, the cast rehearsed conscientiously and was about ready to give the performance a couple of weeks ago.

Only a few days before the opera was to be presented, she was called to the office of Dean E. W. Doty and told that certain legislators in session in the city objected to having a Negro girl play a romantic role opposite a white boy. The Dean insisted that he was sorry, but that she would have to give up the role she had worked hard to play. This bending to the whims of segregationists loosed a flood of activity on their part. Barbara was hurt over the matter, but insisted that the success of integration at the university was more important than her appearance in the opera. From that point on, she refused to discuss the matter. University officials decided to do the same.

However, within a week it became apparent that integration had already achieved far greater success than the administrative and legislative officials imagined. Eight legislators wrote Barbara apologizing for the snub that had been given her by their colleagues, asserting that these colleagues were “more interested in personal advancement … than they are in Christian principles of right and wrong.” Two segregation legislators were hung in effigy on the campus and another in the rotunda of the capital.

The student assembly met and reaffirmed its belief in the right of all students to be given an equal opportunity to participate in campus activities. The presidents of two leading service organizations recommended that students boycott the opera. Angry letters flooded into the office of the student newspaper, one alumnus writing that he was deeply ashamed and another that it made him sick at his stomach. After a week of this protest, the president had not abandoned his “no comment” policy but when the opera opened, less than half the auditorium was filled. From the flagpole in front of the university’s main building hung a swastika flag with the words “no comment” on it. And these facts in the case require no comment from this reporter.

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Quite in contrast to this rather shabby performance is the graduation ceremony that took place at Clinton, Tennessee, on Friday night of this week, three years to a day after the Supreme Court of the United States declared that racial segregation in the public schools was illegal.

During the past year, events at Clinton have brought to Tennessee notoriety throughout the nation and world that, it is probably safe to assume, most Tennesseans are ashamed of and would have preferred to avoid. Last Friday night, however, with only one policeman on duty, Robbie Cain, the only Negro in Clinton’s senior class, marched across the stage with 87 of his classmates and received his diploma of graduation without incident and fanfare, thus bringing to a successful conclusion, insofar as he is concerned, his attempt to get an education equal to that of his neighbors and without discrimination because of race. Perhaps other communities will have learned a lesson from Clinton as to how not to attempt to permit prejudice and violence to interfere with democracy.

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A thought-provoking sentence comes from a correspondent that has had me wondering ever since I read it if it is or is not true. I’ve been forced to the conclusion that it probably is. It goes like this: “The church has always been more severe on heresy than on immorality.” If it is true, it is a serious indictment of organized religion.

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On his 75th birthday, Albert Einstein, on March 13, 1954, put succinctly something that churchmen as well as layman would do well to consider. He said, “By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal part of what one has recognized as true. It is evident that any restriction of academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among people and thereby impedes rational judgment and action.”

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American business is something of a curious social institution. Across only a few days, one finds on his desk appeals for money, correspondence from listeners – some good, some bad; a pile of bills: offers to put one into a lucrative position through practically no effort; morbid letters from insurance companies and one from an undertaker who is cheerfully willing to bury people in “style and dignity”; a medical press assurance that one is using only one-sixtieth of his brains (the uncomfortable thing is that this one may be all too true); invitations to attend conferences, camps, etc.; another urging me to save money, which I should like very much to do if I could find a way of making the money go as far as the month; and an amazing amount of mail that says “free, free, free” this, that, and the other. The truth is that nothing is free if you read far enough. This junk mail clutters up the boxes, weights down the postman, takes your and my tax dollar to make up post office department deficits, and about the only way the present postmaster general knows how to avoid such a deficit is to raise the postage on first-class mail, the only class that is really paying its way. Is this a moral thing to do?

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This program has been off the air for three weeks now because your reporter learned the hard way that a twirling tractor is more powerful than human spine. However, during that time the Senate of the U.S. has lost a member from Wisconsin and the people of that state have been given an opportunity to fill the vacancy with someone who respect the oath he takes to honor, defend, and protect the Constitution. McCarthy’s passing marks, we hope, the end of the hysterical era in American life where insinuations spread in newspapers wrecked the lives of innocent men and women, and where not a shred of evidence was ever offered to prove such insinuations. Shakespeare, in his Julius Caesar, has Mark Anthony say that “The bad that men do lives after them, the good is interred with their bones. Thus let it be with Caesar.” Let’s hope that the good bard of Avon was wrong in this case and that we can accurately say his historic words with the paraphrase that “Whatever good he may have done will live after him: the bad was interred with his bones. Thus let it be with McCarthy.”

Pope Pius has called the Roman Catholic world to a vast missionary action. He has appealed for a special effort in Africa, where, he adds, the people face the dangers of communism. The pontiff urges the world’s more than 450 million Catholics to aid in bringing faith to others by prayer, financial help, and in the case of some, by dedication of their lives. The appeal is in an Easter encyclical letter to bishops of the church, and was made public Friday of this week. He points out the church’s recent expansion in Africa is a motive for hope. The approximate 23 million Roman Catholics in Africa include almost 10 million new members in the last seven years.

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A Jesuit educator says too many Catholic students do not want the scholastic life. The Rev. Edward Clark of Fordham University adds that instead the students use their college education to advance in industry and the professions. Father Clark has suggested greater use of scholarships and fellowships to make teaching and academic research more attractive. The comments of Father Clark were made at the annual meeting, in Milwaukee, of the Jesuit Educational Association.

The impulse to comment upon this statement is irresistible. Father Clark’s comment upon the resistance of Catholic students could as well be applied to all too many non-Catholic. Most of them want a diploma but are not beset by an urge to acquire an education in the process. But if by “scholastic life” he means teaching or the ministry, he displays how naive we school teachers are. When are we going to learn that young people in schools today are realistic without being unduly mercenary? They recognize that they live in a world where money not only talks but is indispensable in order to live. Hence, they look over industry, the professions, and teaching. What they see leads them to go into industry or some occupation other than teaching. We talk about free enterprise and the beauties of competition, but when are we going to recognize and do something about the fact that teaching must compete with other occupations? Until inducements equal to those offered by other occupations are offered to young people who want to teach, young people are not going into teaching. No amount of exhortation will substitute for the possibility offered by a job of getting ahead, not only financially but in other ways. We in Tennessee say to a college graduate who enters teaching that “If you be a good boy, work hard, watch you behavior and associations, you can hope to earn $3,000 after 15 years.” That in a society where plumbers, truck drivers, and other occupational jobs offer far more without the time and money investment of a college education. But often, young people are met only with the idea that teaching is a dedicated career. Most of us are getting rather tired of such prating. There is no apparent reason why a teacher should be dedicated or teach for dedication purposes any more than a personnel manager in industry, or newspaper editor, or a radio station owner should be dedicated. Until we stop talking such nonsense and start talking realistic sense to young people, they’re going to continue to enter industry by preference over scholastic careers, and the bewailings of the good Father Clark and others will not change that.

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The Board of Home Missions of the Congregational Christian Church has voted the largest budget in its history. For the year starting June 1, it will spend $3 million on new and needy Congregational churches in the U.S. The budget has tripled over the past 14 years.

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Commissioners of the Southern Presbyterians to that denomination’s General Assembly have approved a program for developing and training lay workers in the church. They say they need 700 lay workers right away, and about 256 new ones must be trained every year for work in Christian education. Tomorrow, the Southern Presbyterians will consider two controversial proposals about relations with other denominations. One is a request for exploring the possibilities of a merger with the Reformed Church of America, which is mostly in New England, and the other proposal is for withdrawal from the National and World Councils of the Churches of Christ. Already resolutions opposing merger have been introduced.

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President Eisenhower has urged the American Council of Judaism to bring the power of its faith to bear on the problems of our day. His message helps mark the 13th Annual Conference of the council, in New York City. The chief executive has also stated that as a religion of universal values, Judaism contributes to our national culture and the world’s spiritual resources. Well, those are safe statements and commits nobody to anything. Everybody is against sin – at least, nobody openly and earnestly advocates it.

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The Israeli government has officially recognized the Druze sect as a separate religious community. Thus Israel’s 20,000 Druze will have their own religious courts for such matters as family affairs and religious funds. Until now, the Druze were included in Israel’s Moslem community. Recently they won special rights for their members serving in the Israeli army. They had refused to obey the army call-up in protests of their status. The Druze is a mystic sect that broke away from Islam almost 1,000 years ago.

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In Vatican City last Wednesday, in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Pius received in general audience of some 20,000 Italian and foreign pilgrims who had flocked to Rome for Easter. The pilgrims included French, Belgian, British, Austrian, Dutch, Spanish, and one from the United States. Also included was a group of 2,000 nuns participating in a congress of hospital religious orders.

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Tonight in Woburn, Massachusetts, a Negro minister with two all-white congregations will be ordained at the First Baptist Church. He once served the church as associate minister. The Rev. Joseph R Washington, Jr. will be ordained, and faculty members from Andover Newton Theological School where he studied will take part in the ceremony.

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In London, England, the cornerstone of the first Mormon temple to be built in that country will be laid on May 11. The temple will be known as the London District Temple and is being built at Newchapel. Elder Richard L. Evans, of the Council of Twelve of the Church of Latter Day Saints, has been appointed to attend and officiate at the services in connection with the cornerstone laying ceremonies.

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For some five years now there has been a battle in the Illinois courts against the Chicago police censor board’s ban on the Italian film “The Miracle.” Recently, Judge Hugo M. Friend of Chicago’s appellate court reversed a lower court and ruled that the movie was not obscene. The picture, which tells the story of a simple-minded peasant woman who is seduced by man she believes is St. Joseph, has never been shown in Chicago, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1952 decision against New York’s ban on the film. It is not only remarkable, but a cause for concern, that so many people in so many places wish to appoint themselves keepers of the morals as to what people shall read, see, and hear. So, the Hitlerite do-gooders in communities all over the country are wringing their hands and shedding crocodile tears because someone is reading a book or seeing a movie which they, the would-be sensors, don’t like, or, more likely, never read or saw, but which they have “heard about.” There is a problem involved in the matter of the steady diet flowing across newsstands, through radio amplifiers, across TV screens. Much of it all is, in my judgment, merest piffle and occasionally trash. But many of you listening will call my own reading and listening diet trash. So who am I to be my brother’s keeper in the matter of literature or entertainment? We have laws against obscenity, and if a publisher or producer violates those laws, the proper way to punish him is in a court of law through due process, not by means of setting up a censorship board policeman on the beat, laymen in the community, etc. The fathers at Salem, Massachusetts, burned witches: censors of today are burning books and trying to eradicate ideas they don’t like. How conceited can we get, or who was it said, “Be not wise in your own conceit”? Censors haven’t read that one either.

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Along the same line of censorship in the written word and visual presentation is the fact that recently student organizations in two New York City municipal colleges were thwarted when they tried to provide a platform for John Gates, editor of the Communist Party’s Daily Worker, during academic freedom week. Gates, who served a prison term under the Smith Act, spoke without incident before two meetings sponsored by student groups at Columbia University. First, a Queens College organization invited Gates to address it. When the Queens College Provost Bart Gates, a student forum at City College asked him to speak. This led the heads of five New York municipal colleges to vote unanimously to ban Gates from their campuses. An effort was then made to provide a suitable place for him to speak to college students at the Martinique Hotel, the protests from other groups using the hotel caused it to cancel arrangements for this meeting. Unable to find another suitable hall, the interested would-be sponsors abandoned efforts.

Well, some of us teachers at times rate student mentality and industry fairly low. But not often so low that we are afraid to subject them to presentation of views in conflict with our democratic freedoms. Anyone who knows anything about communism, communists, and the Daily Worker, if he can add two and two, can soon realize the basic dishonesty and lack of sincerity in the Party line. Communism is an idea around which all sorts of semantic gibberish has been grouped. You cannot kill an idea by burying it, but you can kill it by subjecting it to the crucible of analysis. Apparently the fathers of the New York City colleges fear that their students may learn something about the real nature of communism and have taken the position that ignorance is better than knowledge, which is a highly untenable viewpoint. Apparently they cannot distinguish between teaching about and indoctrination. Which reminds me of the University of Colorado professor who was asked by a member of the community if it were true that they were teaching communism up at the university. His reply was classic: “Yes, he said. And we also teach venereal disease, but we don’t advocate either.”

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A recent militant attack on war by the membership of the Ohio Pastor’s Association says, in formal resolutions, “We will never again sanction or participate in any war.” But won’t they? These resolutions bring to mind Mark Twain’s disquisition on the same subject.

“There has never been a just one, never an honorable one – on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances.

The loud little handful – as usual –will shout for the war. The pulpit will, warily and cautiously, object –at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there ‘ should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, “It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.”

Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the antiwar audiences will thin out and lose popularity.

Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers – as earlier – but do not dare to say so.

And now the whole nation – pulpit and all – will take up the war cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

Twain wrote before World War I, but there, unfortunately, is not any evidence to indicate that he was wrong then or now.

 

 

 

The results of another Gallup poll in the field of religion are now available. Last time, which I reported, it had to do with the differing viewpoints of British and American regarding church-going. This time, it tries to answer the question: Should churches speak out on social and political questions? Again, there are interesting contrasts between us and the British. Most Englishmen believe the church should keep out of such matters. In this country, there is a definite difference of viewpoints, with slightly more people believing that churches should speak out on social and political matters. Among the typical views expressed on the issue in this country are these:

“If the church expressed its views more it would clear a lot of people’s minds. Politics have always been a corrupt business. There are good and bad politicians and more good politicians would help affairs.”

Again: “The church cannot separate itself from the political side of life… It preaches the Gospel to the people and the preacher has a right to express his views. If the government would listen to the church there would be less corruption.”

Against the idea of churches taking an active role in these matters are such positions as:

“The church should teach the Bible and let the people govern the state outside of church.”

“If a minister is called to preach, he should not be in politics. If he is in politics, he does not have time to save souls.” (A rather curious mixture of theological jargon that may have been meaningful to the person making the statement but is by no means clear to this reader.)

“The church should teach the Bible and stay out of politics. The two don’t mix.”

Statistically, 53 percent of those in Britain said the churches should keep out of the social and political picture; 44 percent thought it should express its views; and 11 percent had no opinion.

In this country, 44 percent thought it should stay out; 47 percent said it should express its views; while 8 percent had no opinion.

An interesting variation was revealed between women’s and men’s viewpoints in this country. Most men said that churches should keep out of political matters, while a majority of women thought they should express their views.

It is difficult to see how churches can refrain from speaking out on social, economic, and political matters unless they are content to simply be academic monasteries in which, like the three monkeys, they see, speak, or hear no evil, devoting their church-going merely to mental, emotional, or what have you exercises in ritual that is removed from life and probably devoid of real meaning. Nobody but the rash would suggest that a church should espouse the cause of any political party. Probably almost all of us would be repelled by a church that did. However to say that there is no moral obligation of the church to let itself be heard on vital issues affecting the lives of people is to let it be shorn of the most important function for which it exists, that is, to bring meaning, purpose, and hope of achievement in the here and now. Wherever the church has for long remained an instrument through which men were encouraged or forced to forgo improvement in this life in the hope of something better in some imagined future one, it has become something of a dead institution, having little meaning to anyone but the spiritual and socially blind.

If religion, any religion, is to flourish in the hearts and minds of people, it must pursue a course that will make people see in it an instrument through which the lot of mankind can be improved, physically, morally, and spiritually here and now. Anything that comes afterward as a result of such improvement can be regarded as something of a bonus, for the good life is worthwhile within and for itself, and churches should help make that good life more nearly attainable. If they do not, they become as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.

The newsletter of the Student Christian Fellowship of the University of Utah carries currently a comment upon the stodginess and narrowness of schoolteachers that is worth repeating here. It goes like this: “The student very often sits silently in class trying to determine the professor’s opinion so he can repeat it back on the final exam…. He would maintain his independence of thought in the classroom, but when he feels that the professor will not understand this independence and that it will result in a lower grade he becomes silent and gradually comes to feel that does not pay to think.”

If this is true, and to the degree that it is true, then we who tried to teach are committing at best a moral wrong in taking this attitude toward our students. Other things being equal, it is assumed that the professor knows more about the subject than the students generally, otherwise there would be little point in his being there. But all of us, if we are honest with ourselves, have come across students who not only knew as much about a given topic as we, but often a darn sight more. Not only that, but occasionally we have a student who can think circles around us. What are we doing to these students when our method of instruction and our attitude towards class learning consists merely in pouring into the class a portion of subject matter and then are satisfied with the results only if the student gives it back to us by rote in undigested form? Students may, and many will, forget fairly early a block of subject matter in a given course, but they are not likely to forget a course in which they are made to think, to do critical thinking out of the information they have learned. Teachers have an obligation, not only to the students, but to themselves, to stimulate students to be curious about the world around them, to want to satisfy this curiosity through learning, and to evaluate through critical thought processes what they are learning and how to relate this to the satisfaction of their curiosity. Unless this process is encouraged – even demanded – much of what goes on in the classroom is not only a farce, but is robbing the student of his right to develop his ability through classroom experiences that require the exercise and expression of his independent thinking and learning.

All of this puts important responsibility on the student, and all too many of them recoil from this responsibility because it means effort on their part. Far too many of them come to college desiring a diploma and shrinking from doing what is necessary to get an education. But even they have a right, moral as well as educational, to an opportunity for stimulation of their mental development through class experiences rigorous enough to challenge their best ability, liberal enough to encourage them to think. If they do not take advantage of such opportunity, they have no business in college, and their grades rightly should reflect this. Failure on the part of the professor to provide such an opportunity and on that of the student to profit by it, is immoral, intellectually, however smug the teacher may like to be or non-receptive the student is.

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Being a native of this section of the country, and having lived elsewhere for a rather long period of time, this reporter is in something of a unique position to look rather objectively at the constant conflict and tensions arising among denominations, and among members of the same denomination, over the fundamental versus the modern point of view in religious beliefs. Nowhere in the United States is fundamentalism in religion more entrenched than in the South, and Johnson City, being a part of that South, has its share, maybe more, of these tensions and traditionalists who would restrict religious thinking to the 17th, 16th, or even earlier centuries. Religion, perhaps by its very nature, can change slowly, but even it must change with changing needs, or it loses its value to the people who rightly can profit by cultivation of this very important part of human existence. But how many sins do we commit in the name of religion? Cloak any idea with a religious aura or flavor, and immediately, to some people, merely to question that idea is to be an infidel, or best an agnostic. The fact is that many people, including myself, have had religious experiences that were not worth having, while many experiences not ordinarily associated with the religious realm, have had for us deep and abiding religious significance.

Traditionalists are alarmed lest the values that sustained people of the past be thrown away. They lament that sin has become behavior and that psychology has captured theology. Liberals feel that our religious needs of today cannot be reached by the dogmas of yesteryear. Traditional theology is not religious enough to meet the needs of a people whose culture is maturing fairly rapidly. The rise of liberalism in the last century or so is no more revolutionary than many previous upheavals in church history. Traditional emphasis has been more on belief than on being. The church is always been more severe with heretics than with sinners. Traditionalism seeks to reassert the past. Liberalism is dissatisfied with the past. Traditionalism emphasizes heredity; liberalism emphasizes variation and perhaps experimentation. Traditionalism holds that guidance for man is embedded in the past, that the task is to rediscover it and make man except it. Traditionalism wishes to enforce inherited beliefs and institutions. Liberalism seeks to examine its inheritance, reject what has been outgrown, and restate its religion in view of present day needs. But liberalism is not merely a restatement of old beliefs in modern terms. That is neo-orthodoxy. It is not a new collection of theological principles. If it were it would be but a new orthodoxy, which it is not. It is a method, an attitude, an approach. Traditionalism grounds truth in authority. Liberalism grounds truth in the inductive method, for that is the only reliable way we have developed thus far to determine the reliability of a supposed fact.

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And along the same line of thought comes something of a progressive evaluation of the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered in a cave a few miles south of Jericho, a decade ago. It will be interesting to see if there is a consensus among students about the scrolls, and more interesting to see whether their impact will be such as to alter the relatively fixed notions that many, perhaps most, people have regarding their present tenants in religion. Very likely, to the traditionalist whose mind is already made up about everything, whatever consensus there may be about these scrolls will seem as subversive to him as the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

Already two extreme views seem to be emerging among students. One is that the Dead Sea community where the scrolls were found might shed more light on Christianity than Bethlehem; the other attach relatively little major significance to them. If there is one thread of conclusion about them shared by more students than any other, it is that the scrolls may modify in some ways certain religious viewpoints, but that fundamentally, they do not alter the foundations of Christianity. Rather, they will do much to contribute to the understanding of these foundations.

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Some interesting comparisons and contrasts with respect to church-going habits among Americans and Britons are revealed in a survey by Gallup, the results of which are just out. Almost three times as many Americans attend church more or less regularly than is true of our British cousins. It was found that 51 percent of American adults attend church on some occasion during the week, while only 14 percent of the English do. Almost 40 percent of the British say they never or almost never go to church. More of them stopped going to church between 16 – 20 years of age than any other age level. One in seven Briton says he goes to church only on special occasions, such as Easter. Also, fewer Britons than Americans make a point of listening to or watching religious services on radio or television. Among the major reasons given for not attending more regularly are such stock ones as “too busy doing other things,” “just lost the habit,” “services are boring or uninteresting,” “no one else is in in the family goes,” and “find it hard to believe in Christianity.” Just what all this proves, if anything, this reporter is not sure. Certainly it would be unsafe to equate church going with belief in religion, and I do not propose to arrive at such an unequal equation.

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Well, the new federal highway system, to be built with your money and mine, will be replete with billboards, unless a miracle happens, and few of us believe in miracles, at least of the political kind. Aside from contaminating the beauty of creation by their unsightliness, these road signs make driving hazardous and thus contributes to highway deaths. But while the Senate Public Roads Subcommittee plans to draft an anti-billboard measure, even if the Senate acts, the House obviously will not. Representative George Fallon, Democrat of Maryland, heads the House Public Roads Subcommittee, and he lists himself in the congressional directory as partner in an “advertising sign business” run by his family. While this firm does not specialize, at least not yet, in roadside signs, Fallon has close ties with outdoor advertising circles in Baltimore, and perhaps elsewhere. This supposed-to-be representative of the people has already stated in advance that he does not intend even to call a meeting of his committee on the billboard issue. He insists that he wants it left to the states, which is exactly where the billboard lobby wants it, for it is easier to maneuver toward their objectives within state legislatures than within the Congress where the national spotlight can be focused upon them. There is nothing necessarily unethical about lobbying as such, but what about conflict of interests where a head of a congressional committee refuses to grant a hearing on an issue which, as a member of a firm, might be unpalatable, but who, as a member and chairman of that committee he has an obligation to see that all sides of that issue have a chance to be heard. The psychologists will call such a personality schizophrenic; some of us who are not psychologists have another term for it, but is hardly as euphemistic.

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Rumor and gossip are at times simply nuisances, but they can and too often do become menaces to business, to government, and to individuals, for the poisoned relations between people affect the well being of society. Rumor cuts across all occupational boundaries with a speed greater than that of any other human communication. Under some conditions gossip is a powerful tool for keeping society in order ethically and politically. All of us dislike to be talked about, and gossip can become vicious in small communities especially. Sociologically, gossip is the voice of the herd, thundering in our ears, telling us that the goblins of ridicule, ostracism, and punishment will get us if we don’t behave. Our culture seems to be saddled with it, for good or ill.

How does it start? It may arise from love of one’s own pet ideas. We may gossip merely to fill a gap in a tea party conversation. But whispering campaigns can also be organized to slander a public official, a business executive, or a private individual. And gossip does not exist only on the lower levels, either as to the person spreading it or the nature of the subject matter. Some high in administrative hierarchies indulge in it. It is a mulish way of thinking and acting. It rests not necessarily on evidence, but on prejudice, egoism, or a deliberate intent to spread propaganda. To indulge in gossip is to betray, unwittingly or otherwise, an immature mind, an indiscreet one, and a mind that seeks its indulgence without regard for the direful results that may be visited thereby on the victim. Those who practice the codes of the Golden Rule and the square deal refuse to be so small. Was it not a great writer who said that “He who steals my purse steals trash, but he who filches from me my good name taketh that which enricheth him not and leaves me poor indeed?”

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A Roman Catholic priest held prisoner by Red China for six years has left for home in Omaha, Nebraska. The Rev. Fulgence Gross, a Franciscan missionary, sailed from Shanghai yesterday for Hong Kong. Four more Catholic clergymen are among the eight Americans still held by the Chinese communists.

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The Vatican’s secretary of state office has denied remarks of Hungary’s communist Premier Kadar about that nation’s Roman Catholic cardinal. The premier had said Pope Pius had asked Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty to resume his post as primate of Hungary. The Vatican statement declares that Cardinal Mindszenty is still considered the primate of Hungary, even if the government prevents him from exercising his functions. The cardinal has been a refugee in the U.S. legation in Budapest for five months. The Vatican view is that there or any place else, he is still the primate.

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Religion is one reason that the U.S. State Department officials expect heavy movement of U.S. visitors into the Middle East in the next few weeks. The U.S. recently ended its ban on American travel in some Middle Eastern countries. The Christian Easter and the Jewish Passover are the religious magnets. Passover begins one week from Monday, on April 15. The following Sunday is Christian Easter. Religious observances usually cause a great influx of travelers to Jerusalem.

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Russia’s chief rabbi died recently. The end came to Solomon Shleifer in a Moscow synagogue just before the evening service. He had been chosen spiritual leader of the Jews in the Soviet Union 11 years ago when he was 57 years old. The Moscow synagogue, through his backing, recently published a new Hebrew prayer book and Jewish calendar.

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This week some 300 million persons throughout the world began a month-long religious observance. For Moslems it’s the feast of Ramadan (ram’a-dan‘), during which nothing is to be eaten or drunk in daylight hours.

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President David O. McKay says that economic progress has been good to the Church of Latter Day Saints, but he cautions against accepting the benefits of this progress without recognizing the resulting responsibilities. He has also told the church’s 127th Annual General Conference at Salt Lake City that new scientific and engineering developments have increased greatly the standard of living of many, and that this includes Mormon families. But he sees perils threatening because of that progress, declaring that “All depends on whether we can match this flow of new material power with an equal gain in spiritual forces.”

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A new Vatican ruling has produced some significant changes in the worship of the nation’s 32 million Roman Catholics. Parish priests have noted a substantial increase in the number of persons receiving Holy Communion since Pope Pius relaxed church requirements of prolonged fasting before Communion. Catholic officials say this is exactly the result the pope hoped to achieve and expressed confidence the trend toward frequent Communion will continue to grow. Under the new rules laid down by the pope there is no longer any obligation for any Catholic, priest or layman, to fast for more than three hours before taking communion – whether at morning or evening Mass.

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Vatican City: Pope Pius has advocated a social security system for the world’s farm workers. In a letter to Cardinal Rodriguez, of Santiago, Chile, the pope said the material, moral, and social living standards in the rural areas must be raised in order to avert an exodus from the fields to the cities.

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London: The unofficial Church of England newspaper, The Church Times, has called attention to the sharp division of opinion in the Council of Churches over impending British hydrogen bomb tests. The council voted to deplore the test – but by a narrow margin. Says The Times, “This division of opinion in the Council of Churches is a reflection of a genuine bewilderment. All are one in loathing the whole horrible business of these weapons of mass destruction. But it is by no means a simple matter to expect those who are responsible for the safety of these islands to jettison a means of defense.”

The British, like ourselves, are merely talking about treatment for symptoms of the disease, war. Wonder when or if they we will ever getting around to attacking the disease of war itself? There is little room for optimism that we will, or if we do, it will probably be too late.

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Cape Town, South Africa: Compulsory racial segregation in churches has come a step nearer in South Africa. The Parliament has advanced a bill making it an offense for whites and Negroes to worship in the same church. The action came only a few hours after it had been announced that a native pastor would conduct the first service Sunday by an African for a white congregation and the Dutch Reformed Church. Premier J. G. Strydom and all his government are members of the church. When we look at such stupidity as this in the name of government and religion, why is it that some Americans still wish to go on mixing church and state without regard to the basic implications of what they are doing? Of course they do it with the best intentions, but all of us have heard that the road to a reportedly undesirable place is paid with good intentions.

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Washington: Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, of New York, says he is asking all House members to help rebuild Negro churches bombed during recent racial strife in Montgomery, Alabama. Powell suggested that those who might be embarrassed at home by such gifts could send cash in a plain white envelope. He hopes to raise $100,000. The question arises: Why would anyone be embarrassed at home or anywhere else by helping repair damage by hoodlums to innocent people and their property?

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It was announced in Jackson, Tennessee, this week that the Tennessee Supreme Court had ruled that a property owner in a neighborhood may sell this property to a Negro without being liable to a lawsuit for doing so. Does this sound silly? Well, it happened. It all arose over the sale of a home in Shelby County by a white owner in an all-white neighborhood to a Negro purchaser. Suit was brought alleging that the remaining white owners sustained loss through the sale because it was “an unusually nice, quiet, all-white residential section” and that the sale did “undermine and destroy the value of plaintiff’s home” by the sale to a Negro. The bill of particulars went on to allege that the property in question was in “the heart of a most desirable, inviting and valuable white neighborhood, and the sale created a great disturbance, … upsetting the entire community and destroying both the value and desirability of the plaintiff’s home as well as that of the neighbors…”

The Supreme Court, quite properly, rejected the claim for damages. As long as we deny to a minority the right to educational opportunity, public services generally, to live where they choose and can afford, and, in short, to go about the process of living just like other Americans, we are that long failing to live up to the precepts that we often so righteously give lip-service to but by our actions deny any real belief in them. There are both undesirable and desirable characters in almost any neighborhood, but it is hardly likely that such differences are based upon race, nationality, or religion alone. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto me,” and that can be applied to denial of the right to a desirable location as well any other aspect of living. No race, religion, or nationality has a monopoly on either vices or virtues.

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Nobody is more aware than this reporter of the hazards of commenting upon a book, movie or other materials which he has not seen. This, however, is based entirely on the fact that, so far, nobody has found anything good to say about the book just published by John Robinson Beal, entitled “John Foster Dulles, a Biography.” Truly amazing is the fact that analysts, commentators, reporters, reviewers, and politicians are unanimous in pointing to what must be numerous flaws, either in the writing or the behavior of the subject about which Mr. Beal wrote. I can hardly wait to read it, but from accounts of this reporting, it bids fair to rate, sooner or later, at the top of the bestseller fiction list.

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One of the remarkable features of man’s religious behavior is the unquestioning attitude he takes toward anything that is coated with a religious flavor. Thousands would willingly die to defend the Bible but have never read it. If all Bibles were suddenly destroyed, man would still be a religious animal. Strictly speaking, we Protestants have no canon. They used to print 14 books of the Apocrypha between the Old and New Testaments. Then the printers left them out and Protestants lost one-third of their Bible and never missed it. It is nothing new to rearrange the Bible. It has been going on since about 850 B.C. God is not in the bookbinding business. He didn’t hand the King James Bible to us – text, hasp, clasp, and binder. But in recent years the furor over the Revised Standard Version has been of huge proportions. Those creating it are either ignorant of the history of the Bible, or, more likely, have their minds closed to any questioning about the book which they have never read thoroughly and critically but which they believe in implicitly. Incidentally, this reporter prefers the King James Version for individual use, but he can see nothing profane of sacrilegious about the Revised Standard Version. In science, to refuse to examine ideas old or new is heresy; in religion, to refuse to examine ideas old or new is orthodoxy. And the ridiculous thing about it is that those of us who fumble around trying to examine religious ideas are classed by the orthodox as being iconoclasts.

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This week the National Education Association is observing what it calls its 100^th anniversary – actually its 87^th. This may be a minor point, but in education the first regard should be for meticulous accuracy, historical and otherwise. Anyway, it is a proper time for realistic appraisal of the organization, since so much has appeared in the press and over radio and television about it that is either unfounded or misleading. It has been hailed as a professional organization representing the rank and file of the classroom teachers of the nation. Actually, it is nothing of the kind, except indirectly. The association is what is rightly termed, in blunt parlance, a “company union,’ in the sense that it is dominated from the national to the local level by administrative bureaucracy. Pick up, for example, any state affiliate organ and run through the list of names on its governing board, and there will be found few if any teachers. Virtually all the names will be city or county school superintendents, principals, supervisors, or other non-classroom personnel. It is these who direct the policy of the organization: namely, that whatever is good for the administration of a school unit is good for the teachers, which may or may not be true.

I have no personal knowledge of but one instance (during the long period that I have been associated with the organization in any way) that it took a forthright stand on the principle of defense of the classroom teacher where both academic freedom and separation of church and state were involved. In that case it permitted (perhaps “bungled” is the word) the matter to become so involved that no … decision was forthcoming that clarified the issues and protected the teacher.

So, most of us go on, affiliating with it, either from pressure from above or because it is the only existing organization through which the cause of education can be pressed before public bodies, like legislatures, for example. But many of us who are in the vulnerable position of classroom teachers and who would like to feel we had a professional organization that truly represented the rank and file of the teaching occupation, find the National Education Association and its smaller affiliates sadly lacking as such an agent.

Perhaps the hope for an ideal man of the future is the fact that the man of now is dissatisfied with himself and the society he has created. To the person uncertain of himself, we feel like giving sympathy. To the one who is always certain of himself, we generally feel like giving nothing. But we cannot have healthy minds and healthy bodies except in a healthy society. And, whether we like it or not, it is difficult to see how we can have saved personalities (whatever that means) apart from a saved society. And we cannot have a sound society unless we remove the conditions that make slaughterhouses of men’s personalities. In surveying any proposal for social change, we can do well to use Karl Menninger’s test: “Does it promote love and diminish hate?”

But some creeds, like Pilate, wash their hands of any connection with social change and reform. Many creeds are exclusive, those who hold them seeming to say, “You do not believe as we do, therefore you are not one of us and cannot be right.” How much more sensible to say, “Come and study with us and let us see if we cannot find common principles and procedures to reach a common goal. But we go on, maximizing creedal differences and minimizing creedal similarities, until we find even church groups so far apart that they no longer act like church groups.

Yet, is it not true that experience, study, and reflection lead us to accept the true as sacred? We can reverence others without reverencing what they reverence. Not our conclusions but out behavior should excite admiration and command affection. Most churches find it difficult if not impossible to free themselves sufficiently from creedal dogma to enable them to look realistically at the world about them. A church freed from dogma well could have many functions. It could assist people in their search for intellectual validity. It could promote and defend social righteousness. It should provide people an opportunity to enter into a growth-into-love experience. We are more than fellow pupils; we are a fellowship pledged to love one another, without regard to creed.

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The Divinity School of the University of Chicago has made reference in some materials that reached me this week, to a sermon delivered by the famous Dr. Martin Niemoller. In it, the doctor confesses that no one can prove that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, but he goes on to urge that all accept that proposition because it is, in his words, “an impossible thesis.” He thinks, as his sermon illustrates, that a Christian should abandon the promptings of experience and reason and “defy the so-called law of nature” and become “God’s obedient child.”

Maybe the Divinity School’s version of it was not exact. Let us hope not. As I read the above, I could not help but wonder if this preacher were insane. Are God and God’s creation at war with each other? If God is in all and through all, are not nature, experience, and reason manifestations of God? Are not those acting as “God’s children,” to use Niemoller’s symbolic language? How can one act as “God’s obedient child” by opposing what we know of God’s creation and evolution? I do not know the answers to these questions, I merely ask them. But even I can see the contradiction in the sermon, even if it comes from someone as famous as Niemoller. Should we become unreasonable in the name of or because of piety? Is such unreason “piety”?  Or is it something else less commendable? All of this is about as sensible as the central theme of the movie entitled “A Man Called Peter.”

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In New Jersey recently, a suit was successfully fought against an inter-faith baccalaureate service planned by the Bergenfield High School senior class. Father Edward McGuirk of St. John’s Roman Catholic Church said not long ago, “We believe that the time-honored custom of keeping religion out of the public schools must be maintained.” But various types of combination of public education and religious teaching go on, call it religious emphasis days or weeks or by any other name, the principle is the same. We talk about separation of church and state, then turn around and combine them. In such cases, our talk is so much lip service to a principle that we really do not believe in. Wonder when we’ll either quit talking about it or quit violating it? I seem to recall that a lowly Galilean said nearly 2,000 years ago, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.” Looks as if we are trying to pay tribute to both in the same breath.

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Last summer Communist China invited 18 American reporters for a visit, but our State Department refused. Recently two newsmen from Look magazine and one from the Baltimore Afro-American went there anyway. The State Department announced that their passports were being suspended except for the trip home, and some U.S. officials hinted that the three would be indicted under the Trading with the Enemy Act because they had paid for living expenses in China. All the arguments of the Secretary of State for the government’s policy have, and rightly, been angrily rejected by leading newspapers in this country and by such groups as the overseas press clubs. Leonard R. Boudin put the issue squarely and sharply in a recent letter to The New York Times in which he said, in part, “The State Department’s announcement that it will revoke the passports of American correspondents in China raises important questions of law and public policy. No statute, executive order, or departmental regulation makes it unlawful to visit China or any other country. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 prohibits citizens, during a period of national emergency, from leaving or entering the United States without a passport…. These newsmen were entitled to visit China for two reasons. First, as American citizens they may exercise their ‘power of locomotion,’ as Blackstone called it, outside this country as well as within it, whether their purpose be amusement, education or business. That right is still being obstructed by the department’s passport policy despite the repeated judicial criticism these last three years. Secondly, the public has a right to information on public issues from on-government sources. To forbid our newsmen to see for themselves is no less censorship than to proscribe or punish their writings.” Whatever one may think of communists or Communist China is beside the point. Ours is supposed to be a government of law, not one of arbitrary policy by an appointed official. That is the communist’s way of doing things.

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Some of you have expressed to me orally and otherwise some curiosity as to why so much time on this program is devoted to the matter of civil rights. Frankly, it is a matter of curiosity to me as to why you are curious about the matter. In reply, I should like to call your attention to the 36^th Annual Report of the American Civil Liberties Union which has just reached me recently. The title of the report this year is not only provocative; it indicated why the matter of civil rights is always a fundamental problem. The title is “Liberty is Always Unfinished Business.” In it are treated developments over the past year such as the following: “freedom of belief, speech, and association, including freedom of religion and conscience,” academic freedom, “the importance of diversity,” “justice before the law.” And the feminine element will be interested to know that it deals with their rights or lack of them, and violation of such rights during 1956.

In connection with the question of civil rights, a colleague of mine from Yankee-land made the comment a short time ago that the term “civil rights” does not mean a thing here in the South. I’ve thought about this a great deal, for I’m sure that what he really meant by his statement is true, namely, that there are more violations of civil rights in the South than elsewhere. It is in the South where the “right-to-work” laws have gained most headway; it is in the South where there is more racial, religious, and cultural intolerance than anywhere else in the United States. We as Southerners may not like this, but if we insist otherwise, our insistence is based on wishful thinking rather than upon informed conclusion. But it is not only in the South that civil rights are violated. Differences in violations are matters of degree, not kind. And individual liberties are everybody’s business, or should be. For freedom of speech, thought, belief, assembly, and all the others means freedom for those who disagree with you as much as freedom for ourselves. And until we become as concerned about the freedom of those we differ with as of those with whom we agree, not even our own freedom is safe. There is no such thing as a second-class citizen under the Constitution, whether we agree with his belief or not.

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Roman Catholic circles this week welcomed the news that the Chinese communists had finally released the Rev. Fulgence Gross from house arrest in Shanghai. The 53-year-old Franciscan missionary from Omaha, Nebraska, was arrested in 1951 on spy charges in connection with the Korean War. Most of the six years imprisonment resulting from his so-called conviction were spent in a Chinese prison. However, nearly one year ago, he and others arrested with him were transferred to house arrest. Father Gross said the Chinese Reds had assured him he might leave the country, and that he hoped to return soon to the U.S. His trial and imprisonment behind him, Father Gross preferred not to discuss them; not yet, at least. But he said he and the others were well fed and permitted to see each other at all times.

Of the five other Americans remaining under house arrest in Shanghai, four are also Catholic missionaries. And there is no word when they are to be set free. They are the Reverends John Houle of Glendale, California; Charles McCarthy of San Francisco, California; Joseph McCormack of Ossining, New York and John Wagner of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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Plans were made this week by the Methodist Church’s Board of Social and Economic Relations for a large scale national conference on race relations. Tentative plans are to hold the conference probably late in 1959, although the specific time and place remain to be selected. Concerning the subject, Dr. Clarence La Rue of Columbus, Ohio, termed race relations the outstanding problems confronting the church. Dr. La Rue, who is chairman of the board’s committee on race relations, pointed out that significant gains have been made in recent years.

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New York: Thirty-five major denominations and communions of Protestant churches join today in nationwide services called “One Great Hour of Sharing.” The services are held with special offerings made to support overseas relief and reconstruction programs of the various churches. This is the ninth year in which the Protestant denominations have cooperated through Church World Service in programs to aid the needy abroad. At the same time, the Roman Catholic churches are holding similar services in response to an appeal of what is called the “Bishop’s Relief Fund.” And most Jewish communities are engaged in their appeal for the “Emergency Rescue Fund” of the United Jewish Appeal.

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Washington: Religious leaders are planning to appeal to Secretary of Agriculture Benson to cut the red tape that hampers private relief agencies from distributing surplus U.S. food to families abroad. Spokesmen for Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish overseas relief organizations will meet with Benson on Monday, tomorrow, to present a joint plea. They will also ask him to make available additional types of surplus foods from government storage bins to provide better balanced diets for millions of undernourished people.

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Vatican City: Pope Pius says the great work of building a united Europe is possible only if strong religious forces enliven its member nations. The pope, a long-time advocate of European integration, told a group of West Germans that the state is no end unto itself, because all authority springs for the Creator. Well, without intending to argue with the pontiff, the question does present itself: What about such authority as that exercised by Hitler?

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All of us have heard, read, thought about the current mess being aired to the point of exhaustion that apparently exists in the Teamsters’ Union, an AFL, and now also a CIO affiliate. Numerous friends of mine, knowing my own affiliation with the AFT, an AFL affiliate, have asked my opinion. I have no opinion on the guilt or innocence of Mr. Beck. That is a matter that should be tried in a court of law according to due process. If he has not been criminal, he certainly has been either negligent or stupid, and therefore unfit to head a great labor organization. Some have said, “Well, if he is guilty, that is no worse than some corporation executives have done.” Maybe so, but a wrong is wrong, whether committed by a member of a labor union or one who belongs to the National Association of Manufacturers.

In Washington, church leaders are resorting to the weapon of political action in an effort to save the U.S. foreign aid program from being cut sharply by the Congress. The governing board of the National Council of Churches has appealed to half-a-million local ministers across the country explain the church position on foreign aid to their congregations and to urge members to write their congressman.

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Milwaukee, Wisconsin: A Catholic chaplain says parents must prepare their children to hold marriage together and stabilize family life. The Rev. Alexander Sigur says parents must, as he puts it, “provide the pattern of character integrity, personality fulfillment, individual and family stability which radiates far more effectively than all other education.” Of course this is true of not only Catholic parents; some Protestant ones well could heed his suggestions. For all children have a right to expect more from their parents than many are getting. Parental selfishness must bear the blame for much so-called juvenile delinquency of today, delinquency in the form of normal family life deprivation as well as delinquency in the form of behavior of young people.

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Washington: An organization of Catholic bishops says the number of Catholic Negroes in the U.S. has almost doubled in the past quarter century. The organization says there are now 530,000 Negroes among the 16 million Negro population who are members; while of the nearly 400,000 American Indians, some 110,000 are Catholic.

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Chicago: A Methodist bishop charges that there is rigorous isolationism based on color in top educational and artistic circles. Bishop Lloyd C. Wicke, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, criticized both cultural and religious leaders for what he called discrimination attitudes in artistic and education circles. He also said there is color discrimination in Pittsburgh’s 120-member symphony orchestra.

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Rome, Italy: Italian Protestants have scored a major victory in their years-long battle against police restrictions. A decision by the constitutional court has upheld their right to perform religious ceremonies without giving advance notice to police. It ruled the prior notification order is unconstitutional as applied to religious functions.

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Washington: The world president of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church has appealed to members throughout the world to pray on March 30 for Christians being persecuted in Colombia, South America. The president, R.R. Figuhr, charges that severe and prolonged persecution had been directed against Protestant Christians in Columbia over a period of years. In recent months, he says, this has increased in both severity and extent.

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Washington: The government’s Social Security Administration says more than half the U.S. clergymen have been given Social Security coverage. But the agency warns that April 15 is the deadline for those still out. An administration spokesman says estimates of clergymen in the U.S. vary from 164,000 to 200,000, and about 100,000 have decided to go into the program.

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Many Protestant churches throughout the U.S. begin today a week of special emphasis on the ministry of the churches to the homeless, hungry, and destitute persons of foreign lands. On next Sunday, March 31, special offerings will be made in response to this year’s “One Great Hour of Sharing.” The $11.5 million appeal is sponsored by the Department of Church World Service of the National Council of Churches. Through this service, 35 denominations and communions cooperate in ministries of compassion to those in distress overseas.

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Philadelphia: A Chicago Baptist minister has urged his fellow members to move together against segregation and discrimination. The Rev. Dr. J.J. Jackson added, “In a time like this, every believer is challenged.” He was among the speakers at the Philadelphia Baptist Association, which marked its 250^th anniversary.

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A two-day session of exploring “the current Jewish revival” will be held in New York City today and Monday. Leaders of the three branches of Judaism – Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform – will take part.

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Vatican City: Pope Pius is reported in excellent health following his latest routine medical checkup. The pope was examined on Wednesday by Swiss specialist Paul Niehans. On Thursday, the pope appointed Monsignor Joseph McGeough, a native of New York City, as the Vatican’s first diplomatic representative to Ethiopia. Monsignor McGeough has been attached to the Vatican Secretariat of State since 1938.

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Knoxville, Tennessee. The Rev. Robert H. Manning, rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church of Mt. Prospect, Chicago, declared this week that conversion is more than a change of mind, that it involves the whole orientation and resetting of the personality; whether the change is sudden or gradual, it must be lifelong. Such a statement is refreshing, for so many people apparently believe that this thing called conversion is something that takes place in an instant, and that the person, presumably previously the worst of scoundrels, becomes through relatively little effort of his own, a veritable saint. Such notions are the sheerest of nonsense. The most that can happen instantaneously is a change of mind as to direction. The rest is up to the individual. And for most of us this rest involves a long, long struggle toward an ever-higher plane of living. But, the good Reverend [Manning] goes on, this conversion is, contrary to the usual assumption, something that involves the amendment of life by God. This, too, is mere gibberish. If such were true, then all one would have to do would be to sit and wait until God acted, and if no action was forthcoming, then the responsibility for lack of it would be upon the divinity.

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Catholic-Protestant sources of tension and conflict were dealt with in a recent article in America, a Jesuit weekly publication. The contents were too controversial to be cleared for broadcast over CBS’s Church of the Air radio show, but they involved three major elements.

One was the matter of birth control. Some Protestants look upon this as a positive virtue, while the Catholic Church views this practice as contrary to natural law. Another major difference is the attitude toward parochial schools. The right to educate his child in a Catholic school is an undisputed one of the Catholic parent, but, Catholics complain, Protestants often misunderstand the parochial school and regard it as a divisive influence in American society. The third source of misunderstanding, according to the publication, is the matter of censorship. The Legion of Decency and the National Office for Decent Literature do not regard themselves as censors. Rather, the magazine insists, they publish moral appraisals of movies and books. But they are looked upon by Protestants as intolerant. And, what is more, Protestants often feel impelled to go see a movie just because Catholics have condemned it.

Father Davis, writer of the article of protest, prescribes that Protestants and Catholics get together and talk over not merely their differences, but also the vast areas of agreement on matters of common concern. And he thinks that Catholics should take the initiative in this.

Well, a quick appraisal of the record on these three items seems justified at this point. As a Protestant affiliate, this reporter takes the attitude that is probably shared by most that birth control is a matter of individual decisions and that there is little if any religious or moral significance attached to it. However, he reserves to the Catholic the right to take a different view as long as he, too makes it an individual affair and does not attempt to impose his views on others against their will and judgment. But Protestants themselves ordinarily do not understand completely the official attitude the Catholic Church has taken in the matter, but assume that it is opposed to such control in any form, which is not true.

Our ignorance of our Catholic colleagues is profound also with respect to parochial church schools. And often we fail to keep in mind that Protestants too maintain church schools to which children are sent, though mainly these are beyond the high school level. Church schools of all faiths have done much to give variety and richness to our educational pattern, and nobody can seriously question the probable force for good they have been in emphasizing religious and moral aspects of education which the public schools, by their vary nature cannot or should not do. But the good father is less complete in his insistence that the Legion of Decency has not engaged in censorship. Movies have been banned many times because of pressure exerted by the legion and members of the Catholic Church, following the legion’s lead and recommendations. “The Miracle,” “Martin Luther,” and others readily come to mind. Both Protestants and Jews themselves have not been blameless in this matter. For example, some years ago Jews tried to prevent presentation of the picture “Oliver Twist” because it portrayed a leading character, a Jew, in an unflattering role. Nobody questions the right of the Catholic Legion of Decency to appraise the moral tone of movies and books to let the public know what its attitude is. But, when it tries, and sometimes succeeds, in bringing pressure on communication media to prevent those who do not agree with its appraisals from seeing movies or having access to purchase of books it would ban, it is going beyond the bounds of its right in our scheme of things. Most Americans do not want censorship, whether it comes from a church-affiliated organization, or from any other pressure group in the community.

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A short lesson in theology came to my attention this week that contains enough food for serious thought that I should like to see what you think of it. It goes like this: “On six days a week we live in an ordered solar system where cause and effect are operative. On Sundays thousands go to church and enter a world of make-believe, where axes float, asses talk with their masters, gods become men and men become gods, people walk on water, the dead come to life, and virgins have babies.” Why is it that we want to think about, but definitely not to think through our religious beliefs? Do we not dare subject such beliefs to the same rigid scrutiny we give to more mundane and secular affairs? Perhaps it is this inability or unwillingness of so many of us to do so that is making Christianity lose perhaps the biggest opportunity in its history, namely to apply its inherent qualities realistically to the social and moral needs of an industrialized society. Instead of doing this, we become even more emotional and subjective, and the cult of religiosity becomes a fetish with many, and the Peale-Graham-Sheen axis gains in popularity for the unthinking mass that wants to feel rather than think. Was it not the Master himself who said that “In that day many will say here he is or there he is,” but believe them not. And from the same source came the assurance that if ye know the truth, the truth shall make ye free. How many of us are objectively seeking truth, and how many of us mistake simply what we want to believe as truth?

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Which leads to a final item, an excerpt from Bertrand Russell, whom few would call orthodox in religion. He says,

“The skepticism that I advocate amounts only to this: 1. That when the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain; 2. That when they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; and 3. That when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend judgment. These propositions may seem mild, yet if accepted, the would revolutionize human life.”

A viewpoint on the matter of values in education came into the news this week, with a resolution sponsored by Rep. David Givens of Fayette County and 28 others who urged Tennessee schools to put more stress on what they called fundamental and less on frills in Tennessee colleges and high schools. This resolution criticized state colleges for giving credit in such subjects as social dancing, tumbling, and the fundamental and techniques of soccer and speedball. Nothing was said about ping pong and tiddlywinks. Perhaps this was an inadvertent omission.

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And along the same line comes an excerpt by President Edwin S. Burdell of Cooper Union, New York, which says:

“Our American democracy has fought shy of elite groups, whether by birth, wealth, or brains. We have promoted an egalitarianism which runs the risk of defeating our efforts to meet our more pressing needs. Our teachers are paid less than our factory workers, and their station in life financially is rated not much above that of the common … salesman. Occasionally waves of anti-intellectualism threaten to stifle the exploration of the unknown, whether physical or social…. The recent fad of applying the term “egghead” to anyone who displays … intellectual ability seems to imply distrust of the intellectual as a sort of misfit in a mass of conformity…. The development of potential brain power of intellectually superior men and women is our greatest need….

“The crux of the problem is how to discover those most talented youths and to motivate them to seek the education … needed to cope with the increasingly complex situation [of the world we live in]. If society is to survive, it must be as much concerned with the man of brains and integrity as it is with enlightenment of the masses of mankind.”

Thus ends the words of the good doctor, but he is saying what many teachers have thought but feared to say in recent years. They have been dismayed as they have seen such panaceas as social promotions, life adjustment curricula, and other such nonsense prescribed as cure-alls for educational ills, and many times they have had to administer the medicine when they had little faith in its healing qualities. Educational theorists have been more concerned with educational problems than they have with the problems of education, and there is a vast difference. If the moral tone of the social order is to be improved through education, it is about time that more reason and less rationalization is utilized in developing and carrying out educational programs. As far as I know, nobody has as yet announced discovery of a process that will transmute zircons into diamonds, but diamonds can be polished by the proper process.

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Frederick May Elliot, writing in The Christian Register for December 1956 contributes the following thought-provoking comments:

“’Man,’ wrote Prof. Harlow Shapely recently, ‘is a stubborn adherent to official dogma, and official dogma is more powerful in religion than in any other area of human concern. This may be natural, because religion is more vitally concerned with the deepest emotional life than any other element in human experience, but it is nonetheless regrettable….

“It is now more than a hundred years since William Ellery Channing laid down the principles for a religious education that would be consistent with a liberal point of view in religion…. But it is only comparatively recently that anything like a majority of religious people has made his principles a basis for practice in our churches.

“But a few are on the road to that victorious outcome. And nothing is more deeply heartening today than the response of an entire generation of young parents to the program of religious education which owes much of its initial impulse to Channing. Out of this breakthrough may well come the greatest onward surge that liberal religion has known from the beginning of its history.

“Here is, as I see it, the chief contribution which our churches can make to the advancement of mankind…. We can demonstrate that religion is the ally and not the enemy, of progress in thought; that the mind of man is mightier than its own inertia; that the barriers can be thrown down in the name of faith. That is our opportunity today.”

He was talking about the Unitarian religious philosophy. Few other denominations, including my own, have been bold and imaginative enough to do this.

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All of us have read recently of the racial tensions and outbreaks at Clinton, Tennessee, Montgomery, Alabama, and other places throughout the South as a result of integration efforts in schools, on buses, etc. Whatever view one takes toward integration, he probably, in theory at least, deplores mob violence, whether it is in attacking a minister who is escorting colored children to school, or dynamiting the home of an integrationist.

This week a new, or at least a little different, instance of violence occurred in Birmingham, Alabama, when a 29-year-old clerk, a white man who has been a frequent speaker at integration rallies was set upon by a group of hoodlums, all white. His car was wrecked, and stones and other missiles, as well as angry and unprintable words were hurled at him. Not only that, but he was fined $30 in court for gunning his car in a burst of speed to get away from the mob before possible fatal violence was done to his person. As a result of his experience, he says that he thinks it best he leave the state to avoid more trouble. He, quite naturally, feels that he wishes to, in his words, “tell the world” what is going on throughout the deep South regarding the racial situation. Washington announced that he would be permitted to submit a report to a U.S. Senate subcommittee regarding what happened and is happening.

Not only is the whole episode disgraceful, but worse, it seemed to be something of a symbol of the atmosphere through the area. Wonder if those doing the attacking do not go into their churches for worship and sing, “We are not divided, all one body we”? If so, how academic can you get about religion?

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To many, perhaps most, of us, children are the most wonderful things in the world. And at least some of us so cherish congenial home and family life where children are, that no sacrifice seems too great to be with them. This week, a statement of “Beatitudes for Parents” came to my attention that seems worth passing on. It goes like this:

Blessed are the parents who make their place with spilled milk and with mud, for such is the kingdom of childhood.

Blessed is the parent who engages not in the comparison of his child with others, for precious unto each is the rhythm of his own growth.

Blessed are the fathers and mothers who have learned laughter, for it is the music of the child’s world.

Blessed and wise are those parents who understand the goodness of time, for they make it not a sword that kills growth but a shield to protect.

Blessed and mature are they who without anger can say no, for comforting to the child is the security of firm decisions.

Blessed is the gift of consistency, for it is heart’s ease in childhood.

Blessed are they who accept the awkwardness of growth, for they are aware of the constant perilous choice between marred furnishing and damaged personalities.

Blessed are the teachable, for knowledge brings understanding and understanding brings love.

Blessed are the men and women who, in the midst of the unpromising mundane, give love, for they bestow the greatest of all gifts to each other, to their children, and in an ever-widening circle, to their fellow men.

Christianity’s season of penitence and prayers begins this coming Tuesday. It is the period of Lent, the 40 days (excluding Sundays) preceding Easter and the resurrection of Christ after his crucifixion. Traditionally, some of the days immediately preceding Lent are a time of high merriment. The name of the festivities, Mardi Gras, comes from the French term for the religious festival, Shrove Tuesday. “Mardi Gras” is literally “Fat Tuesday,” and that goes back to the ancient French housewives who made last-minute efforts to use up the fats that would be forbidden by the church in Lent. Shrove Tuesday’s real meaning is as the day of confession preparatory to Lent. Lent begins the next day, on Ash Wednesday, which gets its name from the ashes that used to be put on the heads of public penitents. Now the Roman Catholic Church puts the symbol on the foreheads of its faithful.

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Today in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the U.S. celebration of the 500^th anniversary of the Moravians begins. Throughout the world, the yearlong celebration is observing a global chain of prayer for peace. This has been arranged so that on every day of the year, one Moravian church will be praying from midnight to midnight for the peace of the world, the continuance of the Christian church, and the growth of the Moravian movement. The Moravian mission in Western Tibet began the chain in January. It will move eastward in Europe through Czechoslovakia, the birthplace of the church in 1457, on to California, and then end in Dutch Guiana in South America. A Moravian bishop is credited with editing the first Protestant hymnal in 1501. The church also was the first Protestant denomination to reach international scope. In the U.S., Pennsylvania has most of the nation’s 50,000 Moravians. Bethlehem is the seat of the Northern body, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the head of the Southern division.

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Yesterday, the Vatican City and many other places throughout the year marked a double event. It was the birthday of Pope Pius and the anniversary of his election as supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church in 1939. The main celebration to honor the pope will be a solemn pontifical Mass on March 12, the anniversary of his coronation.

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The head of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations says the official family of American Reform Judaism now has 540 “liberal temples” in the U.S. and Canada. Dr. Maurice Eisendrath adds that four new congregations were admitted in the first two months of this year. Eleven more congregations are applying for membership. Dr. Eisendrath states that at least 23 more would be awaiting admission if funds were sufficient. He says new housing areas and suburban developments have meant requests from all parts of the U.S. and Canada for aid in establishing new Jewish temples and religious schools.

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In Knoxville, Tennessee, a regional meeting of the Women’s Society of Christian Service of the Methodist Church has been told that the failure of the church to take a positive stand on social issues such as integration has permitted hoodlum elements in many communities to take over. The speaker was Bishop Richard C. Raines of Indianapolis. He said: “The church must be the conscience of the community. When the church only reflects the moral code of its members and fails to shine the piercing light of God’s judgment on human conduct it ceases to be the salt of the earth.” He emphasized that Methodists and other Protestants are in “dire danger” of permitting our churches to become museums. He listed four facets of integration as follows:

• Every person should have the right to work where he is capable;
• Every man should have the right to educate his children in public schools without artificial barriers;
• Every man should have the right to live where he can afford to live and should be accepted by the community as long as he is a good citizen. Christians, above all, should take the lead in stopping rock-throwings and bombings;
• The church should quickly cease to be the most segregated group in our society.

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Albany, New York: The New York State Council of Churches is against lowering the age at which a man can marry without his parents’ consent from 21 to 18. Speaking for the council, the Rev. Robert Withers told a legislative committee that lowering the age would lead to hasty and ill-considered marriages. He said too many young peoples had the erroneous idea that all sorts of problems could be solved by early marriage. Albany attorney Charles Tobin, representing the Roman Catholic Welfare Committee, said his group has not yet taken a stand on the question.

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Augusta, Maine: Roman Catholic lay leaders have threatened to shut down Augusta’s parochial schools unless the city provides the pupils with transportation. Such a move would compel the public schools to absorb 900 children now in Catholic schools. The city council refused bus transportation for parochial pupils even though it was approved last year in a referendum election.

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New York: The controversy over whether religious broadcasts should pay for radio and television time or should get it free will be an important topic at a meeting in New York next week. The meeting is that of the Broadcasting and Film Commission of the National Council of Churches. The national council took a stand last year that the broadcasting industry should furnish time for religious programs. It is difficult to see how such a stand could be justified if the religious programs are sectarian. If the government is prohibited from sponsoring one religion over another, then how can religious groups expect to use government force, indirectly, to compel private industry to do so?

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Chicago: The official newspaper of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Chicago has added fuel to the row over the film “Martin Luther.” The newspaper, New World, called it a hate-provoking movie. The newspaper censured the film especially for suppressing what it called the coarseness and violence which many historians say marked Luther’s character. The Catholic editorial caused television station WGN-TV to cancel a showing of the film. A Protestant group has protested to the Federal Communications Commission because of the ban.

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Williamsburg, Virginia: The General Board of the National Council of Churches had commended all church groups and individuals who are working to relieve racial tensions in the South. No names were mentioned in the resolution.

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Vatican City: Pope Pius’ pronunciation of the use of anesthetics this week appears to have settled a controversy that has agitated some Roman Catholics for many years. The pope declared that a doctor may give an aesthetic with a clear conscience when it is medically indicated, even if he knows it may shorten the patient’s life.

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With the controversy over Israel and her role in the Middle East continually in the headlines these days, a facet of the problem has made little in the way of news. That is the issue of the Jewish vote in this country, hinging perhaps on the position the U.S. takes on the matter of Israel’s withdrawal from Egypt. It is impossible to say just how much Jews vote as Jews. Many analyses of the so-called Jewish vote indicate that, other things being equal, Jews vote as they do for many reasons, only one of which is or may be a religious or socio-cultural bias. However, the Jews of the world have every right to be group conscious, in view of the perennial persecution to which they have been subjected, especially in Nazi Germany in recent years. But there is little doubt that the Middle East controversy could well crystallize a Jewish vote, just as did the impact of the Irish question produce an Irish vote during and immediately after World War I.

None with a memory of the bitter anti-British sentiments with which political candidates bought votes in the great Irish American communities was surprised when Mayor Wagner of New York scorned the visiting King Saud of Arabia, and refused him a municipal welcome in New York. Averell Harriman, governor of New York, backed Wagner in that position in all respects, and few were surprised. Whatever the motives of the mayor and the governor may have been, practical politicians counted their action as likely to hold or win them friends and votes among the very large Jewish community of New York City. Doubtless also how vividly the current dispute over Israel will be reflected in future U.S. elections. It may depend to a considerable extent on whether the United Nations, with U.S. support, takes a position that can be interpreted as penalizing Israel and how severe those penalties may be. If the Israeli have their backs up and the U.N. must hit hard to put them down, the blow may leave a big and perhaps ugly scar on the face of U.S. domestic politics. Fortunately, at this particular moment, it looks as if that eventuality may have been avoided.

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Four weeks ago I quoted some excerpts from and recommended the reading of an article entitled “What do You Mean ‘Religious Emphasis Week’?,” by Dr. Leland Miles of Hanover College, Indiana. The article appeared in the winter 1956 Issue of the A.A.U.P. Bulletin. Both organization and publication tend toward the conservative side in education, and both are as American as the name of the organization indicates.

The viewpoint of Dr. Miles, as set forth in the article, is that in most cases, so-called religious emphasis weeks are largely occasions where only Christian (usually Protestant) representatives are brought before the student body, with a result that, instead of stimulating thought and clarifying convictions, they constitute largely mutual admiration societies that merely confirm prejudices. He suggests that it would be an “exhilarating way to spend a real religious emphasis week … to have representatives of the world’s major religions appear before the student body.”

Your reactions to his suggestion have been about what I had expected and even hoped, for they were both for and against the idea. Had they been all one of the other, it would have been disturbing, for unanimity breeds stagnation, and stagnation is not conducive to thought, growth, or progress. What was surprising was that some of your reactions opposing the idea were based on the fear, expressed or implied, that to bring such representatives before college young people might lessen their faith in Christianity. Does that mean that our faith is so fragile we dare not submit it to open competition in the marketplace with contrasting thought systems in the field of religion? Do we believe in free enterprise only in the world of material objects, not in the realm of ideas?

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Dr. Miles’ suggestion is, within itself, relatively unimportant. What is important is the stubborn fact that in the world of today, bigotry and intolerance are twin luxuries we can no longer afford. We who believe in Christianity are a minority group in the 2.3 billion people that make up humanity of this planet.

The most important ingredient in the peace we hope to forge is a better understanding among people of diverse cultures. Iron curtains raised by the fearful will not bring that understanding about. It will be brought about only by creating an atmosphere that will permit the greatest possible exchange of differing viewpoints. And one can understand a philosophy that conflicts with his own without embracing that philosophy. To assume otherwise would be as ridiculous as to say that because I know the nature of electricity I cannot avoid electrocuting myself. Any religion, including Christianity, will live only so long as it gives purpose and meaning to the lives of people. When it no longer does this, it will perish, and all the great walls erected by the timid cannot prevent its decline. We may not like the idea, but it can be documented by the whole history of human experience.

Do you have sense enough to know what you want to read? What you consider to be fit to read? Apparently a number of city governing boards in the state and elsewhere do not think so. It begins to look as if there might even be competition among the municipalities to see which can surpass the others in telling the public that you can or cannot read this or that. The news this week revealed that Nashville has banned six magazines which even passed the Knoxville censors. Among them was the January issue of Modern Man, a magazine which I had never seen. However, I rushed right down, secured a copy of it, and looked through it. There is hardly anything in it that one may not see in his daily newspaper, on a roadside billboard, or any other public means of display. It is not only disturbing, but a matter of curiosity, to speculate as to why it is that community do-gooders and busybodies get it into their noodles that they and they only know what literature is; that they feel they can set themselves up as superior beings to dictate to us, the common herd, what is fit for us to read. It is not only undemocratic, but irritating. We have laws against obscenity, against salacious literature. If a magazine or other publisher violates these laws, he should be punished. Matters of this sort properly belong in a court of law, and should not be left up to private individuals and groups, acting under sanction of spineless or unthinking governing boards, to be the censors of literate morality. Wonder if they ever heard of the First Amendment to the federal Constitution?

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Closely related to the above item is a matter now pending in the Tennessee state legislature, namely, a bill sponsored by the Tennessee Press Association, that would make meetings of public commissions, boards, etc., open to the public. These commissions and boards are transacting your and my business, but apparently many of them do not wish us to know what they are doing. As one reads the statements of opponents of the measures he can, if he has imagination, visualize their smallness of stature. Is it not rather anomalous that such a bill should be needed or thought to be needed? This reporter is not talking here without benefit of some experience in the matter, for rather wide experience with boards and agencies of various types from the federal to the local level has given him firsthand knowledge of how school boards, city councils, Washington bureaus, and other similar bodies feel that their own domain is their personal empire, and what they do should be a matter of them and them only to know about. There is a moral element involved here. The people have a right to know. It was rather refreshing to live some five or six years in a state where meetings of all public agencies were open at all times to the public, and none of the dire things the timid legislators at Nashville who oppose the “right to know” bill fear happened there. Your and my duty with respect to government is to exert our influence to the end of making it better, more constructive, and cleaner. We cannot do this without information as to what is going on, and we cannot get that information unless representatives of the public are permitted to be present and report upon the transaction of public business. It is as simple as that.

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One comforting item in the week’s news should set the minds of school people at rest, and should make a lot of people red-faced. For years now school teachers and school administrators have been insisting that there is a critical shortage of classrooms in the nation’s schools. Under consideration by a House committee now is an administration bill seeking to provide $1.3 billion over the next four years in federal aid for school construction. Now comes the spokesman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, testifying before that House committee, who reveals that there is really no shortage of classrooms at all. Thomas A. Ballantine of Louisville, Kentucky, chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Committee on Education said, “No critical national shortage in classrooms has been or can be demonstrated to exist.” In fact, instead of a shortage, he has discovered a 14,000 surplus. And that should settle that issue, once and for all.

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It is not my desire to ride the same horse to the point of destruction, but a number of times I have made reference to the need from both the standpoints of safety and of aesthetics to do something to regulate billboard nuisance on the projected 41,000 miles of federal highways. From Washington this week comes news that the billboard lobby is hot after Rep. Cliff Davis of Tennessee who has introduced in the House a companion bill to the one Senator Neuberger sponsored in the Senate to permit use of federal aid in buying up advertising options along these highways. Even union representatives, sign painters and electricians, are putting heat on him. I happen to be a card-carrying member of the AFL, but the welfare of the public comes before the welfare of the union, regardless of what Mr. Wilson once said in another connection. Why not write Rep. Davis and let him know how you feel about the matter? Incidentally, the AAA has for the first time in its history, backed the pending bills, and it represents over 5 million motorists.

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Of course you know that the United Nations is being urged to impose diplomatic, economic, and perhaps other sanctions against Israel because of her refusal to relinquish Gaza and the Gulf of Aqaba unless or until she receives U.N. guarantees that there will be no further raids on the part of the Arabs of Israeli territory. Without any comment upon the rightness or wrongness of her position, few would disagree with the president who said that two wrongs do not make a right, that because Egypt violated her pledge in the U.N. Charter and raided Israel is no excuse for Israel to violate her pledge in the U.N. Charter to settle her differences with other nations by peaceful means. However, any serious or concerned move to impose the same kind of sanctions against Russia for her rape of Hungary is noticeable only for its lack. Veritably, in our world of today, the way of the small transgressor is hard.

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The women’s segment of a county political organization in a neighboring county this week used as its theme “Recognizing Americanism Month,” apparently meaning February. (No mention was made about the other 11 months.) However, this reflects again how enamored some of us can get about slogans and words that mean everything or nothing. As a matter of fact, many of us have become so bored with “ism” words these last few years that we avoid them entirely. The word “Americanism” is one that has been bandied about all too much, and it is about time we either tried to define it or omit its use altogether. A few years ago some of us hoped that some cases then in the courts would force a judicial definition, but we were naive, and such was not forthcoming.

Anyway, the news item mentioned goes on to say that the speaker discussed George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and others. But after all, what is Americanism? Well, it may be the heroes at Valley Forge, or at least the courage they displayed; a Mexican boy carrying the American flag in a Colorado pageant; the Negro fighting within the framework of our constitutional system for the rights that bigoted fellow-citizens of his would deny him. It is not only the George Washingtons and Abraham Lincolns, though we honor them as great; it is the Italian miner in the coal pits. Not only those whose ancestors came over in 1620; but the Hungarian refugees who aspire to become good American citizens. America is made up of all races, all creeds, all nationalities; it is composed of people who came here centuries ago, and of the ones who arrived yesterday. It is composed of not only the George Pullmans and the Andrew Carnegies, but also of the Eugene Debs and Norman Thomases; it is the beleaguered farmer of the dust bowl seeking government assistance in order to retain his homestead for his family, and it is those who resign from office because of conflicts of interest over family contracts with the government. Taken together, it is all of us who make up America. Here we have learned to reconcile our differences without conflict, to be tolerant of those whose convictions are in conflict with our own; to recognize that within the framework of our Constitution and laws under it, we have formed a society that transcends old world loyalties and traditions. It is to this Constitution that all of us owe loyalty, and anyone who respects it and abides by it is to be respected for his Americanism, regardless of his place of origin, religious or political belief, or social or economic status.

Some months ago I reported and commented on the hazards to highway safety of unsightly billboards, and the danger that, unless something is done soon by federal and state governments, the 41,000 miles of super highways to be built will become so many miles of billboard jungle. Since then much has appeared in the papers on this subject, as well as over radio and television media. There is more than safety involved, for as the late Ogden Nash wrote some years ago:

I think that I shall never see

A billboard lovely as a tree,

Perhaps unless the billboards fall

I’ll never see a tree at all.

This may be humor, but it is desperate humor. Senator Neuberger, of Oregon, has just introduced in the U.S. Senate a bill, which, if enacted, would permit the use of federal funds by the states to buy up advertising options to 500 feet of land adjoining the proposed highway system. This is a bill that Congress should enact, and the states should take advantage of. Ours can be a land of beauty, and there is no reason why your and my tax dollars should be spent to build highways that are to become narrow avenues through dangerous and unsightly commercial advertisements. Senator Neuberger puts it this way: “It’s the motorists money which makes the billboard site of value. If the highways were not there, the signboard would be worth less than a continental dollar. The highway, paid for by the motorist, makes valuable the signboard which the motorist is forced to look at while traveling through the land.” But the senator knows what he is up against. The billboard lobby accused it opponents, at the federal level, of violating state rights. At the state level, it accuses them of “robbing widows and orphans of the money they get for renting the land for billboards.” They also have, he says, a unique definition of “free enterprise,” which according to them is an improvement on God…. “If you look at lakes and trees and mountains as you drive along the highways, you go to sleep, but if you look at billboards advertising a brand of whiskey or cigarettes, … you stay awake.” How maudlinly commercial can you get?

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The Union Presbytery, of the Presbyterian Church USA, has called for complete integration of public schools in Tennessee, and has condemned the governor’s recently enacted segregation laws as an invitation to the lawless. Meeting in Knoxville, the presbytery also asked both governor and legislature to reconsider their action on these laws, and to take steps to eliminate “all forms of racial segregation as denial of the fatherhood of God to all men, of the brotherhood of man, and of the dignity and worth of the individual.” It also urged upon the general assembly the adoption of a program that would “assist all Christians in preparing their communities psychologically and spiritually for carrying out the full implications of the Supreme Court’s decision.” It emphasized, “We believe that delay in carrying out the intent of the … decision can only postpone our dealings with a problem which we are bound by law and conscience to face and solve.”

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Another important piece of legislation now in the congressional hopper is the proposals regarding civil rights, proposals designed to safeguard those fundamental freedoms that distinguish a free society from a dictatorial one. Southern (so-called) Democrats have given notice they will filibuster the bills to death, or failing in that, will form a third party. During the forthcoming debate we shall hear invocations of the shades of Jefferson, shouting about state rights, condemnation of the Supreme Court, and in short, all the tricks in the politician’s bag to befuddle and confuse the issue and to wear down supporters of the measure.

Much of the oratory will probably be centered around the meaning of the Bill of Rights and later amendments at the time they were added to the Constitution. There is no doubt about the meaning of the First Amendment, guaranteeing freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion. Many will argue that the 14th Amendment was designed to permit a mixture of races in the public schools. But much of the argument will be a matter of semantics. On the broad principles of free government under due process of law there is no appreciable dispute. But perhaps the most significant problem in the field of civil liberties today is to obtain as clear and widely agreed-upon definition of the basic principles as applied to contemporary conditions as possible.

It is a commonplace that each generation since Jefferson has been compelled to redefine constitutional right and guarantees in accordance with its own conscience and the conditions confronting it. Many of those who signed the Declaration in 1776 that said all men are created equal and had certain unalienable rights were slave owners; and the modifying definitions which they gave to that statement in order to perpetuate chattel slavery had to be wholly revised at a later age. This task of redefinition is unending. It is peculiarly difficult today as we seek to apply principle formulated in the simple and mainly agrarian society of the 18^th century to political, social, and economic conditions which have been so vastly transformed since that day. The very idea of civil liberty implies a sound reconciliation of the conflicting claims of the diversified individual, the pluralistic community, and the unitary state. The measures before the Senate would attempt such a reconciliation through a broadening of the definition of civil rights to make it conform to today’s realities.

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A student editorial in a current issue of a local college newspaper is of such penetrating discernment that its comments seem worth passing on to you, insofar as time will allow. It says:

“On our campus now there are a number of free-thinking liberals who frequently come under heavy criticism for their ‘different’ type of thinking. The ultra-conservative true-blue believers in the great American myth … are in the forefront of the challengers.

“The liberals here, always quick to tell their classes what is fact and what is opinion, are in the minority and therefore subject to dark threats by the pseudo-intellectuals. They are accused of being former members of a John Reed Club, donating money to the Reds in the Spanish Civil War, teaching evolution, and beating their wives. All accusations, even if true, would have some degree of merit. It is interesting to note the source of this criticism, which is, by the way, much more prevalent than most instructors and students realize. Without naming specific groups, the criticism generally originates among religious fanatics, chauvinistic individuals, persons who parrot the catchy phrases of essentially narrow-minded clods, and the apathetic leaders of useless groups.

“To what do they object? Basically they are objecting to a type of thought that will ultimately destroy them; they are objecting to the potential destruction of blind faith based on fallacies; they are objecting to theories that may prove they are not the superior beings and God is not always on their side.

“The manner of criticism employed is insidious, born in the darkness and spread subtly. It occasionally gains momentum, until it reaches the point that certain factions outside the campus are leveling remarks in high places against the freethinkers here. Generally it travels by word of mouth from person to person, group to group.

“The irony of this is that the liberal instructors remain unconcerned, serenely confident that one day they will be average, not extraordinary. They are not perturbed when people disagree with them, but they do object to answers based on what is safest to say.

“This problem of criticism is one that has plagued liberals since Adam and Eve hiked out of the garden; it may go on ad infinitum. Nevertheless, we would like to put in a plug, here and now, for the very few instructors and even fewer students among us who are inclined to think for themselves.

“We feel those thinkers are the ultimate hope for man; that they are worth hearing simply because they are honest. Contrary to being atheistic, or even agnostic, and communistic, they take a long look at humanity and being optimistic, try to show the way. They will be around when the diplomatic liars, the militaristic nonentities, the superior race fanatics, and the dishonest leaders have long since passed into an ignoble place in history, or forgotten altogether.”

Everyone gets around to thinking, at least at times, about how wealthy America is. And that brings immediately to mind the alleged store of gold at Fort Knox. However, the wealth of a country is not necessarily measured in terms of how much bullion it has stored away in the ground from whence it came. It is just as important to know how that wealth is distributed. For India is a rich country for some people, but for the masses, it is poverty-stricken. Moreover, a nation’s wealth can better be measured in terms of how well its families – the men, women, and children – are fed, clothed, and housed. Putting the two together, for they belong together (i.e., distribution of wealth and general welfare), one cannot help but think that the bankers and finance companies have about convinced the American public that people can get out of debt by borrowing money. Stock prices have risen 77 percent since 1952; the interest on home loans now is 7 percent as a rule rather than as an exception, with a reported large bonus in each case for handling the debt at all. Farmer income is down 23 percent. The so-called tight money policy seems to be benefiting only those who already have plenty of it, while those needing better food, clothing, and housing can expect less and less of these things. Is there not a moral as well as a financial consideration involved here? Public officials are quick and frequent to parade their religious affiliations with or without provocation, from the president down. Wonder if they read not only the stock market quotations but also if they analyze what is happening to those who need most. Seems like someone said once somewhere that “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me.”

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A quotable quote comes from Dr. J. Edward Carothers of the Methodist Church in Schenectady, New York, who writes, “One of the mysteries of life in the church is the laziness of people when it comes to trying new hymns. It is a spiritual laziness which shows how far the soul has moved in the direction of dullness. In the jukebox world there are new tunes and songs by the bushel. In that world there is an attitude of hopeful watching and waiting for something better, more exciting, strange, and new. It is often unrewarded but it persists as an attitude. Churches can be horribly dull and inflexible, especially when it comes to singing hymns. People who have been going to church every Sunday for fifty years may not know more than a few hymns and then not be able to sing even so much as a stanza without a hymnal.” Is that true with you in your church?

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It has been interesting to note and think about reactions to the idea quoted on this program last week that a revolution on the college campus during Religious Emphasis Week might be a wholesome development. But where there is no controversy there is not likely to be any thought. In connection with the idea of revolution, it seems apropos here to cite an outstanding American, one Mr. Justice Louis Brandeis, who said, “Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change.” (Though the revolution suggested last week was in the realm of religious procedure.) Mr. Brandeis goes on, “They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for free discussion.”

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Jung said there are four main ways one may view reality or the dominant phase of the universe to denote which we commonly use the word symbol of “God.” These four ways are sense experience, reason, feeling, and insight by intuition. Because some people incline to some of these four more than others, intelligent people have different emphasis in religion. It would seem to be more nearly counsel of perfection to suggest that people become mature in religion by developing and integrating all four.

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This last item is approached with considerable temerity, for it is accepted for once at least, that Freud was right when he said that “Crowds never thirsted after truth; they demand illusions and cannot do without them.” And, it may be added, they are likely to destroy those who take their illusions away from them. However, it cannot but be observed how many Americans go around saying things about themselves, and believing them, that are either not true, or not nearly as true as they wish you to think they are. All of this is brought about by reading an article in Mad magazine about a radio announcer who worked the all-night shift, and who got into the habit of saying just what he thought. His employers promptly fired him, but his audience demanded his return and he was re-hired just as promptly. Newspaper reporters, sensing a human-interest story, interviewed the announcer and got his evaluation of people who speak their minds versus those who do not. He responded:

“The average person today thinks in certain prescribed patterns. People … have a genuine fear of stepping out and thinking on their own. ‘Creeping meatballism’ is this rejection of individuality. It’s conformity. The American brags about being a great individualist, when actually he’s the world’s least individual person. The idea of thinking individually has become a big joke. Old Thomas J. Watson of I.B.M. came up with the idea for a sign which just said, “Think.” And today, it’s a gag. This is the result of “creeping meatballism.” The guy who has been taken in by the “meatball” philosophy is the guy who really believes that contemporary people are slim … and they’re so much fun to be with … because they drink Pepsi-Cola….

“Couple of years ago, we had horsepower competition. Now there’s fin competition. Today … the car with the highest and longest fin is the car everybody’s interested in…

“Today, everything has a badge. Take men’s suits. I go into Macy’s basement, where they sell cheap men’s clothing…. And they have this big rack of men’s suits, and it says “Custom Brand.” And I say, “Custom-designed suits? Whom are they designed for?” “Custom-designed means designed for an individual. But the salesman says, “They’re designed for us … the basement.” That means, it’s impossible in today’s world to buy a standard rack suit. All suits are custom-designed. Even if they’re designed for the rack, and they fit the hangers beautifully….

“I was listening the other day to an ad, and the guy was saying the car he was selling was designed like a jet plane. And I said to myself, “A jet plane is a beautiful thing. Sounds great.” Until I suddenly thought: What relationship does a jet plane have with a car that spends most of its time banging into fire hydrants on 59^th Street, or piddling along at eight miles an hour in cross-town traffic? Why, it shouldn’t look like a jet plane at all. It should look like one of those rubber-bumpered things they have in amusement parks. That’s the ideal car for traffic. What possible advantage would a jet plane have for guy on Clark Street in Chicago? It would be like designing a house to look like a Spanish galleon. Everybody likes the looks of those so you might as well live in one.

But, the announcer concluded:

“Every one of us, I don’t care who he is, has a certain amount of desire to be individual within him. Because, no matter how many refrigerators you buy from Betty Furness, no matter how many custom suits you buy, no matter how many cars with fins you buy, you’re still an individual.

“Once a guy starts thinking, once he starts laughing at T.V. commercials, once he starts getting a hoot out of movie trailers, once he begins to realize that just because a movie is wider or higher or longer doesn’t make it a better movie, once a guy starts doing that, he’s beginning to make the transition from a conformist to an individual. He begins to have eyes that see, ears that hear, and mind that understands.”

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The Evangelical and Reformed Church has set for itself a three-point plan for enlisting the finest U.S. young people for full-time, life-time service. It wants, among other things, to recruit at least 700 more candidates for church-related vocations. The church’s president, the Rev. Dr. James Wagner of Philadelphia, also told the Cincinnati assembly the coming merger of the Evangelical, Reformed, and Congregational Churches will strengthen Far Eastern missionaries.

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The opening sermon at the Third World Assembly of the Lutheran Church will be delivered by Hungary’s once imprisoned Lutheran leader, Bishop Lajos Ordass. The assembly is to be held in Minneapolis in August. The secretary general of the 70-million-member World Lutheran Federation, Dr. Carl Lundquist of Lindsborg, Kansas, has described the Hungarian cleric as “a completely unshaken man.” Bishop Ordass is also reported in full function again as head of the 500,000 Hungarian Lutherans.

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The U.S. legation in Budapest is reported to have asked Roman Catholic Josef Cardinal Mindszenty to make no public statements while in asylum in the legation. The official Hungarian communist newspaper, has accused the prelate of issuing orders to suspend what the paper terms 18 “democratically-minded priests.” So far as is known, Cardinal Mindszenty has been able to send out only one message since he entered the U.S. legation as a refugee during the Hungarian uprising against Russia. That was a “thank you” note to President Eisenhower.

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A Roman Catholic agency says only 23 foreign Roman Catholic missionaries, of almost 6,000 at one time, are still in Red China. The organization, International Fides, adds that seven of the remaining 23 are in jail or under house arrest. Fides states that five of the seven are Americans: the Reverends Fulgence Gross of Omaha, Nebraska; John Wagner, of Pittsburgh; Charles McCarthy, of San Francisco; John Houle, of Glendale California; and Joseph McCormick of Ossining, New York.

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The Rabbinical Council of America has heard from its head that U.S. Orthodox rabbis should foster closer spiritual and cultural ties with Israel. Rabbi Solomon Sharfman of NYC has told the council’s Ninth Annual Midwinter Meeting that U.S. rabbis should be sent to an Israeli seminary for post-graduate studies. He adds they could be shining beacons of spiritual regeneration in U.S. Orthodox communities. The Atlantic City, New Jersey, meeting also heard an appeal from Ireland’s chief rabbi, Dr. Immanuel Jakobovits, who wants the rabbinical council and U.S. Jews to supply social workers and religious counselors to revitalize Jewish life in Western Europe.

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Washington: Laymen in the nation’s Protestant and Catholic churches are now taking on jobs that once were left to the clergy or left undone. They are planning budgets, conducting fund drives, leading youth organizations, visiting the sick, writing and editing church publications, and providing free counseling services. Federal Judge Luther W. Youngdahl, who was named Layman of the Year in 1955 by the Washington Federation of Churches, says the activity of laymen is the most significant spiritual advance in American churches in many years.

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The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano warns Hungarian collaborationist priests that they face automatic excommunication unless they give up church posts assigned to them by the puppet regime in Budapest. The newspaper says the Hungarian communist regime is atheistic and says religious persecution is rampant again in the country.

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Cleveland, Ohio: A national conference of the Presbyterian Church in the United States has been held during the week at Cleveland. The groups deliberated methods for increasing the present benevolence budget to $25 million in 1958, and to $50 million by 1962. A formula was used under which 50 cents should be contributed for national and world missions for every $1.00 contributed to a local church.

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London: Radio Moscow says restoration work will begin this summer on the inner walls of the famous St. Basil’s Church in Red Square. Mural paintings in the church date back to the 17^th century. Restoration work outside was during 1954 and 1955. Inside restoration, says Radio Moscow, should be completed in 1959.

Representatives of 5 million Lutherans in North America heard a number of addresses and made some explanations at Atlantic City, New Jersey, this week. The National Lutheran Council, a grouping of eight Lutheran denominations, urged a stop to the swing toward schools. The council stated such a movement is weakening the public school system, which it termed the chief instrument of general education for children. No cases were mentioned in the declaration, but in earlier debate some delegates charged Roman Catholics and some Protestants are boosting church-run schools, and opposing adequate financing for public schools. Among Protestant churches maintaining parochial schools in some communities is the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, which operates in some council projects. The council has urged too that the government make clear that long-term responsibility for refugees rests on the nation as a whole. It disclosed a lawsuit is threatened in California about two church-sponsored, Iron Curtain refugees. The group also has called for quickened efforts to rid America of what it terms this “sin of racial discrimination.” It went on to voice concern about a watering down of identities in the U.S Armed Forces and about cancellation of a showing of the film “Martin Luther” by a Chicago television station, WGN-TV (which was mentioned last Sunday on this program).

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Detailed plans were given this week to 500 officials of the Congregational Christian Church about their denomination’s coming merger with the Evangelical and Reformed Church. The new group, to be called the “United Church of Christ,” will be formed in Cleveland. The information was related at Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania, by the Rev. Dr. Fred Hoskins, of New York. He has stated to the church’s Mission Council that the Uniting General Synod will find the United Church of Christ exhibiting four marks of the true church: preaching of the word; right administration of the sacraments; essential oneness; and missions.

The opening address at the Uniting Session will be by a world church leader, Bishop Leslie Newborn of the United Church of South India. This new denomination has spearheaded the worldwide Christian movement through merger of Congregational, Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican, and Baptist churches in South India. The Congregational Christians heard one of their prominent laymen declare too many men come to church dinners to a get a $1.50 dinner for 50¢. But Arthur Snell of Nashville, Tennessee, who is president of his church’s Southeastern Laymen’s Convention, has declared, “Live-wire men with a program can literally make over the churches of America.”

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In Hungary, the restored communist government has withdrawn a decree that permitted all Hungarian children to have religious teaching in schools. The regulation had been issued by the present education minister, after the anti-Soviet rebellion was crushed. In Poland, a drive is underway to foster non-religious schools and organizations. This aims to counter the increase in church influence which results from a recent agreement that restored religious teachings in communist-dominated Poland.

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Vatican City: Pope Pius will state the Catholic Church’s stand on the latest methods of anesthesia at an international gathering of doctors later this month. He will give his views in an audience on February 24 to participants in a world symposium of surgeons and anesthetists. The pontiff is expected to pay special attention to the problem of whether it is permissible to deprive incurable patients of consciousness for long periods.

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San Jose, Costa Rica: The archbishop of San Jose has ordered the excommunication of any Roman Catholic family heads who send their children to Protestant or other non-Catholic schools. The order, by Monsignor Ruben Odio [Herrera], warned that excommunication would be automatic. It came as a surprise to many since Costa Rica has always been noted for religious tolerance and complete absence of any anti-Protestant laws or discrimination.

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Washington: A British agnostic questions whether Americans are worshiping God or an idol called “The American Way of Life.” Professor D.W. Brogan of Cambridge University, who made a nine-month tour of the U.S. last year, writes in a magazine article that a great deal of what passes for religion in America is essentially political rather than spiritual in character. He says there is a marked identification of religion with Americanism.

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New York: The National Council of Churches has issued a 12-point program by which local church groups can rid their congregations and communities of racial segregation. The federation of 30 American churches declares that Christians must not rest until segregation is banished from every area of American life.

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Again Atlantic City, New Jersey: An official of the National Lutheran Council predicts that racial tensions will heighten during 1957 and bring a showdown between federal and state authorities over segregation in public schools. Dr. Robert Van Deusen told the council at its annual meeting that this year may prove to be the high-water mark in bitterness and violence on the one hand, and the establishment of the supremacy of federal authority over state control on the other. He also forecast progress toward racial integration in church life will be made during this year.

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The Church World Service has announced a goal of $11.5 million in 1957 to aid homeless, hungry, and destitute persons abroad. Harper Sibley, chairman of Church World Service, in announcing the goal, says it’s the highest in the history of the churches, and that the major areas of need overseas include Hungary, Austria, India, Pakistan, and the Near East.

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Minneapolis, Minnesota: A synodical committee of the United Lutheran Church has reinstated a young minister who was unfrocked a year ago. The committee says it is convinced that the Rev. Victor K. Wrigley, pastor of the Gethsemane Lutheran Church of Brookfield, Wisconsin, is no longer a heretic. He was unfrocked on charges that he denied the virgin birth and other basic church doctrines. In appealing for reinstatement, the Rev. Wrigley told the committee that, in his words, “The birth of Christ is miraculous and my faith must include the virgin birth….”

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Boston: Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam of Washington is reported recovering satisfactorily at the New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston. Bishop Oxnam underwent surgery for removal of gallstone last Wednesday.

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Many, perhaps most, colleges have adopted the practice in recent years of having annually what is called “Religious Emphasis Week,” at which time a week of services, student/faculty/clergymen so-called panel discussions are held, the idea being to stimulate students to take a greater interest in religion as a part of their educational development. The materials that follow are taken from an article entitled “What Do You Mean ‘Religious Emphasis Week’?” that appeared in the winter bulletin of the American Association of University Professors. Program time will permit only excerpts, but these indicate an approach to religion that is rarely, if ever, found on a college campus during a week of so-called religious emphasis. The article itself is by Leland Miles of Hanover College. He says:

“To begin with, any fair definition of ‘religious’ must certainly take account of many noble religions in addition to Christianity. Yet how many church related colleges will feature … as part of Religious Emphasis Week, a symposium on the world’s major religions? How many denominational institutions are planning to invite a Moslem, a Hindu, a Buddhist, and a Jew to their campus on this occasion? Indeed, how many such colleges are even planning to invite a Roman Catholic, a Unitarian, or a Humanist? …. It may be objected … that Humanism is not a religion. (But) what more exhilarating way to spend a real Religious Emphasis Week than to have representatives of the world’s major religions, including Humanism, state their cases before a student body jury? …

“But, alas! It would be difficult to arrange such a program. For one thing, there are not too many Christian clergymen who are eager to debate with the ‘enemy’….

“The intellectual timidity of many clergymen is not, however, the only reason that true Religious Emphasis Weeks are difficult to organize. Another factor is the attitude of college administrations and religious departments, especially in some of the church-related colleges. This attitude seems to be that the best way of producing young Christians is to have a faculty which is 100 percent Christian in viewpoint, and a Religious Emphasis Week dogmatically presents Christianity as the only true way. Now, Christianity may indeed be the true way. But if it is, surely it can stand on its own feet against all competition, without the fearful protection given it on most denominational campuses.

“Where did we acquire the mischievous notion that young people can be molded into zealous believers only if all others on the campus, students and faculty alike, are also true believers? Actually, the reverse may be true. Two of the shrewdest modern defenders of Christianity, T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis, were bred in an atmosphere of pagan pessimism. Conversely, some of the least effective defenders of the faith will be found among students (some of them pre-ministerial students) who have been gently saturated for four years with a saccharine, provincial type of teaching which sticks its head in the sand and pretends that only one religion exists.”

Or looking at it another way, the author goes on:

“For example, suppose, this winter, that American college students were suddenly to put genuine religious emphasis into effect in the classroom. The result would necessarily be a new and revolutionary demonstration of earnestness in the performance of classwork – a new and startling display of that industry, energy, and thoroughness characteristic of Christ, and therefore characteristic of all those who, loving him, seek to imitate his personality. Is it not incongruous that Christian students – even leaders in student Christian organizations – are guilty of careless work in the classroom…. As a professor I have seen … the spectacle of Christian students, including pre-ministerial students, coming to class day after day and performing indifferent, nonchalant work. What can we say but that they betray a total ignorance of Christ’s personality and their obligation to imitate it?

“As for faculty members, what would a genuine Christian emphasis in the classroom mean for them? Surely it would mean that every professor would henceforth ponder deeply the relation of his secular field to Christian thought. Indeed, the development of such relationship would seem to be the principal reason for the existence of the small church-related college as a distinctive education. The biologist at a secular institution has no obligation except to teach biology, including organic evolution; but the biologist of a church-related college, if he is doing his job fully, cannot escape his responsibility for taking account not only of Darwin, but also of Genesis. The Mosaic account of creation, somehow rejected or somehow inferred, must permit the acceptance of an account of man’s rise out of a finny, furry past.

“Many professors … have perverted the concept of Christian … emphasis almost beyond repair. They assume that it means trapping students in a classroom and lambasting the helpless victims with thinly-disguised sermons. Other instructors have decided that Christian emphasis means diligently searching for all poems which contain biblical morals, then proclaiming such poems ‘great literature.’ On that basis, Eddie Guest would be the world’s greatest poet. Yet how adventurous a real Christian teaching of literature can be! …

“… What would happen this winter if college students suddenly put Christian emphasis into effect in their fraternities and sororities? The first result would surely be a new and revolutionary emphasis on brotherhoods of the spirit, and the wholesale abolition of those entrance requirements which in many fraternities hold at arm’s length anyone whose skin chemicals exist in different proportions than in the white race….

“To these suggestions the reaction of both staff and students will, I suspect, be one of despair and alarm. ‘Oh heavens, we couldn’t do that!’, they will cry. ‘Why, it would mean a complete overthrow of the existing order of things. It would mean – well, revolution.’

“Well, what’s wrong with revolutions, anyway? They’re quite in style these days. The last few years have seen the communist coup d’ état in Czechoslovakia, the revolt in Algeria, and the overthrow of Argentina’s Peron. A campus revolution would certainly be appropriate to the revolutionary atmosphere of the times. In fact, it would even be appropriate to Christianity. The Nazarene’s teachings have always been dynamite.”

Harvard University has begun a five-year study to develop mental health training for future clergymen. Heading the study will be Dr. Hans Hofmann, now of Princeton Theological Seminary and trained in both psychology and theology. Dr. Hofmann is ordained in the Reformed Church of Switzerland. His project will be to direct creation of a curriculum in mental health for Protestant theological seminaries. Harvard says similar studies are planned in Loyola University, a Roman Catholic institution in Chicago, and Yeshiva University, a Jewish institution in New York City.

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The American Jewish Committee plans to break ground this year for its Institute of Human Relations in New York City. The $1.5 million building will be dedicated to brotherhood.

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The largest Methodist church in Minneapolis has accepted a small Negro Methodist congregation as fellow worshipers. Almost 70 members of the Border Methodist Church have been received into the Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church, one of Minneapolis’ most exclusive congregations. The small church’s building is to be demolished to make way for a redevelopment project. But the pews, baptismal font, and other furnishings have been donated to other churches and religious institutions. The Border Church minister, the Rev. Dr. Charles Sexton, has been named to a position in the Minneapolis Methodist district. Hennepin’s senior minister, the Rev. Dr. Chester Pennington, says a missionary in India wrote him that such news is invaluable in that part of the world.

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An Associated Press writer well-versed in Soviet and satellite nation history says a major diplomatic crisis is likely to develop sooner or later because Josef Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary is in refuge in the U.S. legation in Budapest. Foreign news analyst Thomas Whitney says the Soviet puppet regime in Hungary may demand that the U.S. turn over the Catholic prelate, and the U.S. is likely to refuse. He adds that other possibilities include an offer of “safe conduct” to the cardinal to go to the Vatican. If Mindszenty should accept, and then be arrested, the incident no doubt would arouse great protest in the U.S. The Hungarian cardinal occupies the rooms of U.S. Minister Edward Wailes in the legation building. He holds occasional masses for legation personnel. And so far the Hungarian communists have apparently not objected to his staying there.

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Washington: Religious leaders say that America’s church boom is concentrated heavily in suburbs and small towns. By contrast, they say, churches in big cities and in rural areas have been suffering a steady decline in membership. Officials of major denominations have made a study of the uneven impact of the back-to-church movement and have come up with some facts. Most of the church building of recent years has been in the suburban areas, yet they cannot keep pace with the demand. During the same period, rural churches have been closing at the rate of nearly one thousand a year. And many of those Protestant churches in particular are disappearing from the centers of cities. There are only two left in downtown St. Louis and only three in Cleveland, for example.

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Again Washington: The Kresge Foundation of Detroit has contributed $1.5 million to help build a new Methodist theological seminary in Washington. The grant is contingent upon the church raising a similar amount to match it. Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam says construction of the seminary, which will be located on the campus of American University, is scheduled to begin in April, with its opening set for the fall of 1958.

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Kenilworth, England: An English preacher has doubled his congregation by retelling the New Testament in the jargon of science fiction. The Rev. John Thompson says he even uses stage props, including hydrogen-filled spaceships which shoot up to the church roof to add drama to his narration. Sounds come from a tape recorder he takes with him. Says the Rev. Thompson, “I think our belief in incarnation lends itself very well to explanation in terms of space travel.”

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A Methodist bishop from the South says U.S. churches must apply Christianity to the problem of racial segregation or quit trying to win foreign converts. The warning has come from Bishop William Watkins of Louisville, Kentucky. He also told a meeting of Cumberland Presbyterian ministers at Bethel College, McKenzie, Tennessee, that the decision cannot be long delayed.

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Many people are more distressed now that at any previous time of the Cold War. With Nehru’s visit here and reliance on the United Nations and the moral force of world opinion, it looked for a short time as if peace might be worked out under a real United Nations police force, that force acting like real [?] policemen. But now the policy is announced of the mailed fist of the U.S. in the East – the old balance of power again. The British and the French moved out of the East. Now it appears that the U.S. is going to move in, and there is little less likelihood of war with us there than there was when Britain and France were there. The problems of the have-nots cannot be solved by guns. It is wrong to kill people because you do not like their government and all the double talk of statesmen cannot change that. How long is the world going on talking in 17^th, 18^th, and 19^th century terms in a 20^th century that has already seen three of our B-52 Stratofortresses encircle the globe in 45 hours? That just puts all of us within less than 24 hours distance from anyone who may wish to bomb us. It is about time we brought our thinking up to cope with the realities or our present day bombers.

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Recently the Chicago Tribune‘s station, WGN-TV, canceled at a late hour the showing of the film “Martin Luther.” This brought a strong protest from groups who believe in both freedom of religion and freedom of communication. It was alleged that pressure from the Catholic Church was responsible for the ban, but a spokesman of the church, Monsignor E.M. Burke, chancellor of the Chicago Diocese, denied this. However, air wavelengths belong to the people, and this means to all the people. They are licensed to private corporations to be used in the public interest. Anyone has a right to protest a presentation, to refrain from viewing it and to attempt to persuade others not to see it. But it is obnoxious to freedom of communication, on which our democratic system rests, to have any group seek to impose a general censorship on material of which it disapproves according to the special standards of that group.

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And in the same connection, a more highly publicized controversy arose when Cardinal Spellman made one of his rare appearances in the pulpit of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to back up the Catholic Legion of Decency’s condemnation of the film “Baby Doll” and to warn Roman Catholics against seeing it “under pain of sin.” This reporter did not see the picture, but a good friend of his did, and her succinct evaluation of it was that it was not so much risqué as it was stupid. While still another critic made the comment to this reporter that if sex were objectionable, then the Ten Commandments should have been banned, but the public, including the Catholic Church lapped that one up. I wonder why it is that when approaching such matters relating to religion, so many of us are willing to accept uncritically something bearing a religious label, without looking under that label to see whether it is religious in name only. But to examine (publicly, at least) such things is not even considered ethical. I know because of the reaction several months ago to my comments on the picture entitled “A Man Called Peter.”

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One very wholesome proposal, apparently with administrative backing, now pending in the Tennessee legislature is a bill that would require that all meetings of public boards, commissions, and legislative bodies in the state be open to the public. Americans are notoriously suspicious of the transaction of public affairs in a secretive manner. However, school boards and other bodies have been just as notorious in trying to conduct their business secretly. This time, with the backing of the Tennessee Press Association, it looks as if positive action may result. Those who oppose it will be the ones who have a “Father Knows Best” complex, an attitude that those who believe in the true democratic process will reject summarily.

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All of us have seen, heard, and read about the reluctance, and, in one or two cases, the downright refusal, of certain labor leaders to testify before a congressional investigating committee regarding possibility of racketeering in the ranks of organized labor. As a matter of fact, the present convention of AFL-CIO leaders, meeting in Miami Beach, Florida, has put this matter of testifying as the first order of business. Nobody knows what the decision will be, but there is a moral principle involved in the matter (and I say this as a member of an AFL affiliate). What labor does or does not do is a matter of public concern, for organized labor has grown until its structure, organization, and functioning can mean good or ill for the whole country. It is just as unfair for labor to refuse to divulge information which Congress legitimately needs to know as it is for management to do so. Both labor and management will prosper and will be entrenched in public support only so long as the public has confidence in them. Both have a responsibility to the public in seeing that their houses are in order, and refusal to talk about this very important matter is no way to build public confidence.

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An interesting case of vacations in reverse cropped up this week in Virginia, a case of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. E. Claiborne Robins, president of a pharmaceutical firm, has practiced shutting down his plant from time to time in order that his workers may all take off to New York, Miami, or elsewhere, for a round of play. This week, he and Mrs. Robins departed via airplane for Acapulco, Mexico, on a two-week vacation. In breaking the news to their president, the employees handed Mr. Robins two checks: one drawn on the Bank of Good Times for a good vacation, the other, a real one, for $4,200, compliments of the employees.

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Ladies and gentlemen, it has been suggested to me that it might be indiscreet for me to include this last item on this program. That item is the fact that Rep. Harry Lee Senter of Kingsport, representing Sullivan County in the state legislature, has introduced in the House a bill that would prohibit public schoolteachers from encouraging integration on school grounds, and would make violations of this grounds for dismissal. In commenting upon it, Senter said, “We don’t believe that the question of integration or segregation should be made a part of the curriculum.”

This is not a fit subject for legislation. Teachers have no right to use their special position in the schoolroom to promote their own pet ideas, whether those ideas include segregation, or the relative merits of last year’s bird nests. They do, however, have an obligation to discuss frankly and fearlessly any social or other problem confronting the community. It would be difficult to conceive a more ubiquitous social problem than that posed by court decisions on segregation. Students of all ages are asking what are the facts? What do they mean? Teachers have an obligation to help students answer these questions. Moreover, it is the thesis of this reporter that teachers have a right to state their convictions about any subject, but do not have any right to try to impose those convictions upon their pupils. This right exists, not for the benefit of the teacher, but for the benefit of the community, including the pupils. In a democracy, no problem is solved merely by sticking our heads in the sand, or in gagging people from talking about that problem. Gag rule is a trapping of dictatorship, not a democracy. Academic freedom exists for the teacher because through it only can he encourage and promote the study of controversial issues. Democracy rests basically on the discovery of truth and upon popular acceptance of policies based on the facts. It is hard to subscribe to the theory that ignorance about anything is better than knowledge about it. Perhaps the sponsor of this legislation should read John 8:32, which is as follows: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

Muskegon, Michigan: For the first time in nearly a century, no Dutch Reformed churches in the Muskegon area will have sermons delivered in the Dutch language. The final sermon in Dutch was given last Monday. The Rev. Alkema explained that “It is apparent younger generations are content with religious services in English and apparently have little interest in Dutch rites.” And I might, as a sociologist, point out that once a church has given up its different language from that of the country in which it is located, it has taken about the last step in becoming assimilated, in this case of religion, into the main stream of American churches.

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Warsaw, Poland: Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, the Catholic primate of Poland, has conferred on church-state problems with communist Premier Cyrankiewicz. The meeting was believed to be the first time the cardinal has discussed religious problems with a government leader since Titoist Gomulka took over as Communist Party boss last October. The Polish news agency says the cardinal and premier discussed the appointment of candidates to clerical posts and the introduction of religious teaching in schools, which the new regime is permitting.

And in connection, further, with Poland, Cardinal Wyszynski has urged all Polish citizens to get out and vote today. As one statement put it, “Catholics as citizens are urged to fulfill the duty of their conscience and take part in the election.” This urging was brought about partly because of the widespread fear in Poland that many people would abstain from voting, thus weakening Gomulka’s stand against home-grown Stalinists and in his dealings with Moscow. Informed Catholics say that the church recognizes that if Gomulka is not given support of the country in today’s election, this very limited and restricted experiment in democracy will give tough Stalinists an argument that they need to try to return to power.

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Vatican City: Pope Pius has been pronounced in perfect physical condition by examining physicians. The pontiff will be 81 years old in March. The examining physician was Professor Antonio Gasparrini, one of the physicians who treated the pope during his grave illness during the winter of 1955.

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Again Vatican City: The pope has been presented with the first copy of the 1957 Annuary. The book, bound in white parchment, was presented to the pope by the assistant pro-secretary of state of the Vatican, Monsignor Angelo Dell’acqua.

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Washington: A church leader says one of America’s most pressing religious problems is finding a Christian path through the pitfalls of prosperity. The Rev. Cameron P. Hall, of the National Council of Churches, says that for the first time in history a whole nation is subject to the temptations that Christ had in mind when he warned that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter to enter the kingdom of heaven. One danger, says Hall, is that we may become so blessed with material possessions that we crowd out other values in life. Wonder if he has examined the financial status of schoolteachers? But then we are in a minority in a sea of prosperity.

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Buck Hills, Pennsylvania: The Rev. Dr. Earl R. Brown has retired as secretary of national missions of the Methodist Board of Missions. Dr. Brown served in the past 12 years. The new secretary is Dr. W. Vernon Middleton.

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Atlantic City, New Jersey: A Methodist church official charges that the Roman Catholic Church is trying to pressure some Methodist colleges into dropping study of the Bible. In an annual report to the Methodist Board of Education, the Rev. Myron F. Wick, of Nashville, Tennessee, director of the Department of Secondary and Higher Education of the board, declared attempts in his words, “represent, apparently, a steady but calculated probing for timorous sects among all Protestant schools and colleges.” He said the alleged interference is centered on Protestant colleges attended by Catholics. The Rev. Wick does not document his statement, at least as reported by United Press. But if it is true, then probably Catholics are somewhat like us Methodists: they would prefer that everybody studied their Bible.

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One of the obsessions of the present time, in some circles, educational and political, for example, is a bewailing of the alleged dearth of physical scientists and engineers. So, their logic goes, our colleges and secondary schools are not turning out enough young men and women who wish and plan to go into the physical and chemical laboratories of the nation, sufficient enough in numbers to keep pace with what is happening among our potential enemies, particularly the Soviet Union. The next step in their so-called logic is that we must offer greater rewards in the field of natural science so as to attract greater numbers to teach it and to promote it. The net and end result of such logic is to make every endeavor, through higher salaries, greater headlines, etc., to enlarge our activity in science.

No informed person would disparage the amazing work of science, nor decry the benefits it has brought to the human race in terms of more food, more light and heat, greater speed of travel and communication, wonder medicines, better understanding of diseases, and so on, ad infinitum. However, the concern of the present seems to be mainly in the field of nuclear devices related to the armaments race. And, again, no informed person would desire to see our own country so outdistanced in the field of security that we should stand no chance of survival if attacked.

But the very spectacle and emphasis upon a single area of our existence causes thoughtful men and women to ponder the unbalanced perspective nuclear zealots have of the world in which we live. Many of us think that we have a greater scarcity of equipped people in the human sciences than in the physical. To put it bluntly: We have the hydrogen bomb, but we do not know what to do with it. We live in a world in which the greatest industrial nation (our own) is presented with a proposed budget of $72 billion, 53 percent of which is allocated for military spending. If to this, you add the interest on the national debt, which is mostly for past wars, and the amount to be spent, we hope, in debt retirement, plus all other charges relating to our past conflicts and their by-products (for example veterans’ administration), we come out with the startling and discouraging fact that only some 10 percent or 15 percent at most will be spent for purposes unrelated to past or possible future wars.

What has happened and is happening to our system of values when persons in high places see nothing in the future but continued emphasis on bigger, if not better, weapons of destruction, with corresponding relatively less emphasis on seeking ways and means to avoid destruction? Science is a wonderful instrument, but science cannot tell us what is good or bad, right or wrong. Science can give us a knowledge of germs and the possibility of germ warfare, but it cannot and does not tell us whether to use this knowledge for the destruction or the salvation of mankind. Science, in short, can arrive at truth, but it cannot tell us what to do with the truths it discovers.

How, where, and when to use the results of science rests entirely upon the values that we as a people hold. Our values include not only knowledge but also feelings, beliefs. I cannot prove to you that a college education will make one a better citizen, but I believe that it will. Otherwise I would not be trying to teach. I do not know that people are happier and better off in a democracy than they are in a dictatorship. But I believe they are because democracy as an abstraction and a process rates high on my scale of values. Hence, I am constantly trying better to understand it and to promote its better functioning. And one could go on and on, citing intangible but very real things that go to make up life; things that rest not on science, but upon our cultural conditioning, our beliefs, our customs, our mores.

And it is just these things that are not inculcated by science, but by the social sciences, the humanities, and other subject fields not included in the realm of natural science.

Do we have an over-supply of people seeking ways and means to help avert war? Persons who try to promote understanding among the peoples of the earth? People who believe that international understanding and peace are not only possible, but attainable? People who look at the stark realities of the present day and are appalled that so much time, space, and attention are given to those movements leading to international suicide and so little to those leading to a peaceful world?

Our real problem today, among us as well as among peoples everywhere, is the promotion of values that would impel us to use the benefits of science for the welfare, not the destruction, of mankind. These values rest on feeling, and sometimes, perhaps upon fancy. Feeling and fancy take the stark and ugly realities of life and shape them into beautiful forms, dress them in beautiful garments, and cause hope to displace despair, discipline to take the place of sorrow.

If we look upon life only with the cold eye of scientific objectivity, there is little inducement for us to want to continue it. We come into this world causing pain. Our first cry is a protest. Our childhood is a history of wanting to do the things we are not permitted to do, and being forced to do the things we do not want to do. We have to go to bed when we are not sleepy and get up when we are sleepy. Life, looked at in this way, is all contrariety and frustration. But if we crown reason and scientific truth with feeling, the scene changes. Birth is a precious pearl bought at great price. The first cry of a baby is a paean of victory. The whole life of the child is a poem, its separate parts written in different meters always to be concluded and never dull, and through it all runs the motif of aspiration and achievement. Life of the adult becomes a sacred trust – talents that must not be buried, lights that must not be hidden under a bushel. Life is a romance greater than the pen of man has ever portrayed or the test tube in the laboratory can ever demonstrate. Feeling can inform us that life is a stage on which we always play the leading role: and we ourselves sit in at the performance, and are at once the most critical and appreciative of all the audience.

Values rest in the hearts of men. We recognize anew the truth that great visions come to humble men. These men were out under the stars close by nature, or amid the busy hum of machinery in the roar of a great city. They are not befuddled or beclouded by ships and commerce, tariffs and trade agreements, spheres of influence, oil and colonies – though these make very loud noises. They are men who try to think their way through the morass of today’s immensely complicated world; to see it in terms of people rather than machines; to regard machines and weapons of destruction as means to an end (i.e., peace eventually) rather than ends in themselves.

We need today wise men who are willing to travel over the barren wastes of materialism, under the scorching suns of pressure groups with their selfish interests, and over the frozen mountain passes of derision, and to hold on to those values that the experience of the race has proved to be good. The wise men of this type carry the burden of the foolish. We hold in grateful memory the men who followed a star; a Socrates drinking the hemlock, Jesus on the cross, Paul in chains, Stephen praying for his tormentors, John on Patmos, Savonarola at the stake, and thousands of those who are unknown and nameless, but put human values first and adjusted all other things to them.

The world needs natural scientists today, yes. But more than that, it needs people who do not permit their outlook – and hopes – for the future to become lost in the trees of the scientific moment, but who can stand off and see the forest of humanity that needs to understand itself, and value the best of itself. The whole problem may be illustrated by the young Tennessean who is reported to have said that “When I went to school they learned me to figger but not to read. Now as I drive down the road and see the mileposts, I can tell how fur but not whur to.” It is about time we not only knew how far, but where we are going.

Throughout the South generally, and here in Tennessee particularly, the critical issue of human rights was the subject of violent action, gubernatorial recommendations, legislative proposals, and considerable vocal gas from many sources. Bombs endangered the lives of citizens in Alabama, destroying property in the process. It reached the point where a leading pro-segregation newspaper commented acidly that “It is no longer a question of integration; it is a question of whether Alabama is a safe place for citizens to live.” At least four Negro churches were damaged in the explosions, but the local authorities spurned the governor’s offer to send in detachments of the National Guard to assist in maintaining order. Apparently the city fathers are not overly concerned about the safety of lives of their citizens.

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The governor of Tennessee on Thursday of this week delivered his own brand of interposition in the segregation issue, which after all did not amount to proposals to do anything new. The major theme of his position is that authority should be given local boards to assign pupils to whatever schools they wish – authority which good legal advisor, outside of the state government, ­point out the boards already have. One phase of his recommendations, if carried out, could conceivably create a three-headed school system instead of the twin-headed one we now have; namely, create a system of schools for Negroes only, one for whites only, and a third for integrated schools. This obviously could create more confusion than clarification of the issue, and is a stalling tactic, designed to appear all things to all people.

Regardless of the innocuous nature of the recommendations, members of the legislature are prepared not only to take them seriously, but also to go beyond them and try, by state statute, to nail down segregation – at least for the next two years. Commenting upon both the governor’s recommendations and the vocal explosions of certain members of the legislature, the Knoxville News Sentinel comments quite appropriately that the proper steps for the legislature to do on the subject is exactly nothing. Whatever it does will probably only lay the basis for further litigation in the courts, stall the issue for two years, and the next general assembly will be confronted with the same problem in aggravated form.

Out of all this welter of proposals, charges, and counter-charges stands one amazing fact: the lack of ability or willingness to meet probably the most crucial social and moral problem of our time, and to deal with it in a realistic, rational, informed manner.

Closely related to the issue of segregation is the movement on the part of some Tennessee legislative members to enact legislation restricting the operation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an organization that has spearheaded efforts to bring about school integration. Present proposals would require this organization to submit to public officials membership and financial records and would make it a misdemeanor to instigate a lawsuit in which the NAACP is not a direct party.

Well, perhaps the legislators should require this of all organizations of all kinds in the state. Certainly it should do that for all if it does it for one. It might be enlightening to them also to read the First Amendment to our federal Constitution, which guarantees the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition government for a redress of grievances. Sometimes it may be that the courts are the final resort of presenting such petitions without hope of achieving the desires of the petitioners. This is the same amendment, too, that protects religious freedom. Freedom is indivisible, and tampering with one cannot but help weaken others.

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Well, it would seem as if Tennessee is committed to mediocrity in higher education. For several years now, Memphis State College has contended for elevation to “university” status. This year, they have seemingly made it, via the side door. The main proposal was to have it called the “University at Memphis.” This week, a so-called compromise arrangement would continue the college under control of the State Board of Education, but would give it the title of “Memphis State University.” The original plan would have made it an integral part of the University and place it under the control of the board of trustees of the university. Tennessee does not now have and never has had a first-class state university. The question boils down to whether it would be better to concentrate on developing a great institution in the present university, or dividing what is already mediocrity between two so-called universities. Proponents of raising Memphis State insist that it means no more expenditure than would otherwise be entailed. If it is not going to be improved – and improvement would cost money – then why call it a “university”? There is no magic in the mere name. But opponents of the plan are not fooled, for once having gotten her nose under the tent, future legislation will be sought to divide funds between Knoxville and Memphis instead of as at present among the several state colleges. If a mere legislative act would create a better institution, the conclusion is obvious that all state schools of higher learning should be dubbed “university,” which in the light of the ability of the state to support education is ridiculous. Probably more Tennesseans than ever, desiring graduate training of real university caliber, will now be compelled to go beyond the confines of the state to get it.

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A magazine of national circulation points out in its current issue that no pope in modern history has, in it’s words, “so persistently cultivated the universality of the Roman Catholic Church” as has the present Pope Pius XII. Within the year just ended the 80-year old pontiff received about a million people in audiences (including people of all faiths) and delivered more than 200 speeches and radio talks, and many more minor addresses.

Among the varied activities of His Holiness are such things as lecturing before 700 gynecologists on the subject of painless childbirth; speaking to racing drivers and members of an automobile club on politeness; receiving such notables as Germany’s evangelical Lutheran Bishop Otto Dibelius, and our own Atomic Energy Commissioner Lewis Strauss; workers of Lombardy; the Roman nobility; 360 U.S. servicemen from NATO; and officials of the U.S. Office of Public Information. Included also among those who came to see him was Baptist ex-president Harry S. Truman. He spoke to the Seventh International Astronautical Congress, to whom he said that their efforts to explore the universe were legitimate before the deity.

The British Catholic Historian, Christopher Dawson sums up this activity on the part of the pope by saying that “Never perhaps in the history of the Church have the peoples come to Rome in such numbers and from so many different regions…. We seem to see the beginnings of a new Pentecostal dispensation by which all men hear in their own tongues the wonderful works of God.”

Washington: The Episcopal Church in Washington is trying an experiment in what it calls “advangelism.” The idea, adopted by the Episcopal Diocese is an attempt to sell the services of the church to the public through a series of paid advertisements in local papers. The ads will run weekly at least through Easter. Episcopal leaders want to test a theory that churches, like business firms, can profit by professionally drafted ads.

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Vatican City: Pope Pius has said that he believes Catholic parents have a right to expect a positive attitude toward religion from teachers in state-run schools with compulsory attendance. The pope recently told 130 teachers from Munich, Germany, that “It would be a violation of man’s elementary rights to force parents by law to entrust their children to a school whose teachers take a cool, negative, even hostile stand toward religious and moral convictions.”

Well, at the risk of being accused of what the pontiff abhors, this reporter considers the position unsound. Obviously, what the pope means by “religion” is his “religion.” It is highly unlikely that he would endorse a positive attitude toward Islam, Mormonism, even Protestantism, to say nothing of Unitarianism. Yet, we teachers in state-run schools must serve all alike, indiscriminately. All of us would probably subscribe to the idea that the public schools should favor morality, but then there are all sorts of definitions of moral. Public school teachers, in America at least, have no business mixing public school instruction with religion. It is reported, for example, that some teachers inquire of their students on Mondays which of them went to church or Sunday school the day before, and then proceed to give merit ratings of some kind to those who did. This too, is out of the sphere of the rightful scope of the teacher. Whether a child goes to church or not is a matter for him and his parents to decide, and certainly one who does not should not be made to feel embarrassed, or be penalized by the public school teacher. Doubtless such teachers do this from the sincerest of motives, but separation of church and state is vital to our American principles, and this was clarified without any question in the famous McCollum case in Illinois a few years ago. While I am a Methodist, I do not want any public school teacher trying to make Methodists, or any other kind of religious affiliate, out of my children. It simply is none of their affair – to put it bluntly.

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Chicago: Youth and Christianity are called the most effective opponents of communism. Dr. Robert Cook, president of the Youth-for-Christ International, told a mid-winter convention of 150 regional directors of the group that no government can forever squelch or contain the religious drives of its people. He predicted a religious awakening in Russia and said once it hits it will fan its way through all of communism.

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Berlin, Germany: The world-wide Catholic students organization, Pax Romana, has concluded a five-day board meeting in West Berlin with a resolution to step up aid for Hungarian refugees. Board members from 24 nations took part in the meeting.

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Evanston, Illinois: The Council of the National Methodist Student Commission says it wants to continue exploration of merger possibilities with other denominational student groups. The council said, however, the Methodist Student Movement must remain faithful to its responsibility to the Methodist Church. This apparently, is like saying, “Go ahead and merge, but let them come to you; don’t go toward them.”

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Washington: It is announced that Pope Pius has created a new Diocese of Gary in Northwestern Indiana and named Monsignor Andrew Grutka, of Fort Wayne, as its bishop. The pope also made the Most Rev. Leo Pursley of Ft. Wayne, bishop of Fort Wayne; the Most Rev. Robert J. Joyce of Burlington, Vermont, bishop of his diocese; the Most Rev. Thomas J. McDonough, of St Augustine, Florida, bishop of Savannah, Georgia; and the Very Rev. Hillary B. Hacker, of St. Paul, Minnesota, bishop of Bismarck, North Dakota.

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And along the same topic, Mexican Roman Catholics hope the pope will name one of their number to the College of Cardinals when a new consistory is held. Mexico’s 30 million people are estimated to be 90 percent Roman Catholic. But Mexico is said to have been denied a cardinal because of differences between church and state in the revolution earlier this century.

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A U.S. newsman has relayed hope for the early release of 10 Americans, including some missionaries from Red China. William Worthy of the Baltimore Afro-American has broadcast from Red China that Premier Chou En-Lai has dropped hints about early parole for some U.S. prisoners because of good behavior. Worthy adds that even without such time off, three of the 10, a Lutheran missionary, a Franciscan priest, and a Jesuit priest, are due to have their sentences end in May, June, and July, respectively. The Baltimore newsman says that so far as can be learned in Red China the general charge against the Americans is espionage.

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A recent compilation of suggestions for pastors and parishioners to consider this year includes some practical, as well as churchly, matters. The list is composed of ideas from worshipers and from letters from ministers and church members to other persons and to church journals. One item is the recommendation that people avoid condemning another’s religion unless they are sure they know more about it than he does. Another is the suggestion that churches put more hooks in cloakrooms, so worshipers do not have to sit on their coats. On the church etiquette side is the plea that hymnbooks be placed gently in pew racks after the service, and not with a clatter right at or before the benediction. Many clergy and worshipers would also be glad to hear the offering plates referred to as such, not as collection plates.

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A Southern rabbi says racial tensions in the South are undermining the U.S. doctrines of freedom of thought and freedom of speech. The Rev. Jacob Rothschild of Atlanta made the statement in a sermon at New York City’s Central Synagogue. He has added that vague and not-so-vague threats of economic boycott and physical violence have been directed against persons who seek a peaceful solution. Or, worse still, he says, against those who dare to counsel compliance with the Supreme Court desegregation decision because it is the law of the land. Dr. Rothschild also states the right to speak freely and openly is curtailed if what one says disagrees with the popular point of view. Well, there was once an itinerant carpenter’s son who got into trouble for the same reason. But it would seem that in the field of religion, or upon matters having religious implications, at least, people who call themselves religious should be tolerant enough of opposing viewpoints not to stifle the mere expression of such differences. However, there is little doubt but what the good doctor says is true, for Rothschild has for 10 years been spiritual leader of Atlanta’s Hebrew Benevolence Congregation and is a long-time resident and community worker in the South.

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Today begins another Christmas – this one, the observance of the Nativity by Orthodox Christians. The services date back more than 1,500 years and depend on the Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian one held to by other Christian denominations. The colorful services have humble origins. For example, some Serbian Orthodox Christians burn a Yule log. And in the chancels of their churches they place straw, to remind them that the Christ child was born in a stable. And today, for other Christians, it is the Feast of the Epiphany. This service marks the worship of the baby Jesus by the Three Wise Men.

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For the past few weeks, even months, newspapers and other media of communication have been full of news regarding racial problems attendant upon attempted or proposed integration of public schools. This reporter has deliberately stayed away from comment upon them because there did not seem to be much he could add to what was already being said. However, this past week, two columns in as many days have been devoted to the race question by Dr. Charles Allen, of Atlanta. In one he raises the question, “Is one race inferior?” He goes on to point out that some white people insist on maintaining racial segregation because of:

1. Economic reasons: They fear to compete in the labor market and in any other kind of market with members of the colored race;
2. Fear of Negro control of local government: Parenthetically, this would assume that Negroes vote as Negroes first and citizens second, while studies show that the reverse is true;
3. Desire to maintain a servant race of people;
4. People with inferiority complexes derive some compensation by thinking that colored people are inferior to them because of color or other racial traits;
5. Resistance to any social change. One perturbing thing about social change for all of us is that it requires us to reappraise ourselves in the light of changed circumstances, and we don’t like that;
6. Some believe the Negro race is, as a race, actually inferior to the whites and thus they do not want to live on an equal level with them;
7. Some people insist upon segregation because they fear intermarriage. How many sins of prejudice has this old myth been used to cover!
8. Some want segregation not necessarily because of prejudice but because they sincerely believe the two races are better off apart.

Well, there is the list Dr. Allen presents. It is as good a one perhaps as could be compiled. Most of us could think of other reasons. The point is: Are these reasons valid and worthy? Examine your own hearts and answer that question honestly.

In presenting what he calls the “Case for the Negroes,” Dr. Allen lists some four reasons why Negroes do not like segregation.

1. They resent restrictions that segregation imposes on them. Many of them prefer to live in Negro communities, but simply do not like to be told where they can or cannot live;
2. Some want integration because they have not fared well under segregation and hope for better education, jobs, etc., if segregation is abolished;
3. Some oppose segregation because it presupposes inferiority, and they strongly believe they are not inferior;
4. Some Negroes want integration because they actually feel inferior and want to escape from this feeling through the integration process.

Of course Dr. Allen is a white man telling us what the Negro wants, how he feels, and why he feels that way. One of the unfortunate lacks in the welter of arguments over integration is that about all who have written or talked have been white people. All too few Negroes have spoken out comprehensively and clearly as to what they want. However, because Dr. Allen has lived in the South for many years, his circle of acquaintances includes many people of both racial groups.

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This reporter was told, rather pointedly, about a year ago, that the matter of segregation did not involve any religious element, and that it would be better to avoid it on this program. To that, my only reply is it depends upon how you define religion. If by “religion” you mean something sacred embalmed between the lids of a book that you take out on Sundays or other special days and treasure it, and then put it back until another such day and forget about your religion on the days in between, and in your relationships with other people, then segregation probably has no religious implications for you. But if your definition of religion embraces the idea that religion should be concerned about people as such – their rights, their responsibilities, their opportunities, their right to respect because they are God’s creatures – then it is difficult to see how segregation could be viewed as a non-religious, academic subject. The Nazarene was not concerned about one’s race, nationality, socioeconomic status, or anything else. His only concern was the need of the persons with whom he came in contact, and he truly exemplified what Paul had in mind when he said, “God hath made of one blood all nations of men.” It is difficult to see how any other conception squares with realities.

Washington: Government experts predict that America’s churches will go on their biggest building spree in history during 1957. They’re already enjoying a record membership boom. During 1956 a record amount of $775 million was spent on building or enlarging churches, synagogues, and Sunday school edifices. Commerce Department analysis says next year’s outlay should be about $875 million, or 13 percent more. That’s about 20 times what was spent 20 years ago. As for church membership, the latest figures – for 1955 – show membership at an all-time high of more than 100 million. Sunday school enrollment climbed to 39 million.

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New York: A religious news director rates the release of three churchmen from communist imprisonment as the outstanding religious news story of the year. Richard T. Sutcliffe, associate director of the Department of Press, Radio, and Television of the United Lutheran Church in America, picked that as first among the top 10 religious news stories. The three churchmen released were Cardinal Mindszenty, the Roman Catholic primate of Hungary; Bishop Lajos Ordass Head of the Lutheran Church in Hungary; and Cardinal Wyszynski, Roman Catholic primate of Poland. Sutcliffe gave second place to the exchange of American and Russian delegations; and third, the merger moves among American Protestant churches.

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Vatican City: The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano has called on the United Nations to follow the appeal of Pope Pius and take action against the oppressors of Hungary. Either that or forfeit its role as the main instrument of peace. In an editorial, the newspaper rejected the war-mongering charges hurled at the pope by the communist press for his Christmas message. The pope had urged the U.N. to refuse life membership rights from those nations which refused to admit U.N. observers.

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Again Vatican City: The pope last Thursday received in private audience Republican Representative Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania. During their brief talk, Rep. Scott expressed gratitude for the pope’s leadership on the Hungarian problem.

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New York: The head of the National Council of Churches said that he believes the nation is on the edge of a true religious revival. But, says Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, it will come to fruition only if it becomes intellectually deeper, more personal and social, more practical and local, whatever that means. Dr. Blake says the increase in religious interest and support in our time is heartening to church people in spite of some indications of superficiality. He added, “I do not believe the day will be won by mass appeal and smart advertising techniques. It will come out of a revitalized Christian congregation worshiping and serving in your town.”

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The first large-scale meeting for Southern Baptist students since 1938 has heard that Christian students should use the worldwide crisis to serve humanity. The appeal has come from a professor of religious philosophy, Dr. Culbert Rutender of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has told the Nashville, Tennessee, student congress that students can respond in three ways to the world crisis. One is to ignore it and hope that it goes away; the second is to flee in fear; but the third response is to make it an opportunity for service.

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A Japanese weekly has disclosed that Emperor Hirohito himself helped draft the imperial rescript that 11 years ago renounced his claim to divinity. One of Japan’s outstanding educators, Tamon Maeda, writes in Shukan, Tokyo, that Hirohito, on January 1, 1946, disclaimed divinity and debunked the mythological divine existence of the imperial house of Japan. Maeda adds the decision for the renunciation was made because everything was chaos and the people were confused in the months after the surrender. Maeda helped with the draft of the renunciation. He adds that the emperor was very cooperative…offered suggestions…and was helpful with the language used in the imperial rescripts.

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A Russian defense ministry publication had accused the U.S. of using its chaplains to achieve what the Soviet Military Herald terms “ideological stupefaction” in its Armed Forces. Among other things, the paper declares that U.S. chaplains take advantage of religious feelings and try to justify social inequality and advocate the inevitability of war from a religious point of view.

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In Anchorage, Alaska, on Thursday, the president of the National Council of Churches ended an 11-day tour of Alaskan defense installations. The Reverend Dr. Eugene Carson Blake told a group of commanding officers and chaplains that he would work for more effective support of the ministry of chaplains. The National Council head, who is also executive officer of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., heard praise for his efforts from high military authorities. It was the third consecutive Christmas that Dr. Blake had left the states to carry the Christmas message to U.S. service personnel overseas.

During Christmas also, Francis Cardinal Spellman celebrated a Christmas midnight Mass at the new chapel at Thule Air Base in Greenland, at the U.S.’s farthest north outpost.

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Boston: A Boston native has been named to a high Roman Catholic position in some Pacific islands. Pope Pius has named the Rev. Vincent Kennally as vicar apostolic of the Caroline-Marshall Islands and titular bishop of Sassura. As vicar apostolic, or delegate of the pope, Bishop-elect Kennally will have virtually the same powers over the island’s 22,500 Catholics as a bishop does in his diocese. The 62-year-old Jesuit priest succeeds another Boston prelate in the Caroline-Marshall Islands post, Bishop Thomas Feeney, who died last year.

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Last week I reported on the discouragement expressed by the commander of NATO, Henri Spaak of Belgium, on the uncertain effectiveness of the United Nations. This week, a nationally-syndicated columnist devotes his day’s work to this subject, pointing out that while the U.N. serves a purpose, it represents the brutal facts of today’s world. As for the purpose it serves, Wellington Long says that it is useful as a forum on the policies of democratic governments. He goes on to emphasize, however, that it has little if any effect on the policies of dictatorial governments, the heads of which go on their determined way, relenting only when it is expedient for them to do so. And in this connection one cannot help but recall that during the war, Stalin decreed freedom of religion in Russia, not because he expected that such freedom would be permitted, but because it would store up capital of good will for him among the democracies, with which he was currently allied from force of necessity.

The brutal facts that Mr. Long points out are all too well known to both radio listeners and newspaper readers, namely, that the U.N. can move with some effectiveness when the matter concerns small of democratic states. But note reluctance and refusal for swift, decisive action in regard to the Russian-Hungary murders. Hence, moral authority is the chief, and about the only weapon which the U.N. can use, and moral force is of no force with immoral governments. It could or would not take steps to force Hungary to admit U.N. observers. Of course all of this is not unexpected. The nations of the world were too selfish, too arrogant to delegate any real power to the international organization that they so proudly proclaimed in 1945 would avert another world catastrophe. We all hope that it will, but there is nothing tangible on which to base this hope until or unless nationalism everywhere is reduced to the point where it will surrender some of its lawmaking and law-enforcing powers to a democratically-constructed international body – powers sufficient to keep the peace, but small enough to leave nations free to determine their own internal destiny. Then and only then will peace on earth to men of good will be something upon which we can safely rely.

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Now that Christmas itself has come and gone, perhaps it is better to review it and its meaning in retrospect than it would have been to preview it, as this reporter, understandably enough, had an urge to do. One can look back at both anticipation and realization; before, he could only look forward to realization with anticipation.

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From the Rev. Irving R. Murray of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, comes this comment upon the changing nature of the work of ministers. He says that it is time now to recognize that some of the old functions of the ministry have to be sloughed off if the new church is to emerge. Old-fashioned parish calling, he says, is incompatible with a counseling ministry. There just isn’t time to visit every home once or twice a year and work intensively with men and women in trouble. Again, it must be recognized that some ministerial roles required specialization if they are to fulfilled with adequacy. And that means other roles must be neglected with only one minister in smaller churches. No precise pattern can be established. But the role of every minister must be defined and understood by his people, with a view to the realization of his talents and the fulfillment of their need. For the frenetic life of the ministry today points only to the collapse of the full-time leadership of the church.

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Some listeners took exception, and quite rightly so, if they so desired, to some comments made on this program some weeks ago in an admittedly crude effort to define religion. Explanation of the natural characteristic religion is called theology. The critical examination of the claims of religious systems is called the philosophy of religion. The theological systems have not adopted knowledge as rapidly as it has accrued, and today there is a gulf between religious systems and modern knowledge. Truth is largely a very high degree of probability. The churches, Christian, have generally insisted that all people needed to do was, in some creedal or emotional sense, to “accept Christ,” and all would be well. After centuries of this, not all is well. The pragmatist points out that the supernatural systems do not work for most people, that on the whole, they do not add to human happiness. The notion that the pay-off is after you are dead sounds like the sales talk of a uranium salesman. Theological systems are, for the most part, like eggs; you cannot reshape them. So the systems have had to ignore knowledge or oppose it. Of course the preservation of a logical system may not be too important. What is important is that the church give direction on the basis of the best knowledge available. At one time, logic very thoroughly supported the idea that the earth was flat.

Be all that as it may, once the world was dark and forbidding. Cold and hunger or heat and thirst pursued everyman. Fear dogged everyman’s footsteps, sat at everyman’s table, and at night mocked his slumbers. From over the horizon, from the land of ought-to-be into this world of insupportable misery came a figure of surpassing masterliness. He looked upon the people of the fields, bound and condemned, and loved them, and said, “Ye shall be free.” He walked the city streets, He saw children with stomachs swollen from starvation, covered with sores, and tormented with vermin, and He loved them and placed his hands upon them in blessing and said, “Ye shall be free.” He saw the workmen hungry, beaten, sullen, and without hope, and He loved them and said, “Ye shall be free.” He saw the lepers, the insane and the prostitutes and He loved them and said, “Ye shall be free.” He saw the priests, the scribes, the tax gatherers, and officials, saw them in all their blindness and wickedness, and He loved them and said, “Ye shall be free.” Soldiers in glittering armor clashed down the street and pushed him out of their way, and He loved them and said, “Ye shall be free.”

This person dreamed the beautiful dream that ever was or ever shall be – a dream of justice and love. The people heard Him gladly. But one day the soldiers came and took Him away to die. For wickedness cannot stand before so beautiful a dream. But the dream itself did not die. It lived, and it lives at all Christmas seasons. So fair was it that in every generation there have been the pure of heart who have been the keepers of that dream. And even the scoffers know that when there no longer are keepers of that dream, there will be no dream, and when there is no dream, everyone will be eternally lost.

A soldier from Ft. Lewis, Washington state, will be in Korea this Christmas because he knows what it means to be an orphan at that time. Staff Sergeant Rex Richard Gilman says his parents abandoned him and his five brothers and sisters when they were small children. So, Sgt. Gilman and his wife will adopt a Korean orphan – a 29-month-old boy who has been crippled by polio. The soldier explains further, “We chose him because not many people want to adopt a crippled child.”

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Again Korea, a Korean-speaking Santa Claus is brightening the season for 150 waifs living near no-man’s-land between South and North Korea. U.S. soldiers from the United Nations Armistice Commission are helping him distribute clothing in four orphanages.

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In Santa Fe, New Mexico, a conditional release has been given an artistic convict in time for Christmas. He is life-termer Ralph Dubose Pekor, famed for his painting of a smiling Christ made while he was in a Florida prison. Pekor is dying from cancer.

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Chinese and Russian will be among the 25 languages the Christmas message by Pope Pius will be broadcast in today.

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Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York is on a Christmas visit with U.S. servicemen in the far north. The Roman Catholic prelate will hold special services for Americans in Newfoundland, Greenland, Iceland, and Labrador. U.S. servicemen in Alaska will have the Rev. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake as a yuletide visitor. He heads the National Council of Churches in the U.S.A., a group of Protestant and Orthodox churches.

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A leading rabbi says the whole of what is termed “our Christian civilization” is rejecting Christ and his teachings. The statement comes from Dr. Maurice Eisendrath, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. He said if he were a Christian minister, he would lament nothing so much and resent nothing so bitterly as the wholesale turning of such a holy day as Christmas into so heathen a holiday. And many of us can echo a fervent amen to this.

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Spot reports from all over the country have indicated more good will and selflessness by working groups this Christmastime. Civilian employees of the Boston Navy Yard used more than $20,000 usually allotted to shop parties to be hosts to more than 1,000 orphans. About $15,000 worth of gifts have been distributed to needy children and to hospitalized veterans by employees of the Republic Aviation Corporation at Farmingdale, Long Island. The Arizona Game and Fish Department has canceled its usual Christmas party in favor of aiding a young Japanese-American widow and her three small children. Her husband was a Game and Fish Department employee who was killed in an automobile accident. The Agriculture Department’s Foreign Agricultural Service will send about 200 toys to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, for distribution among Hungarian refugee children. And a Louisville, Kentucky, Radio Station (WKYW) has adopted a needy family for Christmas day instead of its usual Christmas party. Those are some of the ways with which people are endeavoring this year to remember the birth of the Christ Child almost 2,000 years ago.

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Last Sunday I mentioned briefly the 41,000-mile road building program undertaken – to the tune of about $90 billion – by the federal government, and that no provision had been written into the bill regulating billboards along such roads, thus leaving the way wide open for unsightly eyesores along the way and at the same time tending to accident hazards. Some of you listeners failed to see much of religious significance in that item. While I have no desire to argue the point, for one sees religion according to his own conception of what constitutes religion, I might emphasize that saving of lives, as well as saving of souls, is or should be the concern of all religions. Furthermore, two columnists whose writings are nationally syndicated have devoted as many articles to the matter this week, and Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee has also this week told a newspaperman that he will seek to learn what the states are doing to protect their portions of the proposed highway network. Gore, incidentally, favored writing billboard control into the original bill, but apparently the billboard lobby reached enough lawmakers to cause them to threaten the whole measure if any such provision were included.

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Did you know that during this past week, we also elected a president of the United States? Last month, you and I, the voters, went out and voted here in Tennessee, not for Eisenhower or Stevenson, but for a number of electors who were pledged to cast their vote for one candidate or the other. Since the first election, in 1788, these electors have, with few exceptions, cast their votes according to the way they promised the voters they would do before the election. It has become part of our political – and moral – mores that such electors are ethically bound to support the nominee for whom they announce.

Down in Alabama this week, however, one elector strayed from the fold, and instead of casting his vote for Stevenson as he had promised, voted for one Judge Walter B. Jones. This was legal, all right, but there are a number of things that are legally correct but are morally wrong. This single act by a wayward Alabama elector signalizes no great menace to the Republic, but his behavior illustrates one way in which the will of the voters can be flouted by our antique electoral college system. It is past high time that we abolish this college outright and let you and me and the Joe Smiths throughout the country vote directly for president and vice president. That way there will be no opportunity for an elector to jump the track, break his promise, and thwart the will of the voters.

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As stressed on this program time and again, our freedoms are indivisible. Speech, religion, press, and others are all bound up in a bundle which, if broken weakens the whole structure. Apart of our democratic constitutional system is the rule of the majority, for when a minority can impose its will upon the majority, tyranny results. Moreover, in recent years, all of us have been more and more concerned with economic opportunities, and have relied upon government to protect, and in some cases provide, such opportunities.

One of the most vicious attempts to deny both political and economic opportunities is the so-called right-to-work movement, whereby it would be illegal to require a worker to join a union in order to retain employment in a union shop. Actually it is a union-busting movement masquerading under a more respectable title. How it works is this: Suppose 900 of our 1,000 employees in a given shop vote that a certain union is the one they with to represent them in their bargaining with their employees? A contract is drawn up and signed by both parties whereby the employer may hire anyone he wishes, but whomever he hires must decide within, say 30 days, whether he wishes to affiliate with the established union or to discontinue his employment and find work elsewhere. The so-called right-to-work laws would make such a contract illegal. In other words, such laws would say that one man is stronger than the 900 whose welfare is at stake. Obviously, if an employer wished to break up a workers’ organization, backed by such a law he could specialize in hiring persons who would refuse to be affiliated with the established union until pretty soon the union would be wrecked, and the welfare of the 900 threatened. It is doubtless true that there are unions in this country that have made mistakes. There are also employers who have made mistakes. Two mistakes do not make something right. Our high standard of living for the average worker, about which Fourth of July and Labor Day orators prate much, is due in large part to the collective bargaining carried on in good faith by the employer and employees. Anything that strikes at the heart of family welfare should be of concern to everyone, and the courts have declared that right to organize and bargain collectively is one of our fundamental rights. Thinking citizens will not be misled by movements that are subversive of this right, regardless of whatever high-sounding title they are presented under. A country’s wealth consists not in its gold at Fort Knox but in how well its families are housed, clothed, and fed – and these are the things of concern to religious-minded people, as they were of the Master. They will be less well housed, clothed, and fed, if their economic rights are undermined and denied.

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In this season of wishing peace on earth, a statement this week by the secretary general of NATO, Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium is disturbing, though it is entirely realistic. He expresses the conviction that the United Nations is a dangerous and ineffective instrument in its present form and goes on to assert that unless it is changed it will not long endure. This statement is all the more meaningful when we recall that Spaak is a former president of the U.N. General Assembly, has been three times prime minister of his own country, and four times its foreign minister. And, the statement is all the more disturbing when we place alongside it the stated conviction of our own government officials who assert their complete confidence in the U.N. and say that it is only beginning to show its virtue.

Well, our memory does not have to be very long to recall that it acted decisively when Britain and France invaded Egypt, but that it wrangled and passed a half-hearted resolution of condemnation against Russia at her recent – and continuing rape of Hungary.

Many of us who are familiar with the pattern of performance of the League of Nations throughout its short life fail to see much reassurance about its successor, the U.N., unless something is done drastically to change its structure and authority. Spaak would have modification of the charter to abolish the veto, revise the procedure of voting to make it more responsible, have the charter decree that violators of international law are excluded from the organization, and set up a real international army.

This reporter recommended these and several additional changes more than once on this program. After all, the problem is simple: We either set up an international organization with delegated powers to make and enforce law designed to keep the peace among the nations, or we let the nations do as Russia is now doing – murder innocent people in a neighboring country while the U.N. twiddles its thumbs and wrings its hands wondering what to do. At the risk of being called cynical, I emphasize that this is decidedly not the way to bring peace on earth or good will to men.

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An excerpt for Dr. Harold Scott, pastor of the First Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City, seems worth including as a closing item on today’s broadcast. It goes like this.

I’m not mad at anybody but I am sick at my stomach. Among the things that make me that way are:

 

1. The well-meaning mother who works, instead of living on her husband’s income and taking care of the children, so that the children can have the alleged advantage of a subdivision home, a car that isn’t paid for, and $100 worth of Christmas presents apiece. She says, “It’s worth going into debt just to see their little faces light up, and anyway it would be terrible if all their friends got lots for Christmas and they were left with only six or eight things.”

2. The childless couple who own two large dogs and engage in esoteric hobbies like jewel-cutting, but cannot afford to put a lawn in front of the two-year-old house that won’t be theirs until they are sixty.

3. Automobile commercials that run, “You never looked so good as when you’re in one of our 1957 Junkmobiles. Watch the neighbors stare when you drive past. Bigger than ever – 300 horsepower just straining for action at your command.”

4. Mass media that inculcate idolatry of the unreal and morbid in our children. In other countries kids are taught to venerate intellectuals and patriots who lived on this planet.

5. Pleasant, sincere, well-educated people who are so afraid of life and of themselves that they cannot bear to be alone for a minute.

Well, these are some of the things about which the good doctor feels less than in the top of condition in the general region of his abdomen. Most of us older ones can remember when the neighbors didn’t look down on people who paid their debts, or stayed out of debt, who minded their own business, and who went to church because they loved the experience, and who looked upon Christmas as a holy day rather than merely a holiday.

This week saw Lutheranism in North America get a boost toward union. Commissioners representing four Lutheran church groups voted at Chicago to proceed with plans for merger. That followed agreement that no serious doctrinal disagreement separates them. The union would make a new church of almost 3 million members, including the United Lutheran Church in America, the Augustana Lutherans, the Finnish Evangelical Lutherans, and the American Evangelical Lutherans. A steering committee is to make a pattern of organization. Commissioners of the four groups will meet in Chicago next March to begin drafting a constitution. All told, there are about 7 million persons belonging to 18 Lutheran bodies in North America, which includes congregations in Mexico and Canada. The Lutheran Church Evangelical Synodical Conference claims the most members, about 2.5 million.

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Albany New York: Protestant and Jewish clergymen are doing four-hour shifts as hospital orderlies and hearing lectures on psychiatry and medicine. Their work and studies are part of a 30-week extension course offered by Andover Theological Seminary, Newton Center, Massachusetts, and sponsored by the Federation of Churches in Christ in Albany and vicinity.

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In Egypt this week, the Rev. Russell Stevenson has made a survey of refugee needs for some U.S. churches. His sponsoring agency, the National Council of the Churches of Christ, has said reports indicate some 60,000 refugees need aid because of the Egyptian hostilities.

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In Jerusalem, the foreign consular members have cancelled their traditional Christmas procession to Bethlehem. One of the diplomats says the abandonment is to protest Jordan’s refusal to allow the procession to use the southern road. This is the route over the old Roman road said to have been used by Mary and Joseph in their journey to Bethlehem. However, the usual Christian pilgrimage by another road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem will be permitted by Jordan.

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The head of the Roman Catholic Church has pleaded for a little more quiet in modern life. Pope Pius has told Italy’s Anti-noise Congress that mechanization is responsible for most of today’s noise. He has named streetcars, trains, subways, and heavy trucks as offenders that disturb what the pontiff describes as “the serene joy that should reign at family hearths.”

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Reaffirmation of their faith in dogma of Our Lady of Guadalupe has been made by some 35,000 Catholic pilgrims from 140 parishes around San Antonio, Texas. The candlelight procession and high pontifical Mass celebrated the appearance of the “patroness of the Americas” to a simple Indian in 1531.

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Washington: American churches have begun to wage a religious crusade against death on their highways. Clergymen are telling their members that reckless driving is not merely dangerous; it is a sin. Churches of all denominations are joining in the campaign to bring Christian conscience to bear on traffic safety problems. Pope Pius and many Protestant leaders have endorsed it. The widely circulated Protestant magazine, Christian Herald, has an editorial in its current issue entitled “Are You a Christian at the Wheel?”

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Indianapolis, Indiana: The managing editor of The Christian Century magazine has urged the nation’s churches to go ahead with interdenominational projects even though they disagree on theology. Dr. Theodore A. Gill told a divisional meeting of the National Council of Churches that Christians need theological clarification, not looking for a super church, but a superior national church.

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Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Spencer was elected at a meeting of the group to succeed Herschel Pettus, of the Louisiana Baptist Foundation.

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Pasadena, California: The Methodist Council of Bishops has set a $1 million goal in a resolution appealing for donations to aid Hungarian refugees. The resolution authorized collection of funds through January 6 in the 40,000 Methodist churches throughout the country.

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Indianapolis, Indiana: The head of the National Council of Churches says an all-powerful totalitarian church is as great a menace to the worship of God as an all-powerful totalitarian state. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake says the church in America is in a far happier situation than is the church in most other nations. He urged all religious groups to reexamine the tax-free status of the church in America as a possible threat to freedom.

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Almost every day enough items having moral, ethical or religious significance crop up in the news that fifteen minutes well could be devoted to them. Hence, trying to prepare a broadcast weekly on such items necessitates simply trying to decide, and with very little time at that, which of the many are more significant. The following seem worthy of inclusion under the latter category and comment upon insofar as time will allow:

Yesterday, December 15, marked the 165^th anniversary of the adoption of the first 10 amendments known as “The Bill of Rights,” to the federal Constitution. In these days when in so many areas of the world, there is no value of human dignity, we Americans should give special attention to this all-important document. Here in Tennessee we have seen during recent weeks denial of constitutional rights to American citizens and resort to the potentially strong arm of the federal government to secure those rights which are plainly embodied in the Constitution and spelled out by court interpretation.

Furthermore, the U.N. Committee on Human Rights worked out some years ago a Universal Declaration of Human Rights and presented it to the member nations. Our nation, once the only nation standing out clearly on the world horizon as the staunch declarer and defender of human freedoms, has refused to endorse this declaration. Why? Because individuals in both parties, whom we have a right to expect to assume the stature of statesmanship, have, instead, chosen the path of political expediency. One of the unnecessary ways to be defeated and to defeat ourselves is to assume at the outset that nothing is possible or can be done about a situation, then proceed to do nothing about it. So far, neither Truman nor Eisenhower has presented this document to the Senate with full administration backing!

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Another subject about which considerable has appeared in recent weeks and months, and more this week than usual, is the matter of billboards on our highways. The federal government has authorized spending over $40 billion of your and my money during the next few years in the construction of a network of highways throughout this country. So far, only a feeble attempt has been made to get written into law protection of the public against commercial blights strung promiscuously along the highways where we shall drive. Ours is beautiful country, and could and should be made more so. But shall we sacrifice that God-given natural beauty to the unsightly commercial appeals that urge us as we drive along to use this soap, that gasoline, another brand of beer, to try this gadget. Or that some medical panacea for all human ills will cure everything from an in-grown toenail to a bald head? Aside from the purely aesthetic aspects of this problem is another one: safety. Here in Tennessee, the governor’s Emergency Traffic Safety Committee has become very much concerned over the distraction of motorists’ attention to billboard appeals when that attention should be concentrated on driving. Nobody rejects the right of advertising as a part of the right of free expression, but nobody has a right to yell “Fire!” in a crowded building merely for the purpose of seeing the people surge to the exits, and perhaps get killed in the process.

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Again in Tennessee, two matters of more that usual importance are shaping up for a legislative battle in the forthcoming legislature. One is the matter of reapportionment. (I am aware that some of you listeners will fail to see any religious significance in this, but there is some anyway.) Ours is a representative government; one in which the voice of each and every voter is as nearly equal to that of each and every other voter as possible. As long as this is true, each person can make his influence felt as much as anyone else in selecting public officials, influencing their actions, and securing the kind of government that he thinks will promote the general welfare. But, when legislatures fail to live up to their constitutional obligations, when certain portions of the state are denied their rightful representation in the halls of government, that government, to that extent, is longer fair, honest, or moral.

The Tennessee Constitution requires that the state be divided into legislative districts after each federal census, such districts to be as fairly designated as possible in order to give all voters an equal voice in influencing their government. The last time the Tennessee legislature did this was in 1901, 55 years ago. Since then the social and economic picture has changed. Cities have arisen, population shifted. Today, East Tennessee is under-represented and other regions of the state have more voice than they should. Rural areas are grossly over-represented, while the voice of urban areas is small indeed. In addition, Democrats have so gerrymandered the districts of the state that Republican representation is far out of line with what it rightfully should be.

Civic-minded, public-spirited groups have sought justice for the people through appeal to the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court recently refused to consider the matter, holding that this was a problem for the people of the state to handle. But are we going to do it? The strategy of the recently elected legislators and the administration at Nashville is to consign reapportionment proposals to a study committee for report two years from now. We do not need any more study or reports. The only right, moral, ethical, legal thing to do is to reapportion the state immediately and without regard to vested interests, political affiliations, or anything else but the right of each citizen to have an equal voice in the government – no more, no less. Suppose you write your senator and representative and tell them how you feel about this? Religious people have a greater obligation to do this than anyone else.

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Well I promised to treat another state question, but I see time is running out, and there is another topic I wish to deal with briefly. I shall save the other topic until next week.

This is the season of the year when our thoughts turn toward an event of 2,000 years ago that was small, insignificant, within itself. Few people were aware it was happening. It took place in a town of which few people in the then-known world knew or cared. It was a simple event: a little baby was born, but that birth was heralded by angels themselves declaring that this day is born a king, who is to be the savior of all mankind. Wise men brought gifts to him, and lowly shepherds fell down and worshiped him. His was a life of service; he was man without a home, with only a single garment, which his executors cast lots for. He was buried in a borrowed tomb. But not all the strong men of history have had the influence upon human history that his life has had.

In observance of this life of service to the betterment of mankind, we set aside December 25. How do we observe it? To the wondering, but not cynical observer, it would appear that we have let our observance degenerate into an occasion on which we exchange merchandise. This week a student of mine said that when she became president she was going to declare Christmas giving silly, for it kept her wondering who was going to give her what, in order that she might know what to give who (English teachers make the most of that ungrammatical use). And she was understandably concerned over whether her gift to her friends would be of equal value as those she received. I know this student pretty well. She is not mercenary minded, but she feels that in order to maintain her status with her friends, she must give material things of approximately equal value to those she receives. Is this the spirit of Christmas? Are we not paying more attention to the things that are Caesar’s than to the things that are God’s?

First, a potpourri of religion in the news of the week as reported by Associated and United Press.

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New York: Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches in the U.S. have begun a drive to raise $2 million in aid to refugees from Hungary and Eastern Europe. Dr. R. Norris Wilson, executive director of World Church Service says the funds will be used to continue relief programs and help in the resettlement and rehabilitation of escapes from iron curtain countries.

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Atlantic City, New Jersey: A record 89 congregations have been established in the United Lutheran Church in the past year and another 68 congregations probably will be organized next year. Dr. Ronald Houser, of Chicago, secretary of the Division of English Missions, made the report at the 30^th annual meeting of the church’s Board of Missions.

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Chicago: The Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference is considering a proposal to extend membership to a number of foreign churches. The proposal was made by Dr. Walter Baepler, President of the Concordia Theological Seminary at Springfield, Illinois, at the 44^th convention of the Lutheran conference.

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Again Chicago: Membership in the Methodist church now is just under 9.5 million – a gain of 1.4% in the past year. The Methodist statistical office says that in addition, there are more than one 1.25 million preparatory members of the church.

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Des Moines, Iowa: A Baptist minister charges that Elvis Presley is leading American youth into an “anything goes” era. Reverend Carl E. Elegena, pastor of the Grand View Park Baptist Church in Des Moines says, “We’re living in a day of jellyfish morality, India rubber convictions, and a day when spiritually is as wide as the Sahara Desert and twice as dry.” Anybody want to argue with the man?

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Minneapolis: Parishioners of a Negro Methodist church in Minneapolis have been invited to become members of a white Methodist church. The Negro church is about to be razed to make way for a redevelopment project. Methodist Bishop D. Stanley Coors and Dr. C.A. Pennington, minister of the Hennepin Avenue church, extended the invitation. Said Bishop Coors, “This is a proposal of Christian love and fellowship. I believe this date will be remembered as one of the significant days in the history of Minnesota Methodism.”

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Binghamton, New York: Reverend Dr. Arthur McKay, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, has accepted the post of president of McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. He will begin his new duties on February 1st next year.

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Vatican City: The traditional Christmas broadcast by the Pope this year will contain what Vatican sources call a message of extraordinary importance. They predict the Pontiff will appeal again to responsible statesmen to avert a third world war. The Pontiff may also use the occasion to fill 100 vacancies in the Sacred College of Cardinals.

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Milan, Italy: Italy’s largest circulation magazine, Oggi, says two Americans are among prelates being considered by Pope Pius for elevation to the rank of cardinal. The two Americans being considered, according to the magazine, are Monsignor Fulton Sheen, auxiliary bishop of New York, and Monsignor John Joseph Mitty, archbishop of San Francisco. Vatican sources say they can neither confirm nor deny the report.

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And from Washington, D.C. comes news that the Pope has transferred one American bishop and named two auxiliary bishops. Bishop Lambert A. Hoch, of Bismarck, North Dakota, has been transferred to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Monsignor Joseph Brunini, vicar general of Natchez, Mississippi, has been named auxiliary bishop of Natchez, and Monsignor Harry A. Clinch, pastor of St. Mary’s Church in Taft, California, has been named auxiliary bishop of Monterey-Fresno, California.

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The just-completed agreement between the Catholic Church and Poland includes restoration of religious education to the state schools. The sweeping settlement follows four weeks of negotiation by a joint church-state group. That commission had been formed after Poland’s prelate, Stefan Wyszynski was released from house arrest. And that release followed Poland’s successful (we hope) revolt against heavy Russian domination. Another point in the agreement is that the Church recognizes the Polish state has a theoretical voice in church appointments. But it is understood that the state has agreed never to veto appointments. It will be interesting to see if this last point is respected by the state in the months and years to come.

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An American Jewish writer says personal investigation has shown no evidence of Hitlerian anti-Semitism in Egypt’s treatment of stateless Jews. Alfred Lilienthal has told a news conference in Cairo that he did learn of injustices in the course of far-reaching security measures by Egypt. But he adds many corrections have been and are being made. The U.S. writer, who has often taken an anti-Zionist line, says he went to Cairo to inquire into widely publicized charges by Israeli officials that Egypt was persecuting Jews.

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In Manchester, New Hampshire, a Congregationalist minister will give parishioners an opportunity to talk back during the sermon. The Reverend Mark Strickland has decided the congregation need not sit and take what he has to say. So today, Dr. Falko Schilling will rise from the congregation to present his views on today’s sermon, which is entitled, “The Doctor and Christian Faith.”

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A study by the Milwaukee Field Office of the U.S. Census Bureau indicates little opposition will be forthcoming to a religious preference question in the 1960 census. Bureau officials say only three persons of 431 interviewed in four Wisconsin counties flatly refused to answer the question. The Census Bureau had earlier stated that results of the Wisconsin survey might determine if the religious question should be asked of the whole nation. This is a touchy subject, and always, if it is used, there should be perfect freedom for the interviewee to refuse to answer if he wishes to do so.

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One hears a great deal these days about “the power of positive thinking,” and we are subject to a barrage of propaganda of various sorts, mostly aimed at emphasis on the importance to “accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative” from our everyday experiences. However, did you ever stop to think that it is the pessimist who is made happy because life presents him with unexpected dividends but that the optimist is destined to meet frustration and disappointment? I know my colleagues in the psychology department will frown upon this, but I said it. The salvation of mankind can most readily be advanced if we recognize that this is a world of darkness now that must be made light. Realism for the present – hope for the future. Probably we need what the Jews and early Christians had: a great and intrepid dream against a background of dark reality. Early Christians referred to Jesus as light moving in darkness. We no longer mean it when we sing “Watchman, Tell Us of the Night.” We pretend there is no night. We pull the watchmen down. Such makes us uncomfortable and we insist on being comfortable. We can’t want to know what the signs and promises are if the signs are ill, so, when disaster comes we are like bewildered children singing “Safe in the Arms of Jesus” while the roof blows off. Suppose we stop kidding ourselves. Infirmity, insecurity, and death lurk in our neighborhood and sometimes do not forget to knock at our door. He who does not see the darkness cannot read the stars. Those who do not recognize the darkness cannot know the glory of light. First, admit the darkness then join those who are striving for light. Perhaps the statement of the inimitable Mr. Dooley is apropos here, when he said that my duty is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

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Have you ever tried to define religion? If not, sit down sometime and try to put into articulate form just what it is as far as you are concerned. Certainly it should not be too difficult to put something as all-embracing as religion is into some form of definite expression. Yet, it will probably be harder than you think if you have never tried it. Perhaps there is no all-inclusive definition of religion, but here are a few considerations to keep in mind, for what they may be worth in your opinion. For one thing, religion is man’s response to the totality of his environment. It is surrender to the best he knows. It is the art of living, the science of life. It is the discovery of values, the promotion of values, the protection of values, and the exploitation of values. It is the shared quest for the good life for ourselves and our children’s children. It is building a good society. It is a sense of direction. It is conscious loyalty to the best we know or about which we can dream. It is also, of course, a lot of other things. Let me have your definition of it, and if possible, I shall read it on a future broadcast.

I am well aware that to put one’s religion into words for another is impossible. One can talk about the psychology of religious experience, or about the historical, textual, or other aspects of the Bible. One can examine the salvation schemes of the past and present. He can inspect for validity of theological terms, concepts, and creeds. But he cannot tell another what his religion is any more than he can tell you what electricity is. Human communication has not yet well enough developed among human beings that our gossamer intimate yearnings, that complex we call our religion, can be passed on.

Sometimes, it seems to me, that we need to keep in mind the difference between our religion and its intellectual framework or rationalization. In other words, our theology. Theology is important. An integrated philosophy of life is important as a yardstick for daily use in meeting problems. Without it a person is at the mercy of the latest breeze that blows. A person’s theology is his explanation of the universe; his religion is what he is, and what he does. The explanation may not fit the behavior. Some pious people have behavior that leaves much to be desired, while some intellectually capable persons find social relations difficult to master.

In some respects, religion is like music; but it is more comprehensive. I little understand music, but it stirs my imagination and my emotions. Of course, music, as sound, is susceptible of some analysis. But the parts do not add up to the whole. There are no words to describe one’s personal religion or music as a subjective experience. You experience it, but you don’t construct it. Religion is a matter of sensitivity to values and appreciations that cannot be weighed, measured, and reduced to atomic analysis. A cathedral is constructed of bricks, mortar, stone, glass and wood. But a pile of these materials does not make a cathedral. The story is told that the night Philips Brooks matriculated in theological seminary there was a student meeting. One student after another got up and told how he loved the Master, how dedicated he was to saving the souls of the heathen, and what a wonderful thing it was to be saved through such soul-shaking experience. Brooks was discouraged. He had had no soul-shaking experience such as those about which he was hearing. The next morning at the eight o’clock class, Philips Brooks was the only student who had translated the assigned number of lines, despite his lack of theological coherency.

Religion implies concern, devotion, surrender, consecration, commitment. One of the things that this reporter cannot help but wonder about in religion is the often seen waste of human devotion to that which is worthless, and an inability or unwillingness to critically ascertain that which is worth devotion.

Doubtless all of us have been stirred with many emotions these last few weeks at what is going on in Hungary. The murder not only of those staunch fighters for freedom but also of innocent bystanders, men, women, and children, has horrified the free world, and has aroused people everywhere to wish to do something both to stop the senseless killings and to aid those trying to escape from the Russian-imposed terror. Americans of all shades of political complexion, with the probable exception of the communists, applauded when the president asked that 5,000 refugees be admitted to this country. Even Rep. Francis Walter, co-author of the much-criticized McCarran-Walter Act, has urged that not only 5,000, but 17,000, be admitted. Obviously, Mr. Walter’s education in principles of humanity had improved greatly as a result of his visit to Austria and Hungary.

Doubtless all these suggested actions reflect the heart and soul of the American people. However, our attempts to carry these actions out have developed into something of a mess. Hundreds of public and private agencies are trying to handle bits of the big and growing job. Nobody is in charge to coordinate the efforts of these agencies and make them bear fruit. Not only that, but government bureaus as well as those of private agencies are getting into each other’s way and hair by not having centralized coordinators. An eyewitness, for example, observed the first 60 refugees land here the day before Thanksgiving. About five times as many officials were on hand to greet them as there were Hungarians to greet. The Army representatives would not even let representatives of the White House and the State Department greet the arrivals. And at one point, armed military police barred the heads of sponsoring agencies from speaking to the refugees. The processing of these unfortunates was to take only a short time, but it lasted far into the night. And a week later, some of these first 60 refugees didn’t know where they’d go for homes and jobs.

Overseas aid is about as badly snarled. The Red Cross is supposed to be collecting money to aid the refugees now in Austria, but it is not putting on a campaign because it does not want Hungarian relief to interfere with the numerous community campaigns it is making in this country this fall. At least 50 other groups, some local and some national, are collecting money on their own, and it is possible that professional fund collectors are utilizing this merry-go-round to secure funds that will never aid anyone but the collectors. Furthermore, there is no central place where money for clothing or supplies can be sent. And generous Americans have gotten nowhere trying to make special efforts on their own. In San Francisco, for example a concerted drive gathered more than 100 persons who were willing to act as sponsors for Hungarian families, but for more than a week they could not get the necessary forms to send in their applications. Pittsburgh bakers wish to send their own unit to Austria to bake bread for the refugees, but they have been sent from one government agency to another, for it appears that none of these agencies knows to whom they should go to put their idea into practice.

The height of the ridiculous was reached when supplies donated by our own International Cooperation Administration, and bearing labels indicated that they came from the U.S. were barred from admission until the International Red Cross erased the labels and replaced them with some of their own.

What can be done about this unfortunate situation? Well, it is, in effect, an international matter, and only the White House itself can act forthrightly and effectively to straighten out the snarl. The president could appoint a national director to straighten out both the government bureaus and to integrate and coordinate the efforts of private agencies and individuals. Here is an opportunity to put the amazing potentialities of American human desires to effective work to relieve human suffering. Hungarians are hungry, and we are not feeding them; they are in prison, and we are not visiting them; they are sick, and we are not ministering unto them. Not because we cannot, but because we let the very machinery of government that should expedite aid bog down in petty jealousy and indecision. Until we get that machinery functioning smoothly to get offered aid to the needy, we are shooting below par, whichever course we take.

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Last week I reported to you on the preoccupation of the last Congress with a matter of adopting a general resolution approving the Ten Commandments as a part of our basic faith. A similar instance has come to my attention this week in the reported decision of the president of George Washington University not to consider for employment on the university faculty any person who does not believe in God.

At first blush this might seem to be a commendable policy. However, the thinking person is immediately faced with such questions as: how can you be certain when a person believes in God? In what kind of God do you expect him to believe? And, as a practical matter, if you were an atheist, and your employment hinged upon your asserted belief in a deity, would you hesitate to make such a declaration?

Aside from the purely theological abstraction involved here, are the considerations to be given to the academic side of the matter: freedom to learn, to hear, to read, to know, is basic in a democracy. A great university would certainly be under no obligation to employ an atheist any more than it would be to employ a Protestant, a Catholic, a Democrat, or a witch doctor. The basic question is: Should one be barred from such employment because he happens to fall within one of more of these categories? A thorough knowledge of the atheist viewpoint could do just as much to make a confirmed believer in religion out of a student as it could to make him an atheist. Any other premise assumes that the learner is not capable of thinking for himself, and if this is true, the whole premise upon which democracy is founded tumbles. It is hoped that President Marvin will reconsider his policy decision in the light of calmness and objectivity.

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A rather curious bit of anti-Semitism came to my attention this week in the form of some comments made by a well-known woman reporter whose column is syndicated widely in American newspapers. Entitling her column, “America Can Now Free Herself of Dictation,” the reporter discusses briefly the situation in the Middle East, construes the election results as a verdict on our foreign policy, and   proceeds to insist that until recently our foreign policy has been influenced unduly by our sympathy with the state of Israel and by our (to her) disproportionate regard for our diplomatic ties with France and Britain.

In her comments upon the influence of American Jews on our foreign policy she says, “There is not the slightest hope of salvaging American influence in the Arab world until, or unless, the United States shakes off the stranglehold that Israel, via the powerful Zionist organization of America, has exercised over our policies…. In all American history there is no comparable example of a national minority…. America cannot have any policy in the Middle East if her actions are dictated by the interests of one single Middle Eastern state, a newcomer at that, and one established against the vehement protests of the whole Moslem world…. The Eisenhower administration has tried to break that dictation, regardless of the domestic political consequences…. The election landslide … evaporated the myth of “the Jewish vote” – as interpreted by the Zionists.”

The reporter thus faces the reader with a dilemma: She cannot prove that her assertion is true; neither can the thinking reader prove that it is in error. All of us are aware that there are Jews in this country; all of us are aware that there is a Zionist movement. But it is difficult to believe that there is such a thing as a “Jewish vote.” Most analyses of Jewish voters concludes that the Jews, like any other ethnic group, vote pretty much according to their socioeconomic status rather than along strictly cultural or religious lines. The reporter in question, though, has inserted a neat bit of suggested propaganda that will probably be grist for the mills of those who wish to promote religious intolerance in America.

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Washington: Church leaders, both Protestant and Catholic, are becoming more concerned about the increasing numbers of interfaith marriages. Marriages between Catholics and Protestants once were rare in the United States, but are now becoming commonplace. The official Catholic Directory reports that more than one-fourth of all marriages performed last year by Catholic priests involved a non-Catholic partner. Many thousands of other interfaith marriages were performed by Protestant ministers or civil authorities. Clergymen say that not only do many such mixed marriages end up in divorce, but also that there is a strong tendency for one or both partners to drift away from religion altogether. And that tendency, they add, also extends to the children.

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The world’s Jews are celebrating now the world’s first great war for religious freedom. That war started some centuries ago, when a small, motley group of troops took on the armies of King Antiochus IV of Syria, with guerilla warfare. The Maccabeans finally shattered the vastly superior forces that were used to try to make the Jews become pagans. Dr. Maurice Eisendrath, the president of the American Hebrew Congregations, says Judaism – and also Christianity – would not be except for those efforts in 168-165 B.C. Legend says when the Syrians were defeated the temple lamps burned for six days on a normal one-day supply of oil. Thus began “Hanukah,” with the candles glowing in Jewish homes and synagogues in what is sometimes called the Festival of Lights. This past Wednesday the first “Hanukah” candles were lit at sunset. On each evening then, until the final day, this coming Thursday, one more candle is lit. At the end, eight candles burn in the “menorah,” a special candelabra. While the Hanukah gives glory to God for the preservation of the faith against tyranny, it also recalls the fighting Jew. Such a figure is often overlooked in the long record of Jewish oppression and disaster. But Rabbi Samuel Silver of New York City has noted that when the Jew has the least means and the cause is important, he fights as do the best. Thus in memory of the first big war for religious freedom, candles are lit, songs are sung, pageants staged, and gifts exchanged.

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A Vatican City publication says the apostolic exarch in Sofia, Bulgaria, has been arrested. The paper, L’ Osservatore Romano, adds the arrest of Monsignor Cirillo Kurteff means all Catholic bishops in Bulgaria have disappeared under the persecution. An apostolic exarch is a Roman Catholic bishop appointed as head of a diocese of the Eastern Catholic Church.

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A Presbyterian conference on promotion of world missions has heard plans for increased interchange of information about foreign mission activities of the three U.S. Presbyterian denominations. Dr. Edward Grige, of Philadelphia, has told the area mission meetings at Louisville, Kentucky, “We must alert the home church to what is going on abroad.” Not only will information be exchanged by the United Presbyterians, the Presbyterians U.S.A., and the Presbyterians U.S.; so will missionaries.

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Rome: Withdrawal of government subsidies may force Catholic Bantu schools in South Africa to curtail their activity. The missionary news agency, Fides, says the 800 schools were seriously affected by the Bantu Education Act, which forces them to accept the government’s so-called apartheid (or segregation) policy, or lose their government subsidy. The schools teach 121,000 students.

One of phenomena emerging from the resurgence of religionism in this country is the frequency with which religious topics engage the attention of legislators, either with a view of making legislative pronouncement on these topics, or of enacting statutes on the subjects. An example is the insertion of a religious phrase in the pledge of allegiance to the flag to the extent that “this nation under God.”

In the last Congress, for instance, Concurrent Resolution 88 was introduced by Republican Styles Bridges and Democrat Earle Clements, two days before Congress adjourned. It went almost unnoticed in the press, but it threw the Congress into something of a parliamentary tizzy. It was a simple and brief document, proclaiming that “The Ten Commandments, as a primary moral force, behind the three great religions of today, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, should be reaffirmed as the ethical code governing the lives of men and are the means of bringing about lasting world peace and a solution to the many problems of mankind.”

Apparently religious-minded friends had urged upon the two senators the introduction of such a resolution, and, as Bridges explained, was designed to stimulate spiritual thinking.

The trouble was that the First Amendment plainly states in its first clause that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion…” This clause was not intended to discourage religion but to assure that there would be equal freedom for all. It has been held by the courts to be the basis for keeping separate church and state, and Congress is an arm of the latter, and while Congress has authority to consider just about every known topic, this does not include religion.

The last portion of the resolution, however, read, “Resolved … that we hereby proclaim our faith in the word of God and thereby perpetuate renewed observance throughout the world, by nations and by individuals, of the Ten Commandments.” In view of the fact that it included the word “world” and “nations,” the parliamentarian of the Senate ruled that it could be assigned to the Foreign Relations Committee. But he soon had a call back from a startled clerk asking, “Since when did we have jurisdiction over the Ten Commandments?” And there the resolution died. It will probably come up again in the new Congress, and will again go to the Foreign Relations Committee. Unless constitutional lawyers advise the committee of objections to it, there is likelihood it will be approved and sent to the House for concurrence, and if approved, Congress will have declared formally its faith in God and the Ten Commandments.

Now all of this looks harmless, to some, even desirable. However, there are some serious and sober reflections that arise upon analysis of the situation. The First Amendment plainly means what it says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” and the Ten Commandments are the basis of at least the Judaic and Christian religions. This would seem to rule out such action by Congress as contemplated by Resolution 88. Moreover, aside from the legal question, there is one of policy. If Congress can legally formally pass such a resolution affirming the Commandments today, may it not go further and endorse the Methodist discipline or the Presbyterian catechism tomorrow? And from there it is but a short step to an established religion. Then there is the question of good common sense. The Ten Commandments need no endorsement from a relatively puny body such as even our great Congress is. A religion that needs legislative bolstering is weak indeed, and if it requires mortal enactments in a legislative mill to give it vigor and substance, such enactments are futile and the Commandments are on their way to becoming of no effect.

Obviously, in the light of our constitutional system that has stood the test of the years, or our tradition of no meddling in religion by Congress, and in view of the meaningless effect of such a resolution, it would be well for the Senate to observe individually and collectively the words of the Master when he said “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.”

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Some time ago President Eisenhower created, by executive order, the Committee on Government Contracts, charging it with improving and making more effective the non-discrimination provisions of government contracts. Among those provisions is one prohibiting employment on the grounds of religion. Now it develops that the administration is engaging in religious screening of personnel serving in Saudi Arabia, and thereby barring Jews from American installations in Arabia. Obviously, this discrimination against Jews is in direct conflict with the directive given the Committee on Government Contracts. Perhaps this is a case where the administration should ignore the biblical injunction and at least let its right hand know what its left hand is doing.

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The moving picture “Storm Center” stars Bette Davis as a librarian who refuses to remove a book called The Communist Dream from her public library when the city council tells her to. When it opened in New York some time ago, the National Legion of Decency, a Catholic organization, condemned it, and defended its action by saying it was done “as a protection to the uninformed against wrong interpretations and false conclusions.” As for the film itself, it has received mixed reviews. Some critics have found it lacking in sophistication and dramatic effect, while others have hailed it as a strong argument for the freedom to read. But all this is beside the point. Here is an influential organization, no doubt sincere in its dedication to principles of decency as its members see those principles, but setting itself up as a self-appointed censor of what pictures people may see. As for its statement that it took such action only as protection against the uninformed against wrong interpretations and false conclusions, well, the legion itself is saying in effect that “only my interpretations and conclusions are correct” and we will permit you to consider only them. And as to being uninformed, how is one to get information if he is denied access to it, and this includes access to pro-communist as well as anti-communist materials. To assume otherwise is to assume that common, ordinary people like ourselves do not have sense enough to see, hear, read, and determine for ourselves the truth or falsity of a statement, whether it be in a film, a book, or from the words of someone with whom we converse. Censorship in any form is anathema to democracy, and this is just as true when it comes from a quasi-religious group as when it comes from anyone else.

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A recent letter to the president of the United States reflects not only something of the dire conditions prevailing in Hungary at this time, but also something of what the United Sates means, or could mean, to oppressed peoples. It is from Cardinal Josef Mindszenty and reads as follows:

“As a shipwreck of Hungarian liberty, I have been taken abroad by your generosity in a refuge in my own country as a guest of your legation. Your hospitality surely saved me from immediate death.

With deep gratitude, I am sending my heartfelt congratulations to your excellency on the occasion of your reelection to the presidency of the United States, an exalted office whose glory is that it serves the highest ambitions of mankind: God, charity, wisdom, and human happiness…. May the Lord grant you and your nation greater strength and richer life…. I beg of you do not forget this small honest nation who is enduring torture and death in the service of humanity.”

We can read this letter with only the deepest humility as we realize how far the world structure of things at present permits the powers that be to stop the butchery of the Hungarian murders. And it makes this reporter at least wonder again when or if the peoples of the world are going to demand through their united voices that the outworn, outmoded, helpless system of balance of power is going to be tolerated. President Eisenhower not long ago affirmed his belief in law governing nations as well as individuals. Until such law is a reality, enacted by a world law-making power, we shall go on having our Hungarys, our Suez Canal debacles, and we shall continue to have the flights of Cardinal Mindszentys. It is about time that soul-searching effective reorganization is substituted for the present nationalistic chaos.

The Tennessee Baptist Convention ended this week with delegates unexpectedly dodging the race relations issue in approving a committee report which did not even mention the subject, though the chairman of the Social Service Committee had indicated that it would be contained in his report. As originally drafted and published in printed form, the report included a section stating that “We should accept the Supreme Court decision as the law of the land.” However, in its final form the report merely observes that “Obviously we cannot discuss all the fields of human relations,” and adds that because of “time and space limitations, we shall deal with only two things – race relations and beverage alcohol. We choose race relations because of the recent events in Anderson County; the alcohol problem is discussed because of the continuing magnitude of the problem.”

However, no specific stand regarding the crucial issue of denominational stand for or against enforcement, or attempted enforcement, of the Supreme Court decision was left out.

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Everybody, religious or otherwise, cannot but be concerned about the complicated and frightening mess into which international affairs have been plunged by the events in Egypt since June and in the Middle East within the past few weeks. Churches around the world have expressed their concern. Pope Pius has condemned the “illegal and brutal repression” and declared that Christians have “a moral obligation to try all permissible means in order that the dignity and freedom of the Hungarian people be restored.” The World Council of Churches said in Geneva that “Christians must stand together with all who, in the struggle for freedom, suffer pain and trial.” The National Council of Churches in the U.S. cabled the Russian Orthodox Church asking it to work for “avoidance of further bloodshed and oppression.” Britain, where the church has often appeared subdued and on the decline, was aroused by Eden’s action and most of the Protestant clergy took their cue from the archbishop of Canterbury who emphasized that this action makes the British people “terribly uneasy and unhappy.” “Britain,” he says, “has stood alone in the world before because she upheld moral principles at great cost to herself. But she stands alone today because she has acted in direct violation of the moral and legal principal to which she pledged herself.” And he calls upon “Christian people (to) [stop the way.”]

And Protestant and Catholic Church groups and individuals have expressed deep concern over the international situation. The Protestant Episcopal House of Bishops terms itself “outraged by the ruthless slaughter and enslavement of the Hungarian people by the tyranny of Russia.” At their meeting at Pocono Manor, Pennsylvania, this week, the leaders of the American branch of the Anglican Communion also expressed misgivings about what it termed the unilateral action taken by contending powers in the Middle East. The statements are parts of a pastoral letter to be read in all Episcopalian parishes and U.S. missionary districts.

Meanwhile, the president of the National Council of Churches, the Rev. Dr. Carson Blake, has made a national appeal for emergency aid contributions. The gifts of money, food, and clothing will be used for the new thousands of homeless and hungry persons in Europe and the Middle East. Dr. Blake also called on the Russian Orthodox Church to present to the authorities of its nation its Christian concern that the Hungarians be allowed to determine their own national destiny.

So far as is known, Josef Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary is still in asylum in the U.S. legation in Budapest.

Chief Justice Earl Warren has told the National Conference of Christians and Jews that freedom can be endangered in America even in our day. To prevent this, he says, the nation must stay vigilant against intolerance and injustice.

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Jewish blind throughout the world now are using the world’s first Hebrew prayer book in braille. Preparation of the nine-volume set has been financed by the National Women’s League of the United Synagogue of America.

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Dr. Jacob Agus believes religion should cultivate a sense of reverence for the objective approach in life. The rabbi of the Congregation of Beth-el in Baltimore also thinks religions should cultivate a sense for thinking in terms of humanity, not in racial, national, or political terms. He also told the National Institute for Religious and Social Studies that to serve God as complete humans, we must be objective as well as subjective. The institute is a function of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City. Every year it is attended by about 200 Roman Catholic, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish leaders. Very often the lectures and discussions produce fast jottings in notebooks of sermon ideas. The institute meetings are for a study of common grounds of religion as well as differences.

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New York: The Rev. Dr. Ralph W. Lowe, pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Buffalo, New York, has been elected president of the Board of Foreign Missions of the United Lutheran Church in America.

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Winston Salem, North Carolina: A resolution which would bar Negroes from attending Baptist schools and colleges in North Carolina has been defeated overwhelmingly at the 126^th Annual Baptist State Convention. The resolution had been advanced by J. Henry Le Roy of Elizabeth City, representing a group of Eastern North Carolina Baptists. But barely a handful among 1,600 convention delegates rose to support it.

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Atlanta, Georgia: The Georgia Baptist Convention, the largest religious group in the State, has refused to endorse the Supreme Court integration decision. Recommendations of a committee for endorsement were rejected by a standing vote of approximately 3 – 1.

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Madrid, Spain: The Spanish government has further tightened its laws governing the marriage of non-Catholics in Spain. A decree law signed by Chief of State Franco revises the laws for civil weddings which have not been changed since 1870. In net effect, the new law makes non-Catholic marriages neither more nor less possible, but it does serve to make the procedure somewhat more difficult. Non-Catholics, in order to marry in Spain, must apply for permission to marry, and state reasons why they want to wed.

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Washington, Ohio: An Illinois psychologist says persons preparing to enter the ministry should take psychiatric tests. Dr. Charles Anderson, of Hinsdale, Illinois, says such tests would eliminate many heartaches, ill feelings, and difficulties encountered by clergymen.

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Lisbon, Portugal: A national pilgrimage will take place today to the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, to pray for the salvation of Hungary. Catholics were urged to join the pilgrimage to attend a solemn funeral Mass for Hungarian martyrs which will be celebrated November 28.

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Hanover, Germany: Hungarian Protestant Bishop Lajos Ordass is reported safe in a village near Budapest. Ordass, a Lutheran bishop, fled the capital with his family and staff when the Russians attacked. German Lutheran officials plan to send a truckload of food and clothing to the bishop.

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New York: The Board of Social Missions of the United Lutheran Church in America has approved a plan to train 100 pastors and laymen for an education and action program on desegregation. Dr. Harold Letts, secretary for social action, says the training plan is based on a statement by the denomination’s 20^th Biennial Convention that segregation impedes Christian brotherhood.

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It is difficult to see how religion can be regarded as something abstract, something removed from everyday living, though some of you listeners have expressed yourselves otherwise. However, unless religion is interwoven into the very fabric of everyday affairs, it becomes a stilted, meaningless, and ornamental affair. That is why, on this pre-Thanksgiving broadcast, I have no hesitancy in presenting the following which is probably the most important, both tangible and intangible, element of our everyday life for which we should regard with thanks. It is an essay of America, by a high school student, presented two or three years ago in a nation-wide contest. It is by Elizabeth Ellen Evans, and is entitled ”I Speak for Democracy.” It says:

“I am an American. Listen to my words, fascist, communist. Listen well, for my country is a strong country, and my message is a strong message. I am an American, and I speak for democracy. My ancestors have left their blood on the green at Lexington and the snow at Valley Forge…on the walls of Fort Sumter and the fields at Gettysburg…on the waters of the River Marne and in the shadows of the Argonne Forest…on the beachheads of Salerno and Normandy and the sands of Okinawa…on the bare, bleak hills called Pork Chop and Old Baldy and Heartbreak Ridge.

A million and more of my countrymen have died for freedom. My country is their eternal monument. They live on in the laughter of a small boy as he watches a circus clown’s antics…and in the sweet, delicious coldness of the first bite of peppermint ice cream on the Fourth of July…in the little tenseness of a baseball crowd as the umpire calls ‘batter up!’…and in the high school band’s rendition of ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ in the Memorial Day parade…in the clear sharp ring of a school bell on a fall morning…and in the triumph of a six-year old as he reads aloud for the first time.

They live on in the eyes of an Ohio farmer surveying his acres of corn and potatoes and pasture…and in the brilliant gold of hundreds of acres of wheat stretching across the flat miles of Kansas…in the milling of cattle in the stockyards of Chicago…the precision of an assembly line in an automobile factory in Detroit…and the perpetual glow of the nocturnal skylines of Pittsburgh and Birmingham and Gary.

They live on in the voice of a young Jewish boy saying the sacred words from the Torah: ‘Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might.’ …and in the voice of a Catholic girl praying: ‘Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…’ and in the voice of a Protestant boy singing ‘A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing…’

An American named Carl Sandburg wrote these words: ‘I know a Jew fish crier down on Maxwell Street with a voice like a north wind blowing over corn stubble in January. He dangles herring before prospective customers evincing a joy identical with that of Pavlova dancing. His face is that of a man terribly glad to be selling fish, terribly glad that God made fish, and customers to whom he may call his wares from a pushcart.’

There is the voice in the soul of every human being that cries out to be free. America answered that voice.

America has offered freedom and opportunity such as no land before has ever known, to a Jew fish crier down on Maxwell Street with the face of a man terribly glad to be selling fish. She has given him the right to own his pushcart, to sell his herring on Maxwell Street.… She has given him an education for his children, and a tremendous faith in the nation that has made these things his.

Multiply that fish crier by 160 million – 160 million mechanics and farmers and housewives and coal miners and truck drivers and chemists and lawyers, and plumbers and priests – all glad, terribly glad, to be what they are, terribly glad to be free to work and eat and sleep and speak and love and pray and live as they desire, as they believe.

And those 160 million Americans … have more roast beef and mashed potatoes … the yield of the American labor and land … more automobiles and telephones … more safety razors and bathtubs … more Orlon sweaters and Aureomycin … the fruits of American initiative and enterprise … more public schools and life insurance policies … the symbols of American security and faith in the future … more laughter and song – than any other people on earth.

This is my answer fascist, communist. Show me a country greater than our country, show me a people more energetic, creative, progressive – bigger-hearted and happier than our people, not until then will I consider your way of life. For I am an American, and I speak for democracy.

This item is sort of posthumous, but it did not get on the wire in time to be included on last week’s broadcast. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of last week, two teachers’ organizations met in Knoxville, Tennessee. The white group, which calls itself the E.T.E.A., met at the University; while not far away, the colored teachers, the East Tennessee Teachers’ Association, met at the Austin High School. It is somewhat an anachronism that there should be continued two groups, meeting separately, based on race.

However, the irony becomes greater when one looks into the matters about which the two groups were concerned. A Dr. William F. Robinson, professor of sociology at Central State College in Ohio, told the colored teachers that the only way that further integration could be brought about was by continued efforts through the courts.

In its closing session, the white association passed a number of resolutions, among them being, and I quote, “…to dedicate ourselves…to the task of improving our own understanding of American democratic principles and their advantages over conflicting principles of life and government.” Apparently no conflicting principles occurred to them regarding the racial separation of colleagues at Austin, who are just as interested in promoting education in Tennessee as is the white group.

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All this brings to mind the case of the old Scottish elder, who was faithful in church attendance but the cause of a great deal of trouble among the members. He told his pastor one day that he was going to pay a visit to the Holy Land. “And when I get there,” he said with great enthusiasm, “I’m going to climb Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments from the top of it.” “I can tell you something better to do,” his pastor said, “Stay home and keep them.”

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What has come to be known in our time as the “Social Gospel” is something that many, perhaps most, Christian people today take for granted. We see the gospel not only as a means of securing reconciliation with the deity, but also as a means of transforming conditions of human life. The Christian ideal is not simply a new heaven; it is also a new earth.

While it is not to be denied that the church from the beginning was a social force, it has taken a long time for it to become the continuing, positive force for reform that it is today in many instances. In the Middle Ages, e.g., the church had great political and economic power, and it used that power to further its own organizational ends rather than the welfare of needy individuals.

But almost from the beginning there was some emphasis upon the social gospel by the church. It early exerted an influence on legislation, on the treatment of slaves, on the treatment of prisoners of war, on the treatment of women and children, on provision for the treatment of the sick and aged. Wycliffe’s Bible and the poor priests known as Lollards, carried the biblical message up and down the country, and historians are agreed that these did much to help and prepare England not only for the Reformation but also for improvement in the lot of the barest level of subsistence. They heard little from their priests to lead them to suppose that they were entitled to a better life. But as they listened to Wycliffe’s Lollards and to the reading of the Bible in their own tongue, something began to stir in their souls and they realized that they did not have to die and go to heaven before they could know a brighter lot. And thus it went, from country to country, as the Reformation swept across Europe. French, Germans, and others came to realize that religion was not necessarily a procedure for enduring hardships here in order to escape them in some hereafter, but a positive doctrine that realized that and advocated the good life for men here and now, as well as afterward.

There are some groups today who frown upon the advocacy by the church of a social gospel. To such people, religion is something abstract from or a segmented, compartmentalized portion of life. Such groups fail to catch perhaps the most important aspect of religion, for while there is no intent to disparage emphasis upon religion as a preparation for eternity, it is more than likely, it is fairly certain, that people who see that through religion, a happier, more plentiful life is possible, will also wish the more ardently to influence others to accept it also.

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Two days from now, some 90 million Americans will have an opportunity to perform the most important duty of citizenship – go to the polls and vote for the candidates of their choice for national, state, and in some cases, local candidates. At the national level we shall be choosing the men who will guide the destiny of this country for the next four years. Unfortunately, it is estimated that only a maximum of 60 percent of those who could vote will do so. This discrepancy between the possible and the actual number of voters makes it all the more necessary that those of us who do vote do so with extreme discrimination and with all the information at our command.

Voting is a moral as well as a civic obligation, for government is the institution that regulates in some way all the others. It may step in and regulate the family, religion (e.g., laws preventing the disturbing of public worship); it may and does regulate our economic system, education, and all the other basic social institutions. What it does or fails to do has daily tremendous impact upon the lives of not only all of us, but as we have seen, the lives of people around the world.

The tumult and the shouting are about over. Propagandists, distortioners, exaggerators, as well as the straightforward, objective campaigners have about had their say. We, the voters, have been subjected to a barrage of oratory that tells us that salvation is here; another says it is there. Our task is to evaluate all that has been said in the light of the record – or lack of it – and to determine within our own minds and hearts what is the best for us as a people and also what will be best for the world. What is good for the American people will surely be good for the rest of the free world, for in the long run, our destiny is inextricably interwoven with theirs. Otherwise, freedom will perish from the earth.

So it is that when next Tuesday, you and I enter the ballot booth, the hysteria of the campaign will be over. There, in the quietness of that small structure, we shall do something that very few people in the world can do – vote to perpetuate the present government or vote to throw it out and to institute a new government based on those principles which to us shall seem most likely to effect our safety and happiness. We are the final arbiters, the final judges, and however the outcome, the defeated candidates, whether at national, state, or local levels, will not dare dissent from our verdict. So it is we who are sovereign, not a Hitler, a Khrushchev, or an Eisenhower.

This is the American way, and it will stay that way only as long as you and I exercise the ballot conscientiously and wisely. It is a solemn responsibility as well as a valued privilege. We cannot fail, for if we do democracy fails, and with it all the rights and responsibilities of democracy. Presidents, governors, and magistrates of all kinds will not fail unless we do. What are you going to do about it?

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An encyclical letter by Pope Pius XII has taken note of two world-shaking events. The pontiff expressed joy for the release of Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski of Poland and Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary. But he asked prayers for the Holy Land and the Middle East. The pope writes of hope that recent events in Hungary and Poland might be a sign of peaceful reordering of the two nations. Yet, he adds, a fearful situation presents itself in the Middle East. The pontiff writes that it is not far from the Holy Land where the angels, flying over the cradle of the divine infant, announced peace to men of good will. He asks that he be joined in prayer for peace and order among the nations. The pope asserted that when men, moved by desire for a true peace, unite to deal with such grave problems, they must without doubt feel impelled to choose the way of justice and not that of adventure on the steep cliff of violence.

Budapest church bells pealed a welcome this week for Cardinal Mindszenty when he entered the Hungarian capital a free man for the first time in seven years. In 1949, a Red court condemned him to prison for life as a traitor. The cardinal blessed the throngs hailing his arrival. Women were kneeling in the streets. Men had their heads bare. And many persons crossed themselves and wept. At a news conference Friday, Mindszenty asked Western political support for the new anti-Russian Hungarian regime. He added that he wants personally to report many things to Pope Pius. Earlier this month, the Protestant world welcomed the release of another famed Hungarian figure. That was the Right Rev. Lajos Ordas, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. He had been imprisoned in 1948 on conviction of illegal currency dealings. Bishop Ordas was declared innocent three weeks ago. But he was not reinstated in his church duties at once. Instead, he was named professor of theology in Budapest’s Lutheran Academy.

Poland’s Roman Catholic primate early this week called on that nation to approach her problems maturely. On his first public appearance since release from house arrest, Cardinal Wyszynski asked for no demonstrations and no disorders. He had been arrested in 1953, and was said to have been released from prison last year. Now, he too, has been restored to his ecclesiastical position.

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Delegates for 3,000 U.S. Orthodox synagogues have passed political and spiritual resolutions at their meeting in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The convention of Orthodox Jewish Synagogues of America has expressed deepest concern and anxiety about radioactive dust from H-bomb tests. It declares, “The preservation and sanctification of human life is a prime mandate from the Divine.” The delegates also asked the U.S. Defense Department to make available to Jewish servicemen kosher foods similar in quality and caloric value to regular rations. And they want the U.S. to sever relations with any Arab nation that fails to halt what the convention terms discriminations against U.S. citizens. The Orthodox Jews also backed their National Executive Committee in a test case to maintain separation of men and women worshipers. This refers to a group in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, synagogue that seeks a court order prohibiting mixed seating as proposed by another group within the synagogue.

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Efforts from 48 Protestant and two Eastern Orthodox Church bodies disclose that Americans gave their churches more than ever in 1955. The National Council of Churches says offerings to the 50 groups totaled more than $1.75 billion. For the approximate 49 million members thus represented, this meant a per capita increase of 8 percent. The per person contributions rose from $49.95 in 1954 to $53.94 in 1955, a new high. The highest per member giving was in the Free Methodist Church: $193.45.

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Two congregations of the different Lutheran denominations are going to merge, even if their parent bodies do not. Union is scheduled this winter for a parish of the American Lutheran Church and a congregation of the United Lutheran Church, in Norwich, Connecticut. A campaign for a building fund for the merged churches has resulted in pledges of more that $122,000. Additional funds will come from sale of presently-held properties. But the congregations will not worship together until the new church is completed. The national bodies of the United and American Lutheran Churches are due to start considering merger at talks in Chicago in mid-December.

Some rather quaint statements were made this week by a New Jersey businessman to a Tennessee chapter of a nationally known patriotic (so-called) organization for men. Some of his more bland and ambiguous, some downright inaccurate, gems include: “Today, more that ever in our history, it is vital that we preserve the traditions of early America, the America of George Washington…. to preserve these traditions is vital because conditions of the past 150 years have given us a melting pot – a great mixtures of races, religions, and ideologies. And some of these are antagonistic to the traditions for which Washington fought and for which patriot blood was shed all the way from Boston to King’s Mountain.”

“From 1760 to 1780, Americans were racially one, of one mind, grounded in the principles and traditions of America. Today, the influx of peoples from other lands with ideas hostile to those woven into this Republic and sealed with the blood of patriots has diluted these early traditions…. Now with peoples split and with much intermarriage, especially in the North, of pure American stock to foreigners, we have a problem that presses upward for solution. How are we to keep Americanism pure?” and he goes on to answer this purely rhetorical question by saying, “We, the descendants of the founders of America must unite and stand as one together as never before, not only to justify our existence, but to make certain that the traditions of our great past become the traditions of future generations of Americans.”

Well, there is more of the same, but it is largely repetition. But let us look for a moment at this series of statements, or misstatements. In the first place, there is much in our history that we wish to preserve. It all started with the Revolution, so we want to preserve that right as basic to our philosophy and perhaps our continued existence. If revolution is wrong, then we started out from an untenable assumption and action based on that assumption, and hence we have no moral or historical justification for existence as a nation. But perhaps the speaker did not realize that what he was urging was contradictory to the events that give his organization justification for existence.

George Washington was not fighting to preserve tradition, but to break with it. Had the Revolution ended in defeat for the American forces, Washington would probably have been the first to be executed as a traitor, and he would have gone down in history – British history – as a traitor, just as we now so firmly regard Benedict Arnold. And the verdict of history would have sustained his executioners, for Washington was definitely subversive, from the British point of view. Obviously, the speaker is the son of a Revolution, for which he is proud, but he would shrink from being the father of one.

As to his assertion that “From1760 to 1780, Americans were racially one, of one mind, grounded in the principles and traditions of America,” well, it is a beautiful thought; the only thing wrong with it is that it is simply is not true. Even an elementary glance at the ethnological make-up of our population at the time of the Revolution, reveals that there were Negro slaves, British, Dutch, French exiles, incidentally Huguenot Protestants, Maryland Catholics, Pennsylvania Quakers, Irish Catholics, Scotch Covenanters, Jews, Swedes, and others to numerous to mention.

We started out as a polyglot people, heterogeneous in our make-up, diverse in our political outlook. Many Americans for example, supported the loyalist cause. And, as a matter of historical fact, there was intermingling and inter-marriage among these foreigners from the start. If by “pure,” one means “race, religion, or nationality,” then we started out as an impure nation, and as Americans we (the majority of us) are proud of it. Perhaps the tradition demonstrated by the fact that diverse peoples from many nations and religions and races can find common political bonds of agreement under our constitutional system is the greatest tradition that we have created, and the one of which we can be the most proud. There is no race, religion, or nationality group that has a monopoly upon Americans (whatever that means). In every war we have fought, if you wish to use participation in war as a criterion of patriotism, all of our races, nationalities, and religious groups have taken part and acquitted themselves with honor. And that holds true whether their descendants came over on the Mayflower or arrived since World War II as refugees from tyranny. The words “displaced persons,” so disturbing to some, may mean “delayed pilgrims.” After all, anyone could come here in 1760 for there were no immigration laws, and it is likely that many who came then could not get past the barriers of the watchdogs of our State Department [today].

So let us keep these things in mind as we see, hear, or read such nonsense as our, undoubtedly sincere, but uninformed, speaker presented this past week. Ten days from now Americans of all national, racial, and religious backgrounds will go to the polls and vote for candidates of their own choice. They will, it is hoped, make their choices in the light of the problems of 1956 rather than any blind adherence to some mythical tradition of our past. Americans generally have, if anything, been realists: holding on to those things in our tradition that history has proved to be good, but willing to cast aside those that are either not good, or having been good once, are now outdated and useless as a result of the passing of time and changing of problems we face. And certainly it is not in the American tradition to acquiesce in the idea that a numerically small group is the self-appointed keeper of American purity, destiny, or anything else. It was that against which we revolted in 1776.

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And in this connection, may I pass on to you a short poem by T. Moore Atkinson, who says:

Gone are the old frontiers, the unexplored,

The borderlands on which our fathers wrought

To tame the wild or, at some rocky ford,

To plant a town; a culture dearly bought.

The lands are mapped now, schools have come, and trade

The niceties of social grace abound.

The ancient dangers, stark romance are laid

Away where only legendary tales are found.

Still, one frontier remains as old as men,

As rude and lone as Vineland’s lonely shore,

The realm of man’s own spirit past the ken

Of men to weigh, still waits beyond the door.

These pasts persist, a dare to pioneers,

The soul and minds unconquered lands, our last frontiers.

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During the past two weeks we have heard much “’tis so” “’taint so’” about cessation of H-bomb experiments, disarmament, etc., all of which has been both enlightening and confusing. Perhaps it is the unshackled common sense of the general public that will have to guide the nations to a disarmament agreement that the world’s political and military leaders have been unable to achieve. In both the United States and the Soviet Union, military leaders, some not now in uniform, have a virtual veto power over their country’s disarmament proposals. Political heads, sensitive to public pressure, try to move forward, but the military leaders have shown very little faith in a security system through disarmament. As a result, disarmament negotiations have been a sort of minuet, where partners advance mincingly toward each other, then coyly back away. But public demands for a disarmament treaty continue to mount. A generation that has unleashed the power of the atom and that has devised cures for dread diseases must certainly have capacity to create the political devices which will ensure world peace. This is a must, for if this generation fails to do so, it will have failed to meet its rendezvous with destiny and will be responsible for the awful effects upon future generations. In fact, it may well determine whether there will be any future generations.

In a recently published report entitled America’s Needs and Resources: A New Survey, the Twentieth Century Fund points out that although the people of this country are probably offered a wider choice of religious worship in both form and substance than in any other country in the world, nearly three-fourths of the churches and almost 90 percent of church members are attached to the 19 largest denominations. On the other hand, about 200 denominations have only about 2 percent of the church members. Official statisticians of the various religious bodies reported nearly 286,000 local churches or congregations in 1950, compared with 244,000 in 1940. Total membership of the more than 250 religious bodies of the United States amounted to 86.8 million in 1950 and 64.5 million in 1940, a gain of over 22 million during the war decade. The previous decade added only about 5 million to church rolls. In 1952 over 92 million persons were reported to be church members. About 49 percent of the total population were church members in 1949, and about 59 percent in 1952. This latest gain was unusually large, although the long-term membership trend has been upward.

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One curious note in the news states, “Pacifists are eager to pacify the world because of their own inner conflicts.” This is a startling statement, for when analyzed, it would indicate the so-called psychologist who is talking, implies that persons with no inner conflicts want people to kill and be killed. I wonder how silly some people can get.

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An item on an old subject, but a very important one, came to my attention this week in an exchange dispatch quoting the late President Albert Palmer of the Chicago Theological School on the matter of importance of church attendance. It goes like this:

“Going to church, like going to meals, is a good habit. Spiritual nourishment is as necessary as physical. And there are various ways to get spiritual nourishment. One can wait until tragedy overwhelms him and then reach out blindly for help and comfort. One can browse around, taking in all the religions, sampling all the cults, accepting no responsibility anywhere. But the best way is to go regularly to church, enter heartily into the service, join up, make a subscription, pay attention to the sermon, shake hands with many before you leave, talk it over around the dinner table, and think about it before you go to sleep. Do that regularly, week after week, and you will not suffer from spiritual anemia.”

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A sage observation from a correspondent says that “The older I become the more it is pressed on me that the greatest of the personality graces is simple kindness. It is really the summit of personality growth.” No thinking person could, apparently, argue with this.

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At their meeting in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, this week, the United Lutheran Church condemned enforced racial segregation, but rejected outright endorsement of the Supreme Court decision outlawing it in the public school. In a somewhat hectic session, the church’s biennial convention voted down a proposed declaration that the court ruling is in harmony with Christian convictions. That portion was stricken from a statement urging church congregations to take the lead in demonstrating the possibility of integration. But this watering down of the church’s stand was by no means unanimous. The Rev. Paul L. Roth, of Kenosha, Wisconsin, declared it “a weak and ineffective statement.” Southern members understandably took a more comforting view. For example, the Rev. Frank Efird of Salisbury, North Carolina, called it “courageous, Christian, and consistent, and one that won’t divide our people.”

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There are many kinds of courage. Perhaps many of us associate courage with war and bloodshed. But another of these many kinds of courage is not physical at all, but moral: the kind of courage that some men in high political office exhibit, when, for the sake of their convictions, they hazard their whole future. In his exhilarating book, a best seller, entitled Profiles in Courage, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts tells the story of eight U.S. senators who were men of this kind. The national interest, he states, rather than private political gain, furnished the basic motivation of their careers. John Quincy Adams’ Puritan conscience would not permit him to take a purely partisan stand on any public question. His resultant unfortunately caused him to develop a morbid feeling that his whole life had been a failure. Daniel Webster tossed aside his chance to become president in order to stand unswervingly for the preservation of national unity. Thomas Hart Benton’s opposition to slavery brought down upon his head and avalanche of censure from Missouri. Sam Houston suffered a like fate and for the same reason at the hands of his fellow Texans. Their story was different from those of Kansas’ Edmund G. Ross and Mississippi’s L. Q. C. Lamar. Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio paid a heavy penalty of abuse for working to get a stay of execution for the 11 war criminals condemned to death in the Nuremberg Trials. The stories of these, and others are the heroes with whom Kennedy deals. It is unfortunate that the very closeness of the men and the events concerning them are so close to us that we fail to see clearly the elements of their moral courage until long after; instead we become emotional at the time and it is only until time and the dissipation of emotional coloring are gone that we can give our men of moral courage the admiration their actions merit.

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All, or virtually all, of us, whether of religious bent or not, are interested in the achievement of peace, peace of the real kind. This interest and concern cut across and transcend the fortunes of any political party or political figure. Furthermore, it is recognized that the ideal world would be one in which peace were achieved because all men were of good will. But humanity is far from ideal, and in such a world, peace can be achieved only through the development of channels by and through which those who would promote war, consciously or unconsciously, will be repressed by the overwhelming desire of the many.

Within the past week we have seen something of a curious and somewhat confused exchange of ideas on the steps we should take toward achieving peace. One presidential candidate has proposed a step-by-step suggestion that we seek at any level necessary to bring about a halt to further experiment with H-bomb testing. His argument is that we already have such bombs so strong and destructive that our present state of transport will not permit us to deliver them anywhere we might choose. He further contends that means of detection of nuclear explosions have become so sensitive that it would be impossible for a violator of any no-experiment agreement to violate that agreement secretly. So, in the interest of humanity and its protection from H-bomb fallout, in the interest of indicating our willingness to display leadership in a movement toward peace, he believes that such a course would have a profound effect upon the race toward destruction, without at the same time doing any violence to our security.

Opponents of this, without thus far analyzing the merits of his proposal as carefully as he set them forth, attack his suggestions as “political folly,” as a wild and irresponsible proposal of a politician overcome with ambition. Consequently their reply is to try to submerge the whole discussion by wrapping their opposition in the cloak of that magic word “security.”

Now, nobody knows whether Stevenson’s proposed moratorium on H-bomb testing would bring about the desired results or not. From what we the public know, our Iron Curtain censorship on such things being what it is, we cannot determine whether such a move would endanger our national security or not. But since when has it become undesirable that such a topic be excluded from discussion by public figures in a campaign where the stake of all of us is greater than the failure or fortune of a political candidate or party? What we do know is that a stalemate has existed for some time now on any suggestions or progress toward halting this mad race toward destruction. Only the United States is in a position to offer real initiative, and from a position of strength, toward leadership of the free world in its desire to find peace. So, it would seem that public discussion of such a vital issue, far from being discouraged, should be explored in its entirety, for where there is no vision, the people perish.

First, a potpourri of religion in the week’s news, as reported by Associated and United Press agencies:

Throughout the U.S. churches are observing harvest festivals. For Protestant churches, an order of service to give thanks for the rich bounty of the earth has been written by the Rev. Deanne Edwards of New York City, a minister of the Reformed Church and director of the Hymn Society of America. The department of the Town and Country Church of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. has given wide distribution to the services. Many churches will be decorated with vegetable, fruits, and flowers typical of the season, which later – the decorations not the season – will go to charitable institutions or needy persons.

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A report by the National 4-H Club Foundation and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith tells, among other things, how visiting American farm youths have been impressed by Israel’s religious life. B’nai B’rith, a Jewish men’s group, says all faiths in the new nation have constitutional freedom of worship. It adds that U.S. members of the International Farm Youth Exchange found the two most important Jewish religious holidays most impressive in their rituals. These ceremonials are Rosh Hashanah, the religious New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. But the young Americans got a particular sentiment out of Succoth, the Feast of the Tabernacles. This is the Jewish celebration of the harvest. One exchange, Carol Jenkins of Shelby County, Missouri, says it seemed a wonderful way for farmers, either Jewish or Christian, to celebrate Thanksgiving.

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Today, Roman Catholic lawyers in New York City will have their annual Red Mass. Francis Cardinal Spellman will preside at the solemn pontifical votive Mass of the Holy Ghost at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The Red Mass has been celebrated for centuries in great European cities. For as long as church history has been recorded, the service officially has opened the judicial year of the sacred Roman Rota. It was first celebrated in the U.S. in New York about 25 years ago. The name Red Mass probably derives from the color of the vestments worn by the celebrant and other priests at the Mass. And that, in turn, goes back to the fact that judicial robes used to be bright red or scarlet.

Cardinal Spellman will also lead some 60,000 persons in prayer at a religious service at New York’s polo grounds today. That will be part of the ceremony marking the 80^th birthday of Pope Pius XII. The New York Archdiocesan Union of the Holy Name is sponsoring the commemoration. Birthday medals blessed by the pontiff and flown from Italy to New York early this week are to be presented to each attendant at the services.

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Washington: White members of a Lutheran church have set out on a unique doorbell ringing campaign. Their objective is to bring Negro families into the congregation. The Augustana Lutheran Church is the first to undertake a formal solicitation of Negro members to implement the open door policy that many churches have proclaimed in the last few years.

And at Blue Island, Illinois, the American Lutheran Church, at its 14^th Biennial Convention, has adopted a statement of policy on responsibility of its ministers to their entire neighborhood regardless of race. The statement was adopted by almost unanimous agreement of both clerical and lay delegates to the convention.

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Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, of New Rochelle, New York, has been reelected to a seventh term as president of the United Lutheran Church in America. Dr. Fry has served as head of the largest Lutheran group in North America for six two-year terms. His latest election is for a six-year term.

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Vatican City: Monsignor Lorenzo Perosi, conductor of the papal choir and a world-famous composer, is seriously ill. Vatican sources say Monsignor Perosi has been given the last rites of the church, and the pope has sent him a special blessing. He is 83 years old.

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Montreal, Canada: The Roman Catholic Church has announced that Catholics in the Montreal Diocese will be allowed to work all but two holy days a year, effective next month. The exceptions will be Christmas Day and the Feast of the Circumcision, January 1. A statement issued by the archbishop of Montreal says the change has been approved by the Vatican.

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St. Paul, Minnesota: Death has taken Archbishop John Gregory Murray, leader of 435,000 Roman Catholics in the St. Paul Diocese. The 79-year-old prelate succumbed to cancer of the neck. He also had suffered a heart attack two months ago and a stroke a month ago, which had affected the right side of his body. Archbishop Murray’s duties have been assumed by Archbishop William O. Brady, who recently came to St. Paul from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

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New York: Protestant churches across the U.S. and Canada observe Church Men’s Week, starting today and extending through next Sunday, October 21. Today is recognized as Men and Missions Sunday, which, since 1931, has helped to dramatize the churchman and his relationship to worldwide Christian missions. Laymen’s Sunday, October 21, is the annual occasion when laymen take over the entire Sunday morning worship services, including the sermon.

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Cairo, Egypt: International scholars at the Coptic Museum in Cairo are translating a manuscript that may be a fifth gospel. The author may be the apostle Thomas (or doubting Thomas). The manuscript is written in the ancient Coptic language and is believed to date back to the third or fourth century. It is part of 13 volumes containing 48 books which Egyptian workmen found in a jar while digging in a cemetery in 1945.

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The United Lutheran Church in America has opened its doors for women to give full time service to the church, without planning a lifetime career. Women who so desire may join with the U.L.C Deaconesses to do such work indefinitely. The change has been approved as an experiment. The new members of the church’s women’s religious order will be called “diaconic volunteers,” rather than “deaconesses.” They will receive maintenance and a small allowance during their periods of service. As do the Lutheran deaconesses, the volunteers will serve churches in various capacities, such as teachers, nurses, parish and social workers.

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During the past week the Supreme Court let stand a lower court decision barring Virginia from leasing a state park under any plan that might result against Negroes. This decision – or lack of decision on the part of the high court – may have far-reaching implications for the states that have hurriedly, and emotionally, rushed through constitutional amendments, legislative statutes, etc., aimed at turning their public schools over to private organizations in order to prevent the carrying out of desegregation decisions. The lower court decision was by U.S. District Judge Walter E. Hoffman of Norfolk. It was appealed to the high tribunal after the U.S. Circuit Court in Richmond upheld Judge Hoffman. Hoffman decided that the state, in operating the Seashore State Park, must permit all races to use it. He said if the park were leased, “The lease must not, directly or indirectly, operate so as to discriminate against the members of any race.

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Looking at this whole question of desegregation, objectively and dispassionately, it is a matter, not only of curiosity but of deep concern also, of wondering why all the fuss. Today our Sunday school lesson is based on a study of the Ten Commandments. The principles of justice in these laws underlie our whole sense of justice in the democratic social orders of the Western world. Exodus does not mention in these commandments any exception on the basis of race or anything else from the binding force of these principles. How, then, can we say, and be honest with ourselves, that while these commandments apply to all people, they apply a little more to some than others? Is it true that we, along with Jefferson, hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal? But then, with tongues in our cheeks, … that some of us are created a little more equal than others because of race? The whole question boils itself down into just such a simple principle, though admittedly the problem is, socially, a complex one.

One of the things we see materials about and hear a great deal said on these days is “What of the younger generation today?” Well, any statement on such a subject means that its maker is certainly sticking his neck out. However, it is a matter about which we are all concerned, and I venture to suggest that the following characteristics might well be applied to a goodly portion of the thoughtful members of today’s young generation. First of all, they are something of a skeptical generation, one that wants faith, but finds it very hard to achieve an ardent faith honestly. One student remarked not long ago, “I don’t believe in anything, and I don’t know how to go about starting.” This is a not an uncommon predicament. Again, in many respects, it is a lonely generation, hungering for a warm community dedicated to a common cause, but hardly knowing where to find such a community. It is something of a timid generation, more preoccupied with security than with adventure. And when faced with danger, it faces it with stoic fortitude rather than with courage. And, last, it is not a happy generation; in some respects it is something of a joyless crowd. Of course, it throws itself into distraction in order to distract itself from its unhappiness, but there is little of security there.

Well, there is a venture into trying to state something of mass impression of a very important portion of our people. Probably much the same thing has been said about previous generations. Whatever truth lies in the above statements can probably be traced more to the uncertainty of the times, the tensions of today’s living, tensions which the younger generation did not create but among which they must live, than any unsteadiness in the young people themselves. In many ways we of the older generation have cheated today’s young people in not building a world in which such elements that give rise to personal and social disorganization are absent instead of very much present.

Fundamental to a basic religious philosophy is the question,“What can I believe in religion?” In our Christian culture, this means engaging in the study and practice of religion, which, in turn, means an examination of the claims of historic Christianity. Without such examination, people will not get far in answering their basic question. Christian orthodoxy means the evolving changing doctrines of Paul, the early church fathers, the school men, the reformers, the post-Reformation theologians, and theology as it has been presented and is being presented today. One cannot discuss – I doubt if one can think intelligently – of religion without discussing the claims of religion, anymore than he can discuss chemistry without knowing something of the claims of chemistry. It was Christ who said, “Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are which testify of me.” You don’t get religion like you do measles. Religion is natural, native, and intrinsic.

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The best quote of the week that I came across, and one which has survival as well as religious interest goes like this: “The men of big business have been so busy preparing for a war which they hope to avert that they seem to have neglected almost altogether planning for the peace they hope to achieve.”

And another, almost as good, says that when the government does something for you, that’s social progress. But when it does something for someone else, that’s socialism. How lazy can we get through the use of words and phrases, slogans that mean nothing or everything, and which very effectively lull us away from any effort to do real thinking for ourselves?

Des Moines: One of the largest church conventions in the nation is under way in Des Moines. Upwards of 8,000 persons are attending a six-day international conclave of the Disciples of Christ. A report dealing with racial practices in churches is on the agenda.

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Washington: An American religious leader says Christian leaders in Red China seem to be sincerely convinced that churches are getting along well under the Communist government. Dr. Eugene L. Smith, vice president of the National Council of Churches, quoted Dr. K.H. Ting, an Algerian bishop in Red China, as telling him “The church in China has freedom of worship, freedom to witness, to evangelized, to publish Christian literature without censorship, to conduct Christian work among students at the university.” And Dr. Smith said Bishop Ting seemed to reflect accurately the prevailing opinion of the Chinese churches.

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Boston: The American Foundation for the Preservation of the Christian Heritage is planning to reproduce in Southern California three cities in the Holy Land. They will be reproduced on a 2,000-acre site and the project will cost about $20 million. The cities that will be reproduced are the walled city of Jerusalem, the town of Bethlehem, and Christ’s hometown of Nazareth. It will be called “Christian Land.” Funds will be raised by public subscription.

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The head of the Methodist Church in the New York area predicts that Negroes and whites within the Methodist denomination will be integrated within the next 10 years. Bishop Frederick Newell, addressing a mixed audience, said they must insure that the move toward integration does not tear down the church, even though it should be carried out as quickly as possible.

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And along the same line in Washington, a prominent Negro bishop from Florida says Christian churches must act with vigor and determination to insure peaceful integration of the nation’s schools. Bishop D. Ward Nichols, of Jacksonville, urges a nationwide study of how many churches have met or have failed to meet the challenge of preventing racial violence.

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Again, Washington: It is reported that Lutheran Bishop Lajos Ordass may be restored to his full church rank soon by the Hungarian government. Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, president of the United Lutheran Church in America, says he has been corresponding with the Hungarian government and expects the restoration of Bishop Ordass any day. The Hungarian prelate was convicted on a charge of currency violation in Hungary. He has spent the past two years in prison.

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The general board of the National Council of Churches has voted to set up a special committee to coordinate relief needs of an estimated 1 million Arab refugees from Israel. The committee would recommend appropriate action by American Protestant churches to meet the need.

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Buffalo, New York: More than 10,000 delegates from 24 Catholic archdioceses and 83 dioceses are attending the Tenth National Congress of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine in Buffalo. Several high ranking prelates form Canada, Central and South America are attending. The conferences will end today.

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Some clerics and scholars of the Old and New Worlds are tying to find a way by which millions of Christians might re-enter the Roman Catholic Church. The sessions of the Unionistic Congress in the St. Procopius Abbey at Lisle, Illinois, this week aim to have some 200 million Eastern Orthodox Christians united with Rome. They would become Roman Catholics of the Byzantine rite or one of the other non-Latin rites that now have about 8 million members. The Eastern Orthodox Christians left the Roman Church about 900 years ago. That was the Great Schism of 1054, based on political, social, cultural, and doctrinal differences. The congresses aiming toward the reunion have been going on since 1907. Until World War II they were held in Czechoslovakia, where Saints Cyril and Methodius began Christianizing Slavonic peoples in the ninth century. St. Procopius Abbey has held a papal commission for 29 years to work for the rejoining. It now has bi-ritual faculties; that is, priests trained by it may conduct services in both Latin (or Western) and Byzantine (or Eastern) liturgies of the Roman Catholic Church.

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Pope Pius, through a special representative, has praised the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine as one of the two great treasures of Roman Catholics. The Most Rev. Monsignor Francesco Roberti names the other as the Catholic school. The monsignor is secretary of the Sacred Congregation of the Council in Rome.

More than 3,500 lay and clerical delegates are at the Tenth National Congress of the Confraternity, which is meeting in Buffalo, New York. On the agenda is a controversial new Roman Catholic hymnal prepared by a committee of the confraternity. The committee chairman, the Rev. John Selner of St. Mary’s Seminary, in Baltimore, Maryland, says opposition centers on omission of two hymns. Father Selner adds that some Protestant hymns may be included if they are found to be not native to Protestant worship.

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An official of the Disciples of Christ Christian churches says that denomination is doing some missionary work in full partnership with other groups. The information comes from Dr. Donald West, forum chairman for the World Mission division of the United Christian Missionary Society. Dr. West has told the World Mission leaders that such cooperation already is a fact in Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Africa. And in Nepal and Okinawa, representatives of the Disciples are working with other Protestant groups. The Disciples’ United Missionary Society met in Des Moines this week prior to an international convention assembly that began Friday. The United Missionary Society is an international board of the Disciples. It carried on a $5 million program in 11 overseas nations in 1955-56.

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Labor leaders and clergymen of Fresno, California, are planning a series of joint meetings. The National Council of Churches adds that delegates of the Fresno Labor Council will meet with ministers representing the Fresno Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Monterey-Fresno Council of Churches. The first topic of the labor and church assemblies will be Sunday closing of stores and businesses.

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A fabulous religious treasure of the British Museum is to get a modern printing. It is the Lindisfarne Gospels, an illuminated Latin manuscript of the Gospels made about 700 A.D. by Eadfrith, bishop of Lindisfarne, or Holy Island. The Gospels are famed for their elegance and precious coloring and are noted as a classic piece of Anglo-Celtic book illumination. The modern copies will be printed in facsimile in Switzerland for distribution in the U.S. The two-volume work will be limited to 680 copies, at $375 a copy. Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Mediterranean styles are combined in the words and decorations of these gospels. Its Latin text is very close to the original Vulgate gospels. The manuscript also contains four portraits of the Evangelists.

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The Unitarian Church recently observed a period of recognition of the importance of freedom of the press. This observance honors Elijah Parish Lovejoy who was one of the early martyrs for freedom of the press. He was anti-slavery when to be so was looked upon much as we – at least some of us – look upon subversion today. He was publisher of the St. Louis Observer. His plant was wrecked by a mob and he moved to Alton, Illinois. One press was thrown into the river en route. Another arrived and it was destroyed. In 1837 still another was purchased. The next day a mob attacked Lovejoy’s plant. It was defended by Lovejoy and a few patriots. Lovejoy was killed in the fray.

Why bring this up in connection with a religious news program? The reason should be obvious: A free people must have a free press. Without it and the other freedoms associated with it, it is difficult to see how we could have freedom of religion. Lovejoy was a man about whom it would be well for us to know more. In our day defenders of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are not always popular. But it is these who keep alive the flame of American liberties, which is probably the greatest single thing that distinguishes our system here from that among the dictators. And speaking of a companion freedom, that of speech, Woodrow Wilson made an observation that shows how foolish it is to try to curb free speaking. He said, “I have always been among those who believed the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.”

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One very encouraging development this week was the ruling in New York by Federal Judge Palmieri that the one-time kingpin gambler, Frank Costello, could not be deprived of his citizenship through the use of evidence obtained by wiretapping. The judge went on to emphasize that he was dismissing the case without prejudice to reinstitution of action by the government. This leaves the way open for possible denaturalization and deportation if sufficient evidence is presented in the future to justify it.

The judge’s ruling was obviously made not out of any sympathy for the way the racketeer once made his living. Costello is now serving a five-year prison sentence for income tax evasion, and it is likely the judge would feel little sympathy toward this activity of Costello. The ruling came within the framework of the First Amendment, and also the Fourth Amendment, which is designed to make citizens secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Eager beavers who would like to expel persons of Costello’s caliber from our midst will criticize the court’s findings. Our own attorney general of the United States has urged upon Congress a wiretapping bill, with the excuse that such is necessary in order to detect criminals. However, most of us recognize that if an officer can tap our telephones without our knowing it, they can secure information, not only about crimes, but also about personal matters which we would discuss with no one but our friends and neighbors; that conceivably materials secured in this matter by unscrupulous people could be used for blackmail purpose; and, in short, that wire tapping would open a Pandora’s box of troubles which would be inimical to the tradition and mores of a free people. To put it bluntly, we think that what we discuss with friends – or enemies – over the telephone is none of the business of government. With so much talk about decentralizing government these days, is it not remarkable that those who do the most talk about it are the same ones that urge further centralizing government through giving that government the right to listen in on our most intimate conversation? Believers in the Constitution and its Bill of Rights will applaud Judge Palmieri’s decision, while at the same time condemning the activities of the individual against whom government attorneys tried to use this illegal evidence.

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Only once or twice on this program have I suggested that you write to me your opinion of it. Today’s broadcast completes two years of the program. It has been designed at all times to be a non-sectarian comment on items of religious significance that appear in the press from time to time. Several times I have had an impulse to discontinue it, for, regardless of its merits or lack of them, it does require considerable time to prepare script. There is no financial consideration involved, for I have never received or asked to receive compensation for what I have tried to do. WJHL has generously contributed its facilities for bringing the program to you. Do you wish the program continued? Whether it is or not will depend to a large extent upon your response to this question. Send a post card or letter to me at State College or in care of WJHL letting me know your wishes on the matter.

 

Chicago: Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam of Washington, D.C., has been elected president of the Council on World Service and Finance of the Methodist Church. He succeeds Bishop Clare Purcell of Birmingham, Alabama. The council administers all general and benevolence funds of the Methodist denomination.

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Greenwich, Connecticut: A Catholic and a Protestant clergyman in Greenwich have joined in a traffic safety campaign based on the Fifth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” The group, representing 16 churches, adopted as its campaign slogan, “Drive as though God was sitting beside you.” The crusade will get under way in Greenwich on September 30 and if successful will be expanded on a nationwide basis.

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Hong Kong, China: A Catholic mission bulletin in Hong Kong says the church still has 52 seminaries in operation in Red China in spite of major persecution by communist authorities. The report mentioned seminaries in Hupen, Hunan, and Kansu provinces.

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Castel Gandolfo, Italy: Pope Pius has urged the world’s scientists to press ahead with a peaceful conquest of the universe. The pope, addressing 400 delegates to the Seventh International Astronautical Congress, told them that God did not intend to place a limit to mankind’s effort of conquest when he said “Conquer the Earth.” The pontiff went on, “It is the whole of creation which God entrusted to mankind and which he offers to the human spirit, in order that he should penetrate it and may thus understand ever more fully the infinite grandeur of his Creator.” The delegates were received by the pontiff in a special audience at the pope’s summer residence.

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Assisi, Italy: A leading Jesuit theologian has appealed to the Roman Catholic Church to cut down on the use of Latin and give modern language a growing place in Church ritual. Father Joseph A Jungmann, a theology professor at Innsbruck, Austria, said reforms by Pope Pius have started breaking down the armor which surrounded liturgy. The pope has permitted a number of nations to use modern languages instead of Latin in certain ceremonies, but the church remains steadfast against replacing Latin with modern languages in reciting the Mass.

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Des Moines, Iowa: The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled that a divorce decree may not stipulate the religion under which a child must be reared. The decision reverses a lower court ruling which had cited Mrs. Gladys M. Lynch, of Clarion, Iowa, for contempt of court. Her divorce decree had specified that she should rear her 9-year-old son as a Catholic. Instead, she permitted him to attend the Congregational Church. When her ex-husband secured the contempt action, she appealed.

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The 2,500 or so persons living in the little taconite mining community of Silver Bay, Minnesota, are setting a unique pattern for Protestant unity. What these people of a dozen different denominations are doing may ultimately have other communities pause to reflect whether their religious needs require several competing churches. Silver Bay sprang into being about three years ago when the taconite iron mining industry was started. Situated in the wilderness on Lake Superior’s north shore, Silver Bay now has 650 homes with about 70 more planned or under construction. All will be owned by employees of the taconite project which the Reserve Mining Company operates. At the outset, planners of the community decided to allocate sites for only three churches – Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and another Protestant church. In 1953, the Minnesota Council of Churches sent a chaplain, the Rev. Cecil Mankins, to the community. In time, persons attending the council-sponsored churches were asked to select the denomination they wished to develop a church for them. However, they expressed a preference for an interdenominational church, not one of a single denomination. The next step found Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Baptists, and members of other affiliations drawing up a covenant proclaiming the founding of the United Protestant Church. Among other things, the covenant said, “We believe that we can, with God’s help, unite in one church for the advancement of God’s kingdom in the world.” Their new church was partially completed late in July. It seats 180, and can accommodate an overflow of 60. The Rev. Mr. Hankins serves as moderator of the congregation. According to the 55-year-old Baptist clergyman who spent most of his ministry with the Ohio Council of Churches, the worship service itself has enough elements of a liturgical church to make people with that background feel perfectly at home. He points out that parishioners run nearly the entire gamut of theological background. Members are from both labor and management, and, as he explains, “cut across nearly every line of social structure.” Financing, construction, and a number of other aspects have at times complicated the program. But many obstacles have been circumvented or worked out and folks at Silver Bay are undaunted. It is hard to say how many churches Silver Bay will eventually require, but none, to be sure, will be more unusual than the United Protestant Church.

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Ten prominent church leaders were asked within the past week for their views on the role of a clergyman in the field of politics. The question long has been a controversial one in Protestant circles. This being an election year, it has special significance. The survey was conducted by the information service of the National Council of Churches’ Research and Survey Bureau. The ten leaders were generally agreed that as a private citizen, the minister has a duty to consider all issues and take sides. They were also agreed that he should not use his pulpit for partisan purposes. However, it was decided to leave it to the minister’s own good sense and judgment as to how and where he expresses his political views away from his pulpit. There were widely varying views, moreover, on the nature, extent, and vigor of a clergyman’s political action. Some said he should separate his political life from his spiritual role, but others insisted that this was clearly impossible.

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The general board of the National Council of Churches meets in Washington next Wednesday and Thursday to consider a heavy agenda of policy and other matters relating to the life of the churches. The items on which some action may be taken are the spiritual needs of the armed forces, Christian churches behind the Iron Curtain, Arab refugees, funding a new state-by-state study of church membership, and church relations between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

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Probably about everyone prays at times, or at least engages in prayer. It is not necessarily uttering words, and, indeed, the thoughts are not necessarily addressed to the deity. The people who call themselves atheists pray. Some pagan prayers have literary merit and show a remarkable kinship with nature. Medieval prayers were characterized by great passion, desperate faith, groveling humility, but with little or no social visions. The prayers of and following the Wesleyan revival in America were and sometimes still are frenzied, largely incoherent, noisy, lengthy, and sometimes crude. The typical prayers of American Protestantism are all too often of the “gimme” type. They imply that God is something of a Santa Claus and that every day is Christmas. Some prayers are complaints about the shortcomings of parishioners; some are a sort of report to God about planetary conditions. Others are largely advice to God on how to run things.

Probably few thinking people believe that prayer changes the facts of nature. God, the dominant phase of the universe, having ordained that a colt must be younger than its mother, cannot change that fact. Prayer will not deliver groceries to people marooned on a raft, or divert the course of a bullet, or cure the common cold. Prayer should be subjective, and while it may not change God or nature, it may change ourselves. Psychology of religion gives us a broader conception of prayer than was formerly held.

In one sense, prayer is something of a battleground of the spirit. Perhaps the head pulls one way and the heart another. A decision must be made. The problem is the old one of want to do this; ought to do that. The struggle is prayer. We take ourselves in hand and say, “This is rationalization. This is the wistful thinking. This is emotional drive, not reasoned thinking.” But still a decision must be reached. Thus, in this battleground of the spirit there are three steps: Decision (what is right or best); Resolution (to do what is right); and Execution (working to that end). In How Green Was My Valley, the minister says to the boy, “Don’t be afraid of prayer, lad, it is but another name for hard thinking.”

But prayer is also a process of self-analysis. Dr. Douglas Steere in a little book speaks of prayer as “a dip in acid.” He was talking about the kind of prayer that enables us to get away from ourselves and look critically at ourselves when we are praying. It is doubtful if any of us comes to know ourselves completely. But without prayer as self-analysis we live out our days as strangers to ourselves. Prayer that is self-analysis helps us discover in us trashy gossip, reckless criticism, hypocrisy, selfishness, hidden fears, and other defects. Hence, this kind of prayer is diagnostic. It is also therapeutic. It is this kind of prayer that sees the fault, provides resolutions to end such fault, and pushes for repairs. Not alien to this kind of prayer is gratitude for victory and aspiration for further victories.

But prayer is also a process through which we become acquainted with and often express our innermost desires. In this sense, it is a crisis process. Perhaps this is the most common form of prayer. The jockey trying to win a race, the poet struggling with rhyme and meter, the citizen facing a problem. Emerson said, “Be careful on what you set your heart. You are likely to achieve it.” Since all life is sacred, planning deliberate prayer as to our desires cleanses and motivates and makes us conscious that this life of ours is a trust…. It is well to give our ambitions an overhauling from time to time. To do so is prayer.

But prayer may also be a process of expressing thanks and appreciation. This kind of prayer need not necessarily be verbalized, and certainly there is no need to reduce it to gush. Some people see no beauty in the sea at first. The same is true of mountains, plains, deserts, music, painting, poetry, church, and people. Life is crowded with value, meaning, beauty, truth, and goodness.

To appreciate all these things, including people, we have to look for good in them, learn to appreciate them. As one renders thanks daily for the few things for which he is grateful, the list will grow until sometimes it is not inconceivable that he can embrace the whole world in his heart.

But, finally, prayer is also an adjustment to brute facts. Man’s environment is partially hostile, partially favorable and partially neutral. The things in nature and society that we cannot manipulate we call brute facts. We cannot do much about time, space, growing old, death, or the convulsions of nature. We can only partly control disease, poverty, births, floods, etc. To that which we cannot control we must adjust (as much as I dislike to use that word). The nicety and adequacy of a person’s adjustment to the inevitabilities of life is to some degree a measure of the soundness of his religion. When catastrophe comes, most people pray, though they have put off thinking about religion for years. They are likely to grab at any religion no matter how absurd. Wise people establish their religion before disaster comes. They identify brute facts and make adjustment to them before they are crushed by them.

With some, tragedy when piled on tragedy brings cynicism. He who has yielded to cynicism has failed, has permitted life to conquer him. There are certain tragic situations where all that is left are renunciation, resignation, perhaps hope, and a peace that passeth all understanding. Under certain tragic circumstances the words, “I accept” are the most beautiful of prayers, difficult though those words may be. There are times when action is not called for, but we must in quietness of spirit wait upon life.

 

All of us have watched with mounting concern – interspersed occasionally with brief moments of optimism – the increasingly tense Suez Canal matter. Very obviously, it has been and is, a good example of how unrealistic our approach to effectively handle matters involving the interests of two or more nations in today’s shrunken world. Not all the facts have been given to the people of the U.S., or to the world, for that matter. For example, our own “Secretary of Statements” [John Foster Dulles] has not made clear why in the first place we promised funds to help build the Aswan Dam, then later reneged on that promise. We have glibly been led to assume – partly by actual name-calling, that Nasser is another Hitler, which he may well be, but calling him such does not help solve the problem; it well may intensify it. Nasser may be just a political opportunist responding to the well-known rising Egyptian nationalism so characteristic of countries which have recently won their independence.

But, we approach the matter with bluster and threat of military force. When that fails to scare the other side, we resort to the time-worn, and worn-out method of getting a conference of interested powers, hoping by a show of over-balance of power to cow the other side into agreement. Then when that fails to work, we try a so-called “Canal-Users’ Association.” Now that does not seem any more palatable to the Egyptians. In the process, we hire expert canal pilots to walk off the job, hoping to control the situation indirectly by breaking down effective operation of the canal; this, apparently, giving Russian and other communist countries opportunity to step in and fill the vacuum caused by our own ineptness and questionable tactics.

At long last, the protagonists and antagonists have been forced to seek – regrettably as a last resort – turning the matter over to the United Nations, where it should have gone in the first place. What will happen there is anybody’s guess. Our own government has been reluctant to have it taken there, though it does not tell us for what reason. The nearest hint we’ve been given is that Russia may block any positive action toward a solution by the exercise of the veto in the Security Council. And this may well be true. On the other hand, the U.N. was set up to handle just such matters as this. It was set up because we recognized, but did not meet, the need for establishing an international organization to deal with matters that could not safely be left in the hands of individual nations. And, if that organization is inadequate, the solution is not to by-pass it every time we think we may not get exactly our own way, but to profit by revealed inadequacies in the organization, and proceed to remedy them by amendments to the U.N. charter. What we, along with other nations, apparently want is to eat our cake and have it too, i.e., to have an international body to settle international disputes, but at the same time retain the right of national sovereignty, or the right to have our own way every time. All history should prove that this simply cannot be done.

Moreover, if the Security Council reaches a stalemate, there is always the possibility of calling the General Assembly into action. This was done once before in a critical international situation, and it worked. What are we afraid of? Why not try this again if necessary? All Americans are interested in the maintenance of peace. We are simply not going to get it by following the same paths of diplomatic double talk and finagling that have brought us to nothing but recurrent wars in the past. Christ came to bring to earth peace to men of good will. But good will is something that must be demonstrated by all concerned, and so far there has been a lamentable lack of it on both sides. This is a situation that calls for statesmanship with international convictions and viewpoints, and there are no statements of any kind on the present horizon. And yet, those in positions of power are wielding that power in such a way that well could bring, not a little war, for there is no such in today’s world, but a war that could explode throughout not only the Middle East but throughout the world. It is very urgent that men of good will in private life let those in public office know that there can be peace without appeasement, but that it is hardly likely to come about until and unless we approach this 20th century problem in a 20th century manner.

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It is somewhat refreshing to turn from a moment of reflection on a world problem that is so pregnant with possibilities of strife to come of the results of another world group, this time of churchmen from some 44 nations who have been meeting in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, for the past 10 days and now have themselves been taking an inventory of world problems and their concern as church men about them. This past week the representatives of 18 million Methodists pledged themselves to work toward a human society in which discrimination based on race or color no longer exists. A message adopted at the end of the World Methodist Conference called for an end to race discrimination and production of nuclear weapons. The 2,000 delegates heard a summary of the conference findings presented by Bishop Corson of Philadelphia who emphasized the following points:

1. The Bible is the main guide for the conduct of individuals and institutions.
2. Man’s first responsibility for obedience is to God; his second, to the state. They, i.e., the delegates, affirmed that the state serves man best as his tool, not his master. And this is interesting, considering the widely different kinds of governments prevailing in the countries from which the delegates come;
3. Our practice in race relations falls far short of our precepts and principles;
4. There is no real conflict between science and religion. Science is to be embraced as a means of enabling man to live a more understanding and appreciative existence.*
5. Religious illiteracy is one of the most serious handicaps of Protestants.

*Delegates said the truths of science have often been spurned by the churches as a tool of the devil, when in actuality they are the key to a fuller understanding of God’s handiwork, and the building of his kingdom.

In a sort of man-bites-dog movement, the delegates came out and complained that too much speech making characterized this, as well as other church conferences. That by the time the speeches were over the delegates were too tired to have much energy and enthusiasm for attacking the real work of the conference. They urged that in the future, instead of being worn out by long-winded speeches, more time be given to practical group discussions. This is a sentiment that could well be applied, not only to meetings of church groups but also to teachers meetings, clubs, and other organizational get-togethers.

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On the theme of the political duty of the Christian, Dr. Charles Allen of Atlanta, this week observed that while the Christian layman should in no sense avoid political thought and activity, at the same time he refuses to let his church pulpit become the sounding board for partisan politics. Parts of his comments seem worth repeating here. He says:

“I think thoughtful persons sincerely resent (the) narrow partisans who somehow think that God fights on their side or who feel that their party has a priority on godliness. No blustering political argument, however heated, will ever make God into a hard wheeler of one party or another.”

But, he goes on,

“A study indicates that Christian laymen have often avoided active political responsibility… The preachers themselves apparently avoid the ballot box as they would a plague, for the percentage of ministers who actually vote is not impressive. There may be various explanations for this. Perhaps ministers wish to remain neutral … so as not to offend a parishioner. But his ballot is secret … whatever his reasons, the minister who doesn’t vote is a poor citizen, however noble his spiritual life may be. What I say about the preacher is equally true of the Christian layman.”

At this point, Dr. Allen summarizes by himself quoting from a book entitled Politics for Christians, where he says:

“The best Christian thought has never been willing to exclude any care of life from the formulations of theology. Augustine, Aquinas, Luther and Calvin all related the demands of the Christian faith to both the theory and practice of politics. If what they have to say on the subject seems remote from what we know as politics today, this reflects the changes in the political process even more than any change in the relevance of theology.”

It is the thesis of this reporter that while one might conceivably be a Christian without voting, he can be a better one by doing so in a manner that reflects his dedication to the cause of human betterment.

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Washington: Some 3 million public school children have been enrolled this fall for weekday religious courses. Church officials say the courses are being offered in 3,000 communities in 45 states on a so-called “released time” basis. Children are given time away from public school during school hours to attend religious classes. The enrollment is the largest in the history of the released time program.

Now, it is easy to be misunderstood in the matter of opposition to released time. However, the courts have made it very clear that ours is a system of separation of church and state. It is difficult to see how legally the school authorities can square such released time with the clear intent and spirit of court decisions from the highest court in the land. Some years ago I chided a priest friend of mine with the comment that he couldn’t attract and hold children because of the impelling nature of his message, so he reverted to reliance on the state with its compulsory attendance laws to provide him with guinea pigs on which to operate during the school year. He, good-naturedly, agreed that there was considerable truth in this. The more religion, any religion, relies upon the state to bolster its cause, to that extent it admits the weakness of its appeal and the futility of its mission.

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Castel Gandolfo, Italy: Pope Pius has told doctors they are under a double veto, moral and legal, in the matters of euthanasia, abortion, and contraceptional practices. The pope’s views were submitted in a 5,000-word message to the International Congress of Catholic Doctors meeting at the Hague, Holland. He said medical law could never sanction such practices as euthanasia, abortion, or contraceptives because medical law is subordinated to medical morality, which expresses the moral order. The moral order, he says, is clear on this point. The speech is considered the most important the pope has made on medical topics in many years.

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Millions of Jews the world over observed Yom Kippur during the last week, i.e., the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish religious calendar. Yom Kippur began at sundown Friday and ended at sundown Saturday. It is a day of fasting, abstention and prayer, and finds Jews examining their deeds of the past year and seeking forgiveness for their sins.

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For the first time in history church membership in the U.S. has exceeded the 100 million mark. That is nearly two out of every three persons in the country. The National Council of Churches says the total membership includes nearly 58.5 million Protestants, more than 33 million Catholics, and over 5 million persons of the Jewish faith. Eastern Orthodox churches have over 2 million members, while Buddhists and Moslems total nearly 100,000. Translating these figures into percentages, the report states that almost 61 percent of Americans belong to churches, the highest on record.

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In the not-too-distant future, a delegation of U.S. Christian youth may visit Russia to exchange views with church young people in the Soviet Union. The proposal for such an exchange of visits between youth of the two countries was made recently by the nation’s Protestant youth organizations at Williams Bay, Wisconsin. The representatives said one purpose of such a trip would be to learn what Christian youth and students in Russia are doing to manifest their beliefs in Christianity.

Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Merger of the Congregational Christian churches has been approved unanimously by delegates to the Tenth Triennial General Synod of the Evangelical and Reformed Church. The newly formed organization will be known as the United Church of Christ and will have some 2 million members. It will be the sixth largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. The action culminates a 16-year movement toward union between the two denominations.

At the same conference, a minimum salary of $4,000 a year has been proposed for some two thousand ministers and executives of the VA Evangelical and Reformed Church. That salary is $400 above the current income.

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Lake Junaluska, North Carolina: An Australian clergyman has told delegates to the World Methodist Conference that the Church must provide salvation for a world reeling from threats of war, racial strains, and economic changes. The Reverend Harold Wood told the 2,500 delegates form 70 countries that the Church must proclaim the Gospel to a world which has almost lost hope. Only the Church, he said, can provide the liberation and salvation that are needed.

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Vatican City: Vatican sources say Catholics have full liberty of opinion on the question of whether there is life existing on Mars or any other planet in the universe. Although speaking unofficially, theologians say there is nothing categorical in Catholic doctrine on the question. In any case, they add, the plurality of inhabited worlds would present no problem for the dogma of redemption.

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Nice, France: Roman Catholic authorities have called for medical reports to establish whether a miracle occurred in the case of a Communist who reportedly was healed at Lourdes. The Communist, Louis Oliveri, is said to have recovered from paralysis while bathing at the holy shrine. Archbishop of Nice, Paul Remond, said no pronouncement of a cure can be made until doctors have made their report to the verification office at Lourdes. Oliveri said his right side had been paralyzed from a fall from a ladder and a hospital chaplain had suggested he seek a cure at the shrine at Lourdes.

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In Denver, Dr. J.H. Jackson of Chicago again has been named to the presidency of the National Baptist Convention.

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A mood like a tearful twilight, but also like the fresh lilt of sunrise is pervading Jewish homes and synagogues. It is an extraordinary sense of reverence born of the Jewish spiritual new year. Observance began Wednesday evening and will continue until next Saturday evening. The president of the Rabbinical Council of America, Rabbi Solomon Sharfman, defines it as a time of spiritual regeneration. The celebrants join their voices in prayer and psalms, such as, “I will lift mine eyes unto the hills….” Jewish tradition holds that before God will pardon a transgression, the sinner must first seek the forgiveness of the person who has been wronged and try to right the wrong.

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The new National Chaplain of the American Legion is the Reverend Bernard Gerdon of Indianapolis. Father Gerdon was a Roman Catholic chaplain in World War II and in the Korean fighting. He was elected at the Legion’s final convention session at Los Angeles on Thursday.

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The director of the information center of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City says Communism will never undermine the Christian church. The Reverend Charles McManus says Christians must be honest in expressing their own spiritual worth. What the Communists do not understand, continues father McManus, is that God had redeemed us and uses us to carry out his policy and program. The remarks were made to the more than 400 lay and clerical workers of the New York Catholic charities at their annual Day of Recollection service.

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One item in the week’s news recalled to mind that this reporter dealt with the same subject some months ago, and in this year of elections, it might be well to think seriously on it was we are besieged from both sides to support this or reject that. The subject is the question of what is happening to the family farm, and where do we as a people want to go in the matter of our farming pattern. To put it bluntly, there are two alternatives: to let things go on as they are, and the family farm as known historically in America will disappear, to be replaced by the tractor in the field, huge farm corporations controlled by capitalists and managed from executive offices in the cities, and farmed by hired help who spend little if any other than their working hours on the soil.

Now it is easy to indulge in bucolic nostalgia and revere the family farm as an element of our past, and to do so wholly without regard to the march of mechanization in agriculture. On the other hand, it is undeniably true that the huge surpluses we hear about today are largely the creation of the giant corporate farms, not the result of the activities of the family-sized farm. Furthermore, the family farm contributed something to human values that the corporate farm cannot. First there was, of course, the family security felt by the farmer as he realized that he lived within an economic framework that would provide him and his the necessities of life. Second, there was the constructive, creative satisfaction he and is family received by seeing concretely the result of their efforts in managing the soil, planting crops, nurturing them to maturity, and harvesting the results. And third, but by no means least, farming was not only a way of making a living, it was a way of living at life, and there is little doubt that the farm family felt in a way that they were partners with the Creator in utilizing natural forces to produce foodstuffs to sustain human life.

Perhaps few of us would go so far as the speaker at the Catholic Rural Life Conference did a few years ago when he declared that the farmer’s is a dedicated calling, as much as is the minister who is called to serve the spiritual needs of humanity, but there is little doubt that the framework of farm living encouraged, inculcated, and nourished a set of values that find no counterpart in non-rural living.

Well, as a people, what do we want to do about it? Neither party offers anything in the way of discouraging the trend toward fewer and larger farms and the concentration of land ownership and management in fewer and fewer hands. The two differ only in how much parity they will advocate. Neither offers anything suggesting the use of governmental efforts to encourage more widespread farm ownership for young people who wish to make careers of farming. As one humorist recently put it, farm population is declining because the farmer’s daughter moved to town to get a job, and the farmer’s son had to move to town to get a date. A lot more farmers moved to town because they decided to follow their profits.

Politicians throughout our history have given lip service to the nobility of the farmer’s calling, but few have done very much to ennoble that calling, and now it looks as if the time is not far distant when the small farmers, as Mr. Benson recently put it, will be plowed under and family farm life will be only something our children will read about in history books. When that is true, the homely but sound virtues spawned by family farm living will doubtless be transferred to the textbooks also. So, we can do either or a combination of three things. 1. Set forces in motion to stimulate and encourage ownership and operation of farms of family size; 2. Take the attitude that nothing can or need be done about it, which seems to be what we are doing now; 3. Decide that we want large-scale agriculture and set forces in motion to speed up the process of concentration of ownership and management. Whatever we do, whole scales of human values and human satisfaction will be involved.

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Last Sunday I devoted a major portion of the time on this program to a consideration of the integration debacle at Clinton, Tennessee. Little need be added, I take it, to relate what has happened since. Sturgis, Kentucky, and a nearby community seem to be repeating much the same picture as did Clinton and Oliver Springs. However, something new has been added in the form of a statement that emerged from the President’s news conference on Wednesday of this week. When asked about his attitude toward use of federal force if necessary to uphold the law, the President took refuge in a statement that is entirely true, but leaves us about where we were before the question was asked. His words are, “It is difficult through law and through force to change a man’s heart … but I do believe that we must all, regardless of our calling, help to bring about a change in spirit so that extremists on both sides do not defeat what we know as a reasonable, logical conclusion to this whole affair, which is recognition of equality of men….”

Now nobody can object to this statement. Certainly changing attitudes, or spirits, or whatever you want to call them, is a major problem in dealing with the question of integration. However, the President did not declare himself on or even recognize the fact that what Clinton and Sturgis are dealing with is behavior resulting from attitudes. We may not change people’s hearts by force, but behavior is something overt that can be controlled, and that is what the National Guard contingents in the two states are at their present locations for. Furthermore, behavior that violates this law is violation of a federal law, and while this reporter is a staunch believer in states rights, he also believes that the national rights of the individual citizens are paramount to the prejudiced behavior of citizens who would deprive him of those rights. The President’s statement, while true and admirable, tells us nothing of where the administration stands on the matter. Veritably, the so-called middle-of-the-road is getting crowded these days, by non-committers in both parties.

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A final item deals with a column by a syndicated writer this week who urges school teachers not to be “justa,” going on to defining “justa” as the reply that is often received when a teacher is asked her occupation, to the effect that she is “justa” teacher. The writer goes on, “I urge them to take pride in the wonderful profession to which they are devoting their lives. They deal with children and have unlimited opportunities for molding human character and implanting ideals.”

Well, all true enough. But many teachers are getting pretty bored with hearing all this. We know it already, and repeating it will not help much. As to whether teaching is a profession is a matter of how one defines profession. From this reporter’s viewpoint, it hardly rates as one. Many of us teach for three reasons:

1. We like the kind of work entailed: study, reflective thought, organization, presentation of materials.
2. It affords us a living, of a sort, though the layman has little if any idea of the demands made upon the teacher in many ways, simply because he is a teacher, and those demands far outweigh the scope of the salary of the average teacher.
3. We have faith in the possibility of people, through learning, to learn not only to make a better living but also to live better lives.

Maybe you can think of other reasons, but boiled down, those seem to this reporter, who has spent many years in the classroom, to about cover the subject. Personally, I don’t care much for the missionary preaching that is handed out to teachers about the nobility of our calling. We already know all about that for we’ve heard it hundreds of times, many times extended to us in lieu of salary increases. Maybe I’m ill-adjusted, but I guess I’m just a teacher.

 

First, a potpourri of religion in the week’s news as reported by United and Associated Press services.

A 12-day World Methodist Conference opened yesterday at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina. Delegates and visitors from 70 nations are attending. The conference is sponsored by the World Methodist Council which represents about 18 million Methodists. Bishop Ivan Lee Holt, of St. Louis, the council president, calls this conference the biggest international gathering of Methodists ever held. The World Conference itself was organized in 1881 and last met in the United States in 1947. It is not expected to meet again in this country for some 15 or 20 years.

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From Washington it is announced that Pope Pius has relocated ecclesiastical boundaries and established two new dioceses in Missouri. The dioceses of Kansas City and St. Joseph have been united under archbishop of Kansas City, Edwin V. O’Hara. Former bishop of St. Joseph, the Most Rev. Charles H. Blond has been transferred to a new titular see. A new Diocese of Jefferson City was established with the Most Rev. Joseph M. Marlin as first bishop.

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At sundown this coming Wednesday start the 10 holiest days in the Jewish year. They are the High Holy Days, begun with Rosh Hashanah in the spiritual new year, not the festive one. The latter – Simhath Torah – comes 23 days later, and is known as the rejoicing of the law. Rosh Hashanah in reality marks the creation of the world for the Jews, and as such marks the year 5171 in Jewish history. Messages and statement issued by Jewish leaders and civic groups throughout the world, anticipating Rosh Hashanah, have stressed hope for peace and freedom. For example, the Rabbinical Council of America has pleaded for peace and international cooperation.

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The National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. notes American churches will observe Labor Day in services for the 47th year. The council says in its annual Labor Sunday message that the U.S. seems to be enjoying widespread prosperity at the moment. It also states unemployment is still a threat in many communities. The Protestant church group further declares Christians cannot ignore the economic and moral issues involved in the effect on the U.S. economy of such proposals as those caring for workers during unemployment. The council sees it as the church’s task always to uphold the ethical principles and Christian values that are to be applied even to complicated economic and industrial situations.

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Tomorrow the General Synod of the Evangelical and Reformed Church is to vote on authorization of a unifying general session with the Congregational Christian Church. Approval for the union is expected in Cleveland next year. Even so, the Evangelical and Reformed Church proposes to carry out a new three-year “program of advance,” as it puts it. After the uniting session, a new constitution would have to be written and then adopted by the newly merged groups, which would have the name “United Church of Christ.” The three-year advance program includes establishment of some 100 new churches in North America, recruiting 200,000 new members, and training some 200 new missionaries and overseas workers. The church now has about 2,800 congregations in 34 states, and about 750,000 members. The Tenth Triennial Session of the Synod is being held in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, one of the very early strongholds of the Reformed Church in America.

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The Vatican says that more than 1 million Poles have given evidence of continued Roman Catholic strength in Communist Poland. It adds that many attended recent ceremonies honoring the Virgin Mary. The observers marked the 300th anniversary of the proclamation of the Virgin as “Queen of the Polish People.” Pope Pius has wired his blessing of the gathering.

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Within the past week we have seen here in Tennessee, at Clinton, the origination and development of a situation that is depressing, disgusting, and disturbing. It all began when a dozen colored pupils were admitted to the local high school as a beginning of compliance with a court order for integration in education with all deliberate speed. As in almost every other situation where incidents have occurred over integration, the center of the disturbance is outsiders. One, a John Kasper from Washington, D.C., is apparently a professional agitator. His real motive is not entirely clear, but it is highly likely that he hopes to swim in the waters that he is doing his best to keep troubled. As his activities began to receive more and more publicity, members of the White Citizens Council of Alabama rushed into the already uncertain situation, and took up where Kasper was forced to leave off after a contempt of court citation. There is little if any evidence that a crisis of any kind would have occurred if outsiders, and this includes local residents who are not going to school, as well as those out of state, had not intruded themselves into the situation.

But, like the proverbial snowball, once the emotional jag started rolling, it became larger and more dangerous, until by the end of the week the situation was described by the Associated Press as “tense”, “a mob of feverish pitch,” and the like. Cars have been stopped, people molested, property has been destroyed, and houses have been broken into. It appears that school authorities are standing firm, but such statement can hardly be made regarding assistance requested from the state government in Nashville. [Governor] Clement called out National Guard.

Well, what’s it all about anyway? The whole thing rests on the mistaken assumption of this idea of racial superiority, for which Hitler and company were famous – or infamous. It assumes that a person, because of his race, and because of that one factor alone, is superior in all ways to an individual of another race. But what is this thing called “race” anyway? The truth is that nobody knows. Anthropologists would like to expunge the word from our vocabulary, for it has no precise scientific meaning. But since it is a word that is used popularly and widely, albeit loosely, they try to define it as simply saying it refers to a grouping of the human race who have certain physical, inheritable qualities that passed on to offspring through the process of conception.

But, they hasten to point out, quite rightly, that even taking the three great racial groups – Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid – there are more similarities among individuals of different groups than there are differences. All have the same bodily structure, there are no physiological differences among members of the various groups as to cultural potentialities, that is, an American of white, Anglo-Saxon parentage, reared from birth by a Chinese family, would be culturally just as much Chinese as would an individual of Mongoloid parents.

Moreover, and this is vitally important to keep in mind, there is simply no such thing as a “pure” race today. The ancestry of all peoples is mixed. To illustrate, let me recall for you that in the eighth century Charles Martel drove the Moors – Negroes – south of the Pyrenees, out of France and into Spain. In the process, several hundred Moors were taken captive back into France. There they were at first slaves, but the easy-going Gallic nature of the Frenchman soon permitted those captives their freedom, and finally full rights within the social order. During the course of history these Moorish people have disappeared through merging with their much more numerous white neighbors, and today, many of us who claim to be pure white, though of French descent, might well ask ourselves if it is not possible, even likely, that some of the blood coursing through our veins may have been contributed by our Moorish ancestors. To me that is not a matter for emotional disturbance, it is simply a fact of history. But perhaps the emotionally aroused mobs of Clinton do not know or want to know much history.

If they looked at our own history in this country, they would recognize that it is in the South, where laws and other artificial barriers of all kinds have been set up to keep the races apart, that the most racial mixing has occurred. And this mixing has gone on despite laws, or other factors.

But to what does all this add up as far as “Religion in the News” is concerned? Well, maybe it is easy for me to oversimplify an admittedly complicated phenomenon, but it is difficult for me to see how one can believe in a god who is the father of us all, and yet makes some of us better than others simply because of a minor difference in skin color, or other unimportant detail. Integration, not only in education, but in every aspect of our lives, has been a challenge to the churches long, long before there was any Supreme Court decision on the matter. One wonders, naturally enough, how comfortable the racial supremacists could or will be in the infinite beyond if they find around them members of another racial group. Not only is integration the law of the land, it is a challenging practical situation where men of good will of whatever faith have an opportunity to put the principles we preach so much about to work in our own community.

Christ’s concern began and ended with the individual. Race, color, national origin, made no difference to him. The woman of Samaria, outcast though she was in the eyes of “respectable” Jews, was as precious to him – perhaps more so – than the canting, hypocritical pharisee. The penitent thief on the cross received assurance that Pilate, with all his earthly pomp, could not get.

America has been built and made great and strong by many peoples of all lands and races. Even our language is a hybrid composed of borrowings from about all the languages of the world. The American Indian contributed immensely to our knowledge of the land, new foods which are with us today, staples that our pre-Columbian forbears never heard of; the Chinese blasting his way through the Sierra Nevada Mountains to help build the First Continental Railway; the Italian laborer in the mines and the mills; the German, Swedish, Russian pioneers who wrung a civilization from the wilderness; the Jew who peddled his wares from door to door, providing a service badly needed by the people of earlier America; and so on down – or up – it goes. A complete catalog of those who helped make America what it is today cannot be compiled.

Here, out of diversity, we have been continually working toward unity with diversity. Our declaration of principles in 1776 said “all men,” not just “some.” The Bill of Rights and the rest of our Constitution make no allusion to racial differences. But as a people we have been marching, though not always steadily, toward a realization of the principle that certain rights should be shared by all, and these include the traditional freedoms of speech, religion, etc., and the right to equality in education. Perhaps we shall never fully attain our goal of equal justice for all, but if we ever reach the place where we stop struggling toward it, we shall become another kind of social order.

This kind of equality does not force anyone to become personal associates with anyone who has undesirable characteristics. We whites make all sorts of distinctions among our acquaintances. Some whites we know we do not care to be around or associate with at all. Your and my children going to school have their own preferences among their class and school mates. There is no enforced equality in the classroom other than that minimum necessary for the common welfare of all in seeking better learning conditions. So there is no point in waxing emotional over the idea of more than one race occupying the same classroom.

Certain it is that the program of integration is one that calls for calm, rational thinking, not emotional outbursts of indignation. It is also a program that is going to demand in every community the support of straight-thinking citizens who believe in the essence of American democracy, i.e., the dignity and rights of the individual, regardless of his color or race. It is difficult to see how religion of the Christian variety can be squared with any other concept.

 

Religious tolerance has long been a part of our American tradition, in precept if not always in practice. Perhaps not too much credit should be given to us for this, for it has been a matter of expediency and even necessity as much as, perhaps more than, any inherent broad-mindedness on our part. It has been a necessity because we are of such diverse religious groupings that all have recognized that an attack on one today may presage an assault on another tomorrow, with the end result that each one fears the chain reaction of such discrimination may in the end result in its being the object.

However, there is considerable evidence that some of the worst religious bigotry with respect to public officials at least is waning. As reported here some weeks a recent Gallup poll indicated that religious affiliation with the Catholic Church, per se, would not be nearly as great a handicap as it was in 1928 when Al Smith lost several Southern states largely because of his religious conviction.

In the recent Chicago political convention, it was remarkable the way the Southern state delegates backed Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a Catholic, for the vice presidency. Granted that there was more than lack of religious prejudice here – in fact there was a great deal of political prejudice against one of the other candidates – it is still encouraging to note that the climate of religious tolerance has changed so drastically in the years since 1928 that it is difficult to think back and re-create the angry atmosphere that existed then. So, little by little, we let bitter controversy yield to patient persuasion and common sense. It may not be too much to hope that in the near future we can progress from mere religious tolerance to religious respect, for most of us are not content simply to be tolerated; we want to be respected also.

Well, the two national conventions are over, choices have been made, the captains and the would-be kings depart, and both the Stock Yards and the Cow Palace can now be turned over to their usual usages. All of the hoopla that went on is part of our American tradition, though it is highly speculative whether the flowery speeches, the pointing with pride and the viewing with alarm, did much to change anyone’s mind. Each party tried to brainwash us into believing that only it could save the country from dire results. That is, of course, rankest nonsense. Both promised that campaigning this year would stick to the high road; that smears, gutter tactics would not be used. It will be interesting to watch how, or whether, either or both keep this pledge. It is more than a good guess that as the campaign waxes hotter, deterioration of its level will set in.

As to platforms, there is little difference in the two as to semantics. Both are phrased, as usual, in such a way that most of them can be logically interpreted in almost any way. Hence, they can mean everything or nothing, depending upon your own interpretation. All this, of course, leaves us about where we started, except that four men are offering themselves for the two highest offices in the land. Your and my job as voters is to study carefully the performance of all four; to weigh what they say with how they have performed in the past. Pretty speeches that sound good mean little unless they square with what has gone before, or we have good reason to believe the speakers will live up to what they are saying. Here is your and my job cut out for us, to inform ourselves, think, listen, watch, and do our best, both mentally and physically to bring about the election of the persons whom we are convinced will honestly carry into practice the principles and values which we as voters hold. Upon how well we do that depends the future of our democratic system. Only we can fail now.

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An item that is hardly news, in the sense of recency, but which merits thoughtful attention because it strikes at the very root of our system of things, is the attack upon the Chief Justice of the United States by at least two malcontents who disagreed with a Supreme Court decision that held it was not the intent of Congress to make government employees in non-sensitive positions subject to summary dismissal because of security reasons.

In the first place, Warren did not write the decision; Justice Harlan did. In the second place, Congress could, should it choose, amend the law to apply security provisions to non-sensitive positions. But facts have little effect on people whose minds are already made up and who cannot brook any opinion or decision with which they disagree. Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, a Republican, said that he did not accuse Chief Justice Warren of being a communist, “but there is something radically wrong with him. In the communist book, Earl Warren is a hero.”

Not to be outdone by his Republican colleague, Democrat – not democratic – Senator Eastland said, “I’m not accusing him of being a Party member, but he takes the same position they do when he says the Communist Party is just another political party.” Again, Mr. Warren did not say this last. Probably no other American understands better than Warren the conspiratorial nature of the Communist Party and its threat to democracy.

But look at the two statements. The Founding Fathers worked out in meticulous detail a three-branch system of government. Each is coordinate with the other two. Warren underwent careful scrutiny by the Senate before he was confirmed for his present position, and he was confirmed without a dissenting vote. Nobody who knows the facts about the many facets of his career could by the most fantastic stretch of the imagination conceive him to be anything but an American who believes implicitly and explicitly in the democratic process. Those who impugn the motives and character of any citizen without cause does violence to that process. And it is no credit to those who smear citizens by saying, “He may not be a communist but…” The mere association of one’s name with the Moscow conspirators is enough, in the eyes of the unthinking, to brand one’s loyalty and good citizenship as questionable. It is almost, if not quite, as bad as bearing false witness. Anyone who has violated the law deserves to be punished after conviction under due process; until such has been done, he has the right to be presumed innocent. And that goes for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as well as for the lowliest citizen among us.

One of the things about which we often chide our politicians is their lack of consistency, and quite often they are inconsistent. However, no instance of American history comes to mind in which our own political figures were so inconsistent as have been those of Russia in recent months. It was only three short years ago in March that the Premier Malenkov, Deputy Premier Beria, and Foreign Minister Molotov were delivering eulogistic orations at the funeral of “good old Joe” Stalin.

Beria has since died of lead in the head and the other two face the twilight of political obscurity if not extinction. Reports are that Bulganin and Khrushchev were silent on the occasion of the funeral. However, the others made up for it. Malenkov said Stalin’s “works will live forever. His name ranks with the greatest men in the history of mankind – Marx, Engels, and Stalin.” Beria chimed in with his “Our party now closes its ranks. It is united and invincible. Great Stalin left us a legacy that will be treasured as the pupil of one’s eye.” While Molotov, not to be outdone, asserted that “This infinitely dear man will live in our hearts forever. The fame of his great works for the good and happiness of the workers of the whole world will live through the ages…” – and thus it went.

Bulganin and Khrushchev now spit on the corpse of the man who was their leader in crimes unspeakable. They rose to high office as members of the Soviet cabinet only by the will and approval of the man they now say they despised. Brave lads? They say they were helpless to speak while Stalin lived. Yet millions of Russians went to death or Siberia because they did resist the living Stalin. One cannot help but wonder how long the brave Russian people will follow these now self-convicted cowards.

And while on the subject of Russia, it might be observed that the Jehovah’s Witnesses sect, with 600,000 members in 160 countries, is circulating a petition containing two resolutions directed to the powers-that-be in the Kremlin. One resolution requests permission for a delegation of witnesses to visit Moscow to discuss the status of church members in more than 50 slave labor camps. The resolution contains documented accounts of communist mistreatment of witnesses. The other resolution requests Bulganin to set free some 9,000 members of the denomination now imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain. The resolution declares that “We can do nothing else but inform the world about Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russian prisons, penal damps and deportation centers, but we would prefer to be able to tell the world that the government of Russia has ordered witnesses to be freed to work as free citizens and live a calm and quiet life which they believe to be in harmony with “the precepts of their faith.”

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It was the Scotch poet Burns who uttered the oft-quoted phrase “O wud some power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as others see us.” Well, we got a brief glimpse of something of that sort in the remarks of two English clergymen recently visiting this country under the auspices of the National Council of Churches and the British Council of Churches. Christianity, they found here, is a bit overwhelming to them. One remarked that he wondered whether the church in America is not somewhat frightened by this boom in religion. He went on, “The fantastic interest in church building, church attendance, and education is a strange, alarming phenomenon about which we must not be cynical. It is difficult for people in the United Kingdom not to be cynical about it. Each of us has much to learn and much to contribute …” While his colleague summed up his impression by saying that “It seems to me that there is a great deal of vigor, vim, and virility in American life, which expresses itself in devotion to a competitive free economy. The same spirit, I have a suspicion, displays itself, at least in the externals, in the religious sphere, which to an Englishman seems rather odd at times. On the lighter side, for example, I recall an advertisement which began, “Is any church air-conditioned cool as…?” and members of the congregation were invited to share the delights of an iced fruit drink after the service. The U.S. minister seems to feel he is in a competitive world where other loyalties attract, and that he must ‘sell’ religion…. I have been very impressed with the consequent emphasis on ‘plant,’ on technical efficiency, on grading in Sunday school work … with the willingness of lay people to accept responsibility in terms of finance and service.” This reporter made essentially the same remarks about the current scene some months ago, to which some of you listeners, and quite rightly so if you felt that way about it, took exception.

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There has been a great deal in the press in recent days about the after-effects of the steel strike just settled. The workers won a 3-year contract with a boost in wages that will enable them, partly at least, to keep pace with the increased cost of living. Now the steel companies have announced an advance in the price of steel to the tune of some $8 or $10, and the howl that has appeared in the news articles and editorial columns would have one believe that the unions were somehow united in a conspiracy to fleece the American people by demanding exorbitant wages with which to house, feed, clothe, and educate their children. Is it not strange that nothing is said about the real agency responsible for pushing this added cost onto the American public, that is, the operators? The fact is that the steel companies, along with other giants, like General Motors, e.g., have consistently shown higher and higher net profits after taxes and all other expenses have been met, these last 3 or 4 years. According to their own published statements, they are in no sense in financial straits. Yet, in order to keep their profit margin exceptional, and perhaps to disparage labor unions in the eyes of the public, they would have that public believe that they must raise the price of their product to meet rising labor costs. That is only half-truth, and there is a certain degree of morality here, for blame should be assessed at the point of responsibility for it, and that point in this case is the steel companies. Could it be that the newspapers follow along with this line of persuasion because steel companies are more profitable advertisers than are either the unions or the general public?

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During the next two weeks the two major parties will be holding their usual quadrennial conventions. In both Chicago and San Francisco millions of words will be spoken and will be channeled into our homes via radio and television. All these words will be designed to catch and hold the fancy of the greatest possible number of voters. Much of what is said, written, and done will be so much eyewash to catch the unwary, but all of us as voters should take what is going on seriously. Four candidates are to be selected, two of whom we shall elect in November to guide the destiny of this nation for the next four years. As voters, we have a solemn responsibility to listen and read carefully what is said, to study just as carefully the contenders in the coming campaign, to try to understand issues, to appraise the candidates, not only in what they say but in what they have previously said and done. We have a right to expect the two parties to take stands on fundamental issues that are sufficiently different that we voters, when we go into the polling booths in November, will be confronted with real choices instead of choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Only in this way can there be a real functioning of our two-party system which is so much a part of our American way of life. We as voters cannot evade our responsibilities; the parties should not be permitted to avoid their own either.

 

 

Vatican City: The machinery of the church is moving slowly to beatify Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, who died in 1930. He was secretary of state to Pope Pius X, 1903-1914. The proceedings so far have reached the stage at which the Holy Congregation of Rites has approved the cardinal’s writings.

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Vienna: For the first time in history, an important international conclave was held on communist soil during the past week. The meeting was that of the 90-member central committee of the World Council of Churches. The committee met in a village in Red Hungary. The theme of the meeting was “Proselytizing and Religious Liberty.” Delegates from churches in all the communist countries, including Red China, were present, along with those delegates from the Western, democratic countries.

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New York: Two New York rabbis returned from a trip to Russia and satellite countries saying that Jews in Poland and Czechoslovakia are not better off than those in Russia. Rabbi Harold Gordon and Rabbi Israel Mowshowitz said in both countries there are severe limitations on Jewish cultural activities. And in Czechoslovakia where the salaries of rabbis are paid by the state, the synagogues, like the Christian churches, are more and more coming under the iron control of Red politicians.

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Frankfurt, Germany: An American minister says Russian Baptists who recently visited America were sadly disappointed because they found American women too worldly. The Rev. R.J. Smith of the Church of Christ recently returned to Frankfurt after a 10-day visit to Russia where he met the Baptist leaders who visited America. They told him they were shocked that women in America smoked, used lipstick, and had other worldly ways. In the Soviet Union, devout Baptists do not drink or smoke and the women use no cosmetics. Mr. Smith said the Soviet government gave him encouragement in his plan to get visas for ministers of the Church of Christ to visit Russia.

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New York: The Brotherhood of the United Lutheran Church in America may change its name to The Lutheran Church Men. The change will be proposed at the biennial convention at Kitchener, Ontario, September 20- 22. The idea is to get a more modern and inclusive name. For example, the women’s auxiliary of the church which once was known as the “Women’s Missionary Society” now calls itself “The United Lutheran Church Women.”

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Atlanta: Pope Pius has divided the state of Georgia into two Catholic dioceses. The Most Rev. Francis Hyland, who has been auxiliary bishop of the Atlanta-Savannah Diocese since 1949, becomes bishop of the new Diocese of Atlanta. Archbishop Gerald O’Hara continues as head of the Diocese of Savannah. The new Atlanta Diocese will comprise 70 counties.

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The first U.S. Roman Catholic priest to enter Russia as a tourist is due to arrive in Leningrad today. He is the Rev. Walter C. Jaskiewicz, director of the Institute of Contemporary Russian Studies of Fordham University, in the Bronx, New York. Father Jaskiewicz, a Jesuit, speaks and reads Russian fluently. He considers it always profitable to test the value of theoretical knowledge against reality. And he adds his 30-day visit to the Soviet Union will be in the nature of practical checks within the limits of feasibility. The Fordham educator will visit, among other Russian cities, Riga, Leningrad, Kiev, Odessa, Yalta, Tiflis, Kharkov, and Moscow. No Catholic priest has been in Moscow since March of last year. That was when the Rev. George Bissonnette was expelled as chaplain of the U.S. colony there.

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Reports of greatly improved treatment of six U.S. Catholic missionaries in Red Chinese jails leads to a church opinion that they may be released soon. The Catholic newsletter of Hong Kong says the Americans are getting special food, apparently in an effort to remove signs of prison life. The publication got the information from a British subject recently released from a Chinese Communist prison.

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A U.S. rabbi recently returned from Russia says he used Yiddish newspapers printed in the U.S. to set up contact with Jews in the Soviet Union. Rabbi George Lieberman of Rockville Centre, Long Island, adds he read the publications in the lobby of his hotel or carried them conspicuously when he attended a theater. He relates some Jews approached him openly. Others sought him surreptitiously to get information. They made appointments to meet him in subways or parks or on the steps of libraries. Then the American and the Russian would sit side by side and talk, each with his face buried in a newspaper. Rabbi Lieberman says the Russian Jews were much interested in news about Jews. But he adds they had astonishingly poor knowledge of recent developments.

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The new head of a group placing Bibles in hotels is P.J. Zondervan of Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was elected president of Gideons International at the organization’s recent annual convention in Atlanta. Mrs. Clarence Haan of Chicago has been chosen president of the Gideons Auxiliary.

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The young peoples’ organization of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, has voted to set up a preparation program for young persons entering military life. The plan of the Walther League is based on the belief that too many church young people are spiritually and morally unprepared for what the young Missouri Lutherans term the temptations of military life. The secretary of the league, the Rev. Alfred P. Klausler of Chicago, has told the league’s convention that the problem is part of parish youth programs. He explains potential service people are in church youth ranks until they are 17. The Rev. Mr. Klausler, who is a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, says it is the church’s responsibility to prepare the draftee for his life in the service. The delegates to the Ames, Iowa, meetings have decided, among other things, that young people at home will keep in touch with absentee members in the service.

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The North Carolina legislature has just adjourned after passing a series of administration-backed bills aimed at meeting the segregation issue in the public schools. The lawmakers were called into special session last Monday by Governor Hodges and presented with the bills embodying the recommendations of a special committee on education set up by the 1955 assembly to study ways and means of circumventing the law. These bills provide for amendments to the state constitution to (1) allow the states to pay private tuition grants to parents who object to their children attending mixed schools; and (2) authorize local school boards to close their schools by majority vote of the people when “intolerable” conditions occur. It will be interesting to see what happens.

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Some weeks ago this reporter was kidded somewhat freely for saying on this program that there was no likelihood of the school aid bill getting any action this session. Well, “I told you so’s” are fairly hollow in the face of a failure on the part of our elected representatives to face up to a moral issue and provide for the education of our growing children. But Congress has adjourned, the school aid bill died in committee, and nothing will be done on the part of the federal government at least until next session to provide aid so badly needed. In the meantime, both Democrats and Republicans will go back to their respective states and districts and each will blame the other for failure of the school bill. Just remember this, whatever those politicians say: both are to blame. It would have taken support of both to pass it, and neither can morally blame the other more than he can blame himself.

Other unfinished items on the Congressional agenda include such items as the civil rights measure. There the Democrats must take the blame, for while Republicans probably gleefully maneuvered the bill into the Senate knowing that undemocratic Democrat Sen. Eastland’s committee on the judiciary would not let it get out of that body, had the Democrats been in favor of passage, it would have taken place. It is something of a sad commentary on the term “Democrat” that one calling himself so would prohibit passage of a bill that would have simply safeguarded for all citizens, regardless of race or color, those rights which he demands for himself. There is no excuse for the behavior of the Eastlands. Their very actions make their oath to support the Constitution close to perjury, for they swear to uphold the Constitution, then proceed to subvert it by refusing to enact legislation to carry into effect the clear decisions of the Supreme Court interpreting that Constitution.

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Left unfinished also is action on the pernicious Walter-McCarran Immigration Bill, a statute that both Democrat Stevenson and Republican Eisenhower pledged themselves to revise. The statute, and if you have not read it, I urge that you do so, clearly militates against certain nationalities and religious groups. All of this is understandable if you understand its authors, both self-styled Democrats, who wrote into the law of the land discriminatory doctrines that are in spirit, if not in letter, alien to the clear implication not only for our tradition as a people but to the declared meaning of our Constitution itself.

There is more than mere comment involved in all this. We the people have a right to expect honest and forthright action by our representatives on matters on which they declared themselves at the time they asked for our confidence at the polls. It is like welshing on a bet, backing down on a promise. In essence, it is bearing false witness, and voters should take these matters into account when they are asked to support those who failed miserably to live up to what they promised two, four, and six years ago.

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Debunking is a healthy and somewhat time-honored American tradition. Americans generally take a dim view of pretension and affectation, whether it be intellectual or moral. They often correctly suspect that the high-flown phrase is without substance. As the late Will Rogers said in the early 1930s, “Maybe ‘ain’t’ ain’t so correct, but I notice that lots of folks who ain’t using ‘ain’t’ ain’t eatin.” Well, bad grammar will not make a false statement true, or a true statement false, nor is it the hallmark of character or wisdom. Why, then, do so many Americans take so much delight in ridiculing the professor? Maybe it is because we take pride in being what we call ourselves, “practical people.” We ask not, “Is it true?” but “Will it work?” But I’m convinced that the reason is deeper than this somewhat healthy skepticism. A new and sinister element has entered the American attitude toward learning, an attitude springing from a general sense of insecurity and expressing itself in a suspicion that any form of free speculation somehow is aimed at subverting our morals or our institutions. There is nothing intrinsically new about all this. We can recall the Salem witch-hunts of the 17th century; the Know Nothing movement of the 19th and the K.K.K. of a more recent day. Today the attacks come from self-appointed crusaders and vigilante groups who have set up arbitrary criteria by which to judge the loyalty or patriotism of other individuals. Books have been attacked, usually not because all the attackers have read and understand them but because someone has said they are dangerous. The importance of these attacks is that they are aimed not at a creed or a sect or a radical minority or an unpopular belief but at the very principle of tolerance itself, and at the people who have traditionally restored our emotional equilibrium after a period of hysteria – the much-abused intellectual.

A man who has lived with error and has known the difficulty – and the joy – of conquering is not likely to be dogmatic. He will not deny to others the right to seek the truth in their own way, even though he may see pitfalls into which they are bound to stumble. That is why the intellectual is both a doctor for our ills and a defender of our basic liberties. And that is why the forces of intolerance must not succeed. They must not succeed because a single shackle placed upon man’s right to knowledge is a shackle upon truth and upon that freedom that has made this nation great and, God willing, will make it greater. Nearly a hundred years ago, the army of Northern Virginia invaded the state of Maryland, and the commanding general issued a proclamation to the citizens, a few sentences which are worth our attention now:

“No constraint upon your free will is intended – no intimidation will be allowed. Within the limits of this army, at least, Marylanders shall once more enjoy their ancient freedom of thought and speech. We know no enemies among you, and will protect all of every opinion.”

The man who said that was endowed with far more than common military values. Their utterance on the field of battle, in enemy territory, was an act of supreme moral courage and could only have been inspired by a passionate devotion to the highest democratic ideals. Today freedom of thought and expression – man’s right to knowledge and the free use thereof are a part of our American heritage that must be preserved for and handed on to future generations.

 

Sometime ago I indicated that I planned to devote one program before the election to the theme of “The Christian and His Vote.” On August 2, less than a month away, Tennesseans will be going to the polls for the final election of local officials and will vote in the primaries for state and federal officials. Hence, today we shall dispense with the current aspects of religious news and examine a few of the many reasons why Christians especially have a peculiar responsibility for and interest in voting – at least they should have.

Shortly after Hitler’s blood purge in Germany in the 1930s, a group of American teachers and ministers were meeting in the heart of Berlin. An internationally known scholar of the New Testament from the University of Berlin addressed them. The meeting itself was held in his library and upon his instructions the Americans came to it two-by-two so as not to arouse suspicion. While he talked about the prospects of religion under Hitler, an American started taking notes. The face of the German went pale and he said “Don’t do that. You will endanger my life. Destroy what you have written here.”

One minister remarked afterward, “As I watched those men tearing up their notes into tiny pieces and throwing them in the fire, I saw in one moment what democracy ought to mean to us in America.” Under our system here the state is the servant of the people. When, under a dictator, the reverse becomes true, untold evil awaits a nation. The crucial point for us is that wherever tyrants have come to power, they did so in almost every instance because of indifference on the part of the mass of citizens toward their civic responsibilities.”

How do we Americans rate with respect to these responsibilities of ours? Well, in 1880, 78 percent of the eligible citizens in this nation voted. Yet, 60 years later, only 53 percent voted, and in that year, you will recall, two colorful and dynamic figures were the standard-bearers and, until then, the unbroken third-term tradition was at stake. In 1948 our voting percentage dropped to 51 percent, while our record in 1952 was only slightly better. It should be a matter of shame resting upon us as a people, a free people as yet, that so many of us so disregard our heritage that we never take the trouble to vote.

And yet, it would be a mistake to say that the nearly half of us who do not vote are intentionally bad people. Edmund Burke said in this connection that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” While many Christians and affiliates of other religions stay away from the polls through indifference, gamblers, racketeers, and big time criminals are rounding up their supporters and seeing that they vote.

All this is not merely a political duty resting upon us; it is a religious responsibility to exercise our franchise since democracy as we know it is directly in accord with the Christian teaching of the infinite worth of every human being. Many years ago the Englishman, Lord Bryce wrote, “Religion has ever been the motive power of true democracy,” and adds that no free government can long survive without recognition of moral sanctions. It was the conviction that man belongs, not to the state but to the Creator which motivated the founding fathers in laying a firm and strong political structure of this republic, making it possible for the people to control the state at all times, if they only wish enough to do so.

There is another aspect of our voting behavior, or misbehavior, which should make us shamefaced. We in America, who have been entrusted with such a heritage, find ourselves today the nation that is the foremost advocate of the free way of life, the rallying point of all nations that love liberty. This makes it particularly anomalous that we of all people should sell our birthright for less than a mess of pottage. How can we expect elected officials to take their responsibilities seriously if about half of the electorate is so indifferent to the character of leadership in this nation that they will not even take the trouble to register and vote?

All of us have heard, perhaps sometimes we have said, that politics is corrupt, that government is run by a machine. If so, the responsibility for such corruption lies squarely at the door of every indifferent citizen. The Bible deals with no subject that it does not illumine. This is true in the matter of elections. In the book of Exodus we are told that, on one occasion, Moses was visited by Jethro, his father-in-law. A great crowd of people was waiting for an opportunity to present their case to the lawgiver. Jethro pointed out to his son-in-law the perils of such a situation. “You and the people with you will wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you, and you are not able to perform it alone,” said Jethro. “You must at once elect deputies. They shall be the ruler of thousands and of hundreds and of fifties. Let the people come to them for judgment. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but lesser matters they shall decide for themselves. Now, this is the criterion by which these leaders are to be judged. Provided out of all the people able men such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them.”

The Revised Standard Version puts it more concisely and in more current form by saying, “… choose able men from all the people, such as fear God, men who are trustworthy, and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people.”

This is one of the earliest records in all literature of a free election, and it would be difficult to find a higher standard by which to judge rulers. Note that four qualifications are underscored. [The first is] ability (and for us that should mean ability to do the job for which he hopes to be elected, not whether he can shake hands a certain way). The second criterion is fear of God. The third [is] men who are trustworthy. (What do you know about the candidates for the August election in this respect?) And the fourth: men who hate a bribe.

There is some historical evidence that Alfred the Great, an able monarch who ruled England during the ninth century based his Saxon constitution of sheriffs in the counties on this mosaic example of government set forth in the Bible. It is not impossible that the free institutions of our English-speaking peoples originated in this system of representative government instituted 3,000 years ago. I am aware that if any of my history colleagues are listening, they are probably thinking this is a very flimsy linkage, but it is not impossible, and conceivably may be true.

Rather frequently someone raises the question, “Should religion and politics be mixed?” Before that question is answered, it should be made clear just what is meant by it. Certainly few would argue that a church should become a lobbyist and turn his pulpit into a political rostrum. Religion and politics should not be mixed in such a fashion. If the minister engages actively in politics, acclaiming one specific party, or it he electioneers for one candidate, he is leaving his pulpit to descend into the turmoil of the political arena, using by implication at least authority for political affairs which the church has conferred upon him for religious and spiritual purposes. However, even here it is entirely conceivable that a great moral or spiritual principle may be at stake in an election, and in such case the minister may have a duty to speak out without hesitation and regardless of consequences. All in all, it would seem that the church, as a church, should avoid identifying itself with political programs and platforms, but this does not mean that the members of the church, as citizens should not be individually concerned.

If the question, “Should politics and religion be mixed?” means that the moral influence of religion be infused into political life of the nation, then the answer should be an emphatic “Yes.” No finer standard of judgment could be applied to the candidates in any election than was set forth in the mosaic declaration 3,000 years ago, “Moreover thou shalt choose from all the people able men such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them.” If we are to secure as national, state, and local leaders men who possess these admirable qualities, the people who are entrusted with the use of the ballot must in some measure possess these qualities themselves, or at least have respect and admiration for such qualities. No form of government existing today demands so high a standard of life for its successful continuance as does a democracy. One reason why democratic government has collapsed in many nations is that the moral level of the people was not sufficiently elevated to maintain it. Here we are at the heart and core of the church’s task. If the church fails to nourish a noble life among the citizens of the nation, what other institution can be depended upon to do so?

It is not sufficient merely to proclaim the necessity of high moral standards, for that alone will not be enough to make mean men generous, cruel men kind, greedy men unselfish, or vile men clean. Morality must be under-girded by deep moral convictions, and these convictions must be expressed through practice in being alert, informed, and active citizens, who register and vote and who keep constantly in mind the fourfold standards of judgment which the Bible proposes for leaders – able men, God-fearing, trustworthy, who hate bribery. The whole question is somewhat like the poem contributed by an anonymous person who put it this way:

God give us men a time like this demands;
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor – men who will not lie …
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking.

The Methodist College of Bishops of the Southeastern Jurisdiction have heard this week, in their meeting at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, a prediction that there will be a decrease of radical discrimination in the South and an increase of it in other sections of the country. This forecast was made in a 48-page episcopal address prepared by Bishop William T. Watkins of Louisville, Kentucky, with the approval of the seven other members of the college. In predicting this decline in Southern racial discrimination, the bishops based their statements on the premise that racial relations are governed by the percent of Negro population, and they noted a movement of the Negro away from the South. This, in their report, indicates that as the Negro population thins out in Southern areas and increases in Northern ones, discrimination will thereby shift.

Well, their premise is not always true. Areas with large percentages of population have worked out democratic and satisfactory racial relations, while those with relatively few Negroes have, in some cases, had the most serious discrimination. But the good bishops did not ask for the opinions or information of your reporter.

Methodist memberships have given increasing attention to racial matters since the General Conference in May, at which time there was a proposed amendment to the constitution which would allow integration. The Lake Junaluska conference devoted much time to this. As one dispatch put it, “The change would not mean Negroes will sit side-by-side with whites in Southern churches (though parenthetically, the question might well be raised, why not?), but it could bring about absorption of the single Negro Methodist jurisdiction by the five geographical white divisions. As one bishop asserted, “The doors of racial brotherhood cannot be blasted open.” In comment, it is a sad commentary on the much-mouthed phrase of “Christian brotherhood” that such doors should have been shut in the first place. All men are brothers or they are not, and if that brotherhood cannot find practical expression in religious matters, then there is something wrong with our religion, or with us – and I speak as a Methodist. This is one of the few situations where the issue is clear-cut (I almost used the pun of black and white).

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One of the basic principles in our constitutional system, a principle upon which many of our freedoms rest, including freedom of religion, is the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to due process of law. In the Compulsory Testimony Act of 1954, Congress, upon the recommendation of the attorney general of the United States, in effect amended our Constitution in an unconstitutional way and thereby committed an assault on the conscience and dignity of man. The Compulsory Act says that if a witness is assured that he will not be prosecuted for whatever he may testify to, he cannot then invoke his constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment to testify.

Early in congressional investigations of alleged subversion, witnesses challenged the right of the House Un-American Activities Committee to pry into their political beliefs, basing their refusal to answer on the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of thought, speech, and assembly. They had powerful historical justification for invoking this First Amendment, for as Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn said, this amendment admits of no exceptions. It tells us that Congress and by implication, all other agencies of government are denied any authority whatever to limit the political freedom of the citizens of the U.S. It declares that with respect to political belief, political discussion, political advocacy, political planning, our citizens are sovereign and Congress is their subordinate agent.

Pretty soon, however, congressional committees were no longer recognizing the First Amendment. Screenwriters who became known as the “Hollywood Ten” were cited by the [House ] Un-American [Activities] Committee for contempt, indicted, and convicted. Thus, only the Fifth Amendment remained – to use the words of a former Supreme Court Justice – “as a safeguard against heedless, unfounded and tyrannical prosecutions.”

Subsequent witnesses, equally unwilling to testify as to their political beliefs but preferring to stay out of jail, refused to answer questions under the protection of the Fifth Amendment. Their refusal was sustained by the courts but their victory was a costly one, for political demagogues coined the epithet, “Fifth Amendment Communist,” by which men were adjudged guilty until proven innocent, and this in direct violation of the principles on which our system of justice is founded. For asserting their rights of citizenship and for invoking the Fifth, men stood in danger of summary dismissal from jobs, of the blacklist, expulsion from unions, eviction from housing developments, denial of passport, deportation, and denaturalization.

Dean Erwin N. Griswold of the Harvard Law School, in his carefully reasoned little book entitled 5th Amendment Today, calls that amendment “one of the great landmarks in man’s struggle to make himself civilized.” He gives many reasons as to why a witness should logically, and legally invoke the Fifth Amendment, such as reluctance of a nervous though wholly innocent witness to venture on the stand; the fear of waiver of his rights too soon; and lack of confidence in the proceeding. Is it untoward today to question the good faith of a hearing before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, for example, when a witness already knows that its chairman, Sen. Eastland, though bound by his oath of office to uphold the law of the land, is leading the rebellion against the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision of 1954?

Whatever the reason that prompts a person to seek protection of the Fifth Amendment, his invocation thereof cannot label him a “Fifth Amendment Communist,” for the Supreme Court spoke decisively on this matter in the Slochower case on April 9, 1956, with Mr. Justice Clark reading the majority opinion:

“At the outset we must condemn the practice of imputing sinister meaning to the exercise of a person’s constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment. The right of an accused person to refuse to testify, which had been in England merely a rule of evidence, was so important to our forefathers that they raised it to the dignity of a constitutional enactment, and it has been recognized as ‘one of the most valuable prerogatives of the citizen.’”

Yet, the amendment, as a bulwark, has been weakened against political inquisition by the Compulsory Testimony Act. This act is the brainchild of the late Senator McCarren, who likewise spawned the Internal Security Act and the Walter-McCarran Immigration Act. Under the Compulsory Testimony Act, a witness faces grim choices: He may maintain silence and go to jail for contempt; or he may take, what is to many the odious way, of informing on the political beliefs of his associates and thereby sacrifice his own conscience and dignity. Whatever his course, he risks perjury. And this risk is particularly bad when a witness undertakes to answer questions concerning events 10 to 25 years in the past. Two witnesses who did testify freely in 1948, Remington and Hiss, were later convicted of perjury in trials whose outcome left a legacy of great doubt as to American jurisprudence.

What has all this to do with religion in the news? Everything. IF the Constitution can be twisted in order to get at, today, those whom some believe to be enemies to our way of life, it can, tomorrow, be twisted to discriminate against others, whether they be political or religious dissenters. Which, one may ask from a moral point of view, are the real subversives? Those who advocate undemocratic doctrines and do so within the framework of our constitutional system, or those who take solemn oaths, and this applies to Republicans and Democrats alike, to uphold the Constitution, and then proceed to subvert it under the cloak of saving that which they thereby subvert?

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Another item in the news that reflects something of an inconsistency in our thinking about ourselves in connection with other peoples involves whether U.S. servicemen abroad should be tried according to U.S. laws or the laws of the country in which they are stationed. The U.S. Court of Appeals has just ruled that a foreign country has the right to try U.S. military personnel for crimes committed in foreign lands, i.e., off military posts. That is as it should be. Imagine how we would feel if we had an army of occupation in our midst and they were not responsible to our laws but could be tried only by the laws of their own country. Of course professional patrioteers, political demagogues, and others will view this with alarm, but veritably it is a matter of “As ye would that men do unto you, do ye even so unto them.”

 

Americans are giving an ever-increasing proportion of their philanthropic gifts to church-sponsored drives. Federal figures for 1954, the last year available, show that 53 cents of every dollar given to philanthropy goes to churches and church-sponsored enterprises and drives. The total given to religious charities that year was $2.85 billion out of a grand total of $5.4 billion. In 1952, by contrast, churches and church-sponsored charities got only 47 cents out of the philanthropic dollar. In spite of the present era of high taxes, the total of American gifts to philanthropy have increase from $1.189 billion back in 1930 to the present $5.5 billion mark.

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Meadville, Pennsylvania: One-hundred-tweny young people, a number of them newly-married couples, are attending a summer training school for foreign missionary work at Allegheny College. They represent ten Protestant communities. About half are clergymen. The others are medical or technical missionaries. At Allegheny, they are being briefed on rapid methods of learning native languages, how to teach reading and writing simply and rapidly, simple farming, how to endure a tropical climate, and how to cope with the new problems for missionaries raised by surging nationalism in many lands.

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One of the largest laymen’s religious conventions ever held in the U.S. will open in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 14. It will be for men only and will be under the auspices of the United Church Men. Billy Graham, the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, Congressman Walter Judd of Minnesota, and Mayor Roe Bartle of Kansas City will be among the speakers.

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Out in Chicago, 26 prominent laymen have formed a national committee to launch drives to raise money for 475 colleges that are church-affiliated. Executive editor Milburn Akers of the Chicago Sun-Times is chairman; J. Irwin Miller of the Cummins Engine Company of Columbus, Indiana, is vice chairman; and the secretary-treasurer is Hal Lainson of the Dutton & Sons Company of Hastings, Nebraska.

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Berea, Kentucky: Berea College and the National Council of Churches have commissioned composer Norman Lockwood to write an oratorio. It will be an hour and a half in length, and for orchestra, chorus, and soloists. The libretto, by Mrs. Clara Chassell Cooper of the Berea faculty, is from biblical themes. Lockwood has written a number of major choral works.

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Washington: The Apostolic Delegation in Washington announces Pope Pius has appointed Bishop Raymond Millinger of Rockford, Illinois, to be the new auxiliary to Samuel Cardinal Stritch, archbishop of Chicago. Monsignor Donald Carroll will succeed Bishop Millinger as bishop of Rockford. He is now secretary of the Apostolic Delegation in Washington.

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The two U.S. Roman Catholic priests newly returned to freedom from Red Chinese jails say they had a three-year nightmare of questioning and threats. The Rev. John W. Clifford and the Rev. Thomas L. Phillips add that their only crime was in being priests. Fathers Clifford and Phillips, both from San Francisco, returned to Hong Kong from Shanghai yesterday aboard a German freighter. They had been released last month after imprisonment on the usual communist charge of espionage and counter-revolutionary activities. Father Clifford, 39 years old, says he was questioned almost daily for five weeks. He adds his worst days in four Shanghai prisons were in a cell next to a raving maniac. Father Phillips, 52, says he and Father Phillips were seized the same night – June 15, 1953. He adds that he was subjected to at least 150 interrogations. One charge against him was that he had told Chinese Catholics not to register with the Red police as members of the Legion of Mary, which the priest describes as a purely religious order. The release of the two priests leaves 11 Americans, mostly missionaries, still in Red Chinese jails.

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A Vatican branch for spreading the faith, Propaganda Fide, says only 44.5 million of Africa’s 210 million persons are Christians. Catholics claim 22 million; the Protestant Africans are said to number 11.5 million. The remaining belong to Eastern rite churches. Islam is the religion of most Africans – about 85 million of them. The Vatican agency says the 80 African non-Christians are decreasing rapidly.

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The American Jewish Committee European headquarters in Paris says anti-Semitism has become a key issue in the Polish communists’ internal struggle. The agency reports attacks against synagogues, desecration of Jewish cemeteries, and discrimination against Jews in schools and other institutions.

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In Moscow this week, American Jewish rabbis told Soviet Union leaders that they are disturbed by the lack of Russian religious facilities. An Orthodox rabbi from Lawrence, New York, told Premier Bulganin and Communist Party Chief Khrushchev that he looked forward to seeing more synagogues established in Russia for Jews. Through an interpreter, Bulganin told the U.S. Jewish leader, Gilbert Klapperman, that that was up to the Jews themselves.

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A Los Angeles physician has criticized persons who eat too much or who eat not enough of the right things and then expect their religion to perform miracles. Dr. Wayne McFarland also told the New Jersey convention of Seventh Day Adventists, at Kingston, New Jersey, that such persons expect their prayers to keep them physically fit. Dr. McFarland is a former medical official of the General Conference of Adventists.

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Without knowing whom the speaker had in mind, but having one or two in mind myself, I could not refrain from passing along the words of Roman Catholic Bishop John King Mussio of Steubenville, Ohio, in a recent issue of The Catholic Weekly entitled “The Ave Maria.” “We have,” he says, “suffered enough from those Catholics in name who have exploited the field of political service for their own profit and advantage.” The corrupt Catholic politician – and I might add that the same could be said of any corrupt politician, Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or atheist – is neither Catholic nor a politician. Speaking bluntly, he is a cheap crook who uses the faith as another gimmick to help him into the lush field of easy pickings.”

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Something that gives new food for thought, or food for new thought, is contained in a statement made recently by a Canadian physicist in London, Ontario, Dr. Austin D. Misener, who told a United Nations youth seminar that there are two kinds of forces in the modern world – those that divide people and those that unite them. Science, he said, unites; the churches divide. He was not speaking of Christianity but of the way the churches operate, tending to separate nations, peoples, and races.

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This week saw something of a ridiculous performance by the U.S. House of Representatives in its action over the proposed federal aid to education bill. This bill, which, if passed, would have provided some $1.6 billion to help meet the constantly increasing crisis of classroom needs, was at first passed by the House. Later, it was effectively killed by a vote of 224 to 194. Spokesmen for both parties had all along declared that it was a must piece of legislation, but when Adam Clayton Powell, Democrat of New York, succeeded in getting tacked onto the original bill an amendment which would have denied aid to schools that permit segregation, it was obvious that even if it passed the House in that form it would have been filibustered to death by the Dixie Democrats in the Senate. As it was, a number of Republicans, mainly from the Middle West welcomed a chance to vote for the Powell Amendment in the hopes that it would be killed, and that the blame would be placed on the Democrats. Now, both sides are claiming credit for trying to pass the measure and each is blaming the other for its failure. To the simple man in the street, like this reporter, both sides are to blame for making a political issue out of something that has obviously been needed for years. When the roll call came, 146 Republicans and only 77 Democrats voted for the Powell Amendment, and when it came to final passage, only 75 Republicans and 119 Democrats were for it. It should be clear that since the Congress is Democrat organized and presumably has the votes to carry party measures, that the blame this year must be laid at the feet of the Democrats, just as it has been laid in previous years to the Republicans. So, while Congress hastily passes more legislation in the next few weeks, which the rank-and-file member has not even had time to read, and prepares to adjourn in order to get out into the districts to campaign for re-election in November, children in September will be going back to overcrowded classrooms, and underpaid, and in many cases not fully-certified teachers. But the politicians will each, regardless of party, try to convince us that they were all out for better schools. Their action this week in Congress does not show that. There was a fundamental principle involved in this issue: namely, whether Congress should provide federal funds for states that violate the Constitution. But it was also one of those rare occasions when principle had to be measured against urgency and necessity, again, namely, the shouting need for better education for children. Interestingly enough, the three Negro members of the House – all Democrats – divided on the issue: both the others voting against the Powell Amendment. Obviously, the ones who are going to lose most by House politicking on the issue are the children who will not stop growing until cheap political tricks are disposed of and constructive legislation, with or without the Powell Amendment, is passed.

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And while on the subject of legislation, one more item of House business this week involved a matter discussed some weeks ago in detail on this program, and a matter that involved a moral principle also. The Post Office Department has from the beginning been considered a service rather than a profit-making government agency. The present Postmaster General Summerfield, prodded considerably by Treasury Secretary Humphrey, has been trying to get Congress to hike postal rates in order to reduce the annual deficit of the Post Office Department. This week the House passed and sent to the Senate a bill which would increase such rates by about $430 million a year. Among other things, it would boost first-class mail rates from 3 to 4 cents. As pointed out here before, this is the only class of mail that does pay its way, and it is the kind of mail that benefits everybody, including the little fellow, and that is just about all of us in these days of corporate giants. In other words, the House voted to require the mass of citizens to pay more than the service costs for their first-class mail in order to help out on a deficit brought about by the large publishing companies of books, magazines, and other types of mailing matter. You might ask your congressman how he voted on that bill when he asks you to vote for him next November. Fortunately, it is being privately predicted that the Senate will send the measure to its own dead letter office.

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Within the past few days the world has seen an uprising among Polish workers in Poznan and other cities in the country in the now dubbed the “Bread and Freedom” revolt. Just what it means is anybody’s guess. Even our own “Secretary of Statements” [John Foster Dulles] has not come out with his usual bundle of contradictions on the subject. However, the U.S. promptly seized the initiative, for once at least, and offered to make huge quantities of bread available from our own surplus stockpile. Some have sneered that this was a political trick only, but it does not seem to this reporter that such a charge is important, if it is true. Doubtless most Americans would gladly donate the offered goods to other human beings who are hungry. The cynical and brutal refusal on the part of the Kremlin’s hired boys in Poland to accept this gift is a revealing indication of the ruthlessness with which the Communists work, and it should be a warning to anybody who might be tempted to fall for the party line. How can you reconcile this refusal with party line propaganda? You cannot. The people asked for bread, but their government gave them nothing but stones.

 

In Atlantic City, New Jersey, the Central Conference of American Rabbis has called for a summit conference (How those phrases do go around!) on religion among Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish groups. Purpose of the conference would be to work out a guide for clerics and laymen on the issue of segregation. At their convention, the rabbis elected Rabbis Israel Bettan, of Cincinnati, president of the Central Conference, succeeding Rabbi Barnett R. Brickner, of Cleveland.

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St. Paul, Minnesota: The Convention of the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church is considering a resolution against intermarriage between Lutherans and Roman Catholics. The resolution objects that in such a marriage, the non-Catholic must agree to rear any child born of the marriage as a Catholic. This prenuptial agreement, says the resolution, is an infringement on the Christian conscience.

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Vatican City: Pope Pius made a five-minute appearance Friday before 50,000 pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square. It was the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul. Thousands of the pilgrims had attended pontifical Mass in the basilica. The pope made his appearance at his bedroom window, four floors above the square, and blessed the assembled pilgrims. To mark the feast day, which is a national holiday in Italy, the Vatican State was bedecked with gold and white flags.

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Atlantic City, New Jersey: Abraham Shefferman of Washington, D.C. has been elected to a second two-year term as president of the National Association of Synagogue Administrators of the United Synagogue of America. Shefferman was reelected during the group’s fifth annual convention in Atlantic City.

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Omaha, Nebraska: The General Council of Congregational Christian Churches has ended its 13th Biennial Conference without acting on a racial incident involving one of its members. Instead, the council ended eight days of hot debate over the matter with a quiet prayer for guidance. The incident involved a Congregational Negro pastor who allegedly was refused a room at an American Legion post club because of his color.

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Kingston, New Jersey: Seventh Day Adventists in New Jersey are holding their annual 10-day conference at Kingston. The convention is being attended by an estimated 2,000 persons, many of them putting up in family tents. It is believed to be the largest old-fashioned camp meeting of its kind ever held in Kingston.

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New Orleans: The president of the World Methodist Conference says the Methodist and Protestant Episcopal churches are taking definitive steps toward a merger. Bishop Ivan Lee Holt, says such a merger would be a stride toward the beginning of the United Protestant Church of America.

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Out in Salt Lake City, Utah, a controversy has been brewing now for some two months that is of definite religious significance. On May 31, The Salt Lake Tribune announced a proposal to give public school credit for sectarian education. In other words, children in the schools would be released during school hours to attend classes in religion, and for such attendance would be granted credit toward graduation. Arguments of both protagonists and antagonists have been flying somewhat thick and fast. The former insists that no doctrine is taught, since, as they state it, the King James Bible is the text used: that this is the only true Bible. To which antagonists point out that some of the most important manuscript finds have been since the appearance of the King James Bible in 1611, and they go on to insist that, anyway, this is sectarian teaching. They say further that even if teaching on released time is confined to the Old and New Testaments that teaching cannot help but be sectarian, since passages are in dispute regarding the nature of Jesus, the virgin birth, the resurrection of the dead, and so on. The president of the local school board insists that under the circumstances, no constitutional issue is at stake in the matter.

As a matter of historical statement, it might be pointed out here that the makers of our Bill of Rights intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state. The federal amendment as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court has preempted the field of separation of church and state and no legislative or administrative unit can legally change it. The First Amendment reads, in part: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” It is apparent that this amendment would have to be repealed to make public school credits for sectarian education legal.

In the case of Illinois, McCollum v. Board of Education, in 1948, the heart of the U.S. Supreme Court decision was as follows: “The state also affords sectarian groups an invaluable aid in that it helps to provide pupils for their religious classes through the use of the state’s compulsory public school machinery. This is not separation of church and state.” Four years later, in the New York case, Justice Black wrote as follows on the matter of released time for religious classes, “In the New York program, as in that of Illinois, the school authorities released some of the children on the condition that they attend the religious classes, get reports on whether they attend, and hold other children in the school building until the religious hour is over … the state thus makes religious sects beneficiaries of its power to compel children to attend secular schools. And use of such coercive power by the state to help or hinder some religious sects or to prefer all religious sects over non-believers or vice versa is just what the First Amendment forbids.”

Well, there is the court’s decision. That would appear to have settled the matter, but zealots, sincere or otherwise, keep on trying to secure their own special advantage regardless of court decree.

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It is somewhat refreshing, to this reporter at least, to turn from dealing with such a subject as just treated to another that indicates that we as a people are becoming more tolerant of religions different from our own. The American Institute of Public Opinion has recently released the results of a poll taken and has compared these results with one made 16 years ago, in 1940. In that year the Institute found a majority of 62 percent of the voters questioned voiced no objection to voting for a generally well-qualified nominee of their party for president if he were a Roman Catholic. Today, the number who would have no objection to such religious affiliation has jumped to 73 percent, or virtually three out of four voters.

It is a well known fact of history that a great American, Alfred E. Smith of New York, was defeated for president in 1928 partly because of his Catholic faith, and many of us who believe in both political and religious liberalism have continued to resent this fact, regardless of which political side we were on. Since that time, many students of American politics have concluded that a Catholic could not be elected president. This question may be of some pertinence, even this year, for Ohio’s favorite son presidential candidate, Governor Frank J. Lausche, is a Catholic. There is also some speculation that the Democratic Convention this year might conceivably turn to either Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts or Mayor Robert Wagner of New York City, both of whom are Catholics, for the party’s vice presidential nominee.

In the institute’s recent poll, it is interesting to note the effect of education upon the results obtained: 79 percent of those with a college education would pay no attention to religious beliefs; 77 percent with high school training would not; while only 63 percent of those having only a grade school education would vote for a Catholic of their party.

Age was reported to be a factor also. Of those in the 21-29 years age group, 83 percent would disregard religious membership; those from 30-49 said that 79 percent would disregard it; while those 50 years of age and older showed only 62 percent.

Of interest too is the showing of the various regions. The East was the most liberal with 81 percent having no objection to a Catholic candidate; the far West was next with 75 percent; the Midwest came next with 74 percent; while the South was last with only 59 percent.

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In numerous ways and areas we seem within very recent years to be getting back to the American principle of fair play and due process, in others the progress is not so apparent. What brought this observation on was an item that came to my desk this week from a federal circuit court decision way back in 1887, which reads as follows, “A general, roving, offensive, inquisitorial, compulsory investigation, conducted by a commission without any allegations, upon no fixed principles; and governed by no rules of law or evidence, and no restrictions except its own will or caprice, is unknown to our Constitution and laws; and such an inquisition would be destructive to the rights of the citizen and an intolerable tyranny. Sen. Eastland and Rep. Walter, please note.

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During recent months, considerable conversation, even controversy, has been aroused over the nature and meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Writing in the April issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Duncan Howlett, Unitarian minister of the First Church of Boston, writes of these scrolls, “The desire to know what the scrolls contain and what these writings mean rises, I believe, from a deep-seated yearning on the part of people everywhere to learn more about the enigmatic figure known to men as Jesus Christ, a figure who is the center of the religion of most Americans and perhaps half the population of the earth. Most men know what is to be found in the Bible. But what we know is not enough. We are not satisfied with a Christ of faith. We want to know everything we can about the Jesus of history. It is … Christ who lived and taught in Galilee about whom we want to know, and about whom we can never know enough to be satisfied.”

Mr. Howlett goes on, “The finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls will increase our knowledge of Christian origins. On this all are agreed. And in the end, we find that the discovery does not affect our theology at all. But the discovery has also served to remind man once again that he cannot successfully divorce his theology from the world of fact.”

What the Rev. Howlett says bespeaks not only a universal wish to believe but also a desire to be able to find a factual basis for that belief.

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Sociologist Carson McGuire of the University of Texas, speaking at the Southern Regional Conference on Human Relations Education at the University of Oklahoma asserts that school children in this country are, as he puts it, much more religious than their parents. He draws this conclusion from the fact that among the children, something like 85 percent of them have some sort of religious affiliation, while only 59.9 percent of adults in this country claim church membership.

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At its recent convention in Minneapolis, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, with a membership at approximately 1 million voted to join the World Council of Churches, thus removing about the only barrier to merger with two other Lutheran bodies, namely, the American Lutheran Church and the United Evangelical Lutheran Church. The resulting new denomination will be called the American Lutheran Church and will come into existence, probably in 1960. Combined membership will be nearly 2 million, and will make it the third largest branch of that denomination in the United States.

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A final item comes from the cartoon “The Country Parson,” but it seems good enough to share with you. It reads as follows. “You have to be practical. It is hard to interest a man in being saved in the next world while doing nothing to relieve his suffering in the present one.”

 

New York: One-hundred-forty young Americans from 36 states are foregoing their summer vacation to work on goodwill projects overseas. Under sponsorship of the National Council of Churches, they will sail from New York and Montreal next month to do manual work in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. They’ll spend five weeks digging ditches, painting houses, and laying bricks in 30 Protestant church-sponsored work camps in 22 countries. The Americans are part of about 1,200 young people from 40 countries who will take part in the fix-up program.

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Washington: A prominent scholar of the Bible says the famed Dead Sea Scrolls contain nothing that will require any revision of orthodox Christian doctrine. Dr. J. Carter Swain says the famous scrolls are not nearly so revolutionary as some writers have pictured them. Dr. Swain is executive director of the English Bible department of the National Council of Churches.

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La Porte, Indiana: A British church leader says Billy Graham has had a good, but passing, influence on people during his visit to England. The Rev. Claude F. Freeland, secretary of the General Conference of the New Church in England says Graham did a world of good in making people stop and think. “But,” he adds, “I’m afraid they’ve stopped thinking again.”

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Washington: The House of Representatives has voted to let the major airlines carry clergymen at reduced fares. The House measure amends one already passed by the Senate in that it would confine reduced fares privilege to those airlines not drawing federal subsidies. In general these are the major airlines. Trains and interstate buses already can give clergymen cut-rate travel. A House and Senate conference committee must now act on the two measures to bring them into harmony.

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Knoxville, Tennessee: A prominent Presbyterian churchman says rural churches are declining in number at the rate of 1,000 a year because they are not doing the job they’re supposed to do. Dr. James M. Carr, secretary of the Town and Country Department of his church says in many areas, so-called sect churches which deviate from general religious tradition are rising because the older established denominations fail to meet the needs of the people.

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Chicago: A Negro minister has been appointed to a pastorate by the Rock River Conference Methodist Church, for the first time in history. He is the Rev. Charles E. Frost, who will become pastor of the Church of the Redeemer in Chicago on July 1.

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Vatican City: Pope Pius has elevated three American clergymen to new duties. Monsignor Philip Hannan, chancellor of the Curia in Washington, has been appointed auxiliary to Monsignor Patrick O’Boyle, archbishop of Washington. Monsignor James Byrne, bishop of Boise, Idaho, has been named to the suffrage of Portland, Oregon, and Monsignor William O’Brady, bishop of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has been appointed coadjutor with right of succession to Monsignor John Gregory Murray, archbishop of St. Paul, Minnesota.

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Washington: Congress has been asked to make St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Philadelphia a national shrine to religious liberty. The church was built in 1733 and the following year the colony’s government allowed it to hold service. If it becomes a shrine, it would become part of Independence Park, which includes Independence Hall.

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St. Paul, Minnesota: Doctrinal differences have blocked a proposed merger between three of the nation’s largest Lutheran denominations. The Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church has decided against joining with the United Lutheran Church in America and the Augustana Lutheran Church. However, in Minneapolis, the Evangelical Lutheran Church Conference urged its lawmakers to unite with any or all three other Lutheran groups. This branch has been negotiating since 1949 toward union with the American Lutheran Church, the United Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the Lutheran Free Church. The United Evangelical Lutheran Church has voted in favor of the merger at its conference in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

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At the University of Tennessee this past week there has been in session a summer school for town and country ministers. During the course of one of its sessions, Dr. A.E. Wilson, rural sociologist at the University of Wisconsin, emphasized that no phase of our life has been more affected by science than has agriculture. He went on to point out something that most of us knew already, however: that fewer and fewer people are needed on the land to produce the necessary food for our people. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that rural churches are declining in number, as I indicated a moment ago Dr. Carr had lamented about. Another speaker at the conference, U.T.’s farm management specialist, told the ministers that the church and improved farming programs go hand in hand, citing an instance of where one farmer had built up the fertility of his small hilly farm to support nearly twice as many dairy cows as formerly. “The farmer,” says Mr. Gambrill, “and his family are active church members, and often have daily worship at home.”

At this same conference, a poll of ministerial preference as to rural or urban churches produced an overwhelming majority in favor of the rural. However, the source from which my information was taken does not indicate whether it was a cross section of the entire conference, or merely a questioning of persons who are now rural pastors. The question put to them was: “Given your choice, would you serve a city or a rural church?” The [rural] church was their unanimous choice. Several of those asked had at one time or another held city charges. The Rev. Robert H. Bates, who has the Pleasant Mountain and McCain’s group of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Maury County, put it this way: “I feel at home with rural people. I feel I can do my best work among them. I also feel that a rural church offers more of a challenge than the average city church.”

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One wonders sometimes as he reads the news just what are the values of us Americans. We do a lot of talk about people being important, saying that our human resources are our greatest assets. With all of which this reporter can well agree. However, we pass, or have on the threshold for passing, a highway bill that plans on spending nearly $33 billion for a 41,000- mile super highway system. Now nobody seriously suggests that we do not need highways. However, this same Congress, as have many before it, has haggled over a puny federal aid to education bill. This bill is now bogged down and will not come out of committee this session. If it does, it will not get anywhere. There may be a lot of talk about it for political propaganda purposes, and Republicans and Democrats will blame each other for its not passing. The truth is that both are to blame, and have been for years. In the meantime, children will continue to go to increasingly overcrowded, inadequate, unsafe classrooms, while Mr. Eisenhower and his cohorts are worried about infringing upon the rights of the states by supporting an adequate educational program. Very apparently, to both Democrats and Republicans, highways are important; the education of the children of this nation is not. It is time for deeds, not words, as Mr. Dulles is so fond of saying about the Russians.

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Most peoples of the world subscribe to religion of some sort. In fact, religion is a universal phenomenon, occurring amongst all people, in some form or another. Most of us are likely to think immediately of our own denomination when we hear the word, but how many of us try to define just what our religion really is? Certainly, I have no comprehensive, all encompassing definition for it, but it might be well for each of us to try to put into articulate form just what it means to us. As a matter of fact, it is many things. It is yearning for more than life can give. It is an aching sense of the chasm between the what-is and the what-ought-to-be. Always we long for the full circle, completion, and fulfillment. We are not content to be going there; wherever it is, we want to be there. Thus the imagery of heaven and nirvana follow psychologically if not always logically. Are these emotionally fed feelings valid ambitions? Are they the way to progress and happiness? Apparently peoples of many religions think so, for they seem to be something of constants in a continuously varying world.

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Sometimes in this age of unreason (in some ways chaos), it is good to look at history. Today many timid souls fear freedom and try to find security in conformity – perhaps my educational colleagues would call it adjustment, though I personally detest the implication of that word.

Anyway, in the Middle Ages, the church was a state – really a super-state. To dissent from its dogmas was to revolt from the state and to threaten the vested interests of same. The heretic was the anarchist, the Red of his day. His dissent from majority opinion was so monstrously a wicked thing the motions of all decent people of the time were aroused to destroy him.

Yet, incredible as it seems, when this monopoly of the church was broken, both church and state survived, and the church survived as a purified and more respected institution. Today no one is an outlaw because of his religious beliefs or lack of them. There is security in religious freedom.

Today, however, the innovator in political, economic, or other social affairs, occupies much the same position as the heretic of the 13th century. As orthodox Christian belief was the test of good citizenship then, so an orthodox support of the present order is the test of good citizenship today. Again it is the vested interests of a few that are threatened. Whether the timid soul likes it or not, another reformation is on the way, after which, perhaps, no one will be an outlaw because of his social ideas or lack of them. There is security in this kind of freedom too, as well as in the freedom of religion.

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On a future broadcast, I propose to deal in some detail with the citizen’s responsibility to vote. However, today I should like to pass along a very few items resulting from a study just completed by the American Heritage Foundation.

Voting is, of course, a responsibility of every citizen, but it is especially one for the person who subscribes to religious faith, for government is the … institution that regulates many aspects of our living, including certain ones of religion. And I am sure that all of us can remember who the candidate in 1952 was that termed the campaign a “great moral crusade.” Anyway, the American Heritage Foundation found that in 1952 only 63 percent of the adults in the U.S. voted. Even this was an improvement over 1944 when only 53 percent went to the polls. Comparing our own record with that of other countries, we find that in Belgium 90 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots; in England the figure reaches around 83 percent.

The Foundation found also that education was a factor, for 90 percent of college-educated persons voted, and 88 percent of those in professions or management positions. City people voted in a greater percentage than did rural folks; and it is not surprising that socioeconomic status was a factor, with the more well-to-do voting in greater number than poor people. Low-income groups voted only 53 percent in 1952, that is, those with incomes of $2,000 a year or less. Understandably enough, Negroes had the lowest voting record. I say understandably enough considering poll taxes in many states, intimidation, and other discriminatory practices. The voting record of women was decidedly below that of men. The former cast only 59 percent of their potential 53 million votes. Some of the reasons given by women for not voting were: “I can’t make up my mind,” “One vote doesn’t count,” “Politics are a bore,” “I don’t understand how government works.” (Parenthetically, it might be asked here, does any one of us?)

One of the startling finds of the Foundation was the very low voting record of young people between the ages of 21 and 29. Those in this age category cast only 50 percent of their potential 20 million votes.

One encouraging thing is that not only the Foundation, but a great many other organizations are starting early this year to arouse people to a realization of the importance of their votes. One hundred twenty-five national organizations are starting early this year to arouse people to a realization of the importance of their votes. One hundred twenty-five national organizations have agreed to cooperate in getting people, regardless of party, to register and vote. The advertising council is cooperating, as well as magazines, radio, television stations, movies, and various other agencies. It is important that you register and vote, for each and every one of us has a responsibility to express his point of view on the most important business in this country – its government.

Sometimes it is very easy to become very pessimistic over the hazards of today’s living. There are the Cold War, H-bomb fall-out, possible imminent economic crisis, anticipated effects of radio-activity upon succeeding generations, and the like. These things are all too horribly real, or potentially possible. However, it may be something of an antidote for such pessimism to realize that today is also a time of miracles. During the last half century, for example, more progress has been made in the conquest of disease than in all the centuries of man’s previous existence upon this planet. At the turn of the century, it was expected as a matter of course that some 7,000 children would die every year of whooping cough alone. Last year there were only 310 deaths from this cause. Yellow fever, cholera, and smallpox have been almost completely banished, while such diseases as diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, tetanus, rickets, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and pernicious anemia have all had most of the sting taken out of them. Tuberculosis killed nearly 200 people out of every 100,000 of the population in 1900, but in 1954 the death rate was only 10.8. One could go on enumerating the areas in which amazing progress has been recorded. However, amazing as this record has been, there is no reason why still greater progress cannot be made during the next 50 years.

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And while speaking of medical progress, it may be a good place here to call attention to another item dealing with medicine that came to my attention this past week. The American Medical Association, meeting in Chicago, has passed a resolution in its house of delegates demanding a halt in government distribution of free Salk polio vaccine. The resolution sets forth that free vaccine has “been extended to include many more than the indigent group, thus constituting unnecessary government spending.”

It is easy to wonder just what value the association really sets upon human life, and how far it will go, or try to go, in extending its monopoly over medical services that can mean life or death for millions. All of us are taxpayers, and I have yet to see a protest from any taxpayer about the spending of tax funds to provide polio protection for all who wanted it. It would be a great deal easier to sympathize with the cause of the association were it not for the fact that back in the 1930s, when not even doctors were making any money, the same association recommended a plan of compulsory health insurance strangely like that proposed in California by a Republican Warren and one proposed about the same time by a Democrat in Washington by the name of Truman. Yet, it was all right with the association in 1930; it was rank socialism when proposed 10 or 12 years later. Obviously, whether government spending is socialism or not depends to a great extent upon who is getting the benefit of such spending. Consistency and logic seem to have no place in such arguments.

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Every so often legislators – at least some of them – display an amazing lack of information or a complete disregard of certain constitutional passages. A few years ago it was mainly a very vocal senator form Wisconsin, more recently it has been a senator from Mississippi. The occasion for this item is based upon the hearings during the past week of a subcommittee of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the words are of one Rep. Bernard Kearney of New York. It appeared at the hearing that a president of a Long Island construction company, one Henry Wilcox, had, in 1952, gone to China to attend a so-called peace conference. He admitted in his testimony that the conference was mainly a sounding board for attacks upon the United States, and that he himself was disgusted with what took place, though he insisted that he had gone in good faith. Whereupon, simply because the witness admitted attending a communist peace conference, patriot Kearney promptly denounced Mr. Wilcox as a traitor, saying, “I’m firmly convinced that if there was ever a flagrant case of treason this is it. I suggest that the proceedings be sent to the Department of Justice.”

Now admittedly I have not had a chance to read the complete and official transcript of this hearing, but am basing these comments upon newspaper and radio reports. However, even Mr. Kearney should know that the framers of the Constitution took scrupulous care to write into that document a definition of treason, saying that it “shall consist only of levying war against the United States or of giving aid and comfort to its enemies.” And there certainly is nothing in published reports thus far to indicate that Mr. Wilcox did any of these things. Moreover, while Communist China may be our ideological enemy, we are not at war with her. It might be well for Mr. Kearney to read not only the Constitution, but also that portion of the Ten Commandments wherein it enjoins us that we “shall not bear false witness against our neighbor.” Let us hope that such irresponsible vaporings of McCarthyism dissipate in the sunlight of clear thinking and fair play. If Wilcox disobeyed a law, he should be punished. There is nothing in the record thus far to indicate he did. And, anyway, since when has it become treasonable for anyone to talk about peace with anybody? We cannot get peace with our enemies unless we talk about it with them.

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In Harrisonburg, Virginia, this week, ghosts of Calhoun flitted around the convention hall for a while where the Virginia Methodist Conference was holding its meeting. A state legislator had made an attempt to get a secession resolution through that would have taken the Virginia conference out of the national Methodist organization. Fortunately, cooler, and better-filled heads prevailed, and the conference adopted a go-slow approach toward solving the segregation problem, which was what the furor had started about in the first place. The conference unanimously adopted a committee report asserting that the issue must be faced up to in a spirit of Christian discipleship. “Let us realize,” it said, “that we cannot improve human relations by either forcing the matter or by avoiding responsibility. We can do too little too late as well as too much too soon, and God alone can cause us to see the fine distinction here.” And from this reporter as to that, the proverbial, “No comment.”

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Washington: Churches, labor unions, and merchant’s associations in many parts of the country are joining forces in an effort to curb retail stores from conducting business on Sunday. Once Sunday selling was confined largely to drug stores and delicatessens. But for a number of years the open-on-Sunday sign has been appearing at automobile agencies, appliance, hardware, and furniture stores, even supermarkets. Both Protestant and Catholic leaders consider it a greater threat to the church’s teachings than Sunday movies or baseball.

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Vatican City: Pope Pius XII is moving to his summer place at Castel Gandolfo a month ahead of schedule. Vatican sources say the pope will go to his villa 16 miles south of Rome on June 30 instead of July 30, as he did last year. He’s leaving early to escape the heat, which contributed to his recent case of fatigue. Other sources say the pope may call a consistory in November or December to fill eight vacancies now existing in the College of Cardinals.

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Norwalk, Connecticut: Nine missionaries of the Roman Catholic Holy Ghost Fathers are on their way to assignments in the United States, Africa, and Puerto Rico. They completed their studies at St. Mary’s Seminary in Norwalk and were assigned to their new destinations by the Very Rev. Regis C. Guthrie, of Washington.

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Moorhead, Minnesota: The Augustana Lutheran Church has decided to admit to membership in its synod churches from nationalist congregations which conduct services in their own language. Heretofore the church has had a basic rule that all member congregations must conduct their programs in English. In adopting a resolution to reverse the stand, the synod pointed out that foreign-language-speaking congregations would be expected to develop English-speaking programs at the earliest moment.

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Seattle, Washington: Five Russian Baptist leaders attended opening sessions of the eight-day American Baptist Convention at Seattle last Friday night. The convention is being attended by an estimated 10,000 persons including ministerial and lay delegates and their families. Five Russian clergymen have been visiting with American Baptist groups during the past month. They will return to Russia following the Seattle convention.

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Ocean City, New Jersey: The Northeastern Jurisdictional Conference of the Methodist Church has wound up its sessions without taking action on a request for a new episcopal area in West Virginia. The West Virginia delegation had asked for a sixth episcopal area and a new bishop, but the conference postponed action on the proposal until 1960. The conference represents 12 states from Maine to West Virginia.

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Knoxville Tennessee: The head of the United Presbyterian Church’s foreign mission charges that the regime of Premier Nasser is seriously hampering missionary work in Egypt. Dr. Don C. Black of Philadelphia says the Egyptian Revolutionary Council considers itself responsible for the total welfare of every individual, including medical care, education, and religion. He said missionaries in Egypt either must teach Islam to Moslem peoples or get out of education work.

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Knoxville, Tennessee: The United Presbyterian Church of North America has elected Dr. Robert W. Gibson as moderator of its 98th General Assembly. Gibson is president of Monmouth College, Illinois. He succeeds Dr. George A. Long, president emeritus of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and will serve as moderator of the General Assembly and as titular head of the church until June 1957.

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Shanghai, China: Early yesterday two U.S. Roman Catholic priests reported their release from a Red Chinese prison. They also asked, in a telephone interview, that their loved ones be informed they are well. The freed churchmen are the Rev. John William Clifford and the Rev. Thomas Leonard Phillips, both of San Francisco. The Chinese Reds announced their release Friday, exactly three years after they were jailed. Last November, during their imprisonment, they were convicted of espionage and counter-revolutionary activities against Red China. Fathers Clifford and Phillips were given three-year jail sentences and apparently got credit for their previous time in jail. Eleven U.S. citizens, including missionaries and businessmen, still are in Communist Chinese prisons.

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The largest Roman Catholic child-caring home in the U.S. is increasing its facilities. This coming week a new quarter-million dollar cottage for high school girls and a health and recreation wing will be dedicated by the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin, at Mount Loretto, Staten Island, New York. The 80-year-old mission is one of the 36 child-caring institutions among New York Catholic charities. It shelters and educates more than 1,000 dependent and neglected boys and girls from 3 – 18 years of age. The child-caring center is gradually converting from what is described as the congregate type to the more modern cottage system of institutions. It began in Lower Manhattan in 1871 as a newsboy’s lodging. Now the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin comprises a farm, home school, with about 50 buildings and cottages, including a church, elementary schools, a trade high school, athletic fields, gymnasiums, and a half-mile beachfront.

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Evangelical churches backed by U.S. citizens have won a victory in Italy. The Italian Constitutional Court has ruled police permission is not needed to hang a sign or poster. Thus ends a three-year battle by the Evangelical Church of Christ in Rome against a police rule dating back to fascist days. Police had torn down the sign three times. A suit by the Church went through five courts until it reached Italy’s highest tribunal, the New Constitutional Court. The decision is a broad one that also permits political posters without prior police permission. Italy’s own non-Catholic churches also will benefit.

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Communist Polish newspapers have admitted anti-Semitism is still widespread in their Red-ruled country. They place the blame for the anti-Semitic trend on Stalin’s “Cult of the Individual” and on Berianism. The latter is named for the one-time Soviet police chief, who was executed by Russia’s current rulers.

The nation’s major Protestant churches and theological seminaries will make a three-year study of methods of selections and training for tomorrow’s ministers. The project, announced jointly by the National Council of Churches and the Educational Testing Service, will cost an estimated $85,000. It will be financed by funds given by the Lilly Endowment, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana.

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In Princeton, New Jersey, the Very Rev. Dr. James A. Pike, dean of the Cathedral the Divine, in New York, has called for a hundredfold increase in the ministry. It looks as if the ministry is facing something of the same situation as the schools in regard to trained personnel, and it is difficult to see how this increase is going to come about unless conditions within the ministry are made attractive to young men and women who must invest years of their lives and a small fortune before they are ready to begin. The same goes for school teaching and teachers.

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Washington: Professional fundraisers this year will take over the traditional role of laymen in hundreds of American churches: the job of raising money. Authorities estimate that professional organizations will direct drives to raise more than $300 million among more than 2,000 churches. The efforts of the professionals will be directed chiefly in drives for new construction funds. However, some churches will also use them to raise funds for meeting regular operating budgets.

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Toledo, Ohio: Dr. Eugene Carson Blake says talks between American and visiting Russian church leaders are clearing up what he calls some very real misunderstanding between the churches of the two countries. Dr. Blake, who is president of the National Council of Churches, says there is clear progress in our mutual expression of what we agree are the Christian principles upon which peace must be based. However, some 250 members of the American Council of Churches have protested the visit of the eight Russian churchmen to the United States.

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Washington: The Senate has passed and sent to the House legislation which would allow airlines to give cut rates – or even free rides – to bona fide ministers of religion. Clergymen already receive such special advantages from railroads.

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Bogota, Colombia: The Evangelical Confederation of Columbia charges that there is a growing religious persecution against Protestant denominations throughout Columbia. The confederation says two additional churches recently have been closed and a Protestant pastor arrested. It quoted a Roman Catholic publication, Aurora, which accused Protestants of being fearful enemies of public peace, incubations of communism, assaulters of private property, and betrayers of the motherland. Well, there’s not much else they could accuse them of. We Protestants must be a pretty bad sort of citizen.

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Cairo, Egypt: Egypt has expelled two British missionaries for teaching the Christian faith to Moslem children. The expulsion orders were issued for the head mistress of a school for girls in Suez, and the headmaster of a school for boys at Ismalia. Egyptian state law forbids teaching Christianity to Moslem children.

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The so-called Defense Department, with the approval of the State Department, recently sent, almost secretly, arms to Saudi Arabia out of the obscure port of Sunny Point, North Carolina. It is difficult to think of more immoral behavior than supplying the means of killing human beings to any nation, Saudi Arabia or any other. Not many years ago it was held by apologists for the government that any laws prohibiting private manufacturers from shipping munitions of war abroad would be unconstitutional. Now our government itself, with the consent of Congress, is doing it. Thirty years ago the conscience of America would have welled up in protest that may well have swept those doing this out of office. Granted that we are living in a different world from that of 1926, it is amazing the emphasis that we can place on devising and distributing instruments of destruction, and how little effort, time, and money is spent in devising machinery which, once in operation, would make destruction less likely.

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Certainly a nation has a right to take measures to preserve itself. But that society is best that can induce a common idealism among its members, that provides for diversity without losing its unity, and that achieves a high degree of solidarity while preserving large areas of individual freedom.

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Not infrequently, considerable skepticism – not to say at times cynicism – is heard voiced regarding the practice of dedicating children, infants. Of course some denominations do not practice this, and that is all right if they choose it that way. However, it is just as well not to be superstitious about being superstitious. It is hardly likely that any informed person looks upon dedication of infants as casting out devils, or erasing original sin. Dedication is hardly a sacrament, for no metaphysical change is claimed. It has nothing to do with the state of the dead. And it is not even to be confused with “baptism unto salvation.” The new citizen, so dedicated, is presented formally to the church, identified as to the name and family, and placed in the religious care of the church and its parents. He is dedicated in the name of goodness, beauty, and truth to the service of man. And is there anything wrong with this?

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The Rev. Theodore Abell, of Sacramento, California, has written in an editorial some wisdom that seems well worth sharing with you. He says as follows:

There are none so blind as those who will not see. There are none so weak as those who will not walk. There are none so ignorant as those who will not think. ‘Ignorance is bliss’ is one of the most damming of all myths.

In ignorance men of ancient times allowed themselves to be hitched like horses and whipped to labor until they dropped from exhaustion; in ignorance, men and women threw their first born into the sacrificial fires to placate a supposedly angry God; in ignorance men opine they can establish a just social order by force of arms; in ignorance men are led to believe that mankind is altogether evil and corrupt and can of itself do no good; in ignorance people are led to believe that all the troubles of the world today came about because men dared think about the origin and nature of the universe as a result gave up their allegiance to medieval doctrines and institutions. Ignorance is never blissful; it is slavery.

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And, after such an editorial excoriating ignorance, what about our ignorance of existing circumstances regarding our present rate of growth, diminishing resources, and volume of resources being used daily? It would appear that in this connection, science and reason are our only hope. Within half a century, it is entirely conceivable that the U.S. will be the most acutely have-not nation in the world. Our rate of population growth is a good percentage above any other country. Yet, we have so far depleted our resources that we, who account for less than seven percent of the world’s population, now consume half of the world’s raw material supply. What can we do when we are even more dependent upon foreign resources, and are also in competition with the rest of the people of the world who are now industrializing at a rapid rate?

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In a recent article in the Woman’s Home Companion, historian Arnold Toynbee, in discussing the power of American women, goes on to discuss something quite different in a way. After pointing out that women generally approach politics and other public subjects with more of an emotional tinge than men, he goes on to say that we are entering a new age in which the historic world religions will be much more in intimate contact with another than ever before. Each will have to take account of the other’s principles and points of view. It is hoped, he says, that the women of the world will not set their faces against this necessary task of stocktaking. They would be doing a disservice to the human race if they were to try to perpetuate the old and outworn hostilities that the respective followers of the different world religions felt toward one another in the past, and with such terrible consequences.

Here is a real challenge, not only to women, but to men also. Here in our own country we have many hundreds of denominations and cults. After much quarreling as to the rightness of each, we have settled down to what looks to be something of a long truce. Methodist and Baptist, Catholic and Jew, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Unitarians – all build churches in the same town. But while we insist that we believe each person should have the right to worship the way he chooses, Mr. Toynbee would go beyond the churches that have either as the center of their teaching the Hebraic-Christian ethic or are closely related to it, and points out that we should show the same measure of tolerance for other world religions.

Few sincere and objective people could honestly disagree with this. To far too many of us, to mention the word “religion” is to bring to our mind our particular denomination, not realizing that this denomination is only a very small portion of religions generally throughout the world, for religion is a universal phenomenon among all people. Religious zeal in the future must be tempered with such tolerance as Dr. Toynbee advises, or we may wreck rather than save the world. Without such tolerance, it is doubtful if there can ever be the much-talked-about “Peace on Earth.”

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Alarm is expressed in Holston Methodist Conference circles over a membership decrease reported at minus 3,235 members during the closing conference year. This alarm was expressed Friday by Bishop Roy H. Short, presiding bishop of the conference, now meeting in Chattanooga. Quoting the bishop’s concern about it, we find these views: “It is inexcusable for ministers to let church records fall into such shape that members go away and are lost. We are the shepherds of men’s souls and it is our duty to follow the member if he leaves our church, into another Methodist church or a church of some faith.”

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Not long ago when Queen Elizabeth passed out birthday honors, she awarded the Order of the British Empire to a flying angel. This was to the Rev. Cyril Brown, 52, a minister who sports no wings and is reported to look more like a gray-haired Pat O’Brien than a member of the heavenly host. But the organization he heads is better known in the seaports and ship lanes of the world by its nickname, the Flying Angels, than by its official title, “Missions to Seamen.” The idea for such an organization began all of 120 years ago when a young vacationing Anglican minister stood looking over the Bristol Channel. His little boy, pointing to two lonely islands, asked, “How can those people go to church?” Next day the man, John Ashley, put off in a boat to find out. He found that the inhabitants of these islands – fisherman, lighthouse keepers, farmers, and such – had no church at all. So Ashley began visiting them from time to time. Sometimes he called on ships that were anchored in the channel and held services on them. For the next 13 years he built up a unique service, and in 1856, upon Ashley’s retirement, the British government gave it official recognition and named it “Mission to Seamen,” which is now one of the 12 main missionary societies of the Church of England, having 53 chaplains and 25 laymen to operate in some 80 seaports around the world. A short time ago, on a ship moored in the Thames, Missions to Seamen held its annual meeting and observed its centenary. The Rev. Cyril Brown added up last year’s achievements of the organization, which amounted to visits 57,000 ships, 5,300 hospital calls, some 12,500 entertainment programs, and nearly 13,500 religious services. Which is a record of which any organization may well be proud.

 

First, a potpourri of the religious news of the week as reported by AP and UP:

New York: Thousands of Americans vacationing in the national parks this year will have the opportunity to worship out-of-doors. The National Council of Churches says more than 100 specially trained seminary and college students will establish summertime parishes in the scenic wonderlands of 24 national parks throughout the country. Among them are Yellowstone, Glacier, and Mt. McKinley. They are located in 11 states and Alaska. The preachers and religious workers will include both men and women, and will represent 21 denominations.

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Washington: Leading Protestant clergymen say the New Revised Standard Edition of the Bible is stimulating more interest in Bible reading. The new Bible is easier to read, and easier to understand. Bible sales this year are expected to hit an all-time record of more than 6 million copies. Catholic scholars are now at work to complete a modern translation of the scriptures, and Jewish scholars are bringing out new editions of the ancient Hebrew scripts. The first revised edition of the Talmud in 76 years is scheduled to go to press later this year.

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Atlantic City, New Jersey: Nathan Brilliant of Cleveland, Ohio, has been elected the new president of the National Council for Jewish Education. He succeeds David Radavsky, of Newark. Brilliant is also executive director of the Bureau of Jewish Education.

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Wiesbaden, Germany: An American official of the Protestant Church of Christ charges that a crowd of Catholics led by two priests broke up an evangelist meeting held by a former Catholic clergyman. R. J. Smith, of Terrell, Texas, says the two priests and others continually heckled and interrupted the speaker. The Church of Christ has been in a running fight with Catholics in Italy. Recently it won a court order permitting it to hold and advertise religious services in Italy.

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Philadelphia: Delegates to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. predict that merger with the United Presbyterian Church of North America will be completed in another year. The proposed merger was approved by the assembly and now must be accepted by the individual Presbyteries of both churches and the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church of North America when it meets at Knoxville, Tennessee, later this month. Approval by the Knoxville assembly is regarded as certain.

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New York: The National Council of Churches is sending literacy experts into Tanganyika, East Africa, this summer to conduct a three-month campaign of literacy and literature. Dr. Floyd Shacklock, executive director of the program, says the team will concentrate on developing and perpetuating native leadership in such training programs.

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Hartford, Connecticut: A conference of Methodist ministers has been asked to consider refusing marriages to couples who permit liquor at prenuptial social events and at wedding receptions. The request was made by William H. Veale, of New Haven, to the New York East Methodist Conference. Veale says such a stand was taken recently by a Methodist minister in a Southern city.

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New York: Avery Dulles, the youngest son of “Secretary of Statements” [John Foster Dulles], who is 37, is among 36 seminarians, members of the Roman Catholic Society, who will be ordained by Francis Cardinal Spellman at Fordham University. His father is an elder of the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City. Avery became a Roman Catholic in 1940 while attending Harvard University.

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Kansas City, Missouri: The Southern Baptist Convention has approved a record budget of $11 million for 1957. Almost $4 million of the total will go to the church’s foreign mission, and a little over $1 million to its home mission board.

At the same meeting, the convention revived a religious tradition this week. At the meeting, Baptists brought into use again the old-fashioned amen chorus during an address by Billy Graham. Graham told the 13,000 churchmen that in his meetings around the world he found no difference in the heart of men. As for segregation, he asserted the issue in the South must be faced. “It will take courage, prayer, humility, love, and above all, patience,” he said. However, Graham agreed with the request of the Convention president, the Rev. Dr. Casper Warren of Charlotte, North Carolina, that the racial question not be reopened at this meeting.

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Montreat, North Carolina: On the other hand, the 96th session of the Southern Presbyterian Church has been told that a solution must be found for social and racial problems. The retiring moderator, Dr. J. McDowell Richards of Atlanta, also stated it must be found in a spirit of love. The Southern Presbyterians are to consider again this year a union with the Northern and the United Presbyterians. They rejected it in 1955.

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A newly ordained minister is making ready to take over the pastoral duties of the United Lutheran Church of the Transfiguration in New York City. The Rev. Robert Neilssen is white. His congregation is all Negro. The former pastor, the Rev. Paul West, a Negro, is in poor health.

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Vatican City: Pope Pius XII held a big general audience in St. Peter’s yesterday. The assembly on the anniversary of his namesake attests to his quick recovery from temporary fatigue three days ago. Earlier this week, the pope’s doctors had urged him to go to his summer residence in the hills south of Rome.

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Roman Catholic authorities in Austria say they have heard Hungary has rearrested and imprisoned Josef Cardinal Mindszenty. The reason given is the prelate’s refusal to sign a pledge of loyalty to the Hungarian communist regime. Since last July he has been out on probation from a life imprisonment sentence.

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The National Conference of Jewish Communicable Service has heard two recent Supreme Court decisions are being subjected to nationwide attack, condemnation, and evasion. The American Jewish Congress’ associate general counsel, Leo Pfeffer, told the St. Louis meeting that dissatisfaction with the school desegregation case has been limited exclusively to the South. But, he adds, opposition is widespread to the decision prohibiting teaching of religion in the public schools. The Jewish social workers also have been told that all Jewish groups oppose introducing religion or sectarian practice in the public schools. Jules Cohen, the coordinating officer for the National Community Relations Advisory Council, explains the organizations think separation of church and state is the best safeguard of all religious liberty.

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And again on the matter of segregation, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. this week, meeting in Philadelphia, adopted a report calling for total elimination of racial segregation in this country. The report was directed toward employers, homeowners, and politicians. It said, rather pointedly and succinctly, “Nowhere in this land can Negroes, and to a lesser extent other minority persons, escape the indignity of segregation or discrimination in one form or another.” It recommended specifically that:

1. Christians preparing to sell their homes keep uppermost in their minds the need of minority families for equal housing opportunities, and make their homes available to all qualified purchasers regardless of race;

2. Employers take all necessary steps to break the pattern of discrimination in employment;

3. Politicians “work for the removal of the poll tax and other restrictions which prevent many American citizens from exercising their legal rights.”

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Metropolitan Nikolai, Russian prelate, arrived in this country yesterday heading a delegation of Soviet church leaders who will spend some 11 days in this country, returning a visit that a nine-member delegation of the National Council of Churches made to Russian in March. Not only has Nikolai been active in religious matters, he has taken part also in Russian politics. In October 1950, for example, he declared that the church was solidly behind the capitalist warmongers, and went on to denounce what he called American aggression in North Korea. And as late as May 1952, he spearheaded a meeting of representatives of most of the churches in the Soviet Union, called primarily to denounce the United States. At this meeting he dwelt upon what he called an evil American germ warfare in Korea and went on to picture the United Nations as an instrument of war. His demeanor on this visit doubtless will be one of let’s-be-friends attitude, mirroring something of the present expression of the boys in the Kremlin. However, he may find it a little more difficult than he thinks if the persons whom he meets know something of his background. And it is not unlikely that he will be reminded of some of the things he said earlier but – of course consistency has never been the forté of communists, whether of the Russian or American brand.

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As reported some months ago here, the National Council of Churches has appointed an “ethics kit,” or a “do it yourself” approach to the problem of making religion practical in our modern complicated world. The executive director of this move, the Rev. Cameron F. Hall, says, “Many feel that Christianity is a little too impractical to apply seriously in a highly competitive modern world. We hope this new program will help people see how Christian ethics can become a living, vital force to help solve the different decisions we all face Monday through Saturday.” (Well, it may not be in the best ethical tradition to say, “I told you so,” but a question was raised a few weeks ago here as to whether the great problem of Christianity, and religion of all kinds, for that matter, is not one of ethics rather than ethology.)

But what are these kits like? Each contains five filmstrips, five long-playing records, and five discussion manuals. All the materials deal with practical ethical problems anyone is likely to run into. Pilot discussion groups are already operating in more than 20 states, and churches in 16 Protestant denominations report tremendous interest in the program.

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One of the earmarks of a teacher is his unceasing quest for truth through critical questioning of things with which he comes in contact. What brought this on was something of a chance remark of a teacher whom I know who, according to the implications of what he said, finds nothing in this world that needs improvement; his not to reason why under any circumstances. Well, there are at least two views of the role of the teacher. One is to go along on his own little groove (I almost said “rut”) seeking nothing but those things that pertain directly to his own little field; taking the position that his only proper role is to keep class during stipulated hours, and see no evil, speak no evil, and see no evil – or anything else, for that matter, aside from his own particular specialty.

The other view is that the teacher is an active citizen in his school community, interested in and trying to find out more about every facet of the school society of which he is a part, and, expressing his views wherever appropriate, for whatever they are worth on any subject that bears directly or indirectly to perceive and understand just what effect his own instructional activities have upon the total educational pattern, wherein what he does fits into, or fails to fit into, the summary picture.

Any person functioning in this latter conceived role, then, refuses to be shackled by tradition, to mouth phrases that mean little if anything simply because they are handed down by superiors or handed up by inferiors. He refuses to be smug or complacent, or to pretend to be wise in his little own conceit, but keeps active, flexible interest in the world about him. He is probably a restless soul, doubtless many times he rushes in where both fools and angels fear to tread. But where would we be without the radical Master of Galilee who was impatient of and unwilling to conform to the Judaism of his day? Where would this nation be without its Sam Adams, its Jefferson, its Carl Schurz, its Eugene Debs, and all the other illustrious once-termed radicals who found fault with the existing order of their day for the sole purpose of making it a better order?

In New Orleans this week, on the second anniversary of the Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in the public schools, a cross was burned on the grounds of the residence of archbishop of the New Orleans Diocese. The cross was soaked with gasoline and propped against a wire fence in front of a building adjoining the archbishop’s residence. It was quickly extinguished by the fire department, and apparently police have not discovered who put it there or ignited it. Archbishop Rummel has been under fire from some laymen’s groups recently for his opposition to segregation, and for indicating that its end was in sigh in parochial schools. More recently still, he ordered the pro-segregation Association of Catholic Laymen, Inc. to disband. As reported last week, the group agreed to the order but announced it would appeal to the pope over the issue.

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For the first time in 50 years, church leaders of Russia began a visit to this country on Friday of this week, making the religious traffic between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. a two-way street. Last August, Baptist leaders from this country were guests in Russia. Included in this first group of religious representatives are five Russian Baptists. Scheduled to arrive on June 2 is a larger, nine-member group representing the Russian Orthodox Church and including high-ranking leaders of all the major bodies of religion in Russia. This second group will be returning a visit made to their country early this early this year by a delegation representing the National Council of Churches, which includes 30 church denominations with some 23 million members.

Both Russian delegations will visit churches, schools, seminaries, and other religious centers across the country. The Baptist group that arrived Friday will attend the Southern Baptist Convention in Kansas City, May 30 to June 2.

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One interesting and fruitful development of activities by churches is the effort on the part of many priests, ministers, and rabbis to aid in promoting better labor management relations. In fact many of these people are devoting full time to it. The Rev. Dr. Clair M. Cook, associate director of the National Religion and Labor Foundation asserts that activity in the field is a growing concern among Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish groups. In many places throughout industrial areas in this country, clergymen have become familiar figures at conference tables and among both employers and employees, helping iron out disputes by acting as consultants, conciliators, and arbitrators. Nearly all the principal denominations in this country have some sort of social relations committees that give special attention to labor questions. Catholics alone are now operating more than 100 labor schools. The Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. has industrial relations institutes in Pittsburgh and Chicago, while three years ago the Methodist Theological Seminary in Boston set up a similar summer program to help deal with labor management problems. The Lutheran Church last year set up a church industrial relations department to conduct seminars for both ministers and labor leaders across the country.

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And along the same subject it should be observed that the blinding of Victor Riesel, labor columnist, a few days ago has evoked from a plea for a federal investigation of labor racketeering which, he says, infests labor unions. Now several things should be kept in mind regarding this tragedy. Many unionists, including this reporter, have found much in Reisel’s column over the years with which they disagreed. But that is no reason why he should not have a perfect right to say what he pleases. Moreover, doubtless there is racketeering among some unions. Indeed, it would be astonishing if there were not, considering the relative youthfulness of the labor movement, its rapid expansion during recent years, and the possible opportunities for unscrupulous men to capitalize upon the confusion inherent in such rapid growth. But none of these excuses anyone, including a union racketeer – if such were the agent who did this – of the dastardly act of poison-throwing. Men of good will and sincere intentions, both within unions and without, will condemn this for what it is: cowardly, immoral, and illegal. Perhaps there is no other field in which ministers of all faiths could better direct their efforts than toward improving labor-management relationships, for labor is here to stay and so is management, and they must learn how to get along with each other.

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A report as to how the U.S. Protestant minister spends his time comes from a study made by Samuel W. Blizzard, Jr., sociologist at Pennsylvania State University, with funds granted by the Russell Sage Foundation. The report tries to get at an understanding of the requirements of the modern ministry. Blizzard found that the average minister spends 26 percent of his time on pastoral duties; 19 percent as preacher; 12 percent as organizer; and 5 percent as teacher. He points out further, that most ministers have what he calls a “theological concept” of the church.

Most frequent theme for sermons was man’s spiritual obligation to the deity; with some 51 percent. Forty-four percent of the sermons were devoted to the value of religion to society, while 23 percent dealt with the value of religion to the individual. Thirty-six percent of the ministers felt that they needed more time for reading, study, and private devotions. Thirty-eight percent felt that the minister should have an unusually radiant personality – whatever that means. Eleven percent were bothered by conflicts. Despite their avowed desire to know all kinds of people, ministers tend to associate with leaders of the community. And more than a third of them admit that their effectiveness is impaired by a failure to maintain a fellowship with all groups.

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A topic dealt with here more than once is that of conformity versus individual thinking, and the occasion for this reference to the subject is a passage from a sociology text just off the press and which came to me yesterday. It says, “The older American vocabulary of exhortation – “work hard, lead, strive, stand out from the crowd, and take your stand against the whole world if need be” is being encroached upon by the new vocabulary of “fit in, adjust, don’t stick your neck out, take the other’s point of view. “How does he get along with his associates,” it says, is now a standard item on all recommendation forms. That question, the author goes on, fits perfectly the requirements of a bureaucratic social order. Opposed organizations may conflict, but membership within each organization must increasingly accept and adjust.”

If all this is true, what is happening to the historical, traditional individualism so widely praised as one of the American virtues? Is there no longer any place for the Jeffersons? The Schurzs? The Debs? One who believes in the doctrine of revolution embodied in the Declaration of Independence, in true individualism in thought, can read the above only with a feeling of nostalgia. For if those words are correct, something fine and unique has gone of out the American sense. Now this reporter has no desire to go around arousing unnecessarily the ire of those with whom he does not agree. On the other hand, he has no intention of being overtly concerned with keeping “adjustment” as his primary aim. On the contrary, he has no intention of adjusting any more than he has to do so in order to be law-abiding and respond to the common amenities of living. The path of adjustment is a monotonous, dreary one that does little to encourage not only original thought, but thought of any kind. James Russell Lowell put it pretty well, when he said:

They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three. (“Stanzas on Freedom”)

And Lincoln put it even more forcefully in his first inaugural when he said, “If by mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a normal point of view, justify revolution – certainly would if such a right were a vital one.”

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Vatican City: Pope Pius has given qualified approval to the grafting of corneas from dead bodies to the eyes of blind persons. The pope said the Roman Catholic Church has no moral or religious objection to cornea grafting as such. But he warned that operations should be performed only if the cornea is willed by dead persons with the consent of relatives, and that donating a cornea should not be presented as an obligation.

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And from Los Angeles the president of the International Council of Christian Churches has charged that clergymen from Moscow are agents of the secret police. Dr. Carl McIntire, of Collingswood, New Jersey, says the Reds are using the church simply as a tool in the Cold War. Dr. McIntire and other church officials came to Los Angeles to conduct a series of rallies to protest against the visits of Russian clergymen. Other such rallies are scheduled for New York and Chicago.

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From Newton, Massachusetts comes the item that a Negro minister next month will become the first clergyman of his race to have two white congregations. The Rev. Joseph Washington, son of a retired Baptist minister, has accepted a call to Newfield, Maine. There, beginning June 3, he will serve as minister of the Methodist Church of Newfield and the Congregational Church of West Newfield. The Negro clergyman is not being sent there; he was called by the congregations themselves after they had heard of his work during the past two years as associate minister of a Baptist church in Woburn, Massachusetts.

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In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a defrocked Lutheran minister has lost his first fight for reinstatement. A five-man committee of the Northwest Synod of the United Lutheran Church rejected reinstatement of the Rev. Victor K. Wrigley, pastor of a church at Brookfield, Wisconsin. He had been convicted of heresy charges last November and was defrocked in January. But his congregation has refused to dismiss him. Church officials say the Rev. Wrigley will have another chance to appear before the committee next January.

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Some Americans in the Near East have a unique Sunday school class. They travel to the scenes of their lessons. The Americans in Amman, Jordan, can do it because they work and live not far away by automobile from many biblical localities. So far, the 25 – 30 in the class have visited scores of places, such as Jericho, Elisha’s well, Joshua’s tomb, Hebron, Mt. Nebo, and the site of Christ’s baptism. They also have seen the Mount of Temptation, where Satan offered Jesus all the cities of the earth. The American Sunday schoolers have visited, too, the remote Essene monastery, where the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were recovered a few years ago. The call serves the double purpose of making the Bible more real and of giving the Americans a better understanding of Jordan. And it gives Jordanians the opportunity to know the Americans better.

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Some U.S. rabbis plan a trip to the Soviet Union soon for the purpose of renewing broken spiritual ties with the Russian Jewish community. The Americans will include Rabbi David Hollander of New York, president of the Rabbinical Council of America; Rabbi Samuel Adelman of Newport News, Virginia; Gilbert Klaperman, of Lawrence, New York; and Emanuel Rackman and Herschel Schacter, both of New York City. Rabbi Hollander says the U.S. delegation will try to reestablish relations broken 30 years ago and develop means of stimulating a Jewish religious revival in Russia.

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Former President Harry Truman has told a news conference in Rome that he still favors establishing diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Vatican. He says he has always favored it. Truman has described himself as a good Baptist, but says he thinks it would help the peace of the world to have U.S. – Vatican diplomatic relations. The former chief executive is to have an audience with the pope today.

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And the Vatican on its part has praised the U.S. Fulbright educational program as a maintainer of the proper balance between the spiritual and the material. Pope Pius made the remarks this week at a special audience of 86 U.S. professors, researchers, and their families.

 

 

 

 

 

Note on the transcript: In the original transcript, there are two episodes dated “May 27, 1956,” but none dated “May 20, 1956.” The one put into the binder first was this one, so I’ve labelled it “May 20, 1956.” In addition, there appears to be at least one page missing from the end of this episode.

The pharisee gave thanks that he was not like other men. Many of us are thankful, too, for men who are not like other men, but in a different way from that which the pharisees had in mind. For everyone today who prays to be different, there are perhaps thousands who pray that they may be indistinguishable from the crowd. Progress, however, depends upon those who are deviates from the monotonous mold of conformity. Dr. Frank C. Baxter of the University of California put it in common day parlance by saying that it is the eggheads who set the pace, referring, as he hastened to emphasize, that he was talking about the socially valuable intelligent people, not the superficial intellectuals. He goes on to point out something which many of us realized all too well that America is today afraid of eggheads. And because of that fear, we are bankrupt today in leadership. Churchill dared to be different, but he is through. And yet, many of us who try to teach are painfully aware that under the present methods of mass education, we cater to the mediocre, leaving the potentially valuable human stuff to go to waste. As Dr. Baxter points out, “It is a sign that the mediocre and the unpotential should set the pace for their betters. It is wrong that the superior student with rich capabilities should be denied the chance to unfold to the limits of his powers.” Many will argue on this point, but it makes sense to this reporter.

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From one R. Carter Pittman, president of the States Rights Council of Georgia, Inc., comes this week some words of wisdom – or something – regarding the doctrine of human equality. Speaking before the Tennessee State Rights Council monthly meeting, Pittman says, “The doctrine of human equality is found neither in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, nor the Bible.” “The doctrine,” he goes on, “is found in Das Kapital, which is the bible of communism.” Now we are getting somewhere, though just where I am not sure. Mr. Pittman is an attorney of Dalton, Georgia, and he goes to insist that “The Declaration of Independence does not say that all men are created equal. It says that they were created equal. There equality ended. Creation is over when life begins.” And there is more but in the same vein. Mr. Pittman should know his Declaration of Independence more thoroughly, for Mr. Jefferson did say that all men are created equal, so this was some 70 years before Das Kapital. Furthermore, I believe it was Paul who insisted that “God hath made of one blood all nations of men.” And this was at least a few years even before Mr. Marx and his Pittman-hated writings. It is one thing to be for segregation. It is quite another to twist and distort history to substantiate your prejudice.

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A wee bit of advice that seems dangerously near to being sensible comes from the Rev. Theodore Gill, managing editor of The Christian Century who warns wives of beginning ministers that they should take a more active part in parish life. He says, “You don’t have to be ghostly to be godly … beware lest your piety get too drab and narrow.” And that could well apply not only to ministers’ wives, but also doubtless to some ministers, and, without doubt, to many laymen.

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A short but informative article on a subject about which we Protestants, and, I suspect, many Catholics, are little informed appears in the current issue of Time magazine, a publication for which this reporter has no particular fondness. However, the article deals with the Catholic press in America. It points out that the total magazine and newspaper circulation of Catholic publications reaches some 24 million readers. It varies from dailies to quarterly publications, and in content from superficial items of current happenings to profound discussions of theological questions. As measured by secular standards, the Catholic press has come a long way from being the “dreary diocesan drivel” it was once called. Many of its publications, for example the liberal Commonweal, issued by laymen, and the layman-edited Monthly Jubilee have professional polish and a telling impression among the people [to whom] they circulate.

Again, as I suspect many of us Protestants have thought otherwise, the Catholic press does not present a monolithic view of the news. Actually the news in the papers has no “official” status, i.e., emanating from church authorities as a sort of “party line” for followers to adhere to. Only such things as papal decrees, etc. can be regarded as being the official voice of the church and binding upon members. Indeed, some Catholics have expressed a feeling that journalism in their press has gone too far in promoting something of an intramural controversy, confusing not only non-Catholics but many of the faithful also. At the farthest poles of journalism in the Catholic press are The Tablet, a very conservative, even at times reactionary paper published in Brooklyn, and, a short distance away geographically but poles apart journalistically, the radical Catholic Worker, published in Manhattan.

It might do us Protestants good to read as widely in the Catholic press as we can, for all too many of us know nothing about these powerful organs influencing public opinion in this country, and only a minority of their contents deal with religion as such, but most deal with daily issues that have religious implications.

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In 11 states and Alaska this summer, vacationing Americans will have the opportunity to worship in natural settings of creation. Once more the National Council of Churches will be in operation. The services will be conducted by 110 young ministerial and college students – both men and women – who represent 23 Protestant denominations and come from 25 seminaries and 50 colleges. The young religious workers will hold campfire powwows also and songfests on weekday evenings. But that is not all. The men students will earn their keep by driving trucks and doing general maintenance for park hotels and other concessions. The girls will be waitresses and aids. The programs director, the Rev. Warren Ost, terms it the ideal preparation for the ministry. He also says it provides tourists a rare and unforgettable experience of worship. The parks in the National Council worship program are situated – in addition to Alaska – in California, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, Utah, Colorado, Texas, and Michigan.

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The moderator of the Southern Presbyterian Church sprang a surprise at the annual assembly in Philadelphia, of the Northern Presbyterian Church. The Rev. J. McDowell Richards, president of Columbia College, in Decatur, Georgia, declared the Christian church has failed to prepare the public properly for racial integration. The Rev. Mr. Richards had accepted an invitation to bring good wishes of his own branch of the church to the Philadelphia meeting. In addition, the northern Presbyterians heard him declare that in many respects these are the most difficult times for Presbyterians since the Civil War. The Southern church leader also asserted “It is with deep humility that we face the situation and confess that as Christian leaders we have not done what we should in preparing our people for this hour.” It was the Southern Presbyterians who, last year, rejected a three-way merger with their Northern communion and the United Presbyterian Church. Points of theology as well as integration were the stumbling blocks. Meanwhile, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., the Northern group, has been considering a union with the United Presbyterians. Debate is scheduled for early this coming week. One stumbling block toward this merger has been the claim that the smaller group – the United branch – would get too much prominence in the proposed new name: the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Shades of Socrates! Why not just call it “American Presbyterians”?

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Former President Harry Truman says he discussed U.S. and Vatican diplomatic relations with Pope Pius XII on the diplomatic basis, not the religious one. Truman said it is not a religious matter. The one-time chief executive now touring Italy also spoke to 300 U.S. Roman Catholic student priests at the Vatican’s North American College. He told them, “You have one of the greatest careers a man can have … teaching honor and honesty and the love of Christ.”

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The head of a Jewish men’s groups has urged diplomatic relations between Israel and the new Arab state of Morocco. President Philip Klutznick of B’nai B’rith believes it might be a first step toward Arab-Israel rapport in the Middle East.

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A new edition of the Bible has been published in Russia for the first time in 38 years. It contains the New and Old Testaments, with pictures of scenes illustrating the voyages of St. Paul to the Holy Land. There is no indication how many copies of the new Bible are being printed, where they are sold, or how much they cost.

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Moscow: The chief rabbi in Russia, Shloma Schlieffer, says the Soviet government has authorized establishment of a Jewish theological seminary for training of rabbis and cantors. He also announced that the government has authorized the opening of an official kosher butcher shop selling meat under rabbinical supervision. Rabbi Schlieffer said a kosher restaurant will be opened soon in Moscow – the first in the capital.

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New York: An American churchman who recently toured Russia says the Soviets never will abandon their goal of closing every church in Russia in spite of seeming recent relaxation on restrictions against the church. Dr. Walter Van Kirk, a Methodist minister says there has been a let up in open persecutions for religious belief. There has been no throwing of sticks and stones or desecration of altars. However, he added, the Russians believe that once the new … indoctrination possesses the minds of the present and future generations, the roots of religion will be destroyed.

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Madrid: The Catholic Church is reported increasingly concerned with social conditions in Spain. Informed sources say the church is campaigning for fair family wages and a more even distribution of wealth. The sources say the church is not going against the government, but is pressuring it to push social reforms faster.

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Vatican City: Pope Pius has received a report on persecution against the so-called “Church of Silence” in communist-ruled countries. Members of the Catholic Committee for the Church of Silence handed the pontiff a 374-page volume outlining the conditions of Catholics in Russia, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, China, Korea, Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Vietnam.

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Vienna: Communist Czechoslovakia says Catholic Archbishop Joseph Beran is neither in jail nor in custody, but has been barred from acting as archbishop of Prague and primate of Czechoslovakia. The Czech premier says Beran was expelled from his position in March of 1951. He added, “It is our right to protect the state against all infringements of law. However, this does not mean there is not religious freedom in our country.” The statement is the first official one on the archbishop since he was expelled.

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Philadelphia: David Proffitt of Maryville, Tennessee, has been elected moderator of the next General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. He succeeds Dr. Paul S. Wright who told the delegates at the opening of the 168th General Assembly that the church is more effective than atomic weapons in bringing about international peace. With this statement no sensible person will disagree. It can only bring the opposite, and those from Mr. Dulles down who talk about the weapon as an instrument of peace are either kidding themselves or trying to kid the rest of us. Either is risky business.

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Rangoon, Burma: This week has marked the 2,500th anniversary of the birth of Gautama, founder of the great Buddhist religion. More than 1,000 Buddhist monks from all parts of the world gathered in Rangoon to take part in observances at a 17-hundred-year-old temple, claimed to be the oldest religious temple in the world. Non-Buddhists, particularly Hindu visitors, far outnumbered Buddhists at the ceremonies.

 

Some weeks ago I reported on the situation in Louisiana, where the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese ordered an end to segregation in parochial schools. And where prominent Catholics in the legislature who disagreed with this order announced their intention of going ahead with legislation that would have as its objective prohibition of mixing races in such schools. This past week, in New Orleans, Emile F. Wagner, Jr., president of the Association of Catholic Laymen, organized to fight desegregation, announced that under the pressure of the threat of excommunication, his organization was, temporarily at least, ceasing its activities. However, the organization plans to send an appeal to the pope to step in and straighten matters out, for, as Wagner sees it, Catholics are “greatly alarmed at the casual way the matter of excommunication and mortal sin has been bandied about,” and, he goes on, “We greatly fear this has caused great confusion among Catholics.”

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And while on the subject of integration, it is reported that the Alabama Congress of Parents and Teachers adopted recently a resolution declaring, in part, “We will not concur in or be bound by any policies or statements of the national PTA favoring anything other than separate schools.” This resolution followed speculation that the state group might secede from the national congress. Some local PTA groups in the state had been reported considering such action in protest against of the national organization’s 1954 policy statement. Well, it would appear as if the school administrators, political demagogues, and racial bigots have pretty well under control the voting strength of local PTA groups. Of course these local groups have every right to secede from the national organization if they wish, but it would appear about as sensible as cutting off one’s head to cure a toothache. On the other hand comes the heartening news that another Southern, or border state, Oklahoma, has closed 23 more all-Negro schools and is stepping up the integration process.

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In the thinking of many people today, the frontier of religion is not so much in the field of theology as it is in ethics. Not so much an abstract rationalization of what seems to be right, but a matter of practice of what, in the light of human experience, has proved to be best. To many people, also, psychology, sociology, and the other social sciences are a threat to ethical standards and practices. To others, these fields are a challenge to men to establish a higher order of ethics than any than have heretofore existed. Are these two points of view poles apart? Not necessarily. Both protagonists desire improvement, but one would proceed on a pragmatic basis, while it seems not unfair to say that the other insists that its basis be dogmatic. I certainly have no crystal ball, but I may hazard a guess that in the long run it is the former that will win out.

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The cartoonist Herblock, of the Washington Post, and syndicated in numerous other newspapers, says of McCarthyism that “The sickness is still with us, and even if his song of hate is ended, the malady lingers on.” And, I might add, a la [Senator] Eastland, for example.

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One item from a church paper came across my desk this week that seems worth passing on. It says that some parents insist on biblical instruction for their children but are themselves too unfamiliar with the contents of the Bible to know the values it contains for education purposes, or the appropriate ages for the appropriation of these values. We have not, it goes on, yet fully appreciated the necessity (if we are to make a liberal view of religion available to our children) that leaders in the education program themselves must be persons with liberal attitudes. The teacher is still the most important equipment in the education of the child. Children do not gather grapes from thistles. The minister spends more time and patience than he can well afford in order to correct among his adult members the mistaken notions they were formerly taught in church school. Is this true? Of your minister and your church school?

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In its quadrennial conference that ended in Minneapolis this week, the Methodist Church adopted some far-reaching policies that surprised some of its own members, including this reporter. In its 13 days of sessions, among the major actions it took were:

1. Adopted procedures permitting integration of the Church’s racially segregated administrative structure. (And this was long overdue);

2. Extended full clergy rights to women, who had had only limited rights previously;

3. Allotted $1 million to establish a school for the training of diplomats and other Foreign Service personnel. As far as I know this is the first undertaking of its kind by a religious denomination. The school will be set up in Washington;

4. Decided to establish two new theological seminaries and to expand the facilities of 10 others in order to meet the problem of an under-supply of ministers;

5. Set up machinery to raise an additional $48 million to strengthen the church-related colleges during the next four years;

6. Decided to broaden its program of stimulating work of local churches in their social and religious influences in their home communities;

7. Condemned legalized liquor as a spreading menace to the welfare of Americans;

8. Gave official sanction to birth control;

9. Increased its missionary budget by some $19 million;

10. Adopted a strong resolution opposing any government laws requiring loyalty oaths from churches.

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A moment ago I referred to the matter of dogmatism. A certain denominational laymen’s group has put out a folder saying that you are not a Christian unless you believe that:

1. God made the world and man;

2. Man turned away from God and this is the original sin;

3. Jesus was not a philosopher or healer but the Son of God;

4. The Holy Ghost is not a phantom but a real source of strength and power.

Well, it is not for this reporter to say which of these is true or not, or whether all of them are. It seems pertinent however, to point out the peculiar technique employed here. It is to decide what you want to believe, say this is Christianity, and then go on to say that those who do not believe these things are not Christian. This is bigotry.

Now the truth is that Christianity did not come into an empty world. At the time of Jesus and Paul there were as many religions in the Mediterranean basin as there are today in Los Angeles, or perhaps in Johnson City. Christianity was born in controversy and has been in controversy ever since. There never has been a revelation delivered once and for all to the believers. Each of many denominations claims its religion is revelation. Christianity is a culture that includes a collection of related religions. We here in the Western world cannot escape history. In a broad cultural sense we are Christians, not Buddhists or Moslems. But if by “Christian” one means acceptance of one of the orthodoxies of the past to exclusion of consideration of all others, we are ignoring stubborn historical facts. When someone bobs up and says you are not a Christian because you do not believe exactly as he does, it might be well to pin him down to a definition.

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The call to the ministry should get an impetus form three recent graduates of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. All were varsity baseball players. One is the Rev. Thomas Foster, vicar of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Atonement in Fairlawn, New Jersey. Another is James Waring, in his second year at the Episcopal Church’s General Theological Seminary in New York City. The third is William Eastman, who is in his first year of study for the Congregational ministry at the Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Connecticut. Along with these three, the Rutgers coach has also helped promote the idea that athletes can be churchgoers and more. The coach stated that some kids are actually ashamed to attend church because they are afraid someone will accuse them of being soft. The coach goes on to describe Foster, Waring, and Eastman as perfect examples of great athletic competitors who were deeply religious.

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Kentucky’s Governor Chandler thinks his state administration has been pretty successful in reestablishing what he terms “a religious atmosphere” in Frankfort, the state capital. Those words were part of Chandler’s welcoming remarks to the 3,000 delegates to the 1956 North American Christian Convention in Louisville this past midweek. The convention is an inspirational meeting of church members from 26 states – an assembly that transacts no business. Individually, of course, they are voters. This reporter cannot help but be somewhat skeptical, perhaps even cynical, about political leaders of any party in this country who parade the idea that their administration has created a religious atmosphere in government. Government workers’ main responsibility is to do a good job in their positions, and if they pursue it with religious conviction, so much the better, but let us keep church and state separate. Many of us are getting pretty tired of public officials using religious atmosphere to give flavor to administrative policies that may or may not be wise from the standpoint of public welfare.

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The Jewish Service Organization, B’nai B’rith, has called for creation of what it terms an “experimental international group” that would act consultatively on world Jewish problems. The organization reelected President Philip Klutznick of Chicago. Three objectives were outlined for the proposed international group:

1. To act on world Jewish problems when advisable;

2. To coordinate action taken by affiliated groups;

3. To make clear its stand on what it termed “sectarian religious indoctrination in public schools.” (To which, it is somewhat superfluous to say, it is opposed, and understandably so.)

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Washington: Experts on Soviet policy say Russia’s new leaders are doing everything possible to give foreigners the idea that religious freedom exists in Russia. The experts say the Kremlin’s attitude toward religion has not actually changed – that it still follows the thinking of Lenin, who called religion “the opiate of the people.” Since the death of Stalin, they say, a small number of new Bibles have been authorized for distribution, and a few famous churches have been repaired and redecorated. But, they say, religious instruction of children and youth within the church is still banned.

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Elgin, Illinois: The Illinois Conference of Congregational Christian Churches has called on its 90,000 church members to try by prayer and deed to keep the intercontinental ballistic missile from every being used. The council adopted unanimously a resolution calling this missile the most urgent threat to the peace of the world. Well, there is nothing wrong with such resolutions, but it is difficult to see what influence this may have on nations who choose to use it. Perhaps this action falls into the “useless motions” category. There is a way to stop use of such missiles, but not by passing resolutions saying these missiles are dangerous. That we already know.

The Methodist Church has adopted what is called the fastest and longest step possible toward ending racial segregation now within the church. The quadrennial general conference of the church, meeting at Minneapolis, adopted a statement of principles against racial discrimination and segregation. It also proposed a series of amendments to the church constitution permitting the Negro conference to transfer to jurisdictions which include white conferences. The amendments must be approved by the annual conference of the church before becoming a part of the Methodist constitution.

Another important step taken was the decision to give women equal ecclesiastical standing with men. That means women may be full ministers, instead of the “lay supply pastors” they now are. The final vote was an overwhelming one, but earlier discussion and action on the removal of restrictions on women was long and sometimes tumultuous. Even some women delegates were against granting their sex full clerical rights.

But the world’s largest Protestant denomination has had to indicate it is sadly lacking in filling its pulpits. The Methodists will make major expansion in their ten theological seminaries and establish two new ones. The aim is to get closer to the 2,800 new Methodist pastors needed every year. About 900 yearly are being ordained now. In trying to meet the situation, they have given a decidedly new twist to the usual practice of sending missionaries abroad. Instead, they will bring some overseas ministers to the U.S. to help fill the need.

In still further news coming out of the conference is the announcement that church membership increased by some 10 percent in 44 foreign countries between 1951 and 1955.

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A Philadelphia churchwoman says Christians must work hard to match the zeal of the communists in the battle for men’s minds. Mrs. Frank C. Wigginton, chairman of the Baptist Foreign Missionary Society says there are more Christians than any other single religious or cultural group. But, she adds, they have not been as effective as they should in converting persons to their faith.

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A Dutch judge has asked municipal authorities in Rotterdam to take away the citizenship of Rotterdam’s new Roman Catholic bishop. The judge charges the bishop entered the service of a foreign state by becoming bishop. He says recent controversy has shown that bishops prefer the church’s canon law to Dutch civil law. Apparently that was in reference to a case in which a couple was married in a Catholic church without previous civil ceremony as required by law. A civil ceremony was impossible because the bridegroom already was married under civil law. A spokesman for the bishop, however, said that when the pope appoints a bishop he does not act as head of 220 acres constituting Vatican City, but as head of the Catholic Church. Thus, he added, a bishop does not function as a subject of the Vatican state but as a member of the church.

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Ministers in seven Denver, Colorado, churches, in a pre-arranged program to ease racial tensions, delivered sermons last Sunday against racial prejudice. There were six Protestant denominations among the seven churches. The ministers emphasized that there is no room in the Christian faith for racial prejudice.

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Washington: There is a growing tendency toward merger of churches, which reverses an historic tendency among Protestant churches to split into more numerous sects. In 1954, there were some 250 separate Protestant bodies in the United States alone. At present, according to a survey of the World Council of Churches, a total of 28 church union negotiations are in progress. Some are aimed at merging two denominations; others would bring together three or more bodies. Prospects seem to be bright for a merger of two Presbyterian groups perhaps by next year. Negotiations are also under way among three Lutheran bodies to form a New American Lutheran Church by 1960. And exploratory talks are continuing between the Methodist Church and the Protestant Episcopal Church, two of the largest denominations in the United States.

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Twelve Catholic workers have presented to Pope Pius XII a gilded bronze statue of Christ the Worker. The statue was flown to the Vatican by helicopter. It was purchased by donations from workers in four countries. Eventually, the statue will be transferred to a new church dedicated to Christ the Worker, which is scheduled to be completed in about 18 months. It is located on the outskirts of Rome.

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Leaders of the Christian and Jewish faiths have endorsed an observance set for New York this coming week. By proclamation of Governor Averell Harriman, it will be Religion in the Family Week. In other states and Canada the period will be observed as “Christian Family Week” under sponsorship of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

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Greek and Russian Orthodox churches mark Easter today. In these ancient rites, which base their date on the Julian calendar, the emergence from darkness to light is symbolized in part of the midnight ceremonies. The priest advances out of darkness and tells the congregation, “Come ye forth and receive the light.” Then the worshipers step forward and light their candles from those held by the priest.

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More than 500 leaders of Conservative Jewish Congregations in the U.S. and Canada are expected at the 27th annual convention of the National Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs beginning today. The three days of meetings at Grossinger’s [Resort], New York, will have the theme “Thou Shalt Choose Life – Ethics for Modern Living.”

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Rogation Sunday, the fifth Sunday after Easter according to the Western churches, was and will be marked by special services in many places today. It’s the day that emphasizes the intimate link between the life of the church and the cycle of seed time and harvest. Thus it has become known by a variety of names – Rural Life Sunday, 4-J Sunday, and Soil Stewardship Sunday. In some areas services are held to bless the land.

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The Frenchman Andre Maurois passes along a quotable quote to the effect that the United Nations can’t guarantee peace any more than a doctor can guarantee health. But, he asks, would that be a good reason for doing way with doctors?

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And another which this reporter cannot resist, even at the risk of censorship comes from the Chapel Hill Weekly, which says, “Vice-President Nixon has a lot of people behind him, but we cannot tell whether they are following him or chasing him.” Hence, we wonder sometimes why he is running.

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A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, last month declared that segregation is a sin and as such should not be gradually accepted. Speaking at a New York luncheon, at which he received an annual award from the League for Industrial Democracy, he went on to say that segregation is based upon the negation of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, and degrades, demeans, and demoralizes the dignity of the human personality.”

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A discouraging report from a U.S. Senate committee states that “millions of children still attend schools which are unsafe or which present learning only part time or under conditions of serious overcrowding.” In addition, more than a million children are going to school in buildings not designed originally for school use. Two children out of five have been attending school in structures which do not conform to minimum fire safety standards. Elementary teachers in cities of medium size are paid less than railroad switch tenders, automobile workers, or coal miners. Over 75,000 teachers left the occupation last year. During the next five years the number of school children will rise from 30 million to 45 million, with no means in sight to provide properly for their education. This is not happening in Russia or the Congo; it is happening in the United States, where corporate profits stand at an all-time high, where $40 billion is spent annually for armaments, and where the stock exchange creates new bonanzas and new millionaires almost every day. Many school districts are bonded to the hilt, and state governments in many cases have run out of sources of revenue to tap for school purposes. This makes it look as if our only chance to avoid default on our duty to the children of America is for the federal government to step in and put an end to the school crisis.

A bill is now pending before Congress which would provide a mere pittance of what is needed, but even that is bogged down by the so-called Powell and Lehman Amendments, amendments which, if left in, will probably kill any chances of federal legislation this session of Congress, for the Dixiecrats in the Senate will filibuster it to death. These amendments would prohibit allocation of federal funds to any school system practicing segregation. Nobody is more opposed to segregation than this reporter, as a matter of principle, and he takes the position, again as a principle, that Congress should make a declaratory stand in support of the law of the land as interpreted by the Supreme Court decisions. However, this would appear to be a case where it would be better to get funds if possible, even without the amendments; otherwise we doom both whites and colored to continue in schools otherwise inadequate and unfit. Children grow older each day, and their growth will not await a change of medieval Senate rules under which debate cannot be limited by a constitutional majority.

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What is a girl? Little girls are the nicest things than happen to people. They are born with a little bit of angel shine about them, and though it wears thin sometimes there is always enough left to lasso your heart – even when they are sitting in the mud or crying temperamental tears or parading up the street in mother’s best clothes. A little girl can be sweeter – and badder – oftener than anyone else in the world. She can jitter around, and stomp, and make funny noises that frazzle your nerves. Yet just when you open your mouth, she stands there demure with that special look in her eyes. A girl is innocence playing him the mud, beauty standing on its head, and motherhood dragging a doll by the foot.

God borrows from many creatures to make a little girl. He uses the song of a bird, the squeal of a pig, the stubbornness of a mule, the antics of a monkey, the spryness of a grasshopper, the curiosity of a cat, the speed of a gazelle, the slyness of a fox, the softness of a kitten, and to top it all off, he adds the mysterious mind of a woman.

A little girl likes new shoes, party dresses, small animals, first grade, the girl next door, make-believe, dancing lessons, ice cream, makeup, cans of water, tea parties, and one boy. She doesn’t care for visitors, boys in general, large dogs, straight chairs, or staying in the front yard. She is the loudest when you’re thinking, the prettiest when she has provoked you, the busiest at bedtime, the quietest when you want to show her off, the most flirtatious when she absolutely must not get the best of you again.

Who else can cause you more grief, joy, irritation, satisfaction, embarrassment, and genuine delight than this combination of Eve, Salome, and Florence Nightingale? She can muss up your home, your hair, your dignity – spend your money, your time, and temper – then just when your patience is ready to crack, her sunshine peeks through and you’ve lost again.

Yes, this is a never-wracking nuisance just a noisy bundle of mischief. But when your dreams tumble down and the world is a mess – when it seems you are pretty much a fool after all – she can make you a king when she climbs on your knees and whispers, “I love you best of all.”

Well, that is all Alan Beck says, but every word of it is true – this reporter knows. And to the little girl he has in mind, and who is reaching the ripe old age of ten on Wednesday of this week, her daddy wishes only to say, “Happy birthday, Susan,” for you’re the grandest girl in the world.”

 

One of the things that is very easy to forget, overlook, or evade seeing, is the fact that most religions have more similarities than they do differences, yet we are prone to emphasize those differences, and even quarrel over them. Consider the following:

Christianity says “All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets.”

Buddhism says “Hurt not others with that which pains yourself.”

Confucianism says “Do not unto others what you would not they should do unto you.”

Hebraism says “What is hurtful to yourself do not to your fellowmen. That is the whole of the Torah and the remainder is but commentary.”

Hinduism says “This issue sum of duty: do naught to others which, if done to thee, would cause thee pain.”

Islam says “No one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.”

Taoism says “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and regard your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.”

Zoroastrianism says “That nature only is good when it shall not do unto another whatever is not good for it’s own self.”

Why not think over these things as you feel an urge to consider a religion different from your own as being inferior?

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A congressman has proposed an amendment to the Constitution of the U.S. reading as follows:

“Resolved that the following article is hereby proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by conventions in three fourths of the several states: Article I, Section 1. “This nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law of Jesus Christ, savior and rule of nations, through whom we are bestowed the blessings of almighty God.”

If adopted this would mean a person could not take a loyalty oath without assenting to a credo that reads like something out of one of Billy Graham’s sermons, or one of the columns of Norman Vincent Peale. Of course, if these two are favorites of yours, you have every right to disagree with this reporter, and he respects that right.

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George Washington said, “Precedents are dangerous things. Let the reins of government then be braced and held with a steady hand and every violation of the Constitution be reprehended. If defective, let it be amended but not suffered to be trampled whilst it has an existence.” This short paragraph is recommended reading for the juvenile senator from Wisconsin, who is a Republican; for Senator Eastland, who is a Democrat; and for Rep. Francis Walter, who is of the same political complexion. What about construing the invocation of the Fifth Amendment as an admission of guilt? The framers never so intended.

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A very heartening demonstration of adherence to American principles of freedom of speech occurred this past week at Princeton University. Alger Hiss, convicted perjurer, had been invited to speak to the American Whig-Cliosophic Society. Rumors were flying during the week that some of the trustees were insisting upon canceling the invitation, but the president of the university secretly refused to interfere. Thursday night, he spoke – his first public appearance since his release from about four years of prison. There were no demonstrations; he submitted to a question and answer period; and then slipped out of a back door to avoid a waiting crowd. It is hardly likely that he changed many things about the subject matter of his speech, but how much better is it that he was permitted to go ahead without fuss. This could have made him a martyr in the minds of extremists. Freedom of speech in our First Amendment means just what it says.

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A report to Harvard University president, Nathan M. Pusey, by the preacher of Harvard University, George A. Buttrick, deals with the decline and upsweep of activity of religious activity and interest. Professor Buttrick does not believe there is a religious revival going on here in this country, revival in the older sense of the word. However, he is convinced that “There is here and elsewhere a revival of interest in religion. “That kind of revival,” he goes on, “if it should run down false trails could be a misfortune; it could lead to emotional escape” (and as an aside, it would appear that there is considerable evidence of this) “or a dubious ‘peace of mind,’ or even to the claim of divine sanction for buttressed systems of theology and entrenched prejudices within our common life. Conversely, this revival of interest could deliver us from arid … too cold rationalism into ventures of mind, a broader human concern, and a deeper reverence.”

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One of the many facets of the problem of integration of the races in the South is that of competition between colored and white workers in industry. While some labor unions have become angered by integration and have threatened to secede, union leaders see little danger of mass secession. On the contrary, industry itself has taken the lead in integration. In the steel mills of Birmingham, e.g., the Negro worker, once relegated to menial jobs, is steadily if slowly moving across the color bar into skilled jobs and non-segregated union locals. In Memphis, the International Harvester Company, since its opening eight years ago, has steadily without fanfare and without serious incident been promoting Negroes into skilled jobs. And Georgia’s biggest employer, Lockheed, has been equally successful in assigning Negro workers to skilled assembly and fabrication jobs at its Marietta bomber plant. Even in Mississippi, where the governor vowed last year to preserve integration until “Hades freezes over,” many colored workers have been integrated without incident. So, if the Negro can be given economic opportunity and educational advantages on a basis equal to his white brothers, he will have achieved the most important of his objectives, and will go a long way on his own to raise his standards of living, become a better customer, parent, and citizen.

Perhaps it is one of the lowest, but admittedly it is one of the laziest, forms of reporting to resort to quotations and slogans. The following that came across my desk this week, however, could not be resisted:

“It is hard to tell where the State Department ends and Life and Time magazines begin.”

Another: “Liberals must believe but they cannot have beliefs…. They must face the challenge of maintaining a creedless credo.”

“Many are liberals for all the liberties already acquired, but are formidable conservatives for those liberties which it is still necessary to acquire.”

Another, this time from Gandhi:

“Individual freedom alone can make a man voluntarily surrender himself completely to the service of society. If it is wrested from him he becomes an automaton and society is ruined. No society can possibly be built on a denial of individual freedom. It is contrary to the very nature of man, and just as man will not grow horns or a tail, so he will not exist as man if he has no mind of his own. In reality, even those who do not believe in the liberty of the individual believe in their own.”

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It has not been so long ago that this reporter was opposing, in as strong words as he could muster and dared used, the tactics of one Joseph P. McCarthy, who violated about every civil right in the book, as well as every known decency in conduct of public officials. Such violation is as reprehensible when committed by members of one party as another. McCarthy was a Republican; but the same performance by Democrats, perhaps in a little less-publicized form, is going on under both Senator Eastland and Rep. Francis Walter, of Pennsylvania, both Democrats. For example, at the recent contempt trial of Mrs. Goldie Watson, Philadelphia teacher, before District Judge Schweinhaut, prosecutor William Hitz, Jr., argued that the House Un-American Activities Committee could, if it chose, summon every American in the country before it and ask him if he was or ever had been a communist. Opponents of this “exposure for exposure’s sake” tactics have argued that the committee must show that their questions have relevance. For instance, in another but similar case, the judge invoked the words used by Chief Justice Warren last year when he said that the congressional power of investigation “cannot be used to inquire into private affairs unrelated to a valid legislative power.” In the case of Mrs. Watson, she earned her contempt citation for refusing to tell the House committee about the beliefs and associations of her fellow teachers, and in doing so invoked the Fifth Amendment.

Now this reporter takes it for granted that a communist cannot be desirable as a teacher in the schools in our democracy because the first commitment of such a teacher is to an honest search for truth, while to the communist, truth is secondary and any means justifies the end. However, there is a vast difference between being a member of the party and being required to give evidence before a legislative committee as to the affiliations and associations of colleagues. In this connection, you are urged to read Dr. Griswold’s able discussion of The Fifth Amendment Today, wherein are discussed the pitfalls of penetrating investigation into the beliefs and associations of individuals. While innocent enough in themselves, these can easily lead to an assumption of guilt that is not really true. Ours has been traditionally a society of belief in freedom of thinking in the fields of politics, religion, and social and economic matters. Unwarranted invasion of these beliefs by a congressional committee is not justified, whether that committee is headed by a chairman of one party or of the other. In brief, it is none of their business.

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The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina takes issue with the national Episcopal Church stand against racial segregation. The 166th annual convention of the South Carolina Diocese adopted a resolution declaring there is nothing morally wrong in a voluntary recognition of racial differences, and that voluntary alignments can be both natural and Christian. It is believed to be the first action by a diocese against the stand taken by the national Episcopal Church.

Now this reporter should like to make it very clear that nothing he has ever said has been in denigration of or in conflict with the idea of voluntary segregation. On the contrary, he believes that a lot of voluntary segregation is going to exist for a long time, regardless of what the courts do. The only position he has taken, and still takes, is that such segregation must be voluntary on the part of both races. If both races prefer to segregate themselves from each other, there is no good reason why they should not do so. However, there is no logical or legal reason why they should be required to do so unless they wish. And if one race wishes to segregate and the other does not, again, there is no legal or logical reason why there should be segregation.

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Whether the following item belongs in a program of this kind, you are the judge. It was difficult to resist including it. John Williams of San Mateo, California, was arrested for speeding on the Ohio turnpike. The patrolman ordered him to report to the Mayor’s Court in Swanton, Ohio. All the way to the court, police say, Mrs. Williams was scolding her husband for his driving. He paid a $20 fine, and left the mayor’s office to discover that wife and car were gone. She had dumped his suitcases on the sidewalk and taken off on her own. Police caught Mrs. Williams again and brought her back to Swanton, with a traffic charge against her too. But her fine was suspended on condition she let her husband back into the car. Police say she did, and they drove off, with Mrs. Williams once again telling her husband what she thought of him. Veritably there is no justice for husbands in this world.

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In Minneapolis, Minnesota, the issue of racial segregation comes before the General Conference of the Methodist Church at its quadrennial session next Wednesday. The issue is expected to provoke considerable debate.

At the same time, a new head of the Methodist Council of Bishops will take office during the week. Bishop W. Earl Ledden of Syracuse, New York, will begin work in the post when the session opens. He succeeds Bishop Claire Purcell of Birmingham, Alabama. The pre-conference meetings of the bishop’s council also has resulted in the election of Bishop W. Angie Smith of Oklahoma City as vice president. He is the 1957 president-designate. The council also selected Bishop Roy Short of Nashville, our Holston Conference bishop, as its secretary. He succeeds Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam of Washington, who has been secretary since the Northern and Southern factions of the church united in 1939.

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At Salisbury, North Carolina, the Synod of the United Lutheran Church has gone on record as opposing the involuntary practices of segregation of the races. At its convention, the North Carolina Synod adopted a resolution in support of equal privileges and unrestricted opportunity for all.

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Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania: The annual meeting of the United States Conference of the World Council of Churches has dedicated a plaque commemorating its beginning in the United States. The plaque was dedicated by Dr. Henry Smith Leiper, of New York. The World Council was organized at Amsterdam, Holland, in 1948, after a meeting by a provisional committee had originated the idea at Buck Hill Falls the previous year.

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Denver, Colorado: Sterling W. Sill, a leader of the Mormon church, says the church recommends that all members keep a year’s supply of food on hand in their homes at all times. Sill says the storage of food is in line with the Mormon principle of being self-reliant and also would provide food during catastrophe or depressions.

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Milan, Italy: An Italian magazine says other parts of the world may have to send missionaries to Europe some day. The journal says during the past 85 years the number of Catholic priests in Italy has dropped by two-thirds, while the population has doubled. Many European parishes, it says, have no priests at all. The magazine points to the acute shortage of priests in France, Spain, and Portugal, as well as Italy.

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Vatican City: Pope Pius XII has urged the world’s scientists to conquer the biblical source of leprosy. In an address before an international leprosy congress last Monday, the pontiff advocated a union of forces of science and religion to wipe out the disease which has claimed millions of victims.

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Again, Vatican City: The pope has named Monsignor Alden Bell as titular bishop of Rodopolis and auxiliary to James Francis Cardinal McIntyre, archbishop of Los Angeles. Monsignor Bell has been parish priest of Los Angeles Cathedral. He was born in Peterborough, Canada, and has served as U.S. Air Corps chaplain, and most recently has been in charge of Los Angeles archdiocesan social work.

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Kansas City, Missouri: The Lutheran Baptist Convention is standing on its invitation to Mayor H. Roe Bartle, of Kansas City to address the convention. Some Baptists had demanded withdrawal of the invitation to Mayor Bartle on the ground that he is in the liquor business. Actually, according to the mayor, he is stockholder in a chain of stores which deal in liquor but are primarily food distributors. Mayor Bartle has offered to withdraw as a speaker, but the program committee chairman promptly reiterated the invitation.

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Plans for an outdoor Roman Catholic cathedral have been announced by the Barnabite Fathers Guild of Lewiston, New York. The cathedral will appear from the air to be a giant cross surrounded by cypress trees. Glass stone aisles will lead to three altars, the central one of which will be topped by a granite canopy. It will be built on a 15-acre sited at Lewiston, New York, at a cost of half a million dollars.

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Washington: FBI director J. Edgar Hoover calls on the nation’s churches to play a more active role in the fight against juvenile delinquency. In an article for the United Press, Hoover says what is needed is an extension of the influence of the church into every home and to make the church the center of the family so that it may hold the place it once had as the wellspring of community activity. The FBI chief added churches opening at 11:00 one morning a week miss their full potential just as do those without dynamic programs of counsel and guidance for their members.

All of which this reporter is in agreement. However, as a student of both history and sociology, he has often wondered just how much more the homes of yesteryear were the center of religion teaching than they are today. How much of such talk is reality and how much is nostalgia or bad memory or wishful thinking? He does not know; he merely asks.

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The Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada has proclaimed this coming Monday, tomorrow, as a day of special prayer and fasting on behalf of peace in Israel. The union represents about 650 Orthodox rabbis.

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A Roman Catholic scholar says superficial and misleading claims are being made about the famous Dead Sea Scrolls found in Palestine within the last few years. The criticism comes from Monsignor Patrick Skehan, director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. He is on leave form his post as professor of Semitic languages and literature at the Catholic University of America. In Washington, D.C., he is also on the international team working on the scrolls. Monsignor Skehan tells of the attempts to connect Christianity with some of the Dead Sea texts that contain no basis for such connection. He terms it regrettably true that some persons are much more interested in finding in the Scrolls plausible counterparts to Christian teaching than in evaluating what the documents themselves reveal. The scholar names no one, but many articles and publications suggest that the sect that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls started ideas that were later incorporated into Christianity. Monsignor Skehan also states the general public is repeatedly told this or that phrase or teaching is used in the same by the Dead Sea texts and in the New Testament. But it is not told at all of a connection with Old Testament text or doctrine. The Catholic scholar also takes alleged similarities between Jesus and the leader of the Dead Sea sect, who is known as the “Teacher of Righteousness.” He asserts there is no suggestion in any text that any value of the salvation of anybody was seen in the death of the “teacher.” And where angels fear to tread, this reporter dares not butt in.

 

 

 

A thought-provoking letter in a recent Southern Baptist publication indicates something of the climate of opinion in the South these days toward the matter of segregation. It is written by a retired railroad conductor of Lebanon Junction, Kentucky, who writes that “Throughout the first 60 years of my life, I never questioned that Peter’s confession that ‘God is no respecter of persons’ referred exclusively to white persons. Nor did I question that segregation was Christian. Three years ago my views on this were completely altered, and I became convinced that God makes no distinctions among people whatever their race.” Certain things, he goes on, have convinced him that this is true, despite the fact that interpretations in the churches, i.e., white churches, have almost always either accepted segregation as right, or have ignored it all together.

The writer of that letter is disappointed that he finds no laymen crusading for integration, no pastors making an issue of segregation in their sermons, and no concerted action for integration on the part of the churches. And there is, he says, silence in the denominational papers.

This situation is true, not only of the Southern Baptists, but of other denominations. Perhaps most ministers in the South are troubled, like this layman, but they find other things to talk about in their sermons. Most of those who are vocal are so on the side of the citizens’ councils, to which organizations this reporter gave considerable space a short time ago. One pastor, that of Dallas’ Munger Place Baptist Church, recently insisted that “Now is the time for citizens’ councils to put pressure on your preacher,” and he even goes on to list eight, to him, reasons why it is not Christian to invite persons of the colored race into white churches.

The truth is that most denominations have, on a national level, declared themselves in support of the Supreme Court’s desegregation ruling, but such declarations have been attacked or ignored at the local level. The Catholic Church is the only one that has taken an unequivocal position on the matter, holding that segregation is an offense against Christian morality.

For foregoing is the sort of rationalization going on in the deep South today. A syndicated Southern columnist, John Temple Graves, summed it up saying, “With the brotherhood of man under God so precious in religious faith, no one says men of God should fail to oppose hate, intolerance, injustice, and discrimination.” And Dr. William A. Benfield of Louisville’s Highland Presbyterian Church put it more pointedly when he said in a recent sermon, “In some circles, religion has become an opiate of the people. Present-day Christianity is to many people tame and prosaic, prim and dull.… The Christian church has become too much an ambulance, dragging along behind, picking up the wounded, making bandages, and soothing hurt feelings, when the church should be out on the front line, getting hit in the face, but leading others and conquering the enemy.”

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In Nashville a suit has been filed protesting the reading of the Bible and the singing of hymns in public schools. Persons making the protest contend that this practice is a violation of the First Amendment, which forbids government to prefer one religion over another. Whatever may be our personal attitude toward the matter, it will help keep our thinking straight on the subject if we recall that a great justice of the Supreme Court once said that freedom of speech (and the same is true of religion) means not only freedom for the thought you like but equal freedom for the thoughts you hate. That may be pretty hard for some of us to live up to, but it is the American constitutional way.

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And while on the subject of the Constitution, it might be well to observe that court fights are ahead over the repressive laws passed by some Southern legislatures directed at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. These laws would penalize persons for belonging to the association. Persons and organizations serving notices of protest insist that this is a violation of the First Amendment, which protects the right of people peaceably to assemble, and it is difficult to see where it could be anything else. Up to this date, no news has come in that those same legislatures have entertained any idea of passing similar laws relating to the white citizen’s councils, which are making a veritable reign of terror for colored people in some areas of the Southern states.

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Sometimes perhaps ministers are expected to be mind readers, which of course they are not. The following item records an actual incident. A minister was met on the street by a parishioner who said angrily, “I was in the hospital all last week and not once did you come to see me.” When the minister asked if he had had a doctor, it sent the man’s blood pressure still higher. But the next question brought a reversal of temper, “How did the doctor know you were ill?” It might be well to keep this in mind when expecting of ministers and others performing personal services to do the impossible.

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The year before his death, Abraham Lincoln said:

“I see in the future a crisis arising that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all wealth is concentrated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

Well, not exactly that has happened, but one is reminded of this trend in reading the current attempts to raise the first class postal rates from 3¢ to 4¢. These are the rates that you and I, the little people, pay for sending our letters. The argument is that such a raise is necessary to cover the deficit in the postal department. Well, a little checking reveals that first-class mail is the only class that is paying its way, while you and I, the taxpayers make up an annual loss of nearly $9 million for distribution of Life magazine, $6.5 million for the Saturday Evening Post, over $1.5 million for the Ladies Home Journal, nearly $5 million for Colliers, and over $3.5 million for Reader’s Digest. Furthermore, we pay a deficit of nearly $2 million annually for distributing the Chicago Tribune and almost that much for The New York Times. On these publications alone, there is a deficit of between $25 and $30 million. It would seem that those seeking to be fair about mailing privileges should look first at where the big deficits originate, instead of penalizing those of us who send only a few letters a week, and at that, the postage we pay takes care of all costs of doing so.

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Officials of both the Catholic and Protestant denomination churches say there is a serious shortage of clergymen in the United States. A survey shows that the demand for priests and ministers far exceeds the supply. Thousands of churches in all parts of the country are forced to get along with part-time pastors. As for the Catholic Church, the official Catholic directory says the ratio in its churches has gone up in ten years: one priest in 523 Catholics in 1945, to 700 Catholics today.

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Bishop Donald Harvey Tippett of San Francisco says the Methodist Church needs 2,800 new ministers each year to serve its steadily growing population.

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The Baptist World Alliance says five representatives of the Russian Baptist Union will arrive in this country on May 18 for a tour of the country’s Baptist centers. They will attend Baptist meetings in Washington, Kansas City, and Seattle, and will be in this country for a month.

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The National Religious Publicity Council has made awards of merit to three daily newspapers, and a weekly and monthly magazine. The awards are made in recognition of outstanding service rendered to organized religion through the pursuit of impartial journalism. Newspaper winners of the awards are the Nashville Tennessean, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and the Oakland Tribune. Magazine recipients were Life magazine and the Woman’s Home Companion.

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The chaplain of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, has been elected president of the National University Chaplains. The election took place at the association’s ninth annual conference, held at Vassar College, last Wednesday.

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Cardinal John D’Alton, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland, has arrived by plane to dedicate an American hospital. Cardinal D’Alton came to this country to lead the dedication ceremonies today at the $6 million Cardinal Glennon Memorial Hospital for Children at St. Louis.

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A free-parking-for-churchgoers plan inaugurated in Washington last Christmas is paying off in church attendance. Capital parking lot operators say an average of 10,000 cars are being parked each Sunday morning. Non-churchgoers cannot sneak in. After the service, the parking lot attendants collect a copy of the day’s church bulletin from each motorist before he gets to drive his car out.

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In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Rev. Walter D. Kring, minister of the Unitarian Church of All Souls, New York City, has been elected president of the Harvard Divinity School Alumni Association. He succeeds the Rev. Dana McLean Greeley, of Boston.

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Canon John M. Burgess, the first Negro clergyman on the staff of Washington Cathedral, has been named archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. Canon Burgess, who is 47, was appointed by the Right Rev. Norman Nash, Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts. He will supervise 13 missions in Boston. He is the first Negro to hold the archdeacon post.

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The chief of U.S. army chaplains has reported improvement in the moral standards of U.S. soldiers in Germany. Major General Patrick J. Ryan says conditions have bettered since his last visit, November 1954.

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A Pacific Northwestern minister says the U.S. now has less religious freedom than it had 20 years ago. The statement is from Dr. Albert J. Lindsey, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Tacoma, Washington. He has also told the National Association of Evangelicals, meeting in Cleveland, that more and more channels are being closed to the intelligent religious discussions and dissemination of facts about religion. Dr. Lindsey adds they are being closed behind a smokescreen of supposed tolerance and broad-mindedness and false profession of religious freedom. The evangelicals have elected Dr. Paul P. Petticord of Portland, Oregon, as president. He is an Evangelical United Brethren minister and president of the Western Evangelical Seminary of Portland. The evangelical association represents about 40 conservative Protestant denominations, with a total membership of almost two million persons.

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Pope Pius XII has appointed two new prelates for Roman Catholics in the far Western U.S. The Very Rev. Richard Ackerman, national director of the Pontifical Association of the Holy Childhood, is to be auxiliary to Bishop Charles Buddy of San Diego. He will also have the rank of titular bishop of Lares. Monsignor Thomas Gill, rector of St. James Cathedral in Seattle, will be auxiliary to archbishop Thomas Connolly of Seattle. Monsignor Gill will also be titular bishop of Lambaesis.

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A retired assistant attorney general of Illinois is giving up a life of ease to become a Catholic priest. Donald John F. McGinnis of Alton, Illinois, will be ordained in the Benedictine abbey of Collegeville, Minnesota, on May 19. The 62-year-old Father Donald will say his first solemn high Mass two days later in Alton’s St. Peter and Paul Cathedral. That will be before the same altar where he and his late wife were married 38 years ago. One of Father Donald’s 11 grandchildren admits he is having a hard time changing from “Grandpa McGinnis” to “Father Donald.”

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Mayor Robert F. Wagner of New York City will be given the first Light of the World award today in New York. Leading educators, public officials, and spiritual leaders are to take part in presentation of the honors, which is sponsored by the World Academy in Jerusalem. The award notes the mayor’s outstanding contributions toward furtherance of the World Academy’s universal ideas. It aims to restore and regenerate the spiritual insights of the world’s greatest sages.

An item of rather unique interest comes this week by way of a national magazine that deals with the Wisconsin Restaurant Association’s deep concern over the competition it is getting from church suppers. The association met recently in Milwaukee, and one of its resolutions called for the State Board of Health to subject food-serving churches to the same health regulations as restaurants. It went on to note that one Milwaukee church served 1,200 fish dinners at its monthly Friday night party. A spokesman for the association summed up the organization’s viewpoint by saying that “These church dinners can be the ruination of a restaurant business.” It might be facetious for this reporter to ask at this point what relation does this situation have to our much-vaunted free enterprise system, if any?

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An attempt is being made by a representative of the Southern Baptist Convention to sell the idea of Sunday schools to Japanese Baptists. Dr. William Howse of Nashville and Andrew Quincy Allen of Dallas, Texas, recently began a three-week tour of the islands. Allen comments that “Japanese Baptists feel that Sunday school is too childlike, but my job is to try to help them see that it is manly and womanly.” Japan now has 65 Southern Baptist churches and some 8,000 members. Allen and Howse think that if the Texas techniques of building Sunday school and church memberships are applied in Japan, that within the next 25 years there can be 1,000 churches and 100,000 members. Apparently the work of the two-man visiting committee is having some effect, for a Tokyo pastor is quoted as saying, “We’re going to have to shift gears in our thinking.”

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Reporting on its progress in trying to bring about a settlement of the Cyprus dispute, the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs says it has asked Britain whether it is willing to proceed with a draft constitution for Cyprus. Britain was asked to consider such a move either on its own initiative or consultation with local representatives. Agency officials say they are now holding discussion with the government and churches involved in the dispute. The immediate aim is to restore as quickly as possible an atmosphere in which negotiations can be usefully resumed.

Meanwhile the commission announced its readiness to call a meeting of church leaders of the countries involved if that seems desirable. Many uncertainties will be removed, the agency contends, if Britain is willing to go ahead with a draft constitution. The dispute stems from the deportation from Cyprus last month by military authorities of Archbishop Makarios of the Greek Orthodox Church. He is the reigning prelate of Cyprus and leader of a movement on Cyprus for reunion with Greece. Britain claims the deportation was for the purpose of avoiding further violence on the island.

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Work is continuing for the planned merger next year of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church – both, Protestant denominations. The new union is scheduled to take place in Cleveland at a joint convention in June 1957. Committees and other technical machinery needed for the merger were set up this week in New York at a meeting of executive groups of the two denominations, both of them the result of previous church mergers. The planned group would be known as the New United Church of Christ, with a membership of more than 2 million. The main purpose of this week’s meeting was to adjust the differences of viewpoint between those favoring the merger and those church leaders opposing it.

In the meantime, today is “get acquainted” Sunday for the two groups. More than 400 ministers of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church will exchange pulpits to commemorate the day. Dr. Albert Coe of Boston, moderator of the Congregational Christian churches, says the exchanges were worked out on a voluntary basis in 16 states and the District of Columbia.

The United States Conference of the World Council of Churches will hold its annual meeting at Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania, April 18-20. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, president of the National Council of Churches, who recently returned with a delegation from a 10-day visit to Russia will lead the opening panel discussion. Its subject: Russian Christians and the Ecumenical Movement. While this reporter has no desire to be cast in the role of a wet blanket, it is hardly discernible how Russian Christians could, under present circumstances, become active in a realistic way in any ecumenical movement without incurring the wrath of the ruling powers that be in Moscow.

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The Most Rev. Albert G. Meyer, archbishop of Milwaukee, has been elected president of the National Catholic Education Association. Archbishop Meyer succeeds the Most Rev. Joseph Ritter, archbishop of St. Louis as head of this association.

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The Rev. Myron F. Boyd, of Winona Lake, Indiana, will serve another term as president of the National Holiness Association. He was re-elected at the closing session of the group’s convention in Cleveland. The convention also approved a resolution calling for racial integration within the association, deplored what it called “sensuous and pagan appeal of many radio and TV programs,” and condemned obscene literature.

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Although suffering from his second cold in less than a month, Pope Pius XII held his biggest general audience of the year last Wednesday. He received some 20,000 Easter pilgrims. On Tuesday, he addressed 1,400 girls attending the Rome Congress of Catholic Women and Girls and urged them to remain steadfast to spiritual ideals in a world bent toward pleasure and ease.

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A doctor-clergyman says both professions are playing an increasingly important joint role in the case of hospital patients. Dr. Granger Westberg, who also is a professor of religion at the University of Chicago, says it has been shown that recovery is faster and longer-lasting in emotional stress sickness if the cause rather than just the symptom is treated. And, he added, “That’s where the minister comes in.” He also cited premarital counseling as an example of where the doctor and the clergyman work ideally as a team.

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A program has been launched in West Virginia aimed at helping solve the problems of racial segregation in the schools, churches, employment, and other fields. The first of its kind to be sponsored by church groups, the program is expected to serve as a guide for similar projects by church councils in other states having the same problems. The West Virginia Council of Churches describes the program as “a pilot project in human relations.” A group of 20 white and Negro leaders from all parts of the state has been organized to help local areas bring about integration in a peaceful Christian way. This group’s task will include helping to set up educational panels, seminars, and discussion groups at the request of the various communities, and without cost to those communities. Educators, clergymen, physicians, parents, and others experienced in community leadership comprise the corps of 20. The program’s purpose is not, as church officials point out, “to step in and try to tell the courts and school officials when and how to end segregation.” Instead, it will be aimed at trying to help people to understand and solve the complexities of transition.

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A federal judge at Milwaukee this week administered the oath of American citizenship to Monsignor Sigmund Mihalovic in a special ceremony in his Milwaukee hospital room. Federal Judge Robert Tehan administered the oath to the 66-year-old Roman Catholic priest who was driven from his native land by communist persecution. Now seriously ill as a result of two strokes suffered last fall, he was so weak that his raised hand had to be supported as he spoke the few words of allegiance. During his years in Hungary, he worked very closely with Cardinal Mindszenty, a more famous victim of Red persecution. In fact, Cardinal Mindszenty inspired the priest to flee the country several months prior to the Cardinal’s own arrest. The communists tried Monsignor Mihalovic in absentia and condemned him to 15 years in prison for what they said was espionage in favor of American imperialists. He came to this country in 1950 and had lived in Mundelein and Wheeling, Illinois.

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During the past two or three decades, something fundamental has been happening to a very important segment of our population, i.e., those who live, or lived, on the family farm. A profound change is coming over the agricultural life of the country. Some may look at it as progress; others may view it with apprehension, for it does have its tragic aspects. The isolated family farmstead was not only a way of making a living, but it was also a way of living a life, and from this old and deep tradition sprang much of our moral outlook and our conceptions of individualism, our politics, and our folklore. Much of this is now drying up, for the family-size farm and farm family life are vanishing, and with this vanishing, America is never going to be quite the same again.

And while this reporter was born and reared on such a farm and within such a family environment, let him assure you that these reflections are in no sense merely a bucolic nostalgia for a return to the days of his boyhood. But almost everywhere one sees the seeming unstoppable tide of change. Small farmers are selling out to owners of larger acreages and are moving away from the farm to seek a living elsewhere. They just cannot make a go of it today in competition with large-scale factory farms. One such small farm of about 130 acres is operated by an intensely hard-working dirt farmer and his efficient wife. They have no phone, no car, and all expenses are pared to a Spartan minimum. His gross cash income last year was only some $400. Generations of children grew up on this farm, but the end has come. No small farmers will buy these places when their present owners die out, for no profit is possible, and likely they will all end up eventually as part of great properties owned by corporations or city businessmen who can make farming pay on a very large scale, or who will run them for income tax deduction purposes.

One can get a broader idea of how this is happening all across the country by reading a long study just published by the Farmers’ Union Grain Terminal Association in St. Paul. They studied 4,300 family farms in good farming country like the Dakotas, Wisconsin, Montana, and Minnesota. Some of their findings include the fact that net income in 1954 was $2,500, which means $50 a week. To get this much required that the family put in some 5,000 hours of work during the year, more than twice as many as is the standard for the city worker. If this is figured at a five-percent return on investment, it would mean that the income was around $450 for the whole year, earned by the labor alone. While home construction boomed in and around every great city, very few farm homes have been built within the last generation.

The study also points out that in these five farm states, over a five-year period, some 38,000 farm homes have disappeared, or about one family in 13 gave up the life they had tried to live, and this rate of failure seems to be on the increase, not only in the region covered by this particular study but elsewhere throughout the United States. The point is that the independent farmer and his family are leaving the land: the home is vanishing, and the business office is taking over in their places.

Which brings to this reporter’s mind the words of Oliver Goldsmith in his poem, “The Deserted Village,” where he says,

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey

Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.

This being an election year, it seems not inappropriate, even on Easter Sunday, to call attention to the responsibility of the individual in participating in the selection of public officials.

On a Sunday afternoon shortly after Hitler carried out his blood purge in the 1930s, a group of some 20 ministers and educators met at the home of a Bible scholar in the heart of Berlin. This scholar talked about the prospects of religion and the church under Hitler’s rule. Suddenly he stopped and turned to one of the ministers and asked, “What are you doing with that notebook?” The minister responded that he had merely written down the last comment of the speaker. The speaker paled and said, “You must not do that. You endanger not only my freedom but also my life.” “I will scratch it out,” said the writer. “That is not enough,” said the German, “Tear out the page and destroy it right here.”

One minister afterward remarked, “As I watched these men tearing up their notes and throwing them into the fire, in one moment I saw what democracy should mean to us in America.”

Obviously, when the state becomes the people’s master rather than their servant, evil awaits the nation. The history of nations that have succumbed to tyranny shows in almost all instances a constantly increasing indifference on the part of the citizens toward their civic responsibilities. In his parable, the Master emphasized that faculties not employed will ultimately be lost. “Take the talent from him” is something of a solemn decree of divine justice.

When we apply all this to the voting habits of the American people, the prospect is not so encouraging. In 1880, 78 percent of the eligible citizens of this country voted. In 1940, the percentage had fallen to 53 percent. It is not merely a political duty that devolves upon us, but a religious responsibility of men and women to exercise their franchise, since democracy, as we know it, springs from the religious teaching of the infinite worth of every human being.

And yet we hear frequently timid and, perhaps unthinking, people say, “Should religion and politics be mixed?” If we mean by that that a church should become identified with a specific political party and the minister turn into a lobbyist, using his pulpit for a political rostrum the answer certainly must be an emphatic “No.” But if it is meant by the question that the ennobling spirit of religion, injected through the informed and earnest activities of religious men and women at the ballot box, should be infused into the political life of the nation, the answer is an equally emphatic “Yes.”

It is not enough merely to proclaim the need for high moral standards; that will not, alone, suffice to make mean men generous, cruel men kind, greedy men unselfish, or vile men clean. Morality must be undergirded by affirmative action on the part of all to the end that ideals and principles involved in morality are translated into our national life through the wise use of the ballot by men of good will throughout the nation. This is not only an opportunity for the religious person to use his vote and make his influence felt: it is an obligation that he cannot evade if he really wishes to perpetuate our order of things where men are free to speak their minds on religion or any other subject.

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One of the saddening, tragic commentaries on the inability or unwillingness of man to profit by the lessons of history is the fact that the city streets through which Christ walked to his death and triumph years ago are as tense and murderous today as they were then. As there were riots and bloodletting then, so are there now, or threats of them. In the Middle East today, the attempt to build a northern tier alliance – an idea for which our State Department takes credit or blame, whichever you consider it – has brought the Arab states and Israel on the brink of war and has given Russia an opportunity to vault over the half-built wall of the Baghdad Pact into the long-coveted area of the Near East. In the Holy Land there were riots in January, and the hostility between Jerusalem’s Moslems and Jews never fades.

Here at home it would seem that there is something of a bi-partisan conspiracy of silence regarding the much-needed debate on foreign policy. Apparently the Congress, the people, and the press are paying far too much attention to what politicians are saying and too little on what they are doing or failing to do. Verbal battles race over methods and means, and while these are important, they fail to produce constructive results. Men of religious views, as well as, perhaps all others, are concerned with the matters of peace and war. A recently published study made for the Japanese Economic Planning Board bluntly concluded that the U.S. is losing the Cold War in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. With all our emphasis on maintaining a preponderance of military power, it begins to look as if we are being overtaken by the Soviet Union in the one field where we have until now been preeminent. All this does not mean that we face the likelihood of immediate war; the sad part of it is that we may be facing something very like defeat without war. Another sad feature is that any such outcome could be prevented if influential men on both sides were willing to look realistically on what is happening and do something constructive about it.

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Christians the world over prepared for today the climax of their most important religious week: Easter Sunday. Sunrise services were held in the Roman Catholic and almost all the Protestant denominations, commemorating the resurrection.

In many parts of the U.S., special once-a-year sunrise services were conducted. At the Garden of the Gods in the mountains of Colorado, the sunrise service there celebrated its 36th anniversary. Thousands of persons – last year there were 20,000 – attended the colorful ceremony in the rust-hued canyon on the outskirts of Colorado Springs and in the shadow of Pike’s Peak.

Another sunrise service was also held atop Copper Hill, near Leadville, Colorado, some 12,000 feet high…. In New Hampshire, Easter sunrise services were held at Halo Hill, where rainbows often surround the summit from early morning sunlight, reflecting off the fog arising from nearby lakes. Also, a colorful Moravian Easter service is held annually at Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And there is an impressive Easter pageant held annually at Wichita Mountain, near Lawton, Oklahoma.

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The first climax of the Easter week took place in the birthplace of Christianity on Good Friday. A procession of worshipers, including almost the entire Catholic clergy of Jerusalem, walked Via Dolorosa, the traditional route along which Christ carried the cross to Golgotha. Many in the procession themselves carried heavy wooden crosses. Protestant churches in Jerusalem do not possess any of the holy places in the city and their services were on a more modest scale.

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Paris: Germans, Britons, and South Americans are among some 100,000 tourists visiting Paris for Easter. Bookings by tourist agencies showed that Germans topped the list of foreigners. But hundreds of sightseers form Spain, South America, the Low Countries, and the United States and Britain also attended. Many Austrians who flooded in for last Sunday’s soccer match between a French and Austrian team, stayed on for the Easter holiday.

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Jews throughout the world are winding up their most important holy week – the Passover. The week commemorates the escape of the Jews from Egyptian slavery over 30 centuries ago. The Passover, which began last Monday, lasts for eight days for Orthodox Jews and seven days for Reform Jews. Traditional services include the eating of symbolic foods. In a Passover message to Jews of the world, broadcast by the Voice of America, Irving M. Engel, president of the American Jewish Committee said, “It is our earnest hope that the festival will serve as a mobilizing call to liberty-loving people everywhere to work for the strengthening of human rights.”

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And from New York comes word that the church building boom in the United States shows no signs of leveling off. American Iron and Steel Institute says that within the next 10 years an estimated 70,000 new churches will be built at a cost of $7 billion. Expenditures for religious construction during 1955 were $760 million, 25 percent more than for the previous year. And in 1956 expenditures are expected to reach the $900 million mark.

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Catholic services for Easter were held this year for the first time since the Middle Ages in the evening. They began in a darkened church with the celebrant lighting the new fire and blessing the huge Easter candle, which was lit from the fire. This switch form morning to evening services was by order of the Vatican for convenience of the worshipers. It is, in effect, a return to the ancient ritual. The fire lighting ceremony was held in the ancient churches of the Holy Land, in the basilicas of Rome, and in thousands of other churches throughout the world.

Pilgrims traveled by plane, train, car, on foot, and even by ski lift, to mountaintops for Easter sunrise services.

Easter services of various denominations were – and will be – carried by many radio and television stations in the U.S. and beamed behind the Iron Curtain by Radio Free Europe. The Radio Free Europe broadcasts will include Easter messages from Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York, Samuel Cardinal Stritch of Chicago, and Dr. Ralph Sockman, president of the Methodist Board of World Peace.

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A reminder that clothes make neither the man nor the woman on Easter or any other day came from a Methodist pastor in Paterson, New Jersey. The Rev. Mitchell Modisett, pastor of the Epworth Methodist Church said that people were welcome at his services whether in new clothes or old. “People,” he said, “ought to wear their best clothes to church, but they surely ought not to stay home because they have no Easter finery.”

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Did you know that 36 million American children attend Sunday classes in nearly 300,000 churches and synagogues every week? And it is estimated that by 1975 there will be three children in these Sunday schools for every two attending now? To keep pace with this phenomenal growth, churches are expanding their facilities and adding thousands of new teachers and starting new classes every month. One who has not visited a Sunday school recently will find the classrooms and procedures startlingly different from those of yesteryear. Aware of the influence of environment, emotions, and natural growth on children’s development, more and more Sunday schools are being planned as bright, airy, cheerful places where children can feel comfortable and happy. While the emphasis is still on religious concepts and teaching, the approach, especially with younger groups, is through joy, affection, and friendliness. Children are encouraged to make religion an active part of their lives through participation. Rarely are they longer taught abstract religious and ethical concepts suitable only for adults.

Realizing that a child’s feelings about his Sunday school teacher have much to do with his later attitudes toward religion, most faiths are placing leading educators and psychologists on their advisory boards – to train teachers. It is understood today that teachers need more than dedication and effort, important as these are. They need insight into how children grow and learn, how character and personality develop … how to make the best use of good teaching aids. Many faiths now require their teachers to complete a rigid training course before they consider them prepared to deal with the emotional and spiritual problems of modern youth.

One can be glad, whatever his own view may be, that so much thought and effort are being devoted to giving children strong spiritual foundations – their guide to a better world. That is as it should be, for the children of today are the ones who will fashion the world of tomorrow, and all of us hope that they will do a better job of it than we ourselves have done.

Paul’s book of Romans probably did more to shape Christian theology than anything else written. To the early Christians he was a hero, a martyr, a man who gave his life for his ideals, a great and good man. Some, perhaps many, modern analysts do not accept his religion or give him a place in the succession of philosophers. They point out that his work does not have the inner integrity demanded of philosophy today. But he is a massive figure in church history and in any examination of Christian origins he cannot be ignored.

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The following is a quotation from one Tom Savit, and whether you agree with him or not, his statements are always thought-provoking. He says, “Recent prosecutions for subversion in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and other states were based on what people read, statements made, and meetings attended. Today in the U.S. you do not have unlimited right to read what you want to, say what you want to, and to assemble with fellow citizens. Communist practices have made great gains among American enforcement agencies.” Is this true?

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One hears a great deal these days about its being unfair to ship munitions to this country or that. The issue in the matter should be clear enough, namely, that it is not right to ship munitions to any people, i.e., sending them the means to kill and maim human beings. It would seem that the U.S. in supplying the means of death to any people is an accessory before the fact of the greatest crime of which humans are capable. In effect, the U.S. by so doing is condemning to death unknown persons convicted of no crime.

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Since your reporter is not a movie fan, any evaluation of movies that he passes on to you is likely to be that of third persons. So it is with this one, “Picnic,” which seems currently to be one of the favorites. Dr. Harold Scott of Salt Lake City … says about the move, in part and largely in paraphrase:

“The film pushes the old theme of romantic love, physical attraction, being the proper basis for marriage. The film had the audience breathlessly hoping that the gal would run away and marry the incompetent numskull with the big biceps, and that’s what she did to the satisfaction of the audience…. There are an estimated 160 million people in the U.S., nearly half of which are males. It is irrational to hold that any woman must fall into the arms of the first male of no prospects because she is physically attracted to him … [This is] thoughtless marriage philosophy exploited by contemporary magazines and dangerous films like ‘Picnic.'”

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Two articles in as many magazines currently on the newsstands are worth calling to your attention. One appears in the April 3 issue of Look, entitled “The South vs. the Supreme Court.” It is a symposium of viewpoints about the segregation issue, ranging all the way from the most pro- to the most anti- segregationist. It is a 23-page report you cannot afford to miss if you are interested in understanding something of all sides of this rather torrid issue involving human rights.

The other article appears in Time, and like most articles in that magazine, is so phrased to create as uncontroversial an effect as possible. It is entitled “The South,” but the contents all deal with Senator Eastland of Mississippi, the perhaps self-appointed spokesman for the pro-segregationists.

From reading both articles, you will get, not a thorough, but a somewhat penetrating insight into the cauldron that is boiling throughout the South, producing a ferment among white and colored alike.

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At sundown tomorrow, Jewish families throughout the world will begin a candle-lit meal with a prayer: “Praised art thou, O Lord our God, ruler of the universe. Out of love Thou didst give us … seasons of joy and this … our festival of freedom.”

The occasion will be the meal of worship and story telling and song. It is the start of the Jewish Passover, which has been described as the first great uprising against the institution of slavery. Moses began it with his cry, “Let my people go.” Dr. Abraham Feldman of Hartford, Connecticut, president of the Synagogue Council of America, sees that rebellion as the start of a long, still unfinished march, for the promised land of human dignity. The Passover celebration includes symbolic foods, psalms, devotions, and laughter. Mostly it is telling the “Haggadah,” the passing from father to son of an ancestral lesson in liberty. It has been going on for more than 3,000 years, and is the oldest continuously kept ritual. This Jewish heritage of freedom is stamped on many pages of American history, beginning with the Pilgrims. In the American Revolution, many colonial patriots shouted an angry “pharaoh” at the British. The tradition will be emphasized at synagogue services on the first and last days of Passover, with rest from work on those days. In between will be a week of fasting on unleavened bread and gifts to the poor.

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Coinciding with the Jewish Passover observance is the Christian season of Holy Week, marking the death and resurrection of Christ. Today is Palm Sunday, and Christian churches will begin a week of special services to commemorate what is known as the “Passion of our Lord.” Passion in this sense means pain, affliction, or torture. The services and worship pass through Maundy Thursday, the night of the “Last Supper” of Jesus and the 12 disciples … through Good Friday, the day of the crucifixion … and reach their climax on Sunday, Easter, the day of resurrection.

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The Rev. Jules Jeannard has resigned as Roman Catholic bishop of Lafayette, Louisiana. The 77-year-old prelate figured in a racial integration dispute last year when two women were excommunicated after a third woman had been beaten. She taught white and Negro children in religious classes. The two women were later restored to the privileges of the church. Bishop Jeannard retains his title because Pope Pius XII has made him a titular bishop. He will be succeeded by auxiliary bishop Maurice Schexnayder, of Lafayette. Bishop Jeannard gave poor health as his reason for resigning.

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The Negro boycott of city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, has become a famous skirmish in the Southern segregation feud. The question is whether the boycott weapon will be used more widely now, creating a serious economic situation throughout the South. In Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, the use of economic weapons by both whites and Negroes is growing into a real problem. And it is present to a lesser degree in Georgia and Louisiana. Organizations on both sides – the pro-segregation citizens councils and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – refuse to take responsibility for the boycotts. Ford dealers in some Mississippi towns have complained they are losing white customers because the Ford Foundation has supported civil rights movements. The Falstaff Brewing Company made a public announcement last year that it had nothing to do with the NAACP. Business had fallen off after word circulated that the company made contributions to that organization.

The merchants are caught in the middle. One merchant says his business would have been ruined had he not supported the local citizens’ council, and now his store is being hit by a Negro boycott. In Montgomery, the boycott, which has cost the bus company some $100,000, has not spread to other economic levels. Negroes still trade in stores run by whites, and no apparent wholesale job losses are reported to have occurred because of their action. However, in north Mississippi, where most Negroes are plantation workers or own small businesses, those who have worked for integration have been refused credit and fired from jobs.

Orangeburg, South Carolina, experienced the longest boycott. It started last September when 20 Negroes signed an integration petition. Both whites and Negroes have suffered, but the boycott continues. One white leader says, “No matter what they do, we’re not going to let them come into our schools.” And that would seem to be a real concrete idea – permanently set and fixed.

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Nine Protestant church leaders who made a 10-day tour of Russia have returned to the United States with the view that religion is dying out in the Soviet Union.

They point out that the Russian government no longer persecutes the church, but that the Russian church leaders have a narrowly confined view of the church’s function. A joint statement issued by the Americans says the Soviet church leaders regard their function as that of saving souls and preparing people for the next world, and that they show little concern for the social or intellectual life of their people. It was the prevailing assumption, the statement said, that science involves reason; religion involves feelings. The American churchmen believe the greatest usefulness in establishing relations with Russian churchmen could be in encouraging the Russians to practice more aggressive Christianity.

While the churchmen may be entirely sincere in their belief, it is difficult to see how, under present circumstances, Russian churchmen could, in their words, practice a more aggressive program. Anyone familiar with the history of the Russian Orthodox Church under the tsars knows full well that it was used widely as a means of bolstering and maintaining the then status quo. How much of this remains in the thinking of the present church leaders as a result of their pre-revolution heritage is unknown. However, it is pretty certain that any churchman in Russia today that dared criticize the existing social and economic order would pretty soon find himself in trouble with a government that brooks no criticism….

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With the coming of Easter week starting today, the most sweeping change of Roman Catholic ritual in 400 years goes into effect. The entire Catholic liturgy of Easter week has been revised by decree by the pope. The reforms are designed to make the ancient Easter rites more meaningful to the modern generation. The new ritual provides for greatly increased participation by the congregation in acts of worship formerly carried out mainly by officiating clergymen. In parts of one service, English will be used instead of Latin. Hours of service have been changed too. Those of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday have been changed from morning to evening, to make it easier for working men and women to attend.

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National leaders of four Protestant organizations for college students are holding a two-day meeting at Chicago to discuss plans for merging. The groups are the Congregational Christian Churches, the Evangelical and Reformed Church, the Disciples of Christ, and the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. A spokesman says the college students in the four groups, numbering about 300,000, likely would be more amenable to merging than their elders. And that by merging they could sponsor more effective campus programs through united efforts.

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At Sarasota, Florida, the unique drive-in church is building a new building. A $185,000 V-shaped structure is being built behind the outdoor pulpit which the Rev. B.L. Bowman now uses to preach to his congregation on wheels.

There will be two auditoriums and a second-floor pulpit in the new building, but the minister says that does not mean he’s abandoning drive-in services. It means only, he says, that some people like to leave their automobiles to attend church and his drive-in will be able to accommodate them as well as those who prefer their cars. The idea for a drive-in church, patterned after drive-in theaters, was dreamed up by the Rev. Bowman while he was chaplain in World War II. Similar churches have been organized since.

 

 

 

One of the things that is as true of a society as it is of an individual is its scale of values, and perhaps as far as society is concerned this is nowhere reflected better than in the compensation it gives for various kinds of services rendered to the community. A rather unusual (I hope) instance of this comes in an item from Springfield, New Jersey, where it is pointed out that while school teaching may have its own rewards, garbage collecting there is more profitable financially. Garbage truck drives, under a new contract with the city, are paid $114 for a 40-hour work week, while teachers, with a big investment of time and money to obtain qualifying college degrees, start teaching at an annual salary of $3,300. This spread over a 52-week year, for teachers must eat during the summer too, means a weekly income of $64.44. After a lifetime career of teaching, they can earn a maximum of $5,500 annually, or $105.76 per week, about eight dollars less per week than garbage truck drivers now receive. Of course this reporter will admit to some partiality in the matter, but looking at it objectively, and giving garbage collectors all the credit which they so richly deserve in helping keep the community clean and healthful, it seems more than incongruous that a community will value services connected with garbage more highly than they do services devoted to helping develop the minds and abilities of children.

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We hear a great deal these days pro and con about the influence of comic books and strips upon the behavior of juveniles. The fact is that nobody knows just what the over all effect of reading these materials is. Moreover, to use the term “comic books” in an evaluative sense, indicating they are bad, is greatly to oversimplify a complex problem. There are comic books and comic books. Some of them deal with high ideals, integrity, deeds of heroism; while others are what most of us would call trash.

However, there is something relatively new in David Crane’s comic strip, though he follows in something of the soapy footsteps of other vocational do-gooders. David Crane is a minister and it is understandable that the contents of the strip are largely of a religious flavor. He deals in a serious way to promote religious tolerance among all faiths, particularly the Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant ones. Incidentally, the idea for the strip was considered and rejected by syndicates other than the one who now runs it, Hall, as too controversial. The creator of this strip is one Winslow Mortimer, a Canadian-born artist living at Carmel, New York. Winslow goes to a Methodist church, collects guns, and is aided by Hartzell Spence, son of a Methodist minister who wrote One Foot in Heaven. Between these two creators they have a problem as old as literature itself, namely, how to make the good as interesting as the bad.

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It is true that we live in dangerous times and have some reason to be reoccupied with “security.” But in an equally dangerous time Benjamin Franklin, whose 250th anniversary we celebrate this year, wrote, “They that can give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” In the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln spoke of “a new birth of freedom.” And Washington’s farewell addresses stresses not the guarding of state secrets but the enlightenment of public opinion. Many citizens today believe that national security measures should be directed against overt acts such as treason, espionage, and sabotage. A phrase like “conspiracy to teach and advocate” is meaningless. And as for the oft-used word these days, “subversion, ” it is too slippery a word for the law, too vague, too fraught with emotion to serve as a proper legal or ethical standard. When the late Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson was U.S. attorney general, he warned that there are no “definite standards to determine what constitutes a ‘subversive activity,’ such as we have for larceny and other legal terms. “Activities,” he goes on, “which seem benevolent and helpful to wage earners, persons on relief, or those who are disadvantaged in the struggle for existence may be regarded as ‘subversive’ by those whose property interests might be burdened or affected thereby. Those who are in office are apt to regard as ‘subversive’ the activities of any of those who would bring about a change of administration.”

And Judge Learned Hand also criticized the increasingly common resort to the term as a question-begging word. He said, its “imprecision comforts us by enabling us to suppress arguments that disturb our complacency and yet congratulate ourselves on keeping the faith as we received it from the Founding Fathers.… All discussion, all debate, all dissidence, tends to question and in consequence to upset existing convictions; that is precisely its purpose and justification. He is, indeed, a ‘subversive’ who disputes these precepts and seeks to persuade me to substitute his own.” Hence, any sort of challenging or probing thought, any intelligent effort at social change, may be construed as ‘subversive.’ Veritably, we seem to have arrived at the position of the character in Alice in Wonderland, where to some people, whenever they use a word it means whatever they wish it to mean.

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A report recently by an army psychiatrist alleged that American prisoners of war neglected their own sick in prisoner camps and were not equipped to resist communist propaganda. Editorial comment on this report laments that the home, school, and church had not given these boys the support of religion and a knowledge of Americanism.

Without being cynical one may well consider that typically American Protestantism teaches no primarily human solidarity, but a salvation of everyone for himself. Those who behaved, as Dr. Mayer is alleged to have said they did, reacted perhaps in accordance with the religious thought in most of their churches.

As for the schools teaching Americanism, unfortunately today, in some, perhaps many, communities, teachers avoid such controversial essentials of real Americanism as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights for fear of arousing the ire of some pressure group. One need read only the “Houston Story,” what has been taking place the last few years in Los Angeles schools, in some in New Jersey, and elsewhere to realized that perhaps some of the shortcomings with respect to teaching an understanding of Americanism may be due to the community climate in which teachers operate.

All of us would agree that home, school, church ­– all should coordinate their activities to the end of producing the best possible, all-round citizens. Neither will do its jobs perfectly, under the best of circumstances, but most shortcomings in homes, churches, and schools have their causes, and it might be well for us all to examine closely those causes before jumping to an assessment of blame.

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Today marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Kent School by the Rev. Frederick H. Sills, priest of the Episcopal Church and member of the Order of the Holy Cross. To mark the event, the entire family of Kent will attend a morning service of prayer, Holy Communion, and sermon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The entire student body, the faculty, and the Kent School Glee Club and Choir will attend, along with a large body of Kent School alumni. The preacher will be the Right Rev. Horace W.B. Donegan, bishop of New York.

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New York: Nine Protestant churchmen are on their way by plane to Moscow for an 11-day good will visit to the Soviet Union. The trip is sponsored by the National Council of Churches. Spokesman for the group is the Rev. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, president of the National Council. Before taking off, he said there will be inter-ecclesiastical conversations to increase mutual understanding and good will between Russian and American Christians. He said the delegation will meet with Soviet government leaders if they are invited.

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A demonstration of Christian integration in churches will be held in New York City a week from today. At the morning service a group of 100 white members of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church will attend the Church of the Master of Harlem. And 100 Negro members of the Harlem church will attend services at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. The integration demonstration is intended to show – as one minister put it, “that we are not Christians at arms length,… and that true brotherhood draws no color line.” The idea for the exchange of the two groups was proposed by Dr. John Paul Jones, minister of the Union Church of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

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New Bedford, Massachusetts: The executive board of the Greater New Bedford Inter-church Council has recommended that its 48 member churches hold a joint mass prayer meeting in sympathy with the Negro bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. The prayer service will be held on the evening of March 28 at the Union Baptist Church in New Bedford. A resolution passed by the council says the colored segment of the American population is being denied rights declared by the U.S. Constitution.

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New York: A film with a religious theme, “A Man Called Peter,” was the biggest money-maker of 1955 for the studio that made it. Geoffrey Shurlock, director of the motion picture industry code administration says the picture grossed more than Marilyn Monroe in “The Seven Year Itch” and Clark Gable and Jane Russell in “The Tall Men.” The film, “A Man Called Peter,” is based on the life of a Protestant minister. The screenplay was worked out by three people – a Roman Catholic, a Jew, and the widow of the central character, Mrs. Peter Marshall, a Presbyterian. Shurlock says another religious film, “The Robe,” ranks second only to “Gone with the Wind” as the biggest money-maker of all time.

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Los Angeles: The 400th anniversary of the death of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, the religious teaching order of the Catholic Church will be observed today. Taking part in honoring Loyola will be some 600,000 alumni from 28 Jesuit colleges and universities, and 45 high schools in the U.S. Festivities are scheduled in 150 major cities. A Mass will be said at Loyola University in Los Angeles, and similar functions in other cities will be either televised or broadcast by radio.

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New York: The National Council of Churches has taken a stand against the sale of radio and/or television time for religious programs. The council contends stations and networks should give the time free as a public service. It is difficult to see the logic in this, but that is what is reported.

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The president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews wants a hard-hitting presidential campaign based on the issues and unclouded by racial or religious bias. The group’s head, Dr. Everett Clinchy of New York, has warned that bigoted appeals for votes are contrary to several things: He names these as American principles, the American spirit of fair play, and God’s moral imperative for brotherhood. Dr. Clinchy declares, “Our people want the facts and what each candidate thinks about the issues.” He adds, “They don’t want this information clouded by racial and religious bias.” He says, “Let us reject all racial and religious bigotry from the 1956 campaign. Let us immunize Americans against this evil.”

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This year’s Jewish Youth Week will be held for teenagers beginning next Friday. Mrs. Sue Strassman of Scranton, Pennsylvania, says the aim is to focus attention on the role, achievements, and potential of Jewish youth in the growth and development of a creative American Jewish community. Mrs. Strassman is chairman of the National Jewish Youth Conference. This year’s theme is “Building a Bridge of Friendship between Jewish Youth of the U.S. and Israel.” The period will be marked by Jewish youth sabbaths, interfaith programs, cultural festivals, field days, forums, institutes, and rallies.

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Today is the day of response to Roman Catholic and Protestant appeals for charity for homeless and hungry persons in other lands. Catholic churches will gather offerings for “The Bishops Relief Fund,” which has a $5 million goal. Last year the Bishop’s Fund gave relief and services valued at almost $133 million to more than 32 million destitute men, women, and children. Relief supplies were distributed in 51 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America, without regard to race, color, or creed.

In the “One Great Hour of Sharing,” most of the nation’s Protestant churches aim for $11 million in funds for overseas relief. The Church World Service of the National Council of Churches also expects Protestants to send much food, clothing, and medicines to distressed persons abroad.

The annual “Passover Appeal” of the United Jewish Appeal is scheduled for Passover week, March 27 to April 3. This drive is for $8 million, also for programs of relief and constructive development overseas.

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A four-day ceremony starting today will mark the dedication of the most magnificent of the 12 Mormon temples. More than 50,000 Mormons are expected at the opening services of the temple in Los Angeles. Features of the $6 million structure include a huge steel baptismal font mounted on 12 life-sized oxen and a series of murals portraying the creation and history of the earth.

 

For several weeks news from Alabama has been plentiful and of the sort of which no state could be proud. First it was the Autherine Lucy case and segregation at the University, a case that is not yet settled. Your reporter steered clear of that one simply because this program had dealt with school segregation so much already.

Now, however, another racial fight has boiled over to the point where it cannot be ignored. Some months ago the Negroes of Montgomery, the state capital, started boycotting the city buses because of Jim Crow provisions requiring colored people to sit in the back seats. Apparently the boycott was pretty effective, for soon the bus company was yelling and trying either to get the force of government to whip the Negroes in line or to seek some grounds for compromise. The last compromise proposed was to set off a section in front of the buses for whites and another section in the rear for Negroes. The latter, quite naturally, refused this as any improvement over what they were staging the boycott about.

During the past week, someone at City Hall came up with an old anti-labor law of 1921 vintage, which forbade boycotts as restraints of trade, and under this law, over a 100 of the Negro leaders of the city were arrested and indicted by the grand jury, among the arrested being some 24 Negro ministers. Free on bond, the Negroes proceeded to church to hold services and to pray over their predicament. Interestingly enough, the spokesman for the group said, “This is not only a conflict between whites and Negroes; it is one between justice and injustice. Whatever happens, do not let anyone pull you so low as to hate them.” That is, indeed, magnanimity that only persons of deep spiritual convictions could display.

The governor, on his part, is seeking to get a bi-racial commission to see if a compromise cannot be reached. Whatever happens, it is unlikely that the colored people will be satisfied with less than justice, and there is no reason to see why they should be. Only bigotry, intolerance, and injustice have thus far been displayed by the powers that be, and there is no justice in any of these.

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The president’s passion for two-gun Western stories has been much publicized, and it is of course his own business what kind of recreational reading he prefers. Moreover, there is considerable evidence that he has spent considerable time, since his back to “full schedule” routine, in boning up on the heavier stuff in his office, or the tightly trimmed summaries of this stuff. However, as reported here some months ago, it is sometimes remarkable the things he is expected to know and which he does not. For example, at a recent press conference he was asked what he thought of Premier Bulganin’s statement calling for another “at the summit” conference of the Big Four. The president, with a straight face and quite casually, replied “That is one I missed.” Yet, it had appeared three weeks before and had turned up on countless front pages of the American and world press.

Shortly after that, Secretary of Statements, Mr. [John Foster] Dulles, created something of a world sensation with his chilling “Brink of War Interview” in Life magazine. Newsmen went to the conference with the president loaded with questions they hoped might unravel one of the major mysteries of American foreign policy. But the president was equal to the occasion. He simply said he had not read the article everyone else was discussing and debating, and besides, he said, Mr. Dulles was the best secretary of state he has ever known.

Your reporter’s guess, before that statement, would have been that the president had known at least one other secretary of state, but apparently he has not.

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And while on the subject of Secretary Dulles, it might be worthwhile in passing to observe that he is heading away for India and the Middle East, apparently in an effort to repair some of the damage done by his own pronouncements in recent months. Your reporter should like to suggest in all humility that as he flies the Pacific and Indian Oceans he ponder the significance of a recent dispatch of The New York Times assessing Indian public opinion. The Times points out that among Indians there is a real fear that the U.S. is bent on destroying the Soviet Union by war; that in spite of the talk about freedom and the American revolutionary heritage, this country is interested in independence movements only insofar as they affect the fight against the Soviets. That, they say, is why the U.S is a friend of the colonial powers. Despite the fact that there is much to criticize about our foreign policy – or lack of one – this Indian assessment is rather a harsh indictment, harsher than the facts warrant. Moreover, it is a wholly unrealistic appraisal of Soviet conduct and intentions. But Mr. Dulles has provided enough provocation during his tenure in the State Department to furnish a basis for Indian criticism of our foreign policy. It is difficult to picture Mr. Dulles performing great feats of good will in India, but it is not too much to hope that he will do his best to keep his celebrated foot out of his equally celebrated mouth while on this trip.

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One sometimes wonders why all the fuss because Senator Case was offered $2,500 that he didn’t accept. That sort of thing is common in American political life. The important thing is that the bill was passed and that it would take millions from the poor and give it to the gas barons. Eisenhower vetoed the bill with the explanation that it was a good bill but he had to veto it because of the attempted bribe. Can you see the logic of that? If he thought it was a good bill, he should have signed it. It is no better or worse because someone tried to bribe someone. One cannot help but wish the president would get different ghostwriters. Those he has sometimes make him say the most asinine things imaginable.

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Arnold F. Westwood comes up with a thought-provoking statement regarding the validity of religious experience. He says, “You see, no matter what we call it or how we want to look at it, the one thing we cannot escape is the validity of the religious experience. The religious experience is as natural as wanting to know how a machine works, as real as the sun on your back on the first warm day of spring, as welcome as an old friend. As long as there is a first time to hold your own child in your arms, as long as we put aside childish things and grow up, as long as we agree to live together with a mate, as long as we die, there will be religion. To be man is to be religious.”

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Anyone who wants to know what is going on in the fields of destruction of American principles, private steals of public resources, labor busting, violation of the principle of church and state, military plots, and most of the things about which the public should know, must dig for the facts, and spend considerable money also for releases from specialized agencies. He cannot get it from the newspapers, which are apparently helpless and dependent on the hastily-written and superficial wire services. Despite avowals occasionally to the contrary, there is considerable evidence to indicate that ours is by-and-large pretty much a one-party press, and that is not good in a nation that prides itself upon a two-party system.

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Not long before he died, Albert Einstein, whose genius was largely responsible for unlocking the door into the atomic age, wrote these poignant sentences:

“Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing the power to make great decisions for good or evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

It is doubtful if many informed, thoughtful men would disagree with this. We have gone far in accepting the material benefits, and damages, of science. We have taken halting steps toward thinking in realistic, scientific terms. Einstein saw, perhaps more clearly than any other person, that we are living in a perilous period of transition in which it is apparently too soon for world government and too late for anything else. And there are those who regard us, who plead for world government, as being subversive of our own national government. Association of a belief in world government with subversion is ridiculous. We who are citizens of Tennessee are also citizens of the United States, and we do not find the respective loyalties to each conflicting or confusing. There is no reason why one cannot be loyal to a world government ideal and at the same time be loyal to the United States. As a matter of fact, one could conceivably be a real reinforcement of the other.

 

Perhaps my comments last week regarding J. Edgar Hoover’s proposal that Sunday school be made compulsory were a little premature. Rather, they were made from reading part of his statement out of context, which was all that was available at the time. The full statement is now at hand. He says:

“Shall I make my child attend Sunday school? Yes. And with no further discussion about the matter. Startled? Why? How do you answer Junior when he comes to breakfast on Monday morning and announces that he is not going to school any more? You know. Junior goes. How do you answer when he comes in very besmudged and says, “I’m not going to take a bath?” Junior bathes. Why all this timidity then, in the realm of his spiritual guidance and growth? Going to let him wait and decide what church he’ll go to when he’s old enough? Quit your kidding! You don’t wait until he’s old enough to decide whether he wants to go to school or not… What shall we say when Junior announces he won’t go to Sunday school? Just be consistent. Tell him, “Junior, in our house we all go to church and Sunday school and that includes you.” Your firmness and example will furnish a bridge over which youthful rebellion may travel into rich and satisfying experience in personal religious living.”

I am glad to quote the whole statement, for the excerpt that I did quote gave the wrong impression – the impression that there should be compulsory Sunday school attendance laws.

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Paul Blanshard in his thought-provoking book, The Right To Read, has a paragraph that seems worth sharing with you. He says, “Many local district attorneys in recent years have taken upon themselves the role of extra-legal literary censors, and have issued blacklists, containing the titles of books and magazines never condemned by a court, to local dealers. Because of their economic position, local newsstand dealers rarely bother to challenge the suggestion of a prosecutor that a certain book is undesirable or objectionable or downright illegal. In almost all instances they withdraw it promptly without prosecution. What happens, then, to our right to read?

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From a report of the Carnegie Corporation of New York comes an explanation of one aspect in the current controversy over the quality of education the children in the schools are getting. This time, it is an explanation of why so many children dislike their arithmetic. Quoting from the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey, the corporation says that while “All states required education sources for secondary mathematics teachers, a third of the states require no mathematics for certification of math teachers.” And “In the majority of instances, a prospective elementary school teacher can enter a teachers college without any credits in secondary school math. In most states a teacher can be certified to teach elementary school math without any work in math at the college level.” This being the case, the corporation concludes, it is no wonder that elementary teachers are for the most part ignorant of the mathematical basis of arithmetic.

Living in a cash economy as we do, when at every turn in an individual’s behavior, some sort of mathematical calculation is necessary, it is difficult to see how we can justify ignoring to prepare capable instructors for this very important branch of basic education. To continue to do so is permitting the blind to lead the blind, and we both know that in the biblical account both fell into the ditch together. We cannot afford such ditch falling. What about your child’s teacher?

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A reasoned and reasonable statement was recently directed by the ACLU to the Eastland Committee on Internal Security, urging that the committee not invade the protected areas of private political beliefs. Portions of the statement seem worth quoting. They say:

“The American Communist Party is not only a political agitational movement. It is also part of the Soviet conspiracy. Insofar as it is the first, its members have all the rights of members of other parties; to the extent that it is the second, its members may in some particulars be restricted by law…

“Investigation of real subversion is a matter of proper concern for Congress. But when an investigation enters the area of political beliefs and associations as such, an area in which Congress cannot legislate, the inquiry is improper.

“We recognize that it is extremely difficult to distinguish between conspiratorial activity and political association. Nevertheless, we respectively but vigorously urge that the subcommittee do everything possible to help preserve the principle of free association, by exercising special care in its questioning not to invade constitutionally protected areas of private political belief…”

And, I might add that respect for private political belief is as important in our system of things as is respect for private religious belief, for freedom is indivisible.

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The Right Rev. Horace W.B. Donegan, Protestant Episcopal bishop of New York, has announced his opposition to religious instruction in the public schools. “No one faith or denominational teaching can be chosen as the basis of instruction,” he said, “nor can even a general theistic belief he promulgated without the violation of the rights of teachers, children, and parents who have chosen an atheistic or secularist way – much as we might wish they had not.

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This program has frequently and somewhat regularly been concerned about the cause of education and the federal government’s responsibility in relation to it, for your reporter believes that better schools make better citizens, educationally, socially, morally, and spiritually. Consequently, he has perhaps harped on the theme more than you listeners appreciate. However, there is so much lack of information and even misinformation as to the Eisenhower proposals for federal aid, that in the interest of reducing this lack, he would like to outline briefly just what the president did propose in his special message to Congress.

1. Federal grants of $1.5 billion for five years to be matched by state funds to supplement local construction efforts in the neediest school districts;
2. $750 million over five years for federal purchase of local school construction bonds when school districts cannot sell them in private markets at reasonable interest rates;
3. A five-year program of advances to help provide reserves for bonds issued by state school financing agencies. These bonds to finance local construction of schools to be rented and eventually owned by the local school systems;
4. A five-year $20 million program of matching grants to states for planning to help communities and states overcome obstacles to their financing school construction.

In other words, the president proposes that the federal government spend not over about $2 billion in a situation that needs far more than that, and needs it right now. We can agree with the president’s recommendations for providing funds to states on the basis of need and in relation to pay, but the amount which he suggests is grossly inadequate for the job which needs to be done.

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Washington: A survey of the nation’s synagogues reveals that Judaism is enjoying the same religious revival as the Christian churches. The revival is particularly evident in suburban areas where hundreds of new synagogues have been built. Leading Jewish rabbis say the return movement to the ancient faith of Judaism parallels the booming growth of both Catholic and Protestant churches. America’s Jewish community is the largest in the world. It is estimated at about 5.5 million persons – the vast majority of them living in big cities. New York City alone accounts for about half of them.

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Indianapolis, Indiana: Seventh grade pupils in the public schools of Indianapolis are getting religious training in a unique way. As the Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Herman L. Shibler, puts it, “We aren’t teaching religion – we’re teaching about religion.” For example, the students have learned that Alexander Hamilton was an Episcopalian, that John Adams was a Congregationalist. And that crusty old Andrew Jackson, “Old Hickory,” knew how to pray. In the eighth grade, the students learn, for example, that the word “God” appears four times in the Declaration of Independence, and that Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish religious services are held regularly in the Pentagon. Sectarianism (so it says here) is strictly forbidden. Teachers are cautioned to avoid any subjective evaluation or criticism of any religion. In the forefront of the teaching is a quotation from General Omar Bradley: “This country has many men of science, too few men of God. It has grasped the mystery of the atom, but rejected the Sermon on the Mount.”

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Lourdes, France: More and more Americans are among the pilgrims at the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France. Authorities say some 6,000 Americans prayed at the shrine last year for restoration of health. The shrine is the site where the peasant girl is said to have seen a shining lady in white nearly 1,000 years ago. In 1950, Americans made up only a handful of the two million persons who visited the shrine. The rest were Europeans, but the number of Americans has increased steadily since.

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Iowa City: A leading clergyman says foreign students attending the University of Iowa have soured on democracy because of racial discrimination in Iowa City. Rev. John G. Craig, chairman of the Human Relations Committee of the Iowa City Ministers Association, says the problem had reached serious proportions. Monsignor John D. Conway, pastor of the St. Thomas Moore Catholic Church, says one Negro couple was refused housing in Iowa City.

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Bellevue, Nebraska: The Most Rev. Edward J. Calvin, founder of the Catholic St. Columban Missionary Society, died in Dalgan, Ireland, of leukemia contracted while he was a prisoner of the Chinese Reds in Manyang, China. Announcement of Father Calvin’s death was made by the society’s headquarters at Bellevue, Nebraska.

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Washington: The American Catholic Philosophical Association has announced it will hold its 30^th annual meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 3 and 4. The meeting will be held under the patronage of the Most Rev. Karl J. Alter, archbishop of Cincinnati, and of Catholic Universities and senior colleges and seminaries in the area.

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London: The British Broadcasting Corporation has apologized to the Protestant Alliance for referring to St. Peter as the first pope, during a radio quiz program. The Protestant Alliance contends it has never been proved that St. Peter was a pope, or a Roman Catholic, or that he ever lived in Rome.

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New York: The Church World Service has rushed 25 tons of relief materials to blizzard-stricken areas of Italy for distribution to victims of one of the most severe winters in Europe’s history. Rev. R. Norris Wilson, executive director of Church World Service, says additional supplies are being prepared in case they’re needed in other areas.

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The official newspaper of the New Orleans Roman Catholic Diocese has warned Louisiana Catholic lawmakers they face possible excommunication if their proposed segregation bills become law. The lawmakers want to keep private schools in Louisiana segregated. Most private schools in Louisiana are Catholic. They are slated soon to accept both white and Negro students. Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel of New Orleans has approved the editorial that warned of possible excommunication. But the Catholic lawmakers are reported to go ahead anyway. Meanwhile, Louisiana’s incoming governor, Earl Long, has stated that undoubtedly the archbishop is right from a religious standpoint. But he thinks the prelate is perhaps a little too advanced. Long is a Baptist. (Though what that has to do with it, I do not know.)

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In Montgomery, Alabama, 23 Negro protestant ministers have been among 100 Negroes indicted on charges of boycotting the bus lines. The Negroes want desegregation in the transportation system. Alabama’s boycott law could mean sentences of six-month prison terms and $1,000 fines. The Negroes have held mass prayer meetings. At one of them, the Rev. Martin Luther King asked them to pray for guidance. The Montgomery situation and other segregation problems have drawn comment from many religious leaders and groups. In Pittsburgh, the North American Area Council of the World Presbyterian Alliance has warned that intolerable situations have developed in the fight against the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on racial segregation. In Greenwich, Connecticut, the Protestant Episcopal Church has laid down a set of principles aimed at helping rid it of racial barriers. The church’s national council has also declared “Any attitude or act in the house of God which sets brethren of different races apart form one another is sinful.” And it is difficult if not impossible to find any error in this.

First, a potpourri of religion in the week’s news as reported by the wires of Associated and United Press.

In Oxford, Mississippi the segregation issue has closed an annual religious event observed by many U.S. institutions of higher learning. The University of Mississippi has cancelled its “Religious Emphasis Week” after five ministers suggested the religious atmosphere of the program had been ruined. This followed a long dispute over the revoking of an invitation to a pro-integration speaker. This controversy began when the Rev. Alvin Kershaw of Oxford, Ohio, said he would donate part of his TV quiz show winnings to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Kershaw is the Episcopal minister at Ohio’s Miami University, and had been slated to address the Mississippi student religious program on the subject of “Religion and Drama.” However, the invitation was withdrawn when he said he would speak on segregation if the subject arose.

Following this, five out-of-state ministers cancelled their speaking engagements. This week, five other ministers from the university town suggested the event be called off and cancelled their own speaking engagements for Religious Emphasis Week. Instead of the planned program, the students will have 30 minutes of silent prayer and meditation on three days this coming week. It would seem that they well could meditate on the fact that the God to whom they are praying is the Father of us all. Wonder when Mississippi is going to join the Union anyway?

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Sunday school once a week cannot make a child a Christian according to Mrs. Marian M. Kelleran, a prominent religious educator. Mrs. Kelleran says not one child in 1,000 can find a meaningful faith in Sunday school unless the lessons he is taught are lived out at home in a family that upholds the same values. And to that this reporter can find nothing to add except to wish that this were true of all homes.

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Lowell, Massachusetts: Archbishop Richard J. Cushing, Roman Catholic prelate of Boston, has been awarded the “Man of the Year” award from the B’nai B’rith, a Jewish organization. The archbishop was cited for his lifetime of distinguished service to the cause of human brotherhood.

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Berlin: East German communists have threatened East German Protestant leaders with serious consequences if they do not drop their anti-communist campaign against atheism. A statement printed in the Communist Party newspaper accused church leaders of luring East German youths to West Berlin and distributing anti-communist propaganda.

Well, can you imagine communists anywhere not trying to distribute their own propaganda? And how can they expect a minister, Protestant or otherwise, not to campaign against atheism? If he were sympathetic to atheism he probably would not be a minister. But logic or reason has never been the forté of the communists.

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Miami Beach, Florida: the National Planning Committee of three joint Jewish organizations has opened its third annual mid-winter conference in Miami Beach. The organizations are the Jewish Theological Seminary, The United Synagogue, and the Rabbinical Assembly of America. The conference is sponsored by the University of Miami, The Historical Association of Southern Florida, and The American Jewish History Center.

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Cincinnati, Ohio: The United Student Christian Council has urged its 3,000 chapters on American college campuses to abolish segregation within their ranks. A resolution adopted by the Student Christian Council also urges college and university officials to abolish racial segregation in dormitories, restaurants, and theaters.

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An item from Boston emanating from FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover has a curious twist. It says: “Sunday school, like public school, should be compulsory for all children in the opinion of J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Chief.” Yes, that’s what it says.

In an interview with a Roman Catholic priest, printed in the Boston archdiocese publication, The Pilot, Hoover also urged reestablishment of religious exercises in the home. The article also quoted Hoover as saying the church must provide two-fisted forthright men who are not afraid to trample on toes when the honor of God or country is at stake. End of item.

Now this reporter shares with what he is sure is the vast majority of the American people – a profound respect for the way Mr. Hoover has administered the most important law enforcement agency in the world. But when it comes to making Sunday school compulsory, Mr. Hoover is strictly off the bean. He should refresh his knowledge of the First Amendment which prohibits government from establishing or aiding any religion. We can agree with him that all children should go to Sunday school, but as to requiring it, that is another matter. Perhaps the chief G-man was misquoted. Let us hope so.

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Vatican City: Pope Pius XII on Friday received in audience 170 American airmen who flew an armada of flying boxcars from Germany to Italy to bring aid to Italian towns isolated by severe snowstorms. The airmen were led by General Emmett B. Cassady, United States Air Attaché at the embassy in Rome. The pope spoke in English, praising the airmen for their courage and charitable work, and imparted a special apostolic blessing to them and their families.

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New York: Church World Service says American farmers last year contributed nearly $1 million in commodities and cash for overseas relief through the Christian Rural Overseas Program. R. Norris Wilson, executive director of Church World Service says the 1955 total for the crop program was $924,000, an increase of $108,000 over 1954.

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Hartford, Connecticut: An American priest will become bishop of a newly created Roman Catholic diocese on the French island of Madagascar. The Very Rev. Paul Girouard, who has been missionary on the island since 1928, will be consecrated bishop at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Hartford, Connecticut, on March 7. He is a native of Hamilton, Rhode Island, and to refresh your geographic memory, I might add that Madagascar is located off the east coast of Africa.

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A stiff legislative fight may be in the offing between the Roman Catholic Church and some Louisiana segregation leaders. The church said recently that integration of white and colored persons in its schools may come by September. Now four state representatives have asked the Louisiana legislature to enact measures to prevent mixing races in private schools.

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A Negro bishop has been named the ninth member of an inter-Protestant church group to visit Russia in March. He is Bishop D. Ward Nichols of New York, presiding bishop of the First Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

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Restoration of the Ministry of the Laity to the church has been urged by a Protestant theological professor. He is the Rev. Dr. Reuel Howe of Alexandria, Virginia, and says the real ministry is carried on in the frontiers of where men live, work, love, and play. He describes the officiating minister as the pastor of pastors and the teacher of teachers. Dr. Howe’s remarks were made in Cincinnati this week at a preliminary session of the annual meeting of the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches.

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An interfaith group has cited three prominent persons of different religious backgrounds for distinguished work in human relations and brotherhood. The awards from the Northeastern Region of the National Conference of Christians and Jews have gone to Robert Cutler, former White House administrative assistant; Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts; and Dr. Harry Wolfson, professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard. The week coming up is to be Brotherhood Week, under the auspices of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

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With this being a presidential election year, it is inevitable that the news will be more than ever filled with items of a political nature, even on such a program as this, for politics deals with government, and whatever government does is, or should be, the concern of everyone. A rather revealing glimpse of the habit of politicians to view with alarm when things go against them and point with pride when they have done something they think will be approved comes by way of a massive report by Sen. Bridges of New Hampshire, chairman of the Republican Senate Policy Committee. He views with alarm the fact that 41 labor unions spent considerable funds in the 1954 congressional elections.

In reply to his report, the CIO Political Action Committee has revealed some interesting comparisons. Assuming that the amount spent by the labor unions all went to Mr. Bridges’ enemies, which it probably did not, union expenditures were still less than $2 million, and they came from 18 million members. At the same time, approximately $1.5 million spent by Mr. Bridges’ supporters came from only some 738 contributors of $1,000 or more. In short, for every $1 contributed by a labor union member, each of the wealth contributors on the other side put up nearly $2,000. Ten members of the Rockefeller family alone donated a total of $66,000, while 14 members of the DuPont family put up $51,000. How about that, Senator Bridges? We little folks, the sovereign voters, want to know such things, but we want to know the truth on both sides. We’re getting pretty tired of the numbers racket, whether it be security firings or campaign contributions.

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And while on the subject of government, it seems appropriate to recall at this time something that happened a year ago when 17 freshman congressmen, recently elected from districts widely scattered across the country, got together for a two-hour plea for a revitalized foreign policy which would, in their words, “put some political, social, and economic flesh on the bare bones of our present military measures against communism.” These young congressmen were fresh from the people: They knew what the people back in their districts from both parties were thinking. They looked at their new colleagues, listened to them, and finally could stand it no longer. Finally, one, Charles Vanik of Ohio, revolted and made the following speech: “I have sat here day after day and patiently listened; I have listened for hour after hour to tedious eulogies of congressmen who were and no longer are. I spent, I believe, a portion of one day listening to a eulogy of the ground hog of Pennsylvania. Entire sessions of Congress have been consumed in mutual exchange of birthday greetings. We have spent more time debating the service of food and the quality of food in the Capitol cafeteria and restaurant than we did in total on the Formosa Resolution.”

One of their number told a reporter that their revolt and the resolution that followed would not have happened if these young congressmen had not felt that the people back home wanted something done, that they had misgivings and were confused about the conduct of our foreign policy. Edith Green, e.g., from Portland, Oregon, was sure that her constituents were more concerned over the dangerous drift in diplomacy than over any other issue.

These congressmen had seen Dulles piling up air mileage in lieu of diplomatic achievement. They had heard of the reckless promise to “unleash Chiang Kai-shek.” They had heard the blustering threats of massive retaliation; the new look in defense; or a bigger bang for the buck. These and many more, until they were tired of slogans. So they told the House some simple facts and insisted something be done about it. Well, nothing has been done about it yet. Some of these facts were:

1. That nuclear war is capable of destroying civilization, and this country can no longer ignore some of the tensions, quite apart from the centers of communist power in Moscow and Peking;
2. That military containment is not enough. It must be accompanied by efforts to unite a free Germany and to permit free governments in central and eastern Europe;
3. That it is about time we were backing the fight of under-developed peoples of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East for freedom from colonialism and feudalism;
4. That there must be economic aid on an international basis;
5. And that ours must be a position of non-involvement in great power rivalry.

It was a wonderful challenge, but nothing has been changed. The discouraging thing about it all is that nobody in high places seems to want to change the situation. What are your and my senators and representatives doing these days? It might be well for us to find out and let them know what we expect them to do, for politicians are afraid of nobody but the people, and if they know what we want, they will respond. They probably will not unless we do. That presents us with a continuing challenge.

Several weeks ago I reported on the conclusions of an Atlanta newspaperman who had made a study of the performance of faith healers in that area and arrived at the conviction that it was a hoax. This week’s news carries a similar item by the religious editor of the Miami Herald, one Adon Taft. He attended the tent meetings of the Rev. Jack Coe of Dallas, who was drawing a crowd of some 6,000 Miamians nightly. In the front page of his paper he showed there had been no real changes in the physical conditions of those he claimed to cure. In one instance he pointed out that a woman who had thrown away her crutches and walked without them had never ordinarily used them anyway. Three ministers in the city have offered to pay Coe $2,500 if his faith healing cures anyone who had been duly certified as ill and who, after his ministrations, is certified as cured. Thus far, Coe has not accepted the challenge.

And another alleged faith healer, Oral Roberts, is meeting with disappointment in Australia. After the newspapers and ministers there denounced him in Sydney, and after his meetings attracted only about 5,000 in a tent whose capacity is 14,000, he moved on to Melbourne. Reports do not indicate what success, if any, he is meeting with there.

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One of the things about which men of social consciousness will, or should, always have continuing concern is any segment of our people who labor under something of an inherent handicap because of circumstances beyond their control. In this connection I have in mind the farmers of this country. We are faced with a paradox of hardship for the farmer in an age when they are producing huge surpluses. Government, in the hands of both parties, has never been able to offer them anything other than an aspirin for their financial headache and much of what both have offered has been the same, regardless of what name it went by. The Democrats have generally stood for rigid parity support of 90 percent for basic crops; the present administration has fluctuated between a sliding scale policy of parity from 75 percent to 90 percent, and now it is the soil bank idea. And this week the Senate committee by a close vote decided to recommend again rigid 90 percent parity support. In the meantime, surpluses of all kinds are piling up at an alarming rate and the cost of warehouse facilities alone runs into some $20,000 per [?]. Moreover, 58¢ of the consumer’s food dollar is lost between the point of his purchase and the price the farmer gets for what he sells. Meanwhile, in vast areas of the world millions are starving or are on the verge of starving, while we store potatoes to them useless, or dump good food into rivers or otherwise destroy it.

Even the simplest of us can see that there is something basically wrong with a world where such things take place. And the United States has opposed setting up in the United Nations a special food agency to see what can be done about getting our surpluses distributed throughout starving areas to lessen our own problem and to save lives of people with not enough to eat. This food, if properly handled, doubtless would go far not only to save lives but to create good will for the West in those places where now we offer them only guns with which to arm in a possible conflict about which they know, and probably care, little. It is about time that men of both parties address themselves to the basic problem created by the situation I have just described to the end of alleviating our own domestic problem, aiding undernourished people throughout the world, and using what we have a surplus of to help us in our race for competitive existence with the non-democratic world. There is a large block of neutral nations in the Middle East and Africa. Perhaps our avoidance of war will depend upon how well we can woo the allegiance and support of these people to the cause of freedom. We certainly are not going to do it with the policy Mr. Dulles is pursuing with all the emphasis upon military assistance without very much if any attention to economic needs. Mr. Dulles apparently does not know any better, or is afraid to pursue any other course. But that course is one of expediency only.  It is not one of statesmanship; nor does it, in the long run, contribute to our own security, about which he seems so concerned.

Hence, our own domestic problem here, affecting some 15 percent of our working population, illustrates how much of a seamless web there is to all life on the planet today. Whatever we do or fail to do locally may well have world-wide ramifications, calling for attack upon almost all our problems from a world perspective.

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One of the essential elements in a two-party system in a democracy is that these parties take positions on fundamental issues that are sufficiently different that voters going into the polling booth will have a real choice between alternative policies. Looking at the picture of politics as as of now in the present Congress, it is difficult to see much difference between the two. And while there will be much breast-beating between now and adjournment – and election, if these first few weeks are any indication of the way things are going throughout the session, it would seem that next November we shall have a choice about like that between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Perhaps the most noticeable trend on the part of both parties is the mad scramble to get in the middle of the road (whatever that means). Apparently, both parties have convinced themselves this is not the time to be caught on either the left or right. Under the ever-militant leadership of Sen. Johnson of Texas, Senate Democrats were committed to a program of very mild do-goodism. And with some, perhaps considerable, prodding from Eisenhower lieutenants in the White House, Republicans are trying to toe the center line as closely as possible, even inching their way a little toward that horrible nightmare of four years ago, “the welfare state.”

The result of this is that on the very issues that should reveal real differences between the parties, the leadership of both seems to be in almost complete agreement. For example, in his State of the Union message calling for aid to schools, the president asked for $1.25 billion over a five-year period, while the Democratic measure that went through the House committee last year provided for $1.6 billion in four years.

Both sides are pledged to “do something” about housing, and Eisenhower has called for a goal of 35,000 units, which is a little below that asked by the Democrats but still higher than either hopes to get through Congress.

On highway construction, the administration has abandoned its vast bond sale, simply calling for a plan of adequate financing.

In the matter of tax reduction, neither side seems capable of making up its mind whether it wishes to champion a balanced budget or make a bid for votes in an election year by cutting taxes. The bets are pretty good that if any reduction comes about, it will be in places and at a time when both think it will do them the most good politically.

The farm problem, I have already dealt with today in another connection. On it, the parties are not very far apart, not enough to make any real distinction between them.

Curiously enough, it is foreign economic aid where the confusion is greatest. The president seems to have taken the position that foreign aid of an economic kind is necessary for “projects and programs which we approve and which require a period of years for planning and completion.” You will recall that foreign aid of an economic nature was originally a Democratic creation. At that time the Republicans howled. But it now looks as if the Republicans have stolen Democratic thunder on this issue, and it is the Democrats who are howling that this sort of thing cannot go on much longer.

If time permitted I could go on pointing out the anomalies of politics as she is being played by the two groups at the present time. Certainly the Democrats are going to have to convince the voters that there is enough difference between them and their opponents to justify ousting the incumbent of the White House and putting one of their party in, while the Republicans will have to be just as assiduous in convincing us that it is for the best to keep one of their number at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. You and I, the voters, are going to be caught in the crossfire of a welter of claims and counterclaims, charges and counter-charges that will require almost the wisdom of a Solomon to see through. It is a serious responsibility, and how well we separate the wheat from the chaff and discharge that responsibility will determine in large measure the well-being of us all.

This item is admittedly shoptalk as far as this reporter is concerned, but it seems justifiable to include mention of it on a program of this kind. A ferment is going on in the college world these days. Today there are between 2.5 and 3 million students going to college and university. The immediate future forebodes nothing but heavily increased enrollments, for the first of the war babies are now crowding the high schools and will be doing so to the colleges within a few years. Private colleges are having a struggle – even the oldest, largest, and strongest of them – to stay solvent, much less expand facilities and personnel to meet the increased student volume. Public colleges are in a sense in worse shape, because it is more difficult for them to turn away students who meet the (to most of us) few and minimum criteria for admission. Increased expenditures in all areas of state government make legislatures view with increasingly microscopic examination proposals for increased expenditures for higher educations.

Out of all this, the colleges are asking themselves, “What shall and can we do?” Unfortunately there is little if any consensus among them on many matters. Should they strive for quality of education, turning away those who do not meet higher standards? Should undergraduate work contain a considerable admixture of vocational training, or should it be for general academic excellence? And what about the students who have the ability but who do not have the money? Should scholarships be provided for them? If screening is done with a view to selecting only best? If so, how to screen fairly and be sure the wheat is separated from the tares? And in the heterogeneous college population of today, what about the gifted student? Are we training for mediocrity, since the majority of students are average, leaving the exceptional student to get some profit by it? During the past two or three decades many crocodile tears have been shed at all school levels about the slow learner, but this reporter has never heard any serious concern about the one who could be a fast learner. In fact an advanced student of his did some research on this subject in one of the better systems in this area a year or two ago and came out with the conclusion that that system was really doing nothing about such students. Can we afford to go on doing this?

Certainly I have no answer to these questions, though I have personal convictions about most of them. It would appear, however, that it is high time we began doing some concerted thinking and acting about such an important matter. Conferences alone will not settle the issues, but conferences, plus a continued effort to arrive at a consensus and then put the decisions into practice would do much to clear the confusion and uncertainty. Those of us who try to teach have a faith that man through education cannot only learn how to make a better living but also how to live a better life, than he would without an education. If this basic assumption is sound, then the nation that has an educational policy and program designed to give each of its citizens that education by which he can profit most is a nation that will be stronger mentally, and we hope, morally and physically.

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A 26-page pamphlet has just been issued by the American Institute of Management, a non-profit organization that evaluates efficiency of corporations or other agencies. This pamphlet is a summary report on the effectiveness of the Catholic Church, a study that required a year to do, with more than 200 research workers. Space and time do permit even a summary of this summary, but if you are interested in this unusual and unique venture, you will find an article on it in the current issue of Time magazine. With the sanction of the pope, the Institute examined the social function, the organizational structure, the growth of facilities, the fiscal policies, and other aspects of the church. The result: The church came out with an astonishingly good score of 88 percent. Do your church and mine need such and evaluation? In attempting to analyze the pros and cons of this question, I soon found myself developing an incipient split personality, so I stopped trying. What do you think about it?

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And speaking of what you think impels me at this time to do something that heretofore I have refrained from doing but which I have had an urge to do for some time: namely, ask for your comments and evaluation of this program. A considerable number of you do send me communications from time to time, but rarely on the program as a whole – usually on some particular aspect of a broadcast that you liked or did not like. I am as interested in getting one as the other, for only in so doing can I get an idea of your candid opinion, and that is what I should prefer having.

As your announcer informs you twice each Sunday, this program is sponsored by radio station WJHL. There is nothing to sell, except whatever may be of merit in the program itself. The only contribution this reporter makes is preparing the materials and doing the broadcast. Since this is well into the second year of the program, it is rather belated to express appreciation to the station for use of its facilities, but I wish to take this occasion to do so.

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Sometimes zealots for a particular cause, however sincere they may be, find themselves unintentionally and perhaps without knowing it, logically following the same course they are attacking in others. Last week I referred briefly to the Eastland Committee, especially to the chairman of that committee. Consider the following:

The Eastland Committee is attempting to punish that tiny portion of the press that does not approve of informers, and it seems to want a wholly one-party press. Russia and the communists have a one-party press. Therefore, Eastland and his committee are following the communist line and hence are subversive according to the very McCarthy philosophy of which they are the present instruments. And yet, it is communists and subversives that the committee seeks to ferret out. Pretty ridiculous, is it not?

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A mind-stretching quotation comes to me from Thomas Jefferson, which I should like to pass on to you, for, again, it is one of those things that remind us that while we have every right to belief in and loyalty to our religion, we have no right to force it on others or to disparage the religion of others. It goes like this, in describing how he developed the First Amendment:

“The Bill of Rights establishing religious freedom in the United States, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed: and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the words, “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read “a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.” The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindu, and the infidel of every denomination.” We have every right to disagree with any or every one of them; we have the right to suppress none.

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One of the anomalies of our way of so-called thinking seems to be that many people cannot conceive how one can defend the right of a person to be an atheist without he himself being one; one who speaks out in defense of radicals must himself be a radical; a person who has a good word to say for a political party must himself be a member of that party; and so it goes. Such an attitude fails to take into consideration both the kind of people we are here in this country and the social, religious, and political system we have developed throughout our history, and are still developing. America is a society made up of peoples from all over the earth, who came here at various times and for various purposes. Perhaps the most important simple purpose animating them was the desire to improve their condition. Hence, we must recognize that ours is a people consisting of Catholics and Protestants but also of every other kind of non-Christian faith. Some of our ancestors came early, while others came within the past few years, or even months. We are dark-skinned and light-skinned, and all shades in between. We came from totalitarian governments and from democratic ones. The leavening agent that runs through and cuts across all these national, racial, religious, and ethnic barriers is our constitutional system that guarantees to everyone of us the same rights before the law, even the right to seek actively to change that law, though there those in positions of special privilege whose position would be threatened by change. They insist that the status quo should be preserved intact, and that anyone who questions the perfection of the present is disloyal. If America ever reaches the point where dissent is suppressed, it will cease to be the kind of society that has made it great and strong.

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Church attendance hit an all time high in 1956. The National Council of Churches estimated that an average of 49.6 million persons attended church services in all denominations each week of the year. That is 49 percent of the nation’s adult population. The top Sunday of the entire year was Easter Sunday. A total of 60.4 million adults, nearly six out or every ten adult Americans, were in church that day. Women outnumbered men, but perhaps not by as much as you would think. For every 54 women who attended, there were 43 men.

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The Roman Catholic Church will build religious centers and a sports stadium in Rome as gifts for the 80^th birthday of Pope Pius XII on March 2. Clementa Cardinal Micara, the papal vicar of Rome, announced details of the program in a message appealing to Romans for funds. Among the buildings planned are a parish center, an educational institute for children of poor families, completion of the Pope Pius XII Oratory and Recreation Center near St. Peter’s Basilica, and a Shrine of Mary the Queen. The stadium will be built on church-owned ground on the Appian Way. It might be used in Rome’s 1960 Olympics.

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The United States Embassy in Madrid, Spain, has made a full report to Washington on the closing of the Spanish Protestant Seminary and School by Spanish authorities. The Seminary was established 75 years ago.

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In New York the legislative committee of the Protestant Council of New York City has restated its denunciation of gambling as a social evil, and pledged to oppose the legalization of bingo-playing for religious and charitable organizations. The attack on gambling is one of six points in a statement of principles for 1956 issued by the Protestant Council in its publication Protestant Church Life. Among others are opposition to racial discrimination, and a declaration that juvenile delinquency is the product of total environment of children in the home, the church, the school, and society in general.

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The Methodist Church Board of Social and Economic Relations has urged parishioners to show brotherliness and patience in adjusting to racial integration of the nation’s schools. The board adopted a resolution saying that the Supreme Court decision on school segregation has an influence beyond the schools, calling for far-reaching community-wide adjustments.

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Keith Funston, President of the New York Stock Exchange, insists there is a place for the Bible in business. Funston told the congregation at Trinity Church, New York, that the decisions men of finance must make are not always just dollar decisions. He said, “Many of our acts involve judgments as to what is right and wrong.” He added, “An increasingly great change in American business is consciousness of seeing the business world in terms of human beings.”

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An Easter educator says the average protestant minister has a 10-hour workday. Dr. Samuel Blizzard of Pennsylvania State University adds that a survey has shown the average minister uses 13 percent of his work as preacher or officiate at church services. Then he spends 23 percent at administration, 15 percent as counselor, 7 percent as community and parish organizer, and 3 percent as teacher. The remaining 39 percent of the average protestant minister’s time goes to his family. Dr. Blizzard, an associate professor of sociology at Penn State, adds the figures are based on questionnaires sent to 1,500 ministers of 22 denominations in all parts of the U.S. He told of the survey at a meeting this week of the Ministers Week Program at the Chicago Theological Seminary.

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A special convention of a Lutheran Synod had unfrocked two ministers and declared a third innocent in heresy cases. The English Evangelical Lutheran Synod of the Northwest has voted out of the ministry the Rev. George Crist, Jr. and the Rev. Victor K. Wrigley. They had been found guilty by special committees last summer. The Rev. John Gerberding was acquitted. All had been charged with doctrinal deviation on such matters as the virgin birth of Christ and his resurrection. The 31-year-old Crist, former pastor at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Durham, Wisconsin, is now a student at the University of Iowa. Wrigley, 36 years old, has continued as pastor at Gethsemane Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, at the request of his congregation. But the Rev. Mr. Gerberding, age 33, resigned his pastorate at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, in Menominee Falls, Wisconsin. He is now working on a weekly newspaper at Lancaster, Wisconsin. He is still eligible to receive a call.

 

 

The military, with your money and mine, is reaching into our high schools with their propaganda following a pilot project in Michigan. In all of this none of the sordid and destructive aspects of war are mentioned. The object of military training is not to teach a trade, to see the world, or to guarantee a pension to survivors of war, but to kill and maim human beings and to destroy property. If high school students are to be sold on the idea of a military career, they should be told this side of the story as well as the brighter side. For most of our history as a nation, we have been spared perpetuation of a military clique, such as has been the curse of Germany and other nations. Despite the troubled world situation today, and our real need for defensive strength, there is no apparent reason why such methods as used in Michigan should be resorted to to recruit cannon fodder. We cannot help but wonder why there is not as much time, energy, money, thought, and effort spent on ways and means of reaching a durable peace as there is on anticipating nothing but war and making little effort toward doing anything about it except getting ready. To accept war as inevitable is to admit defeat of peace at the outset. And Mr. Dulles boasts that he prevented our getting us into war by bringing us to the brink of war. Does that make sense to you? No, and it did not to me either.

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Comments on this program indicating a certain amount of skepticism about the religiosity of public officials who seem to wear religion on their sleeve so that all may be sure and see it have at times evoked from you listeners reactions of resentment. However, they were honest comments and were in no way intended to disparage the good and sincere intentions of anyone. But it did seem a little bit too obvious when General Eisenhower rather ostentatiously affiliated with the Presbyterian Church just on the eve of launching himself into the fight for the presidential nomination in 1952. Now, according to reports by Time magazine, would-be presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson is going Eisenhower one better. It says that he is going to be a member of both the Presbyterian and the Unitarian denominations. The same reliable and conservative magazine goes on to say that two Unitarian and two Presbyterian pastors state that in this “There is no inconsistency.” Well, I should judge not lest I be judged, but when I read that, I could not help but wonder why he did not join the Methodists. They have more votes than Presbyterians and Unitarians combined. The ways of politics and politicos are indeed passing strange.

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A quotable quote comes to us by way of a Supreme Court decision in the state of Illinois. It says this regarding state and church: “The ‘establishment of religion’ clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the federal government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.”

It would be well for congressmen contemplating allotting funds to church schools in federal aid to education bills to keep this quotation in mind. Of course it is highly unlikely that such bills have much chance of passage at this session of Congress, though several will be introduced for the purpose of the record.

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The subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee headed by Sen. Eastland of Mississippi, successor to the late much-publicized witch-hunter McCarran, is fine combing American newspapers for evidence of subversion – which is something of a paranoid delusion, for newspapers in this country are notably reactionary. Many of us who have tried to follow the devious windings of this subcommittee and its chairman are convinced that he is acting in defiance of the First Amendment and Supreme Court decision. Also it is a clear usurpation of judicial functions by the legislative branch. It seems a case of a mountain laboring and bringing forth a few mice.

On the other hand, Eastland is the same person who told a Mississippi audience not long ago, in referring to the court decision on segregation, that “You don’t have to obey a ruling of that kind by that court.” And he is the same man who met in Memphis Christmas week and helped organize the so-called Federation for Constitutional Government, an organization dedicated to defying the Court’s decree. Veritably, one is moved, in looking at his Mississippi and Memphis actions as contrasted with his New York ones, to cry “Watchman, what of the night?” Most of us would deem defiance of law and order about as subversive as one can get.

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When we refer to the Bible, we mean that Bible which we regard as sacred writings. It might be well for us occasionally to take a broader view and keep within our realization the fact that there are many bibles of many peoples. The Jewish-Christian view is that our Bible is a revelation from a transcendent deity dictated to some favored men and containing an outline of a plan which, if believed, will insure after death eternal bliss in another world, and, if rejected, will make sure after death of a fate too terrible to describe. But then, even the Christians have many, not one only, salvation schemes. In other words, there is no universally accepted Bible in Christendom. We have the bibles of the Roman Catholic Church, of our Protestant denominations, of the Armenian Church, of the Coptic Church, and of the Syrian Church – all Christian ones. Then there are a lot of bibles of people who are non-Christian. What makes a bible? Obviously all people decide that for themselves, and while we have every right to be dedicated to believing in the superiority of our own, it would be narrow and inconsistent of us to refuse other people the right to believe in the superiority of their own.

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Out in Utah a personal and domestic tragedy is taking place. And it makes no differences as to what our personal beliefs and preferences are in the matter, it is a tragedy for the people concerned. You will recall that a year or so ago a a raid was made on the settlement of Short Creek, Arizona, a Mormon settlement where polygamy was being practiced by members of the so-called fundamentalist sect branch of the church. It was found that plural wives were the rule there and a considerable number of persons were taken into custody. Across the Utah-Arizona line is the other portion of the settlement. There live Mrs. Vera Black and her eight children. She is one of the three wives of Leonard Black, a member of this element of the church. Recently the welfare department of the state of Utah visited the place and urged the mother to sign an agreement that would commit her: 1.to give up polygamy as a practice; 2. to rear the children in the belief that polygamy is wrong. The state is not doing this from entirely altruistic motives; it is trying to avoid lengthy and expensive court action in taking the children away from her. However, the mother would not be persuaded. She insisted that ours is a nation of equal right of all religion before the law; that polygamy is a fundamental part of her religious belief; that to sign the pledge asked for by the state would run counter to her conscience; and that requiring her to sign a pledge or oath such as this would be done only if all mothers who had honorably, as they see it, were required to sign a similar oath.

The state on its part, in view of her refusal, took the children, aged four to 19, to foster homes.

Thus we run squarely into an apparently irreconcilable conflict between church and state. There is little use in asking or arguing the point; the courts have spoken. Yet, one with a social consciousness cannot help but feel deeply the tragedy that is going on the hearts of the mother and children thus so abruptly torn apart. Probably what Vera Black was practicing openly is practiced secretly by many people in the state. Back in 1890 the then head of the church, one Wilford Woodruff, advised the members of his church to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the laws of the land. This meant, in effect, to give up polygamy, and it was made one of the conditions upon which Utah would be admitted to the Union.

The fundamentalists, however, renounce Woodruff as an apostate from what is to them the true faith. They say, in effect, “We believe that polygamy is a divine institution,” that without it, man is not fulfilling his full religious duty. So there you have it. What is to be done under such circumstances? Veritably, it would require one with wisdom more than a Solomon to resolve the conflict.

We who subscribe to the monogamous view may easily bask in the complacency of self-righteousness by saying that basically, their tenets are wrong to begin with. We may wonder how or why any intelligent person can subscribe to such beliefs. We may look down upon them as a being of a lower order of intelligence or morals. But the fact remains that a mother and her children are separated by the laws and powers of the state because of what is apparently deep religious convictions. That is a fact that no amount of rationalization can remove. That is the human tragedy of an unfortunate situation.

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Washington: Catholics and Protestants are holding prayers for unity in the long divided family of Christendom. Both major branches of Christianity started the prayers January 18 and they will continue until January 25. But the services are certain to point up the great gap which still exists between Protestantism and Catholicism. The Catholics are emphasizing at their services their unswerving adherence to the principle that unity can be achieved only by (what they call) the return of Protestants to the Church of Rome. The Protestants also would have to accept the pope’s authority as “Vicar of Christ on Earth.” Protestants are pointing to this Catholic stand as the biggest obstacle in the path of eventual Christian unity.

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The Methodist Church’s General Board of Education has recommended the establishment of two additional seminaries. The commission, meeting in Cincinnati, proposed that one of the schools be located in Ohio; the other in the Kansas/Missouri/Nebraska area. Final action on the recommendation will come at the quadrennial sessions of the Methodist General Conference at Minneapolis in April.

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Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania: Leading Methodist officials say the shift of Americans from rural to urban and suburban areas presents “almost insurmountable problems” to the churches of both city and country. The comments were made at the meeting of the Board of Missions of the Church this week. Dr. Robert McKibben said more than 50 percent of our population now lives in communities of 10,000 or over. A century ago, the percentage was only 10 percent. The meeting also heard from the Rev. Tracey Jones, Jr, a former missionary in China. He said there are what he called “feeble indications” of a growing interest in Chinese Christians to reestablish contacts with Christians beyond the Bamboo Curtain. The Board of Missions of the church reports a record income for the fiscal year 1954-55 of $23,396,000.

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New York: The role of the layman in the Protestant Church will be the theme of a conference for parish ministers to be held in New York next week. Seventy-five ministers from 11 states, and representing the major Protestant denominations, are enrolled for the Fifth Annual Alumni Mid-Winter Ministers Conference at Union Theological Seminary. Date for the conference is January 23 – 25.

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Vatican sources say the Catholic Church this year may proclaim as a saint a North American Indian girl who died 300 years ago. The Indian girl, Catherine Tekakwitha, or “Lily of the Mohawks,” was born in 1656 near Albany, New York. She was the daughter of a pagan Mohawk Indian and a Christian Algonquin woman, and she lived a dedicated life after the smallpox epidemic which marked her face for life and wiped out her family. She died at the age of 24, at the St. Francis Xavier Mission near Montreal. The Mohawk tribe venerated her as a saint, and her grave became a pilgrimage center.

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Philadelphia: A new vote on a proposal to permit women to be ordained in the Presbyterian Church is under way in the U.S. and early tally shows 58 for and 14 against the proposal, which has been twice defeated by the ministry, in 1930 and 1947. The office of the church’s General Assembly in Philadelphia says a majority of 257 presbyteries is required to amend the church constitution to permit the ordination of women. The proposal was recommended at an annual assembly meeting in Los Angeles last year.

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The Roman Catholic Church in Spain has begun a drive for wage improvement among the nation’s poverty-stricken workers and peasants. The church’s great influence in Spain is expected to mean strong pressure on General Alissimo Francisco Franco’s government. The regime is holding wages at a level of a general raise granted one year ago. Spanish employers are not required to boost wages unless the government orders them to do so. Church informants say the Metropolitan Committee of all Spanish archbishops agreed on the move in early December. The Vatican is said to have approved. The poorer Spaniards have been squeezed by the spectacular price rises in the last three months.

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A long-time U.S. Japanese Shinto priest says he has answered the voice of his conscience in deciding to become a Christian. Rikimatsu Hideshima says he and his wife will be baptized today in the Japanese Congregational Church in Seattle, Washington. Hideshima has been a Shinto priest for 29 years. The 59-year-old convert adds he first became interested in Christianity while in a World War II relocation center.

At times certain colleagues of mine have indulged in good-natured ribbing (at least, I hope it is good-natured) because persistently I have expressed concern over the ways that certain Southern states and private groups in those states are going about trying to ignore or violate the clear pronouncement of the Supreme Court with respect to desegregation. I should like to take a little more time on this program to explore the matter in detail, with particular reference to the citizens’ council movement.

In May 1954, the court made its decision. In June of that year the Citizens’ Council of Mississippi was formed to combat that decision. Since then the movement has spread throughout the segregated South. Unlike members of the Ku Klux Klan, members of these councils are predominately respectable business and professional people, leaders in their white communities. They disclaim any notion of violence or inflicting suffering on anyone. But the principles of the councils (whatever their name) is much the same as those of the Klan. Let us look at some concrete, individual, results.

Last August 6, Jasper Mims and 52 other Negroes in the city of Yazoo signed a petition for admission of their children to a formerly all-white school. Ten days later the Yazoo City Herald devoted its back page to a list of the signers of that petition, together with each name, address, and telephone number set forth in 14-point type. Ostensibly all this was done as a “public service.” These were not cotton-patch Negroes; in fact they were the core of the town’s middle class. In six months, Mims, who had had an income of $150 a week, was broken. Nathan Stewart, the town’s most successful grocer among the Negroes, found, after publication of his name, that no wholesaler would supply him for cash. The Delta National Bank notified him to come and draw out his money. He is now bankrupt and living in the state of Illinois. Two other grocers who signed the petition suffered the same fate. One Lillian Young signed the petition, and the lumber company fired her husband. A few days later she went into the local A&P store and the clerk refused to sell to her. Hoover Harvey, a plumber, was installing bathroom fixtures in the home of a white man, but when his name was printed, he was told to get his name off the list if he wanted to continue his work. He did, but was fired from the job. He is now in Detroit.

In the same city, there were a year ago 235 Negro voters. The council printed a list of their names, and now there are just 15 who dare try exercise their right to vote. In this case it was the chief of police who was assigned to dissuade them. No, the councils do not go in for violence. That is what sheriffs and chiefs of police are for. These are just a few of the many examples all over the South where such councils are active.

Since the people who form these councils are of dominant influence in their respective communities, it is somewhat natural that politicians of all kinds have been, and are, catering to them. No one can possibly predict how many delegates will be sent to the Democratic convention next summer because of their influence. The discouraging fact is that both the hopefuls who seem ahead in the race for the nomination have preferred to ignore what is happening. Not long ago one Adlai Stevenson was the guest of Herman Talmadge for a weekend. What went on between these two politicos is not all known, but shortly afterward, Talmadge predicted with seeming pleasure that Stevenson would be nominated. Such an announcement by a communist fellow traveler would have brought the heavens down on Stevenson’s head. It appears that the only reaction to Talmadge’s position by any other Democratic contender is one of envy. Incidentally also, Stevenson improvised into his prepared speech in Chicago last November 19 the idea that integration is no longer a political issue since it has been decided by the Supreme Court.

The other hopeful, Averell Harriman, when asked about his reaction to the acquittal of those charged with murdering Emmett Till, the young Negro boy from Chicago, in Mississippi, took refuge in the non-answer by saying that since New York has not solved its own racial problems it was a no position to preach to anyone else. Shortly afterward, Mr. Harriman went to Alabama where he addressed a farm porch audience of planters and businessmen (some of whom were members of the councils) and preached to the Russians about social decency. He did not mention civil rights.

To what does all this add up with regard to political morality, to say nothing of common decency? In 1924, the Democrats weaseled their way out of a forthright stand on the Klan issue, and lost adherents as a result. If there is a time of judgment for all of us, it must be said then that the American liberal, at a time when he should have called out to Jasper Mims and all the others with his heart, could only say, “Of course, but…” We have stumbled our way down from ”Of course, Hiroshima, but …” to “Of course, Jasper Mims, but…” and with every “but,” the liberal who has done so has lost stature. There are doubtless many realistic political reasons why the Democratic Party should avert its eyes from Jasper Mims and welcome to its councils Fielding Wright, a Mississippi planter. But no amount of gaudy gilt and crimson can make a banner raised by cowards anything but a coward’s banner. This country has survived four years of the Republicans, or almost that much, and could perhaps survive four years more. For Jasper Mims, it will be all the same; and, if it is the same for him, the least of us, it is the same for all of us, for liberty is indivisible. If there is no liberty for the least of us, there is none ultimately for the greatest. It was the Master himself who said that “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” There may be excuses and forgiveness for people like Bill Simmons, Sen. Eastland, and Herman Talmadge, because they are what they are. The tragedy is not so much them, but the fact that men who think themselves worthy of being president of the United States pant after, if not their good will, at least their neutrality, and are willing to ignore stark injustice to get it. There may be forgiveness for these individuals in their community; there can be none for the Democratic Party if it ignores what is happening. A common decency cries out against such blindness to the human issues at stake.

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During the past few years, liberals have been accused of being negative; of being against, rather than for, something. We have been told it is better to build rather than tear down. Yet, sometimes it is easier to define what we do not mean than what we do, what we do not believe in than what we subscribe to believing. Some critics of negativism have gone so far as to think that liberalism has no content of its own, but is merely a form criticism of what it sees. Partly as a reaction and partly because it has a good sound, we have been told to “think positive thoughts” (a la Norman Vincent Peale, e.g.) There are those who seemingly object to criticizing anything for fear of being negative. Such people are not even with Cal Coolidge’s preacher, “agin sin.” This sort of thing has become something of a fad.

Yet, actually, it is impossible for anyone with any convictions at all not to be against some things and opposed to some people. For example, most of us, at least us teachers, believe in free public education, teaching the plain truth to all children. Good. That is positive enough. Yet, when we express that conviction and try to put it into practice, we sometimes immediately find ourselves in opposition to a number of persons and organizations who do not want free, unbiased education. There are people who look upon the school as propaganda media, and we are opposed to them. Call that destructive, critical, negative, or whatever you will. There are many things and persons we are against simply because there are persons and things we are for. And the two groups of persons are opposed to each other. We cannot be positive toward both groups and have any consistency. The human mind works by making comparisons and contrasts. Any religion which rises above mere sentimentality will be against some things as well as for others. So, many of us who like to think of ourselves as liberals plead guilty in advance to being against those who oppose the goals for which we are working.

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Paul Crouch, traitor to friends, violator of confidences, breaker of oaths, false witness, and wrecker of reputations, yet protected by government immunity is dead. He lived unworthily and died detested by all patriots plus those who in high places used him to cast him aside. Blessed is the man who is not employed by the council of the wicked nor testifies in the way of sinners.

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New York: The Methodist Church says it is releasing to television stations a series of 13 religious films. The films were produced in Hollywood at a cost of $250,000. At a news conference in New York, Donald Harvey Tippett, president of the church’s radio and film commission, describes the series as “probably the most elaborately produced TV series ever undertaken by a religious organization.”

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Quito, Ecuador: The Ecuadorean government has warned missionaries not to try to penetrate the country of its savage Indian tribes. The government says the murder of five American missionaries who landed their small plane on a sandbar in the [Ohl Gahn] river this week was to be expected. The Indians of the fierce Huaorani tribe are intractable and the Ecuadorean government does not have the money to attempt pacification of the Auca country. The missionary party was led by Edward McCully, Jr. of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.

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Yuba City, California: Officials of the Mormon Church said the church’s welfare program was a success in the recent west coast flood disaster. The president of the Gridley, California, stake of the church says that emergency supplies requested were unloaded at Gridley within 24 hours by an appeal to church headquarters at Salt Lake City. The president of the Sacramento, California, stake says more than 1,200 members put in at least 10,000 hours of volunteer work.

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St. Louis: The president of Boston University has been elected president of the National Association of Schools and Colleges of the Methodist Church. Dr. Harold Case was named president at the group’s annual meeting in St. Louis, to succeed Dr. Nelson Horn, president of Baker University.

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The Laymen’s Leadership Institute, at Louisville, Kentucky, had been told religion is a full-time job, especially for the layman. The comment is from a Texas food store chain executive, Howard Butt, Jr. At 28 years of age, he is an internationally known lay leader. He says every layman is responsible for the propagation of the gospel.

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The end may be near for a long controversy about the rectorship of a Brooklyn, New York, Episcopal church. Seven years ago, the regular rector, the Rev. Dr. John Howard Melish, was removed by the bishop of Long Island because of the alleged left-wing activities of his son and assistant minister.

Bishop James P. De Wolfe then refused approval to the vestry’s installation of the son as rector. But the vestry declined to name anyone else to the pulpit of Holy Trinity Protestant Episcopal Church. It kept the younger Mr. Melish as acting rector. Now the vestrymen have nominated a new rector. The Rev. Dr. Irving S. Pollard is expected to get the bishop’s approval and then be formally elected by the vestry. Dr. Pollard is on the staff of St. Bartholomew’s Church in Manhattan.

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One of the most eminent Protestant theologians in the U.S. sees today’s younger generation as characterized by its search for a faith. That’s the view of the Rev. Dr. Henry Van Dusen, president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He also told about 400 women at a seminary lecture series that it is religion, not morals, with which the younger generation is preoccupied. He thinks the current younger generation lives far closer to the deep, aboriginal springs of life than its parents or grandparents. He also notes current youth has never known a moment of the golden days before the epoch of the World Wars or the hopeful and confident days between the Wars. Yet he sees it as, among other things, gay, carefree, relaxed, and good humored. But he further believes today’s youth is characterized by listlessness. He says they suffer from lack of worlds to conquer.

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Again this year the Minnesota Jewish Council is cooperating with the University of Minnesota Agricultural Extension Service in a statewide radio speaking contest for 4-H Club members. In this 14^th year of the competition, the 4-H’ers will have the topic of “What can I do today to make the world better tomorrow?” The Jewish Council is providing some $1,500 in awards for county, district, and state winners.

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A U.S.-born Roman Catholic priest with a sudden fame has been honored by his church and state. He is the Rev. Canon J. Francis Tucker, a native of Wilmington, Delaware, and now chaplain to Prince Rainer III of Monaco. He was guest at a dinner in Wilmington on the 50^th anniversary of his religious profession. Father Tucker is the first U.S. member of the order, which is devoted to the secondary education of boys and mission fields. He also founded and was for 25 years pastor of St. Anthony Church in Wilmington. Now he is pastor of St. Charles Parish and canon of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, both in Monte Carlo.

 

It is to observe the obvious that the people of the United States do not like the government of Russia, nor does Russia like the government of the United States. So, the government here spends a lot of the taxpayers’ money to say that to the people of Russia. A handful of discredited people in this country are saying that they do not like our form of government here. These are the communists. These are the so-called menace. Perhaps there are some 25,000 of them out of a population of over 160 million.

Moreover, some people in public life do not seem to have much confidence in the common sense and patriotism of the masses and these people are genuinely frightened. Others seek to win public office, sell periodicals, or gain publicity, by making the menace seem greater than it really is.

The result is that to protest the United States against the menace, many people in power nationally or otherwise adopt the same repressive measures that they condemn in Russia. It is a queer way to preserve American liberties by abolishing them. Not only our national government, but many states have enacted statutes that have reduced liberty in the name of liberty.

Perhaps in no other state has this gone so far as in California, mention of which was made here a week ago. For example, a special loyalty oath is required from all who receive compensation from the state. Teacher tenure is undermined. Any teacher who has ever belonged to an organization that the administration does no like can be summarily dismissed without administrative recourse. Public education is thus regulated by police power which has access to school rooms. Teachers are in some cases forbidden to teach current controversial problems or even to permit the writing of essays on them. (And, I might ask parenthetically, whether an issue is really an issue unless it is controversial?) A seven-man commission called Anti-Communist Civil Defense Commission makes legal “guilt by association” and sets up a list of organizations to which it is illegal to belong or to have ever belonged. In that state, communists must register and the Communist Party is outlawed. Wire-tapping on court order is made legal. Employers are given permission to fire anyone the employer thinks is disloyal, and there is no recourse. From all businesses, professions, or vocations requiring license from the state, a special loyalty oath is required. A separate bill requires lawyers to take a loyalty oath or be disbarred. If a lawyer defends a person declared to be a communist, the lawyer is liable for perjury.

Not only this, but the enemies of freedom found a way to bring churches to heel. Churches are to be taxed unless their officials take a loyalty oath for all their constituents. In this case, the official takes an oath, not only for himself but for others. Otherwise, the churches are liable to pay taxes to the state.

Here and there in the state are islands of sanity in this sea of hysteria. Members of some churches are protesting the disloyal activities of the legislators. Some churches have refused to stop all persons at the door and examine them for loyalty, or to censor peoples’ thoughts. These churches have appealed to American principles through the courts, but that costs money. One church, for example, is paying some $7,000 a year under protest rather than sign the odious oath.

All of this, of course, brings up the fundamental question of whether we can protect democracy against totalitarianism by using totalitarian methods. Of what value is a loyalty oath anyway? We Americans who are not best by such hysteria as that animating California legislators would insist that the only loyalty we know is to our Constitution and to laws validly enacted under it. In a democracy, the state can ask for no more; the people can refuse to give no less. Loyalty oaths mean nothing to communists who proceed upon the theory that any means justify the ends they seek, which is world revolution. It would appear to be about time that we returned, in California and elsewhere, to the basic tenets of Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers. Democracy rests basically upon the premise that the common man in the street can be relied upon to govern himself wisely if given access to the truth. And he needs no special safeguards or prompting from the state to make him do it. Also, another of our constitutional principles is separation of church and state, a principle which California legislators seem conveniently, but unfortunately to have forgotten. You may wonder why so much time is devoted to this topic is some a matter of direct and immediate concern largely to people some 3,000 miles away. Well, it was a little man from Independence, Missouri, who some few years ago stated a fundamental truth: that we are slowly coming to recognize that a threat to freedom of men anywhere is a threat to freedom of men everywhere. That little man was Harry S. Truman, a controversial figure, admittedly, but who, when he said that, was speaking in the best Jeffersonian tradition, for it was Jefferson who remarked that “I have sworn eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the minds of men.” If it can happen in California, it can happen in Tennessee; the thing we must be concerned about is to see to that it does not happen here. It was a Californian, Chief Justice Earl Warren, who recently said that this generation will pass on to the next “a better Bill of Rights or a worse one, tarnished by neglect or burnished by growing use.” Each of us has a part to play in seeing that it is burnished rather than tarnished.

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The Syracuse Federation of Teachers in New York has made a survey to find out from teachers what factors are important in promoting teacher morale. A random sample of 1,000 teachers was chosen in the geographic area, and from the replies some 44 factors were reported. Time will not permit enumeration of them all here, but I am going to take time to pass on to you those factors mentioned by 50 percent or more of the teachers. First, with 77 percent was the complaint that maximum salaries are not reached until about half of one’s teaching career is passed; 75 percent emphasized that salaries of experienced teachers have not increased in proportion to increases in beginning salaries for teachers; 68 percent said that there was no accumulation of days of fully paid sick leave; the same number listed loss of salary and medical expenses suffered by teachers injured on the job; 65 percent objected to the fact that teacher salaries are lower in general than those of other professions requiring similar training; 64 percent pointed out that Syracuse teachers were receiving salaries lower than those paid in many villages and districts in the state; 64 percent mentioned the lack of official action to inform the public of oversized and doubled classes, relatively low salaries of teachers, and the high ability of Syracuse to finance education; 60 percent said there was not sufficient recognition of long and satisfactory service in the determination of salaries; 59 percent were actually aware that teachers retire on allowances below minimum subsistence levels; and an equal percentage, 59 percent, felt keenly the lack of provision for absence due to personal emergencies other than personal of family illness.

Well, you non-teachers out there may or may not agree that these complaints of teachers are justified. Those of us who have spent all or most of our working lives in the school room are all too acutely aware of these and many other factors that keep our morale down. Teacher morale is important, not so much because of the teacher himself, but for the simple fact that a teacher who feels secure, both in the present and the foreseeable future, is worth far more to your children that is one who is worried by debts he cannot pay, retirement without adequate subsistence, and all the other factors that in this world of ours today make the difference between security and insecurity. America’s children have a right to instruction by teachers who feel a minimum of worry because of financial circumstances. Such instruction is likely to be far more thorough, meaningful, interesting, and enthusiastic. So, this matter of teacher morale is more important than simply the personal welfare of the teachers; it is important for the educational welfare of the students.

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From the reactions I get, it seems that every so often it is pertinent to state again something of the point of view of this program. It certainly is intended to be non-sectarian. It assumes that one can have a preference for his own religion without at the same time incurring a prejudice against a religion other that his own. It views religion not only from the narrow confines of ritual and dogma that make up the special perspective of a single creed or denomination; but also from the viewpoint that things often thought of as secular by many people have direct or indirect religious import. For example, it is no accident that crime rates go up as quality of housing goes down; that morality in public life, among public officials, is as much of concern to the man concerned with religion as is a particular form of baptism. It recognizes that religion is an area of life that cannot be delimited, that it is something pervading and permeating every area of the life of the individual and of the society of which he is a part. It refuses to look at religion as something locked up between the lids of a book to be brought out one day of the week and securely tucked away the other six days.

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First, a round up of the week’s religious news as reported by United and Associated Press Radio.

London: Queen Elizabeth has approved the appointment of the Right Rev. Arthur Michael Ramsey as archbishop of York and co-primate of the Church of England. He is the cleric who stood at the queen’s side during her coronation two years ago to help support her in her heavy robes. The 52-year-old bishop succeeds the late Dr. Cyril Garbett who died last Saturday at the age of 80. Dr. Ramsey is now second only to the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, in ecclesiastical rank.

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Milan, Italy: Terrorists have bombed Milan’s Arch-Episcopal Palace in a apparent attempt to kill or intimidate Italy’s two leading anti-communist cardinals. Italian newspapers hint that the bombing was the work of the Reds.

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Again Milan: A Milan magazine says Pope Pius XII has been studying the Russian language. The magazine says the pontiff is making the study in order to understand the psychology of the Russian people. However, Vatican sources discount the report.

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Some Protestant church stewardship leaders meeting in Chicago agree it is both wrong and lazy to mail pledge cards to get church contributions. The Rev. Arthur O. Rinden, of New York City, adds personal contributions are preferable to the pledge card mailings. Mr. Rinden, who presided over the final session of the two-day conference this week, states churches should ask members to give not as they gave last year but that they should contribute as “God had blessed you.” The Chicago meeting of 61 representatives of 21 denominations had raising church budgets as its theme. The conference was sponsored by the National Council of Churches, U.S.A.

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Church youth and church education have been the subjects of three denominational meetings this week. The Rev. Ronald V. Wells of NYC has told the Baptist General Council the church should start a $5.75 million educational drive. That would be to support Baptist schools, colleges, and other educational activities.

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Also in Chicago, the young Methodists have begun Operation Fellowship. The Rev. Harold W. Ewing of Nashville says the plan is to lure the drug store, pool room, and country club crowd to church. He adds Operation Fellowship will use home parties, hot rod clubs, and community recreation to decentralize Methodist youth work outside of church buildings.

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In Cincinnati, the United Lutheran Church has announced a new long-range program for coordinating parish education. The Rev. Dr. S. White Rhune of Philadelphia tells of a complete, coordinated curriculum running through all of the church’s schools. He says little relation exists at the present time among the programs of Sunday schools, vacation, and weekday church schools and confirmation classes.

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At Merom, Indiana, key laymen of the Congregational Christian and Evangelical and Reformed churches from 11 Midwest states held a get-acquainted conference yesterday and today. The two Protestant denominations plan to unite next year. Lay leaders in six other regions will hold similar conferences during the next few months.

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Naples: A Roman Catholic priest has announced he will set up a home for gangsters deported from the United States who cannot find work in Italy. The gangsters have found it difficult to get honest work in Italy. The plan has the support of Charles Luciano, former New York vice overlord, who runs a prosperous medical equipment store in Naples.

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Pittsburgh: The nation’s two largest Presbyterian church groups may merge. A plan to unite the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and the United Presbyterian Church of North America was formulated at a gathering of church leaders in Pittsburgh. The new church with some three million members, would be called the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. If the committees, general assemblies, and presbyteries of both present churches adopt the plan, the two churches will unite in a combined assembly in Pittsburgh in May, 1958.

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The Roman Catholic archbishop of New York has been received in private audience by Pope Pius XII. The prelate, Francis Cardinal Spellman, is en route home to the U.S. after his annual Christmas-time visit with U.S. troops in the Far East. Cardinal Spellman will visit U.S. servicemen and women in Italy and Germany on his way back.

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Another evidence has come of better ties between the Vatican and Argentina. The pope bestowed his good wishes on Argentinians in an audience with an Argentine embassy official this week. Now provisional President Aramburu has expressed his thanks to the pontiff for the blessing.

 

First, a potpourri of religion in the week’s news as reported by the AP and UP news agencies.

Vatican sources say Pope Pius XII is willing to serve as moral mediator between East and West in hopes of preventing an atomic war. These sources say the pope will make no formal offer, but that he’s ready to do what he can to solve outstanding differences in atomic control, if asked to do so.

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New York: A department of the Episcopal Diocese of New York has adopted a resolution deploring “the present reign of terror in the state of Mississippi.” The Department of Christian Social Relations says four persons were killed and another wounded in the past year. It says, “To permit such crimes to go unpunished is to invite lawlessness throughout the South.” It quotes Mississippi Senator Eastland as saying of the Supreme Court desegregation ruling “You are not required to obey a court which passes out such a ruling.” The statement says “This is subversion just as real, and, because it comes from a United States senator, far more dangerous than any perpetrated by the Communist Party.

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Hong Kong: Francis Cardinal Spellman arrived in Hong Kong yesterday in his fifth annual Christmas tour of American bases in the Far East. He will go to Vietnam Monday. During the week, the Cardinal has visited Formosa, Okinawa, the Yokosuka naval base, and Camp McGill, Japan, headquarters of the United States Third Marine Division.

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Chicago: The Methodist Church has conducted a poll among 1,700 of its 9 million members to learn their convictions on various subjects. The poll shows most are opposed to drinking, but 50 percent see no harm in bingo.

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Philadelphia: The Rev. Joseph Fichter of Loyola University in New Orleans has received the Annual Award of the American Catholic Sociological Society. He was honored for writing Social Relationships in the Catholic Parish, which the society considered the year’s best book in the field.

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Cleveland: One thousand delegates to the Fifth United Synagogue Youth Organization wound up their meeting this past week. They elected 17-year-old Arthur Pestcoe of Trenton, New Jersey, their president for the coming year.

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Athens, Ohio: Three thousand college students from 75 nations are holding a six-day ecumenical conference on the Christian World Mission. It is the seventh such meeting, which is held every four years by the Student Volunteer Movement, a unit of the National Council of Churches. About half the delegates are from the United States and the rest are from abroad.

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Rio de Janeiro: Father Pius Barth, Franciscan provincial for the Middle West, has announced increased U.S. Catholic missionary work in the Brazilian jungle state of Para. Barth says church authorities in Brazil are in general agreement with his plan to send an unspecified number of teachers and medical missionaries to join the 26 American Franciscans now stationed there.

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London: (And this is an item that should give us pause.) Soviet Premier Bulganin says possession of hydrogen bombs by both East and West is not a 100 percent deterrent against future wars. He also declared another summit conference “can be fruitful” (for whom, Russia again?). Replying yesterday to questions put to him by Charles E. Shutt, head of the Washington bureau of Telenews agency, Bulganin said, “It is wrong to assert that inasmuch as East and West possess hydrogen weapons, the possibility of a thermonuclear was is automatically excluded.” His interview was broadcast by the Moscow radio. Asked about the prospects for peace in 1956, Bulganin said in the interview, “International cooperation and trust are a fully attainable aim in our time.” (He didn’t say how…)

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A religious newscaster has a list of what he terms the ten biggest religious stories of 1955. Richard Sutcliffe, associate director of the press, radio, and television department of the United Lutheran Church in America, lists them as follows, though not necessarily in their order of importance:

1. The illness and recovery of the pope;

2. Red China’s release of Christian missionaries;

3. Billy Graham’s sweep of Western Europe;

4. Dictator Peron’s failure to choke Argentine Roman Catholics;

5. Princess Margaret’s stand for the indissolubility of Christian marriage;

6. The heresy trials of the Northwest Synod of the United Lutheran Church;

7. The collapse of the proposed merger by three U.S. Presbyterian bodies;

8. Indecision of church leadership after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on racial segregation;

9. The running debate on the relative truth or fiction of what had been termed the greatest U.S. religious renaissance;

10. The visits of U.S. churchmen in Russia.

He explains his choices on the basis of their interest and significance to churchman of all faiths and creeds. Sutcliffe goes on to point out a melancholy possibility that border clashes in the Holy Land between Arabs and Jews are on his list for 1956 religious news. He anticipates also that Washington will produce some big news of interest to the churches, such as congressional activity about federal aid to public and parochial schools and legislation attempting to relax immigration restrictions.

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Chicago: This city was the scene the past week of one of the rarest yet oldest ceremonies – an outdoor wedding in the strict Jewish Orthodox tradition. It was performed in Hebrew. Under the “Dome of Heaven” Rabbi Mordecai Goldzweig of Chicago and Miss Helen Saftler of New York City were married. The seven traditional blessings were given by seven rabbis. Another rabbi, the bridegroom’s father, officiated. Members of the two families held a small canopy over the couple, to show that from then on a single roof would cover the loved ones. Bride and groom, in the ceremony in Chicago’s near north side, each took two sips from a small goblet of wine. That signified that henceforth they should share not only each other’s joys but also their sorrows. The groom took one sip from another glass. Then he broke it, to signify that marriage cannot exist in perfect happiness so long as there is sorrow in the world.

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This week saw in Memphis what has been termed final plans for unity of anti-integration forces, an attempt to weld together the various pro-segregation forces of the South into one big political force. Curiously enough, it calls itself the “Federation for Constitutional Government.” The meeting itself consisted of some 45 representatives from 12 southern states. Approved during the session was the proposed strategy of Virginia which will be presented to the legislature this month. This strategy would aim at a constitutional amendment through securing ratification from three-fourths of the states to prohibit the states from operating racially separate public facilities. The apparent theory behind this move is that if the requisite number of states fails to ratify, the court decision on segregation is void. To the layman who has some interest and less information on the matter, it seems a bit weird as to constitutional procedure and interpretation, but that is what the news report says.

At any rate, the Federation For Constitutional Government elected an executive committee and empowered it to organize a campaign for its objective. Senator Eastland of Mississippi said that all attending the meeting, which was closed to the public, were sworn to secrecy.

Another dispatch quotes a member of the federal Department of Justice as saying that in his opinion states who hope to get around the decision by abolishing public school and subsidizing private ones would be violating the law, and that the courts, he was sure, would so hold. So, it would appear that in the next few months, certainly sometime during this year, the issue in question may be resolved one way or another.

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Something of a contradictory twist occurred when The New York Times, that confesses to being “America’s greatest newspaper,” notified its employees recently that any one of them who supported American liberties by invoking the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination would be fired.

The contradiction comes in the fact that it is the newspaper itself that puts up an aggressive defense as to its own rights to a free press under the First Amendment, but it denies its own employees to invoke the Fifth Amendment to defend their own liberty. How mixed up can you get? As an aside, it might be observed that there is a union of employees called Newspaper Guild, but there is no evidence as yet that it has taken any action in behalf of its members. Thus it seems to be only another of those odious company unions.

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And this brings to mind a parable that I came across recently that went like this:

Once upon a time there was a pastor who thought the object of religion was to protect and promote the happiness of the people both today and for the generations to come. So he studied all proposals he could that had to do with human welfare. Of course that involved the study of legislative proposals and politics. But many of his good people wished he wouldn’t preach politics. So he moved on and another pastor was called who was deaf, blind, and dumb to politics. The people liked that. They called it being spiritual. And from this reporter: No comment.

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Instead of comment of my own, I should like to insert at this point a quotation taken from Paul Blanshard’s The Right to Read. He says, “Probably the present American taboo against what is called ‘religious controversy’ is as bad for religion as it is for atheism. It means that the great concepts of religion are rarely discussed frankly in public by serious, independent thinkers. Religious literature suffers from too much tenderness; it lacks vitality and vigor. It is wrapped in the sterilized cotton wool of hypocritical respect.” Well, that is what he said. I merely pass it on as a thought worthy of reflection.

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A California teacher writes, “I attended political rallies. I listened to Fourth of July orators. I was attentive to the speakers at school assemblies. Later I read some newspaper editorials. All claimed that it was my patriotic duty to take an interest in politics and be sure to cast a careful vote each election. Now that I am a teacher I find myself out of a job because I did all this and taught my pupils they should do the same. Politics are controversial. In these days the controversial is called subversive.” Well, having lived several years in that state and kept up somewhat with developments in it since leaving, I can attest that in portions of it, that teacher’s comments could well be a realistic description of what can and sometimes does happen. In Los Angeles, for example, the Dilworth Act gave the Board of Education the right to inquire into the private opinions and beliefs of public school teachers in Los Angeles schools and to fire without recourse those whose opinions the board did not like. And we still send missionaries to other countries. It is a rather queer way to keep communists from destroying our free institutions by destroying them ourselves.

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And to end this first-of-the-year broadcast, I should like to quote a paragraph from Dr. Harold Scott, pastor of the First Unitarian Society of Salt Lake City, a man highly respected in this country and elsewhere. You may or may not agree with his point of view, but it does do something to shock us, perhaps out of our smug complacency. He says, “One trouble with orthodox Christianity is that it pretends to explain too much. It pretends to explain the origin of matter, the beginnings of man, his nature, interest, duty, and the state of the dead. This is all woven into a fantastic salvation scheme involving gods good and bad, angels fallen and unfallen…. So far as modest but inquiring science is able to see, these easy answers simply are not true. The immature personality demands simple, complete, and absolute answers. Truth is relative and live and all phenomena are complex. Our answers must be tentative, incomplete, and subject to revision.”

In the state of California, the constitution has been amended and legislation enacted that requires churches, in order to be tax- exempt, to take a loyalty oath. Presumably the taking of this oath implies a presumption that the whole membership is presumed to be guilty until the oath of innocence has been registered. It also implies that refusal to sign such an oath is subversive. But the matter of loyalty goes deeper than any oath can do. Nor does the signing of an oath prove loyalty. Churches must be free in their right to make moral and ethical judgments, even though such judgments may at times be critical of the status quo.

The churches have not all taken this matter lying down; some have paid taxes in full under protest and have gone to court to test the validity of this intrusion into religious matters by the state. Unitarians, Methodists, Quakers, and other religious bodies have taken an unequivocal stand against this invasion of religious freedom. And there have already been results. A Southern California court has ruled that the law is discriminatory and unconstitutional. In another case a court has upheld the law. In a San Leandro case involving the Methodist Church, the decision was that the law violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Other cases are pending, and some of the suits entered will doubtless be taken to the highest state court, and if the issue is not resolved satisfactorily there, perhaps ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court. A fund for religious freedom is being solicited by the Pacific Coast Unitarian Council, with a view of giving the matter a full test in the courts. This would seem to be a case requiring continual if not eternal vigilance.

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Considerable concern has existed for many months over the practice of the Post Office Department arbitrarily to withhold what it terms “foreign propaganda” from distribution through the mails to the general public, though individuals in that public have personally subscribed to and paid for such materials. Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the department is now delivering such so-called propaganda materials from abroad to newspapers, universities, and certain special individuals. Protests have [arisen], quite rightly it would seem, over the assumption of authority on the part of the department to make distinction between special individuals, institutions, and the general public. Once the government assumes control over the reading material of its citizens, it has taken a long step down the road to totalitarianism. In recent months the department has held back, banned, and even burned material from overseas that it broadly defines as “communist propaganda.” Last March in Boston, for example, authorities destroyed a shipment of pacifist pamphlets published in England and addressed to the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker affiliate. Well now, the Quakers have been noted for their pacifism since the days of William Penn, but this is the first time, insofar as this reporter knows, that it has been inferred that they deal in subversive literature. Even the conservative but well-known columnist George Sokolsky, who prefers what he calls “nineteenth century freedom” to what he terms “twentieth century liberalism” last spring public protested the post office’s long refusal to deliver to him periodicals from the Soviet Union which he had subscribed to and paid for. All this is a considerable departure from the conviction of Jefferson that we should have no fear of error as long as reason is free to combat it.

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This being the holiday season, perhaps you listeners expect some recognition of it on just about every program these days. Well, at the risk of leaving myself open to criticism, I should like to pass along part of what one of my students had to say about our high-pressure commercialization of Christmas, especially the fact that each year, it would seem, the public is subjected to longer and more persistent pressure. Lea Lawrence, writing in the December 9 issue of the [East Tennessee] State College Collegian has this to say, in part:

“I am getting a grudge against the Christmas season, just like I’m getting a grudge against some of the other holidays, and if you want to look aghast and think you’re face-to-face with a reincarnation of Ebenezer Scrooge, just go right ahead.… The once-pleasing carols are now revised and feature advertising jingles, and department store Santas no longer wait for junior’s lists. Instead they come calling door-to-door.… Every medium of communication is busily employed saturating the masses with “musts” for the shopping lists. No sooner than Gene Autry moans to a halt with ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,’ a voice crackling with enthusiasm bursts forth with the old pitch, ‘Having trouble with your shopping list? Well, here’s something the kiddies will really get a kick out of, it looks and feels like a genuine BB pistol, but shoots dum-dum bullets! And it’s yours for only…blah, blah, blah.’

While the kids turn flips in anticipation, parents have little to look forward to nowadays. The fuzzy aftermath of Christmas Eve will be met bright and early with helmeted and goggled junior spacemen skittering here and there through the house, dousing every passing object with alpha, beta and gamma rays. And topping off the entire head-splitting event will be the parade of little heads swathed in coonskin caps marching by, presenting a living reflection of an indistinct nogging complete with large hairy tongue in the form of a coon’s tail.

To attempt to perpetuate the pleasant legend of Santa Claus is a ridiculous task. Small children may not be able to count, but when they see no less than two-dozen Santas in one shopping tour, all of various sizes, shapes and vocal qualities, they figure pretty well. Two in one trip used to shake me up rather badly….

Another thing that bothers me is to awake one fine June morning to the clatter of sleigh bells as background effect to the ‘lay-away early for Christmas’ tune given by a jovial announcer who mentions at the same time that there are less than 190 shopping days until Christmas. I have a sneaking hunch that these reminders are edging back yearly. April may be the mark for next year. Christmas is all right … but it’s beginning to mess up my Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. And if the mania spreads to any of the other holidays, we may be seeing Easter bunnies in October, turkeys somewhere around May Day. I’m so used to the regular dates that it’s difficult to change.”

Ever since I read the above, I’ve tried to determine whether he was simply being facetious, or was he serious? Obviously, there is something to what he says. In looking at the loads of packages and deluge of cards in our small post office, one can hardly help but conclude that Christmas is becoming more of a time when we exchange merchandise than a time of observing in heartfelt manner its spiritual significance.

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My comments on education last week caused some comment. Here is another charge and reflection that we who try to teach are much concerned about but, like in many other situations, do not know the answer or are not in a position to use it if we think we know. Two vice presidents of the American Federation of Teachers have made the charge that our public schools are neglecting the gifted students and are “educating” for mediocrity. They go on to assert that overcrowded classrooms which produce too great a teacher load, at times disinterested administrators, and poorly trained teachers are among the reasons for our catering to the mediocre.

Most teachers and administrators have long recognized that under our system such a danger exists. The easiest, sometimes about the only, thing to do under the circumstances is to pitch the level of instruction toward those of average or median ability. While at the other end of the scale the below-average student may find the pace too fast for his limited ability. As a result, both students, the brilliant and the below average, may become disinterested and discouraged.

Various solutions have been offered and attempted, from permitting brilliant students to skip grades to special classes and tutoring for the below-average students. School systems, individual schools, and individual teachers have struggled with the problem. In some schools classes are divided into sections on the basis of learning ability, thus permitting better students to advance more rapidly, maintaining a normal pace for average students, and enabling the below-average to proceed at the pace dictated by their abilities.

The problem can be solved, but not until the American public recognizes and provides the facilities required: more and better-trained teachers and more and better-equipped classrooms with a consequent reduction of the teacher load. Opportunity for an education commensurate with one’s ability is a birthright of all boys and girls, but so far there has been forthcoming no blueprint to provide such, despite the fanfare of the White House Conference on Education.

Last week I gave a brief report on the incident in Erath, Louisiana, over the fact that teachers of Catholic catechism had been teaching white and Negro children in the same classes. More nearly complete information on the matter is now available. Erath is a small town of 2,500, some 125 miles west of New Orleans. One morning one of the teachers started to the church and when she got there she found a group waiting. Three women began striking at her with their fists and shoe heels. The teacher filed assault-and-battery charges against the attackers. Even the priest, Father Labbe, found that he was being followed, and he asked a friend to accompany him as a bodyguard.

Shortly thereafter, Bishop Jules Jeannard returned from a church meeting in Washington and took prompt action. He issued a letter of excommunication to be read at all Sunday Masses at the church in question. He named no names, but referred to the culprits as those who had caused a “scandal to the church and to the community.” He denied to them the sacraments, participation in prayers of the church, and Christian burial, until they repented. His action brought results rapidly. Soon it was announced that those guilty had made reparation. Classes were resumed but the priest has disclaimed any plans for integrating the races beyond the classroom, and has not expressed any assurance over a hope for the future, saying somewhat philosophically, “We shall have to wait and see what the future brings.” At any rate, it would appear that race will not be a dividing factor among the students as they seek to learn church catechism, and it is difficult to see why it should.

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For several days, some 1,800 delegates from all the states and territories conferred in Washington at the White House Conference on Education, trying to determine what should be done to meet the crisis in education that is daily growing worse. So far, nothing concrete and specific has been released to the public as to what the conference consensus will be. From what has been printed, it is pretty obvious that the conferees have ranged pretty much all over the educational spectrum in their deliberations. In a way, however, this conference seems to be pretty much an ex-post-facto affair. School people already knew that the nation needs some 200,000 classrooms now and will need almost that many more in another five years. Two-hundred-thousand teachers are needed to staff those classrooms. Fewer and fewer college students are taking teacher-training courses and fewer still are going into teaching.

Money may not be the most important element in the problem, but it is an indispensable one. Many states and local divisions have pretty well taken themselves up to the legal or economic limit for school purposes. The president warns that “Responsibility for educating our young is primarily local.” But simply saying that a school district is responsible does not bring about better schools if that district is unable adequately to discharge its responsibility.

And in the matter of teachers, it is difficult to see how the shortage is to be met until or unless teaching is made as attractive as other types of work requiring comparable training and skill. Young college people of today look rather realistically at the job world, and since most of them will have to work for a living, they evaluate objectively, not cynically, the comparative opportunities from a financial point of view of the possible career areas. While recognizing the opportunity for giving service in teaching, they recognize as fully that unless rewards for that service are commensurate with what they can command in other fields, they cannot afford to teach.

Several things are necessary to attract capable young people. First, working conditions should be greatly improved. Teachers quite naturally dislike being looked upon as a public servant on call any time of the day or night for the performance of any chore needing done in the community. They resent also intrusion into their private and personal affairs, while at the same time recognizing their special obligation to the community because of their position in it.

Second, teacher salaries must be made commensurate with salaries in other fields. Community gratitude, if any, is very satisfying to the teacher, but it is not something that he can spend in the stores for life necessities.

Third, once equipped by training, and having demonstrated his fitness for teaching, teachers want and have a right to demand security in their position. The teacher who is continually forced to wonder how long his position will continue is not going to be free to concentrate his time and thoughts on his work as he should, and he is not going to be able to plan his future with any degree of certainty. And this is an age and a social order that make the teacher, like all other workers, conscious of the imperative nature of job security.

Other conditions could be enumerated, but certainly the above are fundamental ones. The White House conference can debate, argue, and extemporize, but for the welfare of the millions of young children in this country needing an education, shibboleths and slogans about local responsibility, about educational philosophy, about political philosophy, will not build the needed schoolhouses nor will it attract capable teachers to fill them. An opportunity for an education is a birthright of every boy and girl in this country, and that opportunity should be approximately the same whether he lives in Maine or California, Tennessee or Idaho. This nation is able to provide such opportunity, and if the White House conference fails to meet the challenge, it will be failing to discharge its responsibility to the nation’s children. No amount of debate over federal, state, or local respective responsibility can change that fact.

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The last item is largely personal, but it is embedded in a fundamental and provocative question by Alan Beck entitled “What is a Boy?” and his answer to that question for the sake of time I shall have to abbreviate it. He says,

“Boys come in assorted sizes, weights and colors. They are found everywhere – on top of, underneath, inside of, climbing on, swinging around or jumping to…. A boy is a truth with dirt on his face, wisdom with bubble gum in his hair, and the hope of the future with a frog in his pocket.

A boy has the appetite of a horse, the digestion of a sword-swallower, the energy of a pocket-size atomic bomb, the curiosity of a cat, the lungs of a dictator, the imagination of Paul Bunyan, the shyness of a violet, the audacity of a steel trap, the enthusiasm of a firecracker, and when he makes something he has five thumbs on each hand.

He likes ice cream, knives, saws, Christmas, comic books, the boy across the street, woods, water (in its natural habitat), large animals, Dad, trains, Saturday mornings, and fire engines. He is not much for company, Sunday School, books without pictures, music lessons, neckties, barbers, girls, overcoats, adults, or bedtime.

Nobody else is so early to rise or so late to supper. Nobody else can cram into one pocket a rusty knife, a half-eaten apple, three feet of string, two gumdrops, 6 cents, a slingshot, a chunk of unknown substance, and a genuine supersonic code ring with a secret compartment.

A boy is a magical creature – you can lock him out of your workshop, but you can’t lock him out of your heart. You can get him out of your study, but you can’t get him out of your mind. Might as well give up – he is your captor, your jailer, your boss and master – a freckle-faced, pint-sized bundle of noise. But when you come home at night with only the shattered pieces of your hopes and dreams, he can mend them with two magic words, ‘Hi Dad!”

Well, those lines were written about boys in general, and during periods of the average boy’s life he probably engages in and is all of these things. Some of them apply aptly to the boy I have in mind, some do not. But for that particular boy, who is today celebrating his 13th birthday, I want to wish for him, with all my heart, that every birthday he has will be better than the previous one. So “Happy Birthday, Thomas. You’re a swell guy.”

 

 

 

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.”

 

A rather curious twist in the problem of religious freedom occurred recently in the state of Washington. For many years a small army of evangelists representing a dozen or so church groups had been visiting King Country Prison and holding services in the corridors outside the cells. Apparently the evangelists did not inquire as to whether the inmates wanted such services. Last summer a prisoner got a lawyer to file suit charging that the constitutional rights of the inmates to religious freedom were being denied; and that a prison rule was being broken, a rule that permitted religious services outside the cells in the prison chapel.

The case finally came to Seattle’s superior court. Witnesses, quite naturally appeared for both sides. Some insisted that they appreciated the services and that through them they, the prisoners, had been helped to find ways to a better life. Others complained that the evangelists competed loudly with each other, asked for contributions, and played loud music or talked in a loud voice if the prisoners themselves tried to converse with each other while the services were going on.

In handing down his decision, the judge avoided the constitutional issue of invasion of the right of religious freedom, but he refused to terminate the services. However, he also refused the evangelists the right to hold their services in corridors outside the cells, and holding the prison rule that services should be held in the chapel should be observed in the future.

Now it is easy for all of us to let our emotions enter here and be swayed in one direction or the other in such a controversy. Many of use would likely be inclined to conclude that services of this kind, whether wanted or not, would be a wholesome influence upon the inhabitants of the prison. However, once we admit the right of any religious group to a captive audience, we concede the power of the state to promote that religious faith. In this case, it was the prisoners in King’s County, Washington. If we make this concession, it is but a fairly short step to conceding the right of a religious group to proselyte in the schools, or in any other situation where individuals cannot easily avoid subjection to a doctrine or belief imposed upon them by a government. We cannot have freedom of religion without also having freedom from religion, and however much we may subscribe to a particular faith, we cannot escape this simple fact.

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During the past year, much has been heard about the work of various philanthropic foundations. At least one congressional committee made the headlines for awhile by castigating the foundations for the work they were doing in the social sciences. What brought this up is a recent report on the work of the Ford Foundation, an organization which to date has made gifts totaling more than $350 million. During the past 12 months it has given or committed $134 million primarily for education and research. A total of $50 million will go to college and universities for improvement of teaching salaries; $20 million will be used by the Merit Scholarship Corporation to provide four-year scholarships to talented boys and girls who otherwise might not be able to afford a college education; and $15 million will support natural scientific and medical research on the problem of mental illness.

There is a point of unique interest about this foundation, namely, that the Ford family in establishing and maintaining it, were determined that it should become a public trust, and that it should be guided and controlled by a board of trustees drawn from all sections of the country and broadly experienced in education, business, finance, and the mass media. The present board is so composed, and in its judgment the most critical problems of this century “arise out of man’s relations to man, rather than relation to the physical world. People everywhere,” it goes on, “are confronted by the necessity of choosing between two methods for conducting their affairs: one is democratic, dedicated to the freedom and dignity of the individual; the other is authoritarian, subordinating human rights and truth to the state.” And one is likely to find few informed persons who would attempt successfully to challenge the wording of this dilemma, or to argue that the dilemma does not exist.

In carrying out its work, the Foundation is dedicated to five broad fields:

1. Supporting efforts to increase international understanding and promote world peace;
2. Strengthening democratic institutions and processes;
3. Advancing economic well-being;
4. Improving education;
5. Encouraging the natural scientific study of human behavior.

Activity sponsored or aided by this foundation is going on almost everywhere except behind the Iron Curtain. It is going on in the explosive Middle East, in India, in Southeast Asia, the Far East, in Western Europe; in short, its overseas program forms a ring of democratic effort along the sensitive border of the Soviet Iron Curtain.

Well, there is a brief, thumbnail sketch of the ramifications of one of the foundations. Again, few informed persons would hardly challenge the desirability of its broad aims, even though there may be, and are, many differences of opinion as to whether a specific policy or program within these aims is desirable. It would seem a not unwarranted conclusion, on the whole that the organization will continue to perform its services to the benefit of mankind as the best judgment of the board of trustees defines that benefit.

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One of the things that has puzzled this reporter many times, and it still does, is the neatness with which some people have divided all life into two parts: secular and religious. To them, it would appear that the secular is a nuisance, interfering with the religion. To some, the secular is even non-religious. Most of us agree that religion is natural, native, and intrinsic to man, not exterior to him. But a goodly number have difficulty, as I do, in keeping these worlds so neatly separate and apart. This number would insist that religion deals not only with man and a possible invisible world, but is greatly concerned about man as he exists on this planet. Perhaps some of you listeners out there can enlighten me on where the line can be drawn with certainty between secular and religious. I should appreciate it. Obviously there are areas which most of us would agree are secular, others about which there would be agreement with respect to religion, but what about the spaces in between? I merely ask; the answer I do not know.

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During the last session of Congress, Senators Hennings of Missouri, O’Mahoney of Wyoming, and William Langer of North Dakota were appointed to a subcommittee to inquire into violations of civil rights and liberties. They sent out a questionnaire. They announced the committee would begin with violations of the First Amendment, which includes, among other things, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” When the evidence began to pile in the committee apparently realized it was opening up a great controversial field, and cancelled the hearings. It was deemed inexpedient to go ahead. Only obscure releases have appeared in the nation’s press. Maybe this is adding up two and two and getting three or five, but all of this item seems to point up the need, and the obligation, on the part of the subcommittee to do its part in getting to the people the facts about the often silent struggles going on in this country involving values of democracy – and thus religion.

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Last Sunday I mentioned that a Catholic declaration by 208 members of the church hierarchy subscribed to the idea that private and parochial schools “exist by right in the United States. On that ground, discriminatory treatment of them is unfair.”  Such discrimination specifically includes the matter of sharing funds, public and/or private. Well, a largely Protestant organization, called Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State did not let the declaration go unnoticed. Glenn L. Archer, executive director of the organization, called it, among other things, “studied nonsense.” His organization is opposed to the use of public tax funds to aid students at religious schools. And as for this reporter, no further comment.

 

From the current issue of Time magazine comes an article on a subject touched upon occasionally on this program, namely, the resurgence of interest in things religious by the present generation. Since it deals with the subject as related to college campuses, it was of particular interest to this reporter, and I should like to pass on to you some of the basic elements in the article.

Four Cornell sociologists made a survey of 7,000 students at 12 colleges and universities and came up with the results that 80 percent of those questioned said they felt a need for a religious faith. Significantly enough, only one percent confessed themselves to be atheists. The tendency, apparently, is not toward any particular creed, but a search for a religious system based on the deity as a supreme being.

This renewed interest in religion is reflected in an increase in number of courses devoted to the subject and the numbers of pupils attending such courses. For example, in 1933, Yale offered only three undergraduate courses in religion and had only four students; today it offers 12 courses and in one course alone there are 400 students. Much the same is true of Harvard, Princeton, and other similar institutions. The University of Chicago had only one chaplain in 1928; it now has 11 full time chaplains and 13 part-time workers. Students of this trend are by no means agreed upon its exact meaning. The professor of Christian morals at Harvard says, “The cycle has come full turn. Once we doubted our faith. Now we have to come to doubt our doubts.”

While the assistant professor of religion at Bowdoin College says, “The resurgence of religion is largely due to the shock administered … by two world wars, a depression, and the painful knowledge that the great powers possess the awesome tools of genocide. Religion is seen as an essential tool in the hard work of sheer survival, not as a matter of icing on the cake.” Still another, emeritus professor of Christian methods at Yale comments that “It is a wistful generation, tired of living on snap judgments and seeking enduring foundations.… This does not mean a return to religion or a revival of religion. Rather it means that these students are seeking to come to grips with the basic problems on faith and living. They are asking not superficial but ultimate questions, and they will not be satisfied with easy answers. They want to find solid grounds for ultimate loyalties.” And that, of course, is something that all of us would like to keep on finding.

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The much-criticized religious group, Moral Rearmament, Inc., was permitted to use military aircraft and personnel to transport 192 MRA leaders to chief points on an extensive world proselyting tour at little or no cost to the organization. This occurred shortly before Air Force Secretary Harold Talbott resigned. Moral Rearmament describes itself as “an inspired ideology for democracy that would remake the world on the basis of moral standards and the guidance of God.”

Objection was raised to this use of government equipment and personnel by interested organizations, raising the question as to the constitutionality of Talbott’s action, and pointing out that in a previous case the Supreme Court had ruled that “Governments may not furnish support to any religions or all religions.”

In replying to the objection raised, the secretary sidestepped the constitutional question of separation of church and state, but replied that MRA would reimburse the government for all expenditures attributable to the trip, thus presumably preventing the use of taxpayers’ money in support of the objectives of this religious organization.

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All of us, I take it, wish to have as much freedom of local and individual action as possible. That is our traditional way. But we hear a great deal of concern being expressed these past two or three years about the shifting of power from the states to the federal government – about states’ rights regarding schools, off-shore oil, and other matters. In this connection a rather thought-provoking paragraph comes to hand from the President’s Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. It reads like this:

“If states do not give cities their rightful allocation of seats in the legislature, the tendency will be toward direct federal-municipal dealings. These began in earnest in the early days of the Depression. There is only one way to avoid this in the future. It is for the states to take an interest in urban problems, in metropolitan government, in city needs. If they do not do this, the cities will find a path to Washington as they did before, and this time it may be permanent, with the ultimate result that there may be a new government that will break down the constitutional pattern which has worked so well up to now.”

It would be both interesting and illuminating to know just how much the federal government has grown in power throughout our history, grown at the expense of the states, because the latter themselves did not live up to their obligations. Certainly, as some problems have arisen, e.g., schools, the ability of all the states to provide needed services equally has been revealed. Nobody wishes federal bureaucracy less than this reporter, but he fails to subscribe to the theory that any expansion of federal power in any direction is undesirable, especially if it involves the rights of boys and girls to an education adequate to meet their needs.

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There is a great deal in the news these days about the plight of the farmer. Perhaps most of us have constantly asked ourselves this question: “Why do we have to subsidize the farmer?” Well, there is no simple and easy answer to this, and certainly not enough time on this program to do more than point to some fundamental factors in the matter. The farmer occupies a unique position in our economic system. He has no control over the market in which he sells or that in which he buys. Moreover, his individual output of products is influenced not only by his own decisions but by the elements and by the force of life itself, for all that comes from the farm is a living thing at some point.

On the other hand, industry and business have learned to gain a measure of control over their markets by banding together, while the farmer cannot control his market. Realizing their hazardous position in our economic structure, farmers have tried to compensate for it through the years in various ways. Schemes for easy money, like free silver and greenback; laws regulating railroad rates; and many other devices have been sought to give the farmer a better position in the system. But all this was not enough. Back in the Hoover days, cooperatives were encouraged and indulged in, but many of them failed, primarily because the cooperators lacked control over volume of production. The next step was government support for cooperatives, which was achieved by the Hoover Farm Board, but this failed too, again mainly because of lack of production control.

The final step, of course, was direct government support of farmers through price support loans in exchange for controls over production. The system has not worked entirely successfully, but it has worked to keep the farmer from bankruptcy. Perhaps one of its greatest weaknesses has been the failure of the administrator to act decisively and swiftly enough to avert breakdowns. At least it has, for the first time, given farmers some measure of control over their markets. The people of the nation have paid for this. The public pays for all such market controls. In non-agricultural businesses, the cost is hidden in the price of the product, but in agriculture, it is open for all of us to see, and we do see and often complain about it.

All this does not mean that the present system is the best that can be devised. One of the problems growing out of the system is to learn how to dispose of what the farmer is able to produce. We have done a pretty good job in teaching our farmers how to grow two stalks of wheat where one grew before, but we have failed to learn how to use the extra wheat. Food is an essential of life, and in a complex economy we cannot afford to let those who produce it fall into a level of income that will not support them. A collapse in the agricultural segment of our economy well could bring the house down in all the other segments.

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New York: Negotiations are continuing for a merger of the major Eastern Orthodox churches in America. Archbishop Leonty, Russian Orthodox Metropolitan of North America, says his church is taking the lead in projecting a united Eastern Orthodox Church, embracing all national churches on the continent. The other principal church in the negotiations is the Greek Orthodox Church. Half a dozen other churches, such as the Serbian and Rumanian Orthodox Churches, also are involved. In all, the Orthodox Churches have a total membership of 6 million from Alaska through South America.

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Washington: The Catholic hierarchy of the United States has defended church and private schools as an integral part of the nation’s educational system. It claims for them equal rights to grants or aids extended to public schools. This position was made clear in a 2,500-word statement issued at the end of a three-day conference by 208 cardinals, archbishops, and bishops. Now most of us appreciate fully the splendid work being done in church and private schools, and we recognize them as valuable parts of our system of education, but when it comes to granting them aids from public moneys, that is another matter. Again, most of us are committed rather strongly to the idea of separation of church and state, and we are not likely to depart from this commitment in the near future.

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In Durant, Mississippi, the elders of the Presbyterian Church have called for the dismissal of their minister. He had defended two men accused of advocating racial integration. The Rev. Marsh Calloway defended Dr. D.R. Minter and A.E. Cox at a mass meeting last September. Minter and Cox were called before the meeting and told to leave the country. They were accused of racial integration by permitting mixed swimming on their farm. The Rev. Calloway told the mass meeting the action was “undemocratic and un-American.” The board of elders demanded his resignation. Church members will vote today.

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London: Prime Minister Anthony Eden has refused to consider a demand for separation of church and state. He turned down a Laborite challenge to investigate lines between the Church of England and the government. The tie-up has been [going on] since Princess Margaret renounced her love for Peter Townsend because of church rules.

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The head of the United Synagogue of America says the recent upswing in church membership poses a major challenge to every U.S church and synagogue. Charles Rosengarten [president of the World Council] of Waterbury, Connecticut, adds joining a church has become fashionable. But he asserts these people will not remain long if the emphasis on religion is on the social aspects of culture. He asserts they will not remain, and more will come, only if the churches help them find their place in the world in terms of their religious tradition. Rosengarten’s statements have been made at the United Synagogue’s Biennial Convention, at Kiamesha Lake, New York. He says U.S. church and synagogue membership has risen from 20 percent of the population 100 years ago to 60 percent today. The United Synagogue represents one million members of 585 congregations of Conservative Judaism in the U.S. and Canada.

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Two Presbyterians in Tucson, Arizona, have given a 21,000-acre ranch to their national church. The $250,000 property north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, will be used by the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., for religious retreats, conferences, and similar programs. The donors are Mr. and Mrs. Arthur N. Pack. He is a retired ranch resort operator and active in Presbyterian and community programs in Tucson.

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Two of the largest of the 16 Lutheran bodies in North America will soon begin to explore the possibility of organic union of all the groups. Representatives of the United Lutherans and the Augustana Lutherans will meet in Chicago, December 16 to issue invitations to merger talks early in 1956.

 

A few days after the Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in the schools invalid, two Presbyterian ministers met for lunch at a Washington, D.C., restaurant. Their conversation soon turned to the court decision. One of them said, “It is a great challenge for us. The church must prepare the people to accept integrated schools in a Christian spirit.” After a few moments of silence his companion answered, “I wonder if there is anything convincing we can say about brotherly love and racial understanding when the church itself is the most segregated institution in America.”

Here is perhaps one of the sorest spots in America’s Christian conscience. Many frontier thinkers on the subject believe that the churches are bringing up the rear in a battle that they should have led. Racial barriers have been disappearing in sports, theaters, trade unions, schools, and military service, but in the worship of the deity, in almost every community, it is almost entirely on a Jim Crow basis.

However, there are some bright spots, too. In 1946, a survey of racial practices of 17,900 churches of six Protestant denominations found only 860 racially mixed congregations. That the doors are opening in almost every part of the country is shown by a later survey by the National Council of Churches which checked 13,597 churches in three denominations and found 1,331, or nearly 10 percent with mixed congregations. This same survey revealed that the Presbyterians alone now have as many open door churches as the 1946 survey found in six denominations.

The Negro theologian, Dr. Frank T. Wilson of Howard University School of Religion pointed out the complexity of the problem when he said, “The churches will take longer to achieve integration because they are undertaking a much greater accomplishment. Worshiping together is a more personal thing than riding trains or attending movies together. Tolerance is not enough here; it must be real brotherhood or nothing.” And that is something about which we would all do well to ponder.

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Among the materials that came across my desk was this item that struck me as having special significance for all of us who love children. It is a proposed 11th Commandment, and it reads like this:

“And this commandment I give unto you: honor they children, that their days may be long and happy ones. For where thou hast walked in ignorance, they shall tread the paths of wisdom. Where thou hast sown weeds of hatred, they shall cultivate the fruits of love. For they are a mirror reflecting the goodness and the iniquities of their elders. Live well and honor them.”

I am sure that many of us who have failed, consciously or unconsciously, to live up to this regret such failure. Children are the most wonderful people in the world, and if grown ups could have the souls and wisdom of children, there would be little of wars, strife, and other similar undesirable problems with which this world is at present beset.

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Historian Arnold J. Toynbee has told Manhattan’s Union Theological Seminary something that is thought-provoking, albeit to some, highly controversial. Christianity, he says, must purge itself of accidental Western accessories and of its feeling of uniqueness if it is to be accepted in the future. Quoting his words, “We treat Christianity as if its virtues were not derived from being Christian, but from being Western.… One can believe that one has received exclusive revelation. Exclusive mindedness is one of the most fatal sins … the sing of pride … I suggest that we recognize all higher religions as revelation of what is good and right.”

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And the somewhat perennial bogey regarding Catholicism crops up again in Mobile, Alabama, where Dr. Frederick H. Olert, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia, roused a religious storm by telling a Reformation Day gathering that “The Roman Catholic Church is not at home in America. It wants to make this country predominantly a Roman Catholic country. It can and will win America unless Protestants heal their divisions and get together.” The Very Rev. Andrew C. Smith, Jesuit President of Alabama’s Spring Hill College, replied by saying that “If ever there was a time when all Christians ought to stand together, regardless of recognized differences, this seems to be the hour….” And to that, there is not anything much than can be said realistically to refute.

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And another item that cropped up in the week’s news regarding Catholics is somewhat off the general trend. The church in general has taken a forthright stand on the segregation issue, both in its schools and churches in many places. From Jesuit Bend, Louisiana, we learn that a petition is being circulated by a group of Catholic laymen who are forming a citizens’ council to protest against assignment of Negro priests. Back of this move is a train of events that started when Jesuit Bend parishioners refused to let a Negro priest say Mass. Whereupon, Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel suspended services in the parish. This action was praised by the Vatican newspaper. Thus far, Catholic schools are segregated in the New Orleans Diocese, but Negroes regularly attend most churches without regard to special seating arrangements. By custom, however, they usually take the back pews. Thus we have the issued drawn between church authorities and the laity. The latter says that integration is contrary to church teaching and that assignment of Negro priests is a step toward breaking down segregation barriers; while the reply of the former is that there shall be no discrimination in the matter of priest assignment. Certainly this reporter would not be so rash as to hazard a guess on the outcome, but he along with many others will be watching with keen interest this test of a principle.

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A few weeks ago I mentioned the matter of restrictions upon the right to enter or leave the country, and reported that court decisions had made some headway in clearing this logjam. It now appears that the State Department’s passport policy is essentially unchanged in spite of the recent decisions to which I referred. Passports are still being denied for political reasons despite the ruling in the Shachtman Case that travel is a “natural right.” Further, the department persists in its refusal to confront the passport applicant with the witnesses against him. And it persists in its demand, made on a selective basis, that the applicant take a test oath. A case in point is that of Jane Foster Zlatovski, an American painter resident in Paris for nine years. She returned to the U.S. in November 1954 because of illness in her family. Her passport was seized four days after her arrival, thus separating her from her husband, home, and friends in France. For eight months the department refused to return the passport, and a court suit was instituted against the passport office. A few days later the department issued a temporary passport, and she returned to Paris. At the same time there has been set up within the department more complex administrative procedures for review of cases for fear of litigation. It now has a passport legal division, and adverse decisions are not made by the passport office itself until after clearance with the office of the legal advisor to the Secretary of State and Scott McLeod’s security office. Whether this further extension of bureaucracy will result in reliance upon law rather than administrative discretion and whims remains to be seen. It would appear that the precautions being taken by the department show that it is at least aware of the concern being shown over arbitrary denials of what the court has called a “natural right.”

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Two important Jewish groups have listed four major areas in which they say religious freedom and the principle of separation of church and state have been infringed. The Synagogue Council of American and the National Community Relations Advisory Council name the areas as involvement of the public school in religious instruction, the use of tax funds for religious education and use of government property for religious purposes, compulsory Sunday laws, and curbs on building houses of worship in new residential communities. The two councils have written the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights about their opinions. That followed the suggestion of the Senate group after cancellation of hearings on the Freedom of Religion Clause in the First Amendment.

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The third heresy trial in the history of a United Lutheran Church Synod has found the accused minister guilty on five of six counts of doctrinal deviation. The U.C.L.’s Northwest Synod recommended then that the Rev. Victor K. Wrigley be suspended from his pulpit as pastor of Gethsemane Church in Brookfield, near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The minister was not present at the trial of earlier hearings, on the advice of his church council. He has served notice he will not be forced out as pastor.

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A series of statutes about church government has been adopted by the Ninth All-American Convention of the Russian Orthodox Church in America. A statement says the step looks toward eventual merger into a United Eastern Orthodox Church of all such national groups in North America. But the statement also cites the reason for the action as political conditions in Russia that brought control of the church under a communist atheistic regime. One top official of the Russian Orthodox Church in America says no contact whatever exists with the church in the Soviet Union.

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American Catholics can now read the seven so-called “Wisdom Books,” of the Old Testament in a modern English translation. They are included in a 72- page volume published Friday of this week under the sponsorship of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, an official adjunct of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy. It is the second volume to come off the press in the 11-year-old project of replacing the centuries-old Douay Version of the Bible with a complete new translation in up-to-date easily understood English. A previous volume containing the first eight books of the Old Testament appeared in 1952. Two more Old Testament volumes and one containing the books of the New Testament will be issued before the project is completed, probably in 1960.

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The National Conference of Christians and Jews held its 27th Annual Meeting in New York this week. Highlight was the dedication of its new $1 million “Building for Brotherhood” [43 W. 57^th St.]. The structure was built with funds donated by the Ford Motor Company Fund. President Eisenhower wrote from Denver in late October that “All of us must continue our efforts to promote a belief in brotherhood among people of varied backgrounds … to uphold the right to freedom of worship … to foster the individual citizen’s understanding and tolerance of his neighbor’s spiritual convictions.” The new building is to be the headquarters of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

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In Cleveland, Ohio, the Seventh National Assembly of United Church Women has heard a statement that a large part of the U.S. public has been deprived of an adequate ministry because of competition among Protestant churches. Dr. Stanley North of the Congregational Christian Church has also said denominational conduct has too often been like that of competing chain stores and gasoline stations.

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A Methodist church official says his denomination’s Sunday classes’ enrollment is now at 6.5 million. The Rev. Walter Towner of the Methodist board of education has also told a Methodist Christian education conference in Cincinnati that this is a gain of almost .25 million this year.

 

The current issue of Time magazine reports something of an unusual development in faraway Western India. There some 100 Jain temples containing around 600 priests. The regimen of these priests consists in ritual prayers, guarding temple treasures, and abstaining from smoking and drinking. They eat before sundown because lamps would lure moths to destruction. They even wear white cloth pads over their noses and mouths to prevent their breathing from destroying gnats and germs. But even within these cloisters the secular age is penetrating. Recently some priests have been seen in public without their masks, have eaten in restaurants, and use lamps without thought for the safety of moths, etc. Recently these priests went even farther, for some 100 of them met and announced that their work in interceding with the gods is something like industrial employment, and they formed themselves into a union demanding a raise from $5 to $8 a month. They even want seven days of paid sick leave during the year, three week’s paid vacation, and retirement. Somewhat naturally, the rich Jains composing the temple committees objected, complaining “How can priests be dedicated to poverty if they go about forming unions and making wage demands?”

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When the Nazis rounded up the Jews in Amsterdam, two-and-a-half-year-old Anna Beekman was slipped into the underground just in time. Her parents were gassed to death by the Germans. Eventually Anna was placed in the hands of five maiden sisters who were Catholic. Throughout the war Anna was safe. However, Dutch Jewish organizations, after the war, applied for her transfer to a Jewish foster family so she could be reared in the faith of her parents. The maiden sisters objected. Publicity ensued, and when a social worker went to the house to get Anna, she had disappeared. In March 1954 police raided a Belgian convent school and missed her by only a few minutes, but they had enough evidence to make again a wave of bitterness sweep over the Netherlands. The maiden sisters were arrested for hiding the girl, who had by now been baptized in the Catholic faith. The sisters were sentenced recently, but Anna is still missing. Commented the leaders of Amsterdam’s Jewish congregation, “Though only a single child is concerned, this case is a measuring rod for civilization and freedom.”

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Several of you have wondered why so much of the time on this program has been devoted to the subject of American liberties. I had thought, rather hoped, that the reason was fairly obvious, though at times I have taken pains to make the application more direct and clear. To explain further my reason for emphasis on this subject, I should like to treat it somewhat more in detail.

When the settlers of America came here, doubtless they wanted to better their economic condition. But there were also great moral and political principles actuating them. These principles came to a focus with the drafting of the Constitution and its Bill of Rights. These documents together form the greatest pronouncements for freedom ever designed by man.

The rights and liberties set forth in the Constitution and Bill of Rights reflect the disabilities under which the people in the Old Countries lived. The new Constitution tried to make impossible in the new republic that long train of abuses with which the colonists were familiar. It is a document that gives effect to the principle of the worth of the humblest citizen, and seeks to protect the weak and unwise from the exploitation and abuse of the strong and ruthless. Insofar as a political document can do so, it seeks equality of privilege, justice, and opportunity. It seeks to prevent any discrimination because of religion, race, or previous condition of servitude. It protects citizens and aliens against the tyranny of a majority political or religious group. Its protection of property was meant to make the humblest citizen secure in his few possessions.

The dream, then, of our Founding Fathers was to bring forth on this continent a government of, for, and by the people; to protect freedom of conscience in religion; and to guarantee fullest expression of political views. It is the only constitution in existence that states as one of its purposes “to promote the general welfare” (and we become concerned about the possibility of developing into a welfare state).

Here in the U.S., we take for granted our American principles. In back of the provisions for civil rights were centuries of human misery. The framers of these documents well knew that. They erected a wall of law around the weak and helpless. Looking at the past each outrage on human dignity they asked, “How can this be prevented?”

This Constitution provides for separation of church and state and protects man in his holiest aspirations. It guarantees fundamentals of democracy and human dignity: the right to think, write, speak without coercion, to assemble peaceably, to petition, to educate, to propagandize, to influence minds and the course of events by human reason and persuasion. Under the provisions of these documents man became a man and entered into his birthright as a human being of worth, possessed of the right and privilege of making his contribution to the common welfare, the organization of that society of which he was a constituent part.

He was to be secure in his house, person, papers, against searches and seizures except on warrant for probable cause. He must not twice be put in jeopardy for the same cause. He must not be compelled to be a witness against himself. He must not be deprived of liberty or property without due process. These provisions corrected Old Country abuses.

Our history in action has not always lived up to either the letter or the spirit of these ideals. After World War I, e.g., there was a reign of terror under the notorious Attorney General Palmer who, it was claimed, expected to be made president by a grateful electorate. There was a familiar pattern: arrests without warrant, detention without charges preferred, trial by administrative agencies, excessive bail, deportation of aliens without court actions, anti-Semitism, racism, the Ku Klux Klan, and so on. The press apparently approved in many, perhaps most, instances.

There were attempts to suppress or hamper labor unions: spies, agents, provocateurs, police brutality, strikes broken, unions busted.

Fortunately tyrants are not immortal, and their places are taken by people who, sooner or later, slowly and painfully build back that which was destroyed.

Today is another era of reaction that at times runs counter to the principles enunciated in our basic documents. I suppose as the years pass and the history of this time is carefully studied and written, the verdict will be that this decade was one in which the powerful and wicked sometimes deliberately confused the public to make it hate what it loved and love what it hated. Certainly during this decade, many principles of Americanism have gone into eclipse and historic rights and liberties lost or infringed upon. In this topsy-turvy world, he who defends the Constitution and insists on constitutional rights is likely to be called a traitor, and we have seen communists-turned-spy wined, dined, and paid with taxpayer’s money.

But, again, it is some consolation to reflect that change is constant; that the hysteria through which we have been going seems to be subsiding. And it certainly is true that without adherence to the foregoing principles of government set forth in our basic documents, our freedoms of religion, speech, press, and all the others would be gone. It is for this reason that this program has more or less continually emphasized the importance of the political aspects of our society, for religion is concerned with all those elements of society that affect the well being of people, and without our constitutional safeguards, our well-being in every area of living would be restricted or destroyed.

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Memphis: Delegates from more than 2,500 churches will attend the Tennessee Baptist Convention at Memphis. The three-day meeting opens Tuesday at First Baptist Church. Dr. Fred Kendall of Jackson is convention president.

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A new diocese of the Greek Orthodox Church in the U.S. has its first bishop. The Very Rev. Polyefktos Finfinis will head the new See, the sixth of his church in the U.S. In it are Eastern Ohio, Northern West Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania. The prelate was installed this week as bishop of Pittsburgh by Archbishop Michael of New York, the leader of the Greek Orthodox Church in North and South America. Bishop Finfinis was born in Istanbul, Turkey, and has been pastor of San Francisco’s Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church.

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Agreement has been reached between the U.S. and Russia for an exchange of churchmen of the two nations. A U.S. Roman Catholic priest may now minister to the spiritual needs of U.S. Catholics in the Soviet Union, and a Russian church leader may do the same for Soviet Union nationals in the U.S. who belong to the Russian Orthodox Church. The Rev. Father Louis F. Dion of Worcester, Massachusetts, is expected to leave for Russia about December 1. To the U.S. will come the Russian Orthodox Archbishop Boris.

This ends a stalemate that began about six months ago. First, the U.S. refused to extend a visitor’s visa held by the archbishop, on the grounds the Russian Church serves political aims. Then Russia expelled the Rev. Father Georges Bissonette, like Father Dion, a member of the Assumptionist Order. Washington’s complaint that the two cases were not similar got no response. The State Department also argued the ouster of Father Bissonette violated the 1933 agreements under which the U.S. formally recognized the Soviet communist regime. The U.S. also stated Father Bissonette had to carry out his duties within his small Moscow apartment. But Archbishop Boris was free to travel in the U.S. and hold services in several churches. The new agreement avoids such disparity. But it sets up new curbs. Each churchman may minister only to nationals of his own country. The archbishop will have at most 400 parishioners (if all the Russian citizens in the U.S. go to his church). About half are in Washington and half in New York City. Father Dion will have the spiritual care of about 150 U.S. Catholics in the Soviet Union. Boris will not be permitted, now, to deal with Americans who follow Russian Orthodox teachings. But Father Dion will apparently not be permitted to minister to Roman Catholics of nations other than the U.S. and Russia who are in the Soviet Union.

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The American Jewish Committee has challenged Russia to prove its “new look” is genuine. The committee says thousands of Jews are still in Russian jails or slave labor camps for no other reason than their religion. The committee has proposed a six-point test for the U.S. State Department to learn if the Russians have had a genuine change of heart. These include release of all persons in jail or slave labor camps on charges related to race, religion, or national origin … restoration to Russian Jews of true freedom of worship … and establishment of full freedom of movement for Eastern Europeans.

The committee notes communist countries recently made a few departures from Stalinist anti-Semitic policies. Among them are the small number of Romanian Zionist leaders released from prison … and a Russian magazine warning against anti-Semitism.

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From Cleveland, Ohio: This week, the nation’s churches were urged to extend their social welfare services quickly and widely. The appeal from a body of the National Council of Churches stated such expansion is needed to cope with forces changing and enlarging the needs of U.S. citizens. The plea from the Protestant council’s Conference on Churches and Social Welfare asked church members to extend personal deeds of kindness into a highly organized system of social and health services. The meeting’s message to the churches also declared “immense social and economic forces are at work in our time changing American culture” and its very setting. Thus the increased social services are called for, to meet what the gathering termed “this panorama of need.”

 

A time or two before, I have dealt on this program with the matter of church membership growth. It is true that such membership in the U.S. is booming, but the statistics we have as to how big the boom is are often (perhaps always) inaccurate. Compilation of church statistics is the main source of information, i.e., the Yearbook of American [& Canadian] Churches, represents nothing more than the results gained from mailing blanks to statisticians of various religious bodies, who, in turn, have to rely upon unchecked estimates of local pastors. As for the matter of church attendance, there are few if any real statistics at all. It is interesting, however, to note that while population increase for 1954 was 1.7 percent, Protestant increase was 2.3 percent as to membership, while Catholic was 2.9 percent, a slight edge in favor of the Catholics. You might be interested in knowing, also, that the figures for last year, in round numbers, were: Protestant, 570,000,000; Roman Catholic, 32,000,000; Jewish, 5,000,000; and Eastern Orthodox, 2,000,000.

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One of the things that many of us, especially teachers, are watching is the forthcoming White House Conference on Education. Back in January 1954, the president in a message to Congress requested a nationwide study be made to determine by investigation in every state of the union if the United States faced a crisis in education. Now none of us would deny the good of such a program, but for the fact that we had long known there was already such a crisis. As pointed out on this program some months ago, approximately a million dollars had been spent by the various appropriate agencies of government collecting and maintaining facts about this same crisis. Educators everywhere had pointed out the critical areas and pleaded for immediate relief. To their grave disappointment, instead of action, they got only words. For almost two years now, the preliminary work has come on. Upward of some 100,000 persons have taken part in the deliberations, and now the answers are to be given at the White House Conference? Just what will these answers be? Will they present a true picture? Will they be in the form of concrete recommendations? Will they set forth specific remedies?

Many of us who are more interested in the educational welfare of the oncoming generation have been disappointed at the delay, for we recognize that the growth of boys and girls needing educational facilities will not wait while politicians quibble over theories and formulas. Hence it is that we are waiting anxiously for what the answers will be, hoping that at last they will be more than additional conferences dealing in glittering generalities while the youth of the land continue to suffer from lack of those facilities which we are able to provide so generously.

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This month the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin hearings that could do much to inspire a rebirth of freedom. The enlightened acts of a few courageous jurists and national leaders, inspiring as they have been, can reveal only the pitfalls of certain measures and protect the rights of particular individuals. But the hearings of the subcommittee headed by Senator Hennings can expose the underlying fallacy in the security mania and its attendant witch-hunt. Just as the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee of the Senate helped establish the rights of organized labor in New Deal days, the Hennnings subcommittee conceivably can help restore the rights of all. This mania has cut across religious freedom, at times separation of church and state, has attacked the press and freedom of speech, as well as the right peaceably to assemble. Bishop Oxnam, e.g., was harassed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. So was the Jewish Culture Center of Pittsburgh when its assets were seized by a local court at the instigation of an outfit of self-appointed censors of the public mind and behavior.

Of course we have had other manias before. The Know Nothing outrages of 1800 – 1860 were directed primarily at Catholics, but also, perhaps mainly at all recent immigrants. Also, we dare not forget that the Ku Klux Klan terrorized Negroes, Jews, and Catholics.

We live today in a worldwide competition for ideas, and to assume that we must give up time-honored traditions of democracy to save that democracy does not make sense. It is hoped that the Hennings subcommittee will point that out.

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All of you are aware that hardly an issue of your daily newspaper comes out but what some mention at least is made of the poor condition of our schools. Radio programs are devoted to it, and magazines carry articles pro and con as to the quality of our schools, and what can be done to improve that quality. For example, an article in September Harper’s insists that “Public Schools Are Better Than You Think,” by Sloan Wilson. This is the pro side.

Now, just how good schools are is difficult to measure. The sociologist estimates it in terms of culture: birth rate and death rate, auto accidents, water usage and sewage disposal, police and fie protection, divorce rate, consumption of liquor and patent medicines, truancy, dependency, delinquency, crime, health, including mental health, adequacy of agencies combating social pathology, religious instruction, racism, and so on almost indefinitely. On any sociological scale many of our schools would rate rather low…. But most of us in the field assert that the school system is basic to culture and its perpetuation.

The argument that school financing may safely be left to state and local districts is not impressive when the state of the nation’s schools is examined. That is what has been done and the school systems have not done the tremendous job assigned them. With the cry for lower taxes handed out to many of the people in many of the states, the outlook for more far-sighted spending for education is not bright. Federal taxation takes from all who can afford to pay and gives it back in education to those who cannot pay. Isn’t that democratic? Is that un-American? This reporter cannot see that, properly safeguarded, federal aid to schools is any more dangerous than federal aid to agriculture. Are corn, wheat, cattle, more important than our children? In my own case there is nothing more important than children generally, and my own in particular.

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My mail contains, often, materials from many organizations; materials from some making sense; those from others seem rather far-fetched, naive, or what have you. I have one of the latter types before me now. Some of its contents are praiseworthy, if somewhat visionary at the present stage. They insist that we can produce enough food to feed all the world’s peoples; that we can provide medicine to conquer the dread diseases and ease the pain of the financial burden of common ailments (which may be true); and housing within the reach of all. Admitting that in theory all these are possible, it still remains to consider how practically it can be brought about within the next decade. But, the pamphlet goes on to laud the Summit Conference in July, describing it as “breaking the ten-year pattern of the Cold War” and ushering in “a new spirit of conciliation in international relations.” Well, within the past few days, since the foreign ministers’ conference has been meeting, we see, as of this moment, that the smiles of Geneva at the summit did not mean any essential compromise of points of view on the part of either the Russians or the West.

It lauds the Austrian peace treaty as a great demonstration of concession by the Russians, and calls it one of the main ‘deeds not words’ actions which Eisenhower called upon Russia to show some months ago. Well, the sincerity and good faith of the Austrian treaty can be determined only by time and future events. It is not too pessimistic, however, to speculate that Austria may well be the focal point of future maneuvers that may bring the whole of the country behind the Iron Curtain.

The pamphlet, as a whole, savors of either unrealism or a more subtle motive of deliberately displaying things as they are not. As I pointed out some weeks ago, the struggle between the East and West is a fundamental one: one in which both sides must make at least the minimum concessions here and there in order to permit two systems to coexist. But we would do well to read between the lines of propaganda sheets designed to lull us into believing the unreal.

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The Catholic Church apparently has established a firm foothold in the South, long a center of hostility to Catholicism. Catholic dioceses in 17 Southern and border states had a membership of 4,157,000 at the beginning of this year, a gain of more than 40 percent over 1945. The Catholic population in North Carolina has nearly tripled in 10 years. It has approximately doubled in South Carolina, Virginia, and Florida. Despite these gains, only about 20 percent of the population in the South is Catholic.

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Atlantic City: The president of the New Jersey Congress of Parents and Teachers has opposed proposals for excusing children from public schools for religious training. Mrs. A.G. Link told the group’s convention that the similarities among school children should be emphasized, rather than their differences.

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A leading Catholic organization says the nation would be better off if government officials spent less time talking about God and more time serving him. The National Council of Catholic Men said, “Many people, including senators, congressmen, and others high up” seem to have discovered that “pious expressions are good public relations.” An editorial in the organization’s publication said these gestures would be fine “if we could see more evidence that our public leaders really” carry their expressions out in practice.

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Pope Pius XII warned teachers that no education method will be successful if it spurns Christian principles. He spoke to members of an Italian education association. And from Washington comes news that Pope Pius has appointed the Most Rev. Joseph McCracken as coadjutor bishop with the right of succession to the Most Rev. Robert Armstrong, bishop of Sacramento, California. McCracken was formerly auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles.

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From Vatican City comes news that the Vatican newspaper has denounced the race segregation politics of the South African government. In a bitter editorial, it has called them “unjust and immoral.”

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Russia is still stalling on the admission of an American priest seven months after he asked permission to go to Moscow. The Rev. Louis Dion, of the Order of Assumptionists, of Worcester, Massachusetts, applied for entry last March. So far he has received no word of whether Russia will admit him.

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Services throughout the U.S. today by individual churches and in community worship will mark the 438th anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. In them, Luther argued against indulgences and for a new understanding of repentance. Other breaks with the church had been made before, and still more came later, even with the new movement. But Luther’s stand was the first to expand fast. The Lutherans have commemorated the day, October 31, 1517. Other Protestant churches have also marked it. But the interdenominational services have been a long time arriving. Some 300 communities will see united worship for this year’s Reformation Sunday. In 1950, only about 50 communities had such inter-church services. In many churches and community services today, the concluding hymn will be Luther’s famous “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

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The 153^rd Annual Massachusetts Baptist Convention has heard from the church’s national president that “The church needs to adopt a more vigorous approach to bring more men into the fold.” The statement is from Frank A. Nelson of Racine, Wisconsin, a layman. The Baptist meetings at Haverhill, Massachusetts, also have been told by him that the church has certainly been too reticent for a courageous active faith on the part of its men.

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Jewish-sponsored Brandeis University, at Waltham, Massachusetts, is breaking with a long-time U.S. collegiate tradition. It has three separate chapels on its campus for worship by Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant students. Almost every other U.S. college or university has but one chapel built for one form of worship, but usually open to all. Dedication services for the three chapels will be delivered today by Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan. The scene will be the common ground adjacent to the chapels.

 

 

 

For the past two or three weeks, references have been made briefly to the debt that Christianity has to Judaism. Yet, it is a safe guess that few of us know, or take the trouble to find out, what Judaism itself is like. Christians have at times crusaded to convert Jews as if they were engaging in a rescue. On the other hand, Jews themselves show no missionary zeal. In the main, Judaism has been the religion of one people, trying to keep their covenant with God. The Jewish tradition holds that some day this covenant will include all humanity.

In recent years the question [has arisen] of whether modern Judaism should abandon its somewhat neutral position and assume a missionary role. Again, it is … a safe guess that it is unlikely to do so in the near future.

Unlike some other religions, Judaism has never held to the idea that there is no salvation outside that particular faith. Instead, it recognizes all righteous men as sharing in the world to come. Non-Jews need only obey the Seven Laws of Noah – the covenant God made with all mankind, instead of the 365 negative and 248 positive injunctions of the Jewish law.

Those among the Jews who seem most sympathetic to the establishment of Jewish missions are the liberal group, officially known as Reform Jews; and yet it is those who have the least to offer, for it is they who live least like the Orthodox Jews of the Old Testament days and most like the non-Jewish Christians around them. The liberal, indeed any other, Jew would hardly lay claim to personal salvation of the individual. But the Jews do believe that the plans for God’s kingdom on earth have been delivered into their keeping: that Judaism, as the religion with the most positive approach to all aspects of human life, holds the best promise for enrichment of the earthly life of mankind as a whole. As a good friend of mine, ex-Rabbi Franzblau once remarked, “We’d rather work to make good Catholics better, good Protestants better, than to work to make either one of them a poor member of the Jewish faith.” And that about sums up the traditional attitude of Judaism toward missions, and that tradition is likely to continue for some time to come.

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Five witnesses were announced this week in the first interdenominational competition in social welfare conducted by the National Council of Churches. Dr. Robert Thomas of Sevierville, Tennessee, was recognized for “Outstanding Achievement in Church-related Social Work.” He has been called the “Albert Schweitzer of the Smokies.” The Church of All Nations in Los Angeles will be cited also for outstanding social welfare in its community. Dr. Leonard Mayo of New York, executive director of the Association for the Aid of Crippled Children will be cited for contributions to the social welfare of the nation. Similar honors will go to Chaplain Russell Dicks of Duke University and professor John C. Bennett of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. All five will receive their citations in Cleveland during the first national Conference on Churches and Social Welfare, November 1 – 4.

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A Minneapolis man who describes himself as an atheist has started action to prevent the government from paying chaplains in the Armed Forces. He says his right to religious freedom is being violated. The action was taken by 73-year-old Frank Hughes.

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Francis Cardinal Spellman, the archbishop of New York, says he hopes this year’s national Catholic Youth Week “will help strengthen America’s family ties.” The observance will be held October 30 – November 6.

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Protestant groups in Highland, Indiana, are preparing to go to court to demand that a 20-foot crucifix be removed from a public park. The cross was dedicated this week in ceremonies attended by 4500 persons. It was built by the Knights of Columbus, a Roman Catholic organization, as a monument to veterans of all wars. Protestants say the crucifix is a “symbol of the Roman Catholic Church.”

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Washington: The American Federation of Labor President George Meany has been given the highest award that can be presented to a Catholic layman in the U.S., the Laetare (lay-tah’-ray) Medal. In making the presentation the Most Rev. Patrick O’Boyle, Archbishop of Washington, called the 61-year-old former plumber “the number one labor leader in the free world.”

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Milwaukee: The Rev. Victor Wrigley, pastor of a Lutheran church in Brookfield, has been formally charged with six acts of heresy, including a denial of the virgin birth and the resurrection. He is the third Lutheran minister in the Milwaukee area to be charged with heresy in recent months.

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Understanding ears seem not only to have heard the prayers of a young Korean orphan who wants to be the Billy Graham of his country, but the possessor of those ears did something about it. President William F. Foster of the Merit Clothing Company in Mayfield, Kentucky, says he has wired authorities that he is willing to sponsor the 19-year-old youth’s studies in the U.S. The lad’s desire to be a minister is traced by a U.S. army chaplain to the time he heard Billy Graham preach in Korea. The chaplain taught the boy to read and write English from hymnbooks and the Bible. Another friend says he preached the finest sermon of his life when the youth was his interpreter in Korea. The boy, Park Bon Il, has won a sponsorship that may enable him to accept a scholarship at Campbellsville, Kentucky, at a Baptist junior college. Park, or “Mike,” as he was known after he “joined” the U.S. Army, lived with Dr. and Mrs. John A. Abernathy of the Southern Baptist mission in Korea awhile. They are leaving soon and Mike has written his old chaplain friend that he wants to go to college in America, and then return to Korea as a preacher.

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British historian Arnold Toynbee says man’s work must be vitally related to religion if the work is to be healthy and beneficent. He has also told the Church and Work Congress of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Albany, New York that the price of salvation is the same as the price of liberty: eternal vigilance. Toynbee adds the exercise of this vigilance cannot be delegated to the public authorities. The historian says each of us must keep watch over himself, in the hope and with the help of God’s grace.

New York’s Governor Averell Harriman was also a speaker to the Episcopal gathering. He declared that unless the Free World sets as its goal the elimination of misery and hunger from the earth, out great production and productive capacity may crush us.

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Roman Catholic Archbishop Patrick O’Boyle of Washington says the Catholic Church believes that labor unions are desirable. He has termed them necessary to protect workers’ interests and develop a sound social order.

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Two Argentine Roman Catholic Church officials have left New York City for their homes and the posts they were deported from last June. Former dictator Juan Peron had exiled the Rev. Manuel Tato, auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires, and Monsignor Ramon Novoa, his vicar, during the revolt against Peron. Now the prelates have been invited to return by Argentina’s provisional president Eduardo Lonardi. The provisional government has annulled the law that Peron’s regime used to gag or jail critics for expressing disrespect for the president and his top aides. Under that law, scores of Catholic priests were arrested and jailed, many on charges of voicing disrespect form the pulpit.

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One of the ironies in the news recently is the refusal of the city of Providence, Rhode Island, to accept a statue of Thomas Paine because the hero of the American Revolution “was and remains a controversial figure.” In reply it should be emphasized that the struggle for American freedom, to which Paine’s writings contributed greatly, was a struggle to establish the rights of all men to speak their minds freely, without fear of penalty or repression by government. Exchange of opinions, however controversial they may be, is a hallmark of the kind of democracy that we have built into our history as a nation, and it represents the free exercise of the liberties epitomized in our own Bill of Rights. If such an outstanding historic figure as Thomas Paine can now be denied a place in Rhode Island, a state noted during its colonial days for liberal thought in speech, religion, and about all the other freedoms, one cannot help but wonder what this world of ours here in the United States is coming to. Are such people as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and others of our great men, one by one, to be pilloried, figuratively speaking, years after their great contribution to the American way of life has become much a part of that way that we ofttimes fail to remember who contributed what?

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In the fight to put into practice the decree of the Supreme Court regarding segregation in the public schools, Time magazine a short time ago ran a story, featuring Thurgood Marshall, but also containing something of a report card on the states as to how well or how unwell they were moving toward what the Court declared unanimously and unequivocally to be the law of the land. This report card runs something like this:

Those states receiving a grade of “F” were the following: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. The states receiving a grade of “D” were Florida and Virginia. Arkansas got a “C+” while North Carolina racked up a “C-“. The “C” states were Delaware, Tennessee, and Texas, while those states receiving an “A” were Missouri and West Virginia. It is doubtful if the rating of Tennessee would be changed much by the recent Memphis court decree approving the admission of Negroes to graduate schools this year, senior college next year, and presumably eligibility for enrollment in first grade by 1972.

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During the coming week there will be observed United Nations Day, a day set aside to pay tribute to our only organized hope for one world, slim and despairing as that hope seems to be at times. Some of the voices opposing the United Nations today are indeed strange ones, and the arguments they give sound unappealing. Some of us can remember, either from personal experience or from our reading of history, the great vision of Woodrow Wilson who envisioned a league devoted to keeping peace among nations. Our experience with that League [of Nations] throughout the 1920s and 1930s showed how very unrealistic were some of the things we expected of it in the light of the lack of willingness on our part to clothe it with real powers to act. This unwillingness to grant more than a semblance rather than a substance of power caused the gradual collapse of this effort at collective security. And when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 there was nothing for the league to do but go into eclipse.

Many of use were sadly disappointed that in the formation of the United Nations the powers that be showed a willingness to concede little more than they had done in 1919 in connection with the league. Yet, despite the weaknesses in the United Nations, it is the only continuing agency we have in which to promote world public opinion through the forum process.

So it is that this week, Christians and Jews will be among those marking the 10th United Nations anniversary this weekend. At New York’s Protestant Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, President Eisenhower’s special assistant Harold E. Stassen will speak this afternoon. Yesterday, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Rabbis in Jewish congregations all over the country offered a prayer that read, in part, “We pray earnestly for the United Nations and for the nations united, that they may find the way to goodness transformed into life, to justice revealed in the processes of living, and to peace discovered through the abandonment of bloodshed and wars.”

At 4:00 tomorrow afternoon, a U.N. anniversary program on WJHL-TV will be given with Mrs. Betsy Harrel acting as coordinator. A representative from Korea and another from Lebanon will discuss “what the United Nations means to our country, and why we came to America to study.” This discussion will be largely of the interview type with the coordinator. After this, Dr. James E. Sutton, assistant professor of history at East Tennessee State College will be on hand to answer questions regarding the United Nations. And knowing Dr. Sutton pretty well, I can assure you that his answers will be reliable and well worth knowing. Watch your radio and TV page and newspapers for more materials regarding observation of this important day.

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This last item is something of an innovation, but one of the three people who are the most important persons in my scheme of things is observing her birthday anniversary today, and I wish to take this occasion to wish her sincerely a happy and successful one.

 

 

We hear a great deal these days of guilt by association. Why not innocence by association? It is susceptible to the same logic. If writing for a radical magazine makes a man radical does not an article in a conservative periodical establish the author as a conservative? I wonder sometimes if … government snoopers have heard of the philosophy called logic. Pick any of their victims and you would find that he has likely associated with more conservative papers than radical ones, listens to more conservative sermons that radical ones, hears more reactionary ideas over the radio and TV than radical ones. Is it only radical ideas that are catching? It is … highly doubtful that any of us have found it to be so. Yet the implications in all the smear campaigns have been that only radical ideas … identify the ideology of the individual: that only radical articles signify the viewpoint of the author.

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And an educational quote comes to the reporter at this point which seem seems worth passing on to you. It goes like this: “John Ruskin said that education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.” It is a painful and difficult work to be done by kindness, by watching, by warning, … and by praise, but above all, by example.

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A lot of nonsense is being talked about regarding a return to the primitive church as a condition to one big union of Christian bodies. The assumption seems to be that there was a unity of belief and practice in the primitive church. I have seen no proof of that; instead, there is almost always found the opposite. There never appears to have been delivered one faith once and for all time to the saints. The Christian church was born in controversy, and it has been in controversy throughout history. An evolving culture discovers new religious needs and demands new answers. New ideas conflict with the old; hence conflict and controversy. It is all a part of the glorious struggle for truth, which is one definition of the practice of religion.

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The Secretary of Defense Advisory Commission on Prisoners of War reports that many POWs informed on their prison mates with dire consequences for the victims. How are you going to cut down on ratting when a whole generation in this country is being brought on to believe that informing is an obligation? A generation that sees teachers punished and discharged for refusing to inform cannot help but gather that the smart guy talks and save his skin in the process.

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This brings up with cogency what teachers themselves think as they survey the scene, their position in it, and the jobs they have to do. The current issue of the American Educator points up with concise clarity the major wishes of teachers in connection with their jobs.

First, is the matter of higher salaries. An average salary for classroom teachers nationwide is about $3,750. This is somewhat more than $70 a week; … stenographers and unskilled factory workers get more than that. At a recent meeting of state university professors, it was reported that professors frequently make less than electricians working on new dormitories on the college campus. Certainly higher salaries would do much to restore morale and promote good will among teachers. The present teacher shortage will get progressively worse unless salaries are raised high enough to induce superior men and women to go into classroom teaching.

Second, teachers want better working conditions. Increased enrollments and higher operating costs of class size have increased in school systems throughout the land. Teachers contend rightly that increase in class size or class load decreases their ability to do their job adequately. It is not possible to give the right kind of guidance and individual attention to a class of 45 students, and reports indicate from all over that this is not an unusual size. But this is only one phase of the program. Teachers feel that they are overburdened with paperwork, extracurricular activities, etc., that should not be part of the teacher program. Why make a second-rate clerk out of a first-class teacher? … Much of the teacher’s time is devoted to … serving as hall monitor, supervising children in the classroom, etc. More time should be available for classroom work and less to other teaching duties.

Third, teachers want community status. They want recognition that comes with any respectable profession yet they complain that they rarely get even a modicum of community status. While the person of intelligence is sought by government and industry, that same type of person often is looked down upon in the teaching profession. The term “egghead” derisively is one indication of the community attitude. One reason community status is low is that many members of society measure status in terms of wealth, and teachers are near the bottom of the ladder in this respect.

Fourth, teachers desire more democracy within the school system. For the most part, the American public school system does not call upon the teacher to make school policy. This is the job of the administrator: president, superintendent, principal; but the teachers object to an autocratic attitude on the part of those in administrative position. They want to have more freedom in the classroom, to teach without fear of the principal walking into the room and ordering them around. As Benjamin Fine, editor of an educational magazine puts it, “Teachers should have a say in what goes on in school. How can we enjoy our work if we were treated like so many puppets.”

Incidentally, I came across another item in my reading this week about the relative shifting of salaries of teachers. It points out that the average salary increase of factory production workers far outstripped the rise in urban teachers’ pay during the years 1941 to 1953. Teacher salaries rose by about 93 percent while the hourly earnings of factory workers increased by some 155 percent. This comes from a U.S. Department of Labor bulletin on statistics entitled Changes in City Public School Salaries.

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A publication just out that has commanded thoughtful reading and stimulated much soul searching is a volume entitled Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence. Those who saw it in proof, men like Robert M. Hutchins, Lewis Mumford, Erich Fromm, and others of like stature, pleaded at once for the widest possible discussion and debate of the study, however much some disagreed with part or all of the Quaker alternative to present American foreign policy. This reporter has not had a chance to read the entire book, but he has had a chance to read something about this somewhat revolutionary approach in the search for peace. Its main theme is not strictly pacifist. It tries not to preach religious truth, but to show how it is possible and why it is reasonable to give practical expression to it in the great conflict that now divides the world.

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Another volume worthy of note is entitled Nine Men, by Fred Rodell, professor of law at Yale University. In this volume, which is not a debunking one at all, he tears aside the robes and ritual, the ceremony and secrecy, and re-evaluates the justices of the Supreme Court not as gods from Olympus, but as men not above politics and personal motivations. Fascinating behind-the-scenes stories about John Marshall, Rover B. Taney, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Evans Hughes, Louis Brandeis, Benjanim N. Cordozo, and many other famous jurists, past and present.

One of the things we need to remind ourselves with respect to religion is that the central figure of Christianity, Jesus, probably did not mean to found a new religion. Christianity began as a Jewish sect. Jesus lived and died in the Jewish faith. Probably he was an ethical teacher of the order of prophets like Amos, Micah, and others. We can appreciate the contribution that Judaism made to Christianity and the philosophy of religion in general when we consider the historical and philosophical framework out of which Christianity arose. Our debt to Judaism is great, and we should not forget its significance.

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One of the interesting, if necessarily unfortunate, comments, about our newspapers is the avidity with which they assisted Joe McCarthy smear people who had not been convicted of disloyalty to the country. Newspapers brought him to cities, feted him, and made something of a hero out of his professed efforts to save the country. Now that he is in the doghouse, those same papers join in lambasting him. Perhaps this is one of the ironies of human nature. The biographies of the great and good show how seldom they go to the defense of the unpopular – Ingersoll, Atgeld, Darrow, and Debs are some examples that come to mind.

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Turning from these liberals to the question of liberalism itself, it might be pertinent to point out that the heart of liberalism is revolt against finality. The heart of scholarship is critical analysis…. Some soft heads call this tearing down religion, the social order, or whatever it is that is being criticized at the moment. Not only should we scrutinize the religious claims of the past and of current propositions, propositions put out to win friends and influence people, but we should also contentiously reexamine the parts and points of our own religion in the light of more information and further contemplation. I am well aware that historically this has been called heresy. But a heretic is not necessarily an unreligious or an irreligious person; he may be merely a skeptic seeking light, the light of truth.

In religion, liberals hold that all relations between men should be ideally based on free consent, not coercion. With whatever intelligence they have, men should in loving concern join freely with others in searching for the truth, more effectively to meet the problems of everyday life and to make their positive contribution to the common good. To do this is not always easy. Sometimes it is indeed very hard to stand up for what one is convinced to be right – to take the course of action one knows he ought to pursue, especially when it runs counter to the mood of the crowd.

Being a Methodist myself, I may be excused for insisting that the church should be a democratic institution – of, by, though not entirely for, the congregation. The congregation consists of those who, as legal members may cast their votes in matters pertaining to the church. In order to participate, then, in the corporate thinking and action of the church, those seeking membership pledge themselves to the code and creed of that church, and through doing so should increase their personal satisfaction and greater usefulness to themselves and to the community.

In essence, then, liberalism is not that “God’s in this heaven and all’s right with the world,” nor that “It doesn’t matter what one thinks,” or that “Everyone is right.” Such attitudes reveal flabby thinking and feeling. However, the essence of liberalism is, in a sense a revolt, a revolt against the unfairnesses and social injustices of the time, or whatever time. It is a passion for truth and justice.

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Something that is unique is happening up in Massachusetts. There controversy over a so-called crime commission has been moving forward for sometime. This controversy has so aroused public interest that it would appear it is going to be established with adequate funds to support its activities. However, it is reported that the underworld has on deposit in a Boston bank $200 million to battle any probe the commission may start. If these alleged facts are true, they illustrate well how easy it is to secure funds from entrenched interests, interests that are inimical to the welfare of the public.

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The following is admittedly abstracted from an editorial appearing in The Spectator, a prominent newspaper in London. It sets forth succinctly some aspects of the world picture that are sober and thought-provoking. It says, “A sober man might be forgiven for letting the peals of boyish laughter from Marshal Bulganin’s diplomatic parties go in one ear and out the other. Not that there is any reason to grudge the Russians their newfound affability … but it would be a thousand pities if people here in America mistook manner for matter and began to believe that our troubles are over.… The situation today is precisely as it was before Geneva. Russia has given away nothing but a few merry parties and appropriately jolly words. Nor is there any sign that Russia will be likely to make any concessions when the hard bargaining begins at the foreign ministers’ conference. This is the point at which, before we sun ourselves into forgetfulness, we should recall that the entire system in which Eastern Europe lies frozen is contrary both to the general principles which must inform the policies of the West and to the Yalta and Potsdam agreements and the various peace treaties. The democratic parties are suppressed. Their leaders are in exile, in prison, or dead. Anybody suspected of sympathy with their forbidden ideals does not long remain at liberty.”

And, The Spectator concludes, “The aim of the West is to see Russia back behind the frontiers of 1939, and the peoples of Eastern Europe freed from the yoke that presses so tyrannically down upon them. The aim of Russia is to radiate peace ever more intensely while not budging an inch, yielding nothing, making no concessions. That is what the new diplomacy is about, and the West is in for a nasty shock if it permits itself to imagine that there will be anything easy or friendly about the coming negotiations.”

Well there it is. What do you think of the editor’s summation of the situation?

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This next item is one which, as you might suspect, I view with some perturbation, for if it should work out, teachers might be replaced by that process we might call automation, though that is hardly the word – TV is the one.

It points out that researchers at Pennsylvania State University report that television can be a cheap and practical means of overcoming teacher shortages in colleges and universities. They found that students, when measured by objective achievement tests, measured up to scores made by students actually in the classroom. Dr. C.R. Carpenter, who directed the project under the sponsorship of The Fund for Advancement of Education, says, “The system has great promise as one means of meeting the critical problem of rapidly expanding college enrollments.” This feature of expense received primary consideration from Dr. Carpenter and his assistants. If television proved costly, its usefulness as an educational medium would be harmed.

In actual practice, lectures were given to more than 360 students in general chemistry, general psychology, and psychology of marriage. Laboratory work and recitations were conducted in the usual manner. Reported comparison of results showed no differences in informational learning between students taking the TV courses and those taking the standard courses.

Understandably enough, while the students generally approved of televised lectures, faculty members were not so quick to accept it, demanding more proof of the feasibility of the project. In summing up faculty reaction, Dr. Carpenter said, “Faculty personnel, as a whole, have yet to be convinced of the effectiveness and acceptability of the plan.” To which this reporter can only comment, “Humph!”