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 Dr. 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 36th 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 Reverend 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.