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. 57th 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.