Month: October 1955

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!”