Month: January 1956

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.”