Month: August 1957

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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