Month: December 1957

The shortage of clergymen has caused much concern among a number of church denominations. Even more alarming is that the shortage is likely to become more acute with passing years. The president of Catholic St. Michael’s College in Vermont, the Rev. Francis Moriarty, had this comment on the situation recently: “In the age-old diocese of Sens, France, there are 520 parishes and only 220 priests. In our own North Carolina, two of our priests have to cover 2,000 square miles. This is a problem to which we must address ourselves.”

Two Protestant denominations are doing just that. The Lutheran Church of Finland has cut one year from the period of study required for ordination in its aim to fill 80 pastoral vacancies, most of them in sparsely settled areas. Theology students at the University of Helsinki will be eligible for degrees after four-and-a-half years of study. The present term of study is five-and-a-half years.

An experimental program also has been inaugurated by the Christian Church, or Disciples of Christ. This program is aimed at recruiting more ministerial students. In California, two pilot guidance and recruitment conferences recently saw 155 high school students undergo tests for psychological fitness after they had expressed interest in church careers. Those making high scores on the tests will be given church guidance in planning their scholastic careers. At the time they become college juniors they will be expected definitely to decide whether they wish to make church service their careers. The director of the Christian Church’s United Christian Missionary Society, the Rev. Jay Calhoun, emphasizes that the present complement of 3,400 full-time ministers must be increased to at least 4,500 by 1975. That is necessary, he says, if the present proportion of ministers to church members is to be maintained.

_______

Charlotte, North Carolina: A South Carolina attorney has told a Methodist Church fact-finding panel that Southern Methodists will not integrate their schools or churches. Hugh S. Sims, of Orangeburg, South Carolina, said, “Very frankly it doesn’t make any difference what the Supreme Court or the Methodist Church does. The attitude is not going to change.” Some others, however, disagreed. The Rev. Jack Crum, of Raleigh, North Carolina, said, “Segregation is wrong. I am opposed to segregation in our church. As a Christian, I can no longer sit in silence as my church denies the power of Christ’s love within its bounds.”

_______

Indianapolis, Indiana: A Denver minister warned members attending the American Urban Convocation that the sins of segregation are weakening in the churches of America. The Rev. Wendell Liggins said, “Communism feeds upon inconsistencies and hesitancies and confuses our youth.” The racial problem in the United States, he said, is the foremost issue in the world today.

_______

Cleveland, Ohio: A prominent church leader of New York City has urged that large American foundations join the government in sponsored student exchanges between American and Russian higher educational institutions. The Rev. Dr. Ray Gibbons recently returned from a tour of Western Europe and Russia, and said, “There is genuine desire among the common people of Russia for peace with America.”

_______

Vatican City: The Roman Catholic Church has decreed that young men must fulfill their military obligations before they take permanent religious vows. The Sacred Congregation of the Religious, in a decree published in the official Vatican news bulletin, said the measure was adopted because military service often affects a young man’s mind about monastic life.

_______

Again Indianapolis, Indiana: A Baptist leader says three press associations, four radio and three television networks dominate much of American thinking. The Rev. Paul O. Madsen, of New York, addressing the Baptist Urban Convocation, said the press associations and networks have taken over the role of shaping the mind, morals, and thinking of the nation. This, he said, once was the function of ministers.

_______

Vatican City: Pope Pius will go to Rome from his summer villa at Castel Gandolfo next week to attend the annual Requiem Mass held in memory of the cardinals who have died during the past 12 months. Those to be commemorated are Jules Saliège, of Toulouse, France, and Pedro Segura y Saenz, of Spain.

_______

St. Louis: 30 Protestant denominations having a total of 37.5 million members discussed a wide range of subjects this week in the General Assembly of the National Council of Churches. Of the many significant resolutions approved at this supreme policy-setting conclave, one stood out. In the light of the new age of rockets, nuclear weapons, and satellites, the General Assembly called for greater effort to achieve worldwide disarmament. It pointed out, quite rightly, that the present arms race can lead to nothing but a war which conceivably could destroy civilization. In the words of the assembly, “Efforts must be redoubled to realize the final goal of worldwide disarmament in the framework of the United Nations.” Well, few would disagree with the desirability of disarmament, but whether it will ever be possible under the U.N. as presently constituted, there is certainly no consensus.

In other actions, the assembly adopted resolutions:

1. Calling for more help to refugees.
2. Urging increased world trade.
3. Terming a menace to our liberties recent attempts by some local and state governments to suppress certain voluntary associations by forcing them to name members – a blow dealt to some chapters of the NAACP.
4. Protesting that Negro delegates to the assembly have been refused service by some St. Louis restaurants and taxicabs. Then promptly took action not to hold another such meeting anywhere that delegates will not be treated with the same courtesy regardless of their race.
5. Voting to admit four new denominations to the council. One of them is the Polish National Catholic Church in America, the first nominally Catholic church to join. They bring the total of 34 Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic denominations to 38 million members.
6. Sending a telegram to the AFL-CIO Convention in Atlantic City commending it for working to oust corrupt and racketeering elements.
7. Suggesting a Senate committee conduct a full inquiry into malpractices of management.
8. Renouncing racial segregation as contrary to the teachings of Jesus and the gospel of love, and appealed to local churches and citizens to do more to end it in schools and elsewhere.

_______

On the matter of church integration, the Rev. Dr. Liston Pope, Dean of Yale Divinity School, said the churches are making slow but steady progress toward ending segregation. Dr. Pope informed the assembly that about 10 percent of America’s congregations are now integrated, five times the percentage in 1947. This would indicate that about 30,000 churches are now integrated. Contrasting reports were heard by the assembly on this point. A Presbyterian layman and president of the Virginia Council of Churches, Francis Pickens Miller of Charlottesville, said race relations in his home state and other Deep South states are steadily deteriorating.

_______

My report and comments two weeks ago evoked considerable discussion and apparent disagreement among some of you listeners. That is good, and is exactly what I had hoped, for I was dealing with the question of revelations, the firm belief held by Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mohammedans, and others, that their bibles were the result of revelation, and that in each group there are some who insist that their bible only is right. This would be fine if all revelations were the same, so it seems hardly reliable to depend upon revelation as a basis for religious insight.

It would, indeed, be convenient if we could get such revelations from some other world, so we could know on what horse to bet, what job to take, in what to invest our money, what girl to marry, and so on. Unfortunately, there is no such easy way. It would be wonderfully convenient for those too lazy or too pleasure-loving to think and study if they suddenly could find themselves in possession of such truths. But I have not yet met such a person. I have met a number of deceivers, but what they claimed as revelation was not knowledge at all but mostly imaginative nonsense. It would appear that you have to study, work, and think in order to be wise in any field, and religion is no exception. There is no miraculous substitute for honest endeavors and hard work in the field of learning, as the educationists are being told by about everybody in these Sputnik days.

Scientists tell us all knowledge, that is, all awareness, comes to us through the sense as sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and the like. There is no such thing as non-sensory experience, or revelation. There are no ways of discovering or apprehending truth unique to the field of religion. Religious knowledge is not acquired in any other way than is knowledge of any other field. Progress can and will be made in religion only to the extent that it is given the same kind of critical thinking that is applied to other areas. It is no good to think scientifically in terms of cause and effect all during the week, then on Sunday, park your brains in the vestibule, along with your hat and coat, and enter an atmosphere where all sorts of impossible things happen.

Through all history, people, some sincere and some not sincere, have believed they received special revelation. They have claimed visions, dreams, trances, illuminations, and many of them insist that such experiences came from God. But it is equally true that drug addicts, alcoholics, and the mentally ill have such experiences also, and it is likely that the revelations of the latter have about as much foundation as those of the former. They are worth nothing because they bring us no important knowledge.

This reporter has yet to learn of any great truth benefiting mankind that was arrived at in a non-human way. Great truths are the result of careful experiment and patient observation. The great laws of the universe to which we must make adjustment were not revealed. They were discovered. The great marvels of human achievement did not come by revelation, but they were built on discovery. Few of us doubt that God is in and through it all. He is both law and author of law. Man, by use of the intelligence that God has given him, may progressively discover these laws and make adjustment to them. If he does not, he will perish. All of this is intended to indicate that there is no shortcut to heaven, no cheap and easy salvation schemes, but to study religion, society, and self, that we make the largest possible contribution to human enterprise. This may not be – it is definitely not – orthodox; it may not accord with the fine-spun theology. But it does offer a working hypothesis that will enable one, building on it to make progress, whether it is in the field of more mundane everyday affairs or in the loftier realm of man’s experience that we call religion.

_______

Newspapers are dreary reading these days – mainly about bigger and better ways of killing people. Friends talk about this competition in devilish instruments of destruction much the same way they did about the last World Series. Education is urged not to make people better, but to produce scientists who can contribute to carnage. The advisers of an amiable but befuddled president have launched a great campaign to get the American people to give the government an ever-increasing part of their subsistence for what may literally destroy them. I am old enough that I can remember when it was not only respectable to work for peace but it was thought to be a religious obligation to do so.

_______

Christmas is only 17 days from now. I wonder if those responsible for doing so have ever thought of giving the citizens of Washington County a Christmas present by bringing to justice those responsible for the April 30 dynamite slaying in the Sulphur Springs community. They will have had a long time in which to perform this duty.

A somewhat curious thumbnail profile was reported this week of a captain of industry in New Jersey who always wept during Mother’s Day services. Yet he voted against … suffrage for women; was opposed to limitation of hours for women in industry and state supervision of working conditions in his facility, the minimum wage law, accident and unemployment insurance, and maternity and retirement compensation. He was doubtful of coeducation. He openly branded as “communism” any effort to remove the legal disabilities of women. He was opposed to conception control, urging prayer in its stead. Yet he meant to be a good Christian and was sure he was “saved.” In the face of all this, one well could be excused for asking, “Just what is religion, anyway?”

_______

A somewhat cynical comment comes from a minister who observes that most Protestant ministers have two theologies: one they learned in theological school, and another that laymen permit them to preach. If this is in any sense true, it is a sad commentary on us laymen. For if they learned truth in theological school, it means we do not want to hear it. On the other hand, if what they learned is not truth, it may be just as well that they do not preach their learning.

_______

One of the great commandments is that “Thou shall not bear false witness.” All of us can remember, but it is likely that few are proud of, the days not so long ago when inquisitions were the order of the day; trial by headline took the place of jury and courtroom; accusations, distorted and unsupported by evidence, took the place of the grand jury and the witness stand. The late juvenile senator from Wisconsin was a master at this sort of thing, and he and his supporters, largely the lunatic fringe, whipped this nation into a hysteria from which it will take a long time to recover. Even then, the pages of our history of that time will not be ones to which we will point with pride or about which Fourth of July speakers will orate. Comes now a book which this reporter has not read, but which he intends to do, entitled “False Witness,” which, according to Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, one of the abler members of the United States Senate, is at long last the “shining truth about the false accusers, the half-truth artists, the professional fabricators, the prevaricators for pay”; a book which “cuts through the dark and ugly clouds of doubt” the purveyors of false testimony “have so evilly blown up.”

_______

It would appear that some, perhaps most, people seem to need to feel superior to others, not because of their own intrinsic or developed merits, but superior period. A little digging throws some interesting light on this. For whenever there is talk of brotherhood or the equality of men, there is almost invariably an opposition voice which cries out that brotherhood is a fallacy and we often hear it said that if providence had intended men to be equal, it would have made them that way. Even a brief review of history would seem to indicate that the fallacy is in the argument of those who claim superiority. A writer in the International Journal of Religious Education points out that Cicero warned his followers not to obtain slaves from Britain. He said, “They are stupid and dull, an inferior people.” In the 14th century, a moor wrote of the Germans, “They are tall of stature and light of skin. But I have heard it rumored that they do not take baths, and are altogether a hopeless strain.” In this country, when the Ohio Territory applied for statehood, a member of the United States Congress said, “They are so rude and unlettered they will never make good citizens.” The truth is, of course, that the British developed an empire which has stood longer than any other in recorded history. They, along with the Germans, have been outstanding in science, philosophy, music, and art. And Ohio, the territory of the “rude and unlettered,” has given the nation seven presidents. History is filled with many similar instances. Concluding, the journal writer asks, “Who are we to draw sharp lines between groups … to shut ourselves out from fuller fellowship when the world’s new trend must not be toward brotherhood, whether we like it or not.”

_______

Some of you have apparently been disturbed over the statement on this program some weeks ago to the effect that both the Hebrews and the Mormons claim to have had their bibles handed to them by the deity and that there was about as much evidence for one as the other. It is good that people become disturbed, for only then are they likely to become curious, to think, and to search for answers. Anyway, the statement was the truth and I have no inclination to retract.

Let us be honest with ourselves and look at some facts. The history of religions reveals that there have been a great many religions that claim to have been founded by a message from a god or gods to man. While these religions have some points in common, they do not agree on the messages. It is queer that God revealed so many different religions. The religions of Arabia, China, Greece, India, and Japan, e.g., do not agree with that of the West. Yet in each there have been those who claimed their religion was the only true one because it was delivered to man directly from deity. These same religions do not agree as to the name and nature of deity, on whether there is a life after death, or what happens in that life, or how to avoid punishment and reap reward. Nor is there any agreement as to the climate in those places, or their location, or the occupation of the inhabitants. All these many religions claim to be the result of faith delivered to the saints. The orthodox faithful are urged to accept this on faith. Indeed, it is held by some that there is merit in accepting in faith what is hard to believe simply it is hard to believe. Does this make sense?

It is about time that we come to realize that experts in the field of religion have just about abandoned the idea of revelation. Students of comparative religions explain that belief in revelation came about because early man had so many needs and the normal ways he had of getting information were so limited that the crafty were tempted to claim revelation. The people demanded revelation and the priests delivered. One might define so-called revelation as “non-human communication of truth,” or what passes for truth. The modern science of religion says there are not two kinds of truth – revealed truth and the ordinary kind. Truth is truth. Some forms of this so-called revelation have been (1) significant occurrence (as in the racket called astrology); (2) casting of lots (much employed by the ancients); (3) examination of the intestines of slain animals; (4) oracles or communication through eccentric or deformed persons, or the head of a church who is believed by the faithful to be the source of all earthly truth; (5) dreams; (6) ecstasy, or a trance in which a person is believed to be invaded by some spirit; and (7) sacred literature.

As a people come to know more, these superstitions tend to disappear. Yet, in the United States, after a century of public school education, many people believe in non-human communication of truth; in short, in revealed truth. Of course that is an easier method of arriving at a decision than the difficult but surer one of testing every idea, religious or not, by the only reliable way of arriving at truth, i.e., the scientific process. It is easy to believe that God dictated the contents of the Bible to human beings. The only trouble with that is that Buddhists, Mohammedans, Hindus, and a lot of others believe that of their respective bibles. And each believes, just as devoutly as the others, that his is the only true revelation. Very confusing, isn’t it? And where does all this leave us? About where we came in, I suppose. But keep on thinking. Such has never known to prove fatal to anyone.

_______

I still wonder what Frankie and Johnnie are doing these days. They still have shown no signs of catching bomb riggers whose fiendish device blew a man into eternity.

_______

The nation’s largest religious organization, the National Council of Churches, opens its week-long annual general assembly today at St. Louis. Some 2,000 delegates will undertake the job of planning the future of 75 programs the nation’s churches conduct through the council. Since its inception, the council has become a very versatile institution. Its records of achievement include all sorts of public and pious works and illustrates that church business today is big business. The council and its working subsidiaries extend into scores of activities far beyond the pew and pulpit, including radio and television broadcasting, teaching illiterates to read, running health clinics, training marriage counselors, finding homes for refugees, prodding politicians, printing books, analyzing community problems, etc. The council stresses that it is not a church, though it includes 30 denominations. The common denominator for the council is a belief in the divinity of Christ. There, creedal identity ends, the council leaving to the churches concerned the wide range of ideas about baptism, communion, and other tenets.

_______

A group of Lutheran laymen reports continued success in its annual drive to keep Christ in Christmas. The campaign is aimed at inspiring an ever-widening appreciation by business houses and community groups of the real purpose and spirit of Christmas. Especially active in the campaign are two New York City laymen, Julius Nickleburg of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, and Henry Jaburg of the United Lutheran Church in America. Some suggestions of their effort include attending church services and urging others to do the same; recommending the use of nativity billboards, window displays, and articles in religious and secular publications; and the encouraging of outdoor singing of Christmas carols.

Is it not rather ironic, to put it timidly, that there should need to be an effort to keep Christ in Christmas? How much farther are we going toward making Christmas just an annual holiday on which we exchange merchandise, and calculate how much to get whom on the basis of how much whom is going to give me?

_______

The 17th biennial convention of the National Federation of Temple Brotherhoods opened this week in Pittsburg, and will continue through today. The federation is the layman’s branch of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the parent body of 550 Reform temples in the USA and Canada. It has a membership of more than a million.

_______

New York: The Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds has awarded two Jewish organizations in the 1957 William J. Shroder Memorial Awards. Winners are the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland and the Jewish Hospital Association of Cincinnati. The awards will be presented at the 26th General Assembly of the council at New Orleans next weekend. The awards are given in recognition of superior initiative and achievement in the advancement of social welfare.

_______

South Bend, Indiana: The University of Notre Dame is lending a helping hand to Ottumwa Heights College in Iowa whose only building was destroyed by a fire a month ago. Hundreds of books, plus equipment and supplies are being shipped from Notre Dame to Ottumwa Heights College, which is run by the Sisters of the Holy Humility of Mary, a Roman Catholic order. Many Notre Dame professors sent books from their private libraries.

_______

London: Radio Moscow has broadcast an appeal for peace by leaders of the Roman Catholic Church of Latvia. According to the broadcast, the bishop of Riga urged all nations to raise their voices against war and emphasized that atomic and all other energy should not be used to destroy people but should be used for the good of humanity. Latvia was taken over by Russia and incorporated as part of the Soviet Union. Everybody agrees with this in principle, but precious little is done about it in practice. What about convincing the USSR to do this? And this does not imply there are no warmongers in this country.