Washington: Government experts predict that America’s churches will go on their biggest building spree in history during 1957. They’re already enjoying a record membership boom. During 1956 a record amount of $775 million was spent on building or enlarging churches, synagogues, and Sunday school edifices. Commerce Department analysis says next year’s outlay should be about $875 million, or 13 percent more. That’s about 20 times what was spent 20 years ago. As for church membership, the latest figures – for 1955 – show membership at an all-time high of more than 100 million. Sunday school enrollment climbed to 39 million.
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New York: A religious news director rates the release of three churchmen from communist imprisonment as the outstanding religious news story of the year. Richard T. Sutcliffe, associate director of the Department of Press, Radio, and Television of the United Lutheran Church in America, picked that as first among the top 10 religious news stories. The three churchmen released were Cardinal Mindszenty, the Roman Catholic primate of Hungary; Bishop Lajos Ordass Head of the Lutheran Church in Hungary; and Cardinal Wyszynski, Roman Catholic primate of Poland. Sutcliffe gave second place to the exchange of American and Russian delegations; and third, the merger moves among American Protestant churches.
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Vatican City: The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano has called on the United Nations to follow the appeal of Pope Pius and take action against the oppressors of Hungary. Either that or forfeit its role as the main instrument of peace. In an editorial, the newspaper rejected the war-mongering charges hurled at the pope by the communist press for his Christmas message. The pope had urged the U.N. to refuse life membership rights from those nations which refused to admit U.N. observers.
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Again Vatican City: The pope last Thursday received in private audience Republican Representative Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania. During their brief talk, Rep. Scott expressed gratitude for the pope’s leadership on the Hungarian problem.
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New York: The head of the National Council of Churches said that he believes the nation is on the edge of a true religious revival. But, says Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, it will come to fruition only if it becomes intellectually deeper, more personal and social, more practical and local, whatever that means. Dr. Blake says the increase in religious interest and support in our time is heartening to church people in spite of some indications of superficiality. He added, “I do not believe the day will be won by mass appeal and smart advertising techniques. It will come out of a revitalized Christian congregation worshiping and serving in your town.”
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The first large-scale meeting for Southern Baptist students since 1938 has heard that Christian students should use the worldwide crisis to serve humanity. The appeal has come from a professor of religious philosophy, Dr. Culbert Rutender of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has told the Nashville, Tennessee, student congress that students can respond in three ways to the world crisis. One is to ignore it and hope that it goes away; the second is to flee in fear; but the third response is to make it an opportunity for service.
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A Japanese weekly has disclosed that Emperor Hirohito himself helped draft the imperial rescript that 11 years ago renounced his claim to divinity. One of Japan’s outstanding educators, Tamon Maeda, writes in Shukan, Tokyo, that Hirohito, on January 1, 1946, disclaimed divinity and debunked the mythological divine existence of the imperial house of Japan. Maeda adds the decision for the renunciation was made because everything was chaos and the people were confused in the months after the surrender. Maeda helped with the draft of the renunciation. He adds that the emperor was very cooperative…offered suggestions…and was helpful with the language used in the imperial rescripts.
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A Russian defense ministry publication had accused the U.S. of using its chaplains to achieve what the Soviet Military Herald terms “ideological stupefaction” in its Armed Forces. Among other things, the paper declares that U.S. chaplains take advantage of religious feelings and try to justify social inequality and advocate the inevitability of war from a religious point of view.
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In Anchorage, Alaska, on Thursday, the president of the National Council of Churches ended an 11-day tour of Alaskan defense installations. The Reverend Dr. Eugene Carson Blake told a group of commanding officers and chaplains that he would work for more effective support of the ministry of chaplains. The National Council head, who is also executive officer of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., heard praise for his efforts from high military authorities. It was the third consecutive Christmas that Dr. Blake had left the states to carry the Christmas message to U.S. service personnel overseas.
During Christmas also, Francis Cardinal Spellman celebrated a Christmas midnight Mass at the new chapel at Thule Air Base in Greenland, at the U.S.’s farthest north outpost.
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Boston: A Boston native has been named to a high Roman Catholic position in some Pacific islands. Pope Pius has named the Rev. Vincent Kennally as vicar apostolic of the Caroline-Marshall Islands and titular bishop of Sassura. As vicar apostolic, or delegate of the pope, Bishop-elect Kennally will have virtually the same powers over the island’s 22,500 Catholics as a bishop does in his diocese. The 62-year-old Jesuit priest succeeds another Boston prelate in the Caroline-Marshall Islands post, Bishop Thomas Feeney, who died last year.
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Last week I reported on the discouragement expressed by the commander of NATO, Henri Spaak of Belgium, on the uncertain effectiveness of the United Nations. This week, a nationally-syndicated columnist devotes his day’s work to this subject, pointing out that while the U.N. serves a purpose, it represents the brutal facts of today’s world. As for the purpose it serves, Wellington Long says that it is useful as a forum on the policies of democratic governments. He goes on to emphasize, however, that it has little if any effect on the policies of dictatorial governments, the heads of which go on their determined way, relenting only when it is expedient for them to do so. And in this connection one cannot help but recall that during the war, Stalin decreed freedom of religion in Russia, not because he expected that such freedom would be permitted, but because it would store up capital of good will for him among the democracies, with which he was currently allied from force of necessity.
The brutal facts that Mr. Long points out are all too well known to both radio listeners and newspaper readers, namely, that the U.N. can move with some effectiveness when the matter concerns small of democratic states. But note reluctance and refusal for swift, decisive action in regard to the Russian-Hungary murders. Hence, moral authority is the chief, and about the only weapon which the U.N. can use, and moral force is of no force with immoral governments. It could or would not take steps to force Hungary to admit U.N. observers. Of course all of this is not unexpected. The nations of the world were too selfish, too arrogant to delegate any real power to the international organization that they so proudly proclaimed in 1945 would avert another world catastrophe. We all hope that it will, but there is nothing tangible on which to base this hope until or unless nationalism everywhere is reduced to the point where it will surrender some of its lawmaking and law-enforcing powers to a democratically-constructed international body – powers sufficient to keep the peace, but small enough to leave nations free to determine their own internal destiny. Then and only then will peace on earth to men of good will be something upon which we can safely rely.
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Now that Christmas itself has come and gone, perhaps it is better to review it and its meaning in retrospect than it would have been to preview it, as this reporter, understandably enough, had an urge to do. One can look back at both anticipation and realization; before, he could only look forward to realization with anticipation.
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From the Rev. Irving R. Murray of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, comes this comment upon the changing nature of the work of ministers. He says that it is time now to recognize that some of the old functions of the ministry have to be sloughed off if the new church is to emerge. Old-fashioned parish calling, he says, is incompatible with a counseling ministry. There just isn’t time to visit every home once or twice a year and work intensively with men and women in trouble. Again, it must be recognized that some ministerial roles required specialization if they are to fulfilled with adequacy. And that means other roles must be neglected with only one minister in smaller churches. No precise pattern can be established. But the role of every minister must be defined and understood by his people, with a view to the realization of his talents and the fulfillment of their need. For the frenetic life of the ministry today points only to the collapse of the full-time leadership of the church.
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Some listeners took exception, and quite rightly so, if they so desired, to some comments made on this program some weeks ago in an admittedly crude effort to define religion. Explanation of the natural characteristic religion is called theology. The critical examination of the claims of religious systems is called the philosophy of religion. The theological systems have not adopted knowledge as rapidly as it has accrued, and today there is a gulf between religious systems and modern knowledge. Truth is largely a very high degree of probability. The churches, Christian, have generally insisted that all people needed to do was, in some creedal or emotional sense, to “accept Christ,” and all would be well. After centuries of this, not all is well. The pragmatist points out that the supernatural systems do not work for most people, that on the whole, they do not add to human happiness. The notion that the pay-off is after you are dead sounds like the sales talk of a uranium salesman. Theological systems are, for the most part, like eggs; you cannot reshape them. So the systems have had to ignore knowledge or oppose it. Of course the preservation of a logical system may not be too important. What is important is that the church give direction on the basis of the best knowledge available. At one time, logic very thoroughly supported the idea that the earth was flat.
Be all that as it may, once the world was dark and forbidding. Cold and hunger or heat and thirst pursued everyman. Fear dogged everyman’s footsteps, sat at everyman’s table, and at night mocked his slumbers. From over the horizon, from the land of ought-to-be into this world of insupportable misery came a figure of surpassing masterliness. He looked upon the people of the fields, bound and condemned, and loved them, and said, “Ye shall be free.” He walked the city streets, He saw children with stomachs swollen from starvation, covered with sores, and tormented with vermin, and He loved them and placed his hands upon them in blessing and said, “Ye shall be free.” He saw the workmen hungry, beaten, sullen, and without hope, and He loved them and said, “Ye shall be free.” He saw the lepers, the insane and the prostitutes and He loved them and said, “Ye shall be free.” He saw the priests, the scribes, the tax gatherers, and officials, saw them in all their blindness and wickedness, and He loved them and said, “Ye shall be free.” Soldiers in glittering armor clashed down the street and pushed him out of their way, and He loved them and said, “Ye shall be free.”
This person dreamed the beautiful dream that ever was or ever shall be – a dream of justice and love. The people heard Him gladly. But one day the soldiers came and took Him away to die. For wickedness cannot stand before so beautiful a dream. But the dream itself did not die. It lived, and it lives at all Christmas seasons. So fair was it that in every generation there have been the pure of heart who have been the keepers of that dream. And even the scoffers know that when there no longer are keepers of that dream, there will be no dream, and when there is no dream, everyone will be eternally lost.