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.