Today near Nashua, Iowa, is a celebration of the centennial of a song about a church, “The Little Brown Church in the Vale.” It was written on June 14, 1857, by music teacher William Pitts about a spot where a church did not stand. But the place impressed him as waiting for a church to be built there. Pitts saw the spot en route to visit a girl, Ann Warren, and to ask her parents’ permission to marry her. He sang the song at the dedication of the church in 1864. Later Pitts became a doctor. “The Little Brown Church” has its own long-time tradition as a very popular wedding place.
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The United Presbyterian Church of North America has voted to merge with the Presbyterian Church USA next May…. The moderator of the United Presbyterians in their final year is to be Dr. Robert Montgomery. He is president of Muskegon College, in new Concord, Ohio, where the church has been holding its final separate assembly.
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A scholarly yet easily-read book has been published to help tell the story of Judaism. Dr. Bernard Bamberger, rabbi of New York City’s West End Synagogue, stresses in his work the development of the great ideals of his religion. In the book, entitled “The Story of Judaism,” he states his firm belief that the core of Jewish experience is religious. In the core are the God idea; the concept of man and of humanity; the moral law; the future hope; the two foci or centers of synagogue and home; and the system of study, prayer, and observance. But Rabbi Bamberger says the current secular Jewish philosophies are a challenge to Jewish religion and thus must be considered. Still, he adds, the Judaism of today is the Judaism of Sinai. He tells the story from the seeds and roots – as Abraham and Moses and the exodus from Egypt. The Torah is explained. The author terms it more than “law.” Instead, “Torah” means the direction given man by God for the guidance of his life
In other chapters, the author writes of the effects of the Jews, Greeks, and Romans and their religions on each other; of the Jews and their religion up through the middle ages; the combating of discrimination by American and French revolutions; pogroms and anti-Semitism; American Judaism; and the state of Israel today.
Bamberger says that Paul, or Saul of Tarsus, made Christianity a different kind of religion than his and its native Judaism. The author defines Judaism as a religious discipline of acts and duties. “Pauline Christianity,” he declares, is a plan of salvation achieved through faith. Judaism is seen as centered around a divine command, and Christianity around the divine person.
Judaism, he goes on, is the source of another world-religion, Islam. But Islam never had any connection with corporate Jewish life. Although its teachings closely resemble those those of Judaism. Dr. Bamberger says that Mohammed taught a religion derived largely from conversations with Jewish acquaintances. Islam means “submission,” that is, submission to the will of the deity. The author sees the ethical standards of the Koran is fairly high and doing much to lift the Arab moral tone. But he adds that the Koran does not teach the full measure of universalism and sensitive tenderness found in the best Jewish teachings.
Well, that is the evaluation of his own religion and of other religions, and one can forgive him if he is ethnocentric about that to which he subscribes. Is there any of us who is not?
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Two Roman Catholic missionaries from California have been released from four years of jail and house detention in Communist China. The Rev. Charles McCarthy, 45 years old, of San Francisco, and the Rev. John Alexander Houle, 42 years old, of Glendale, expect to be in Hong Kong in about 10 days. By telephone from Shanghai, Father McCarthy has reported that he and Father Houle are in fair health. But he also said that Father Houle has a back ailment for which he is in bad need of treatment.
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A Protestant Episcopal minister charges that evangelist Billy Graham is using Madison Avenue advertising techniques to fill Madison Square Garden every night. The Rev. Howard Graf, of the Church of St. John’s in Greenwich Village, New York, said “There are thousands in the garden who are there because they love a parade, a show, circus, or to watch the fire engines go by.” Graf spoke from the pulpit of his church to about 100 persons. Graham has been preaching nightly to crowds estimated at 15,000 – 19,000 persons. Graham has never been a favorite or hero to this reporter, and many times he has aroused skepticism about many things. But could it be that the Rev. Graf may have a little jealousy also at the contrast in size of respective audiences? Is it not about time we quit throwing stones at each other? It is to be hoped that the net effect of Graham’s activities will be good. Who can complain about one who does good, however small that amount of good may be? It is better to ignore such if you do not to agree with them, then to berate and give them more publicity and perhaps make a martyr them to some.
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Vatican City: The newspaper L’Osservatore Romano has reminded its readers that the Vatican holds that there can be no collaboration between Catholics and socialists. The paper pointed out that the church not only condemns the communists, but has explicit reservations with regards to socialists, even when they have no formal links with the communists. It would be wonderful if labels were accurate and distinctions between right and wrong were always so simple.
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A 46-year-old man who spent 16 years in prison for a murder he did not commit has been ordained a Presbyterian minister. Nearly 450 persons were on hand to see John Cacopardo, of Hackensack, New Jersey, ordained at the Oliver Presbyterian Church on Staten Island. Cacopardo, married, and the father of two children, was sent to prison in 1937 for the murder of a young woman. Later, his uncle, Paul Petrillo, who had been a witness against him, was proved to have committed the murder. Cacopardo was granted a full pardon by Gov. Averell Harriman.
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Vatican City: The primate of Poland, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, returns on Monday, tomorrow, to Poland after a 39-day stay in Italy. The 56-year-old cardinal who was released last October from the communist detention camp had a farewell audience on Thursday with the pope. He will return to Poland by train, by way of Vienna.
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One more brief comment on liberal religion and the attitude of the religious liberal: The liberal is tolerant, hospitable to truth from every and any source. Tolerance does not imply a don’t-care attitude, nor does it mean a mush of complaisance. It does not mean everyone is right, and it certainly does not mean appearing to agree when you don’t. In short, it does not mean being a hypocrite. The liberal would explode superstition wherever he finds it; he would expose error; uncover fraud; stop exploitation of man by man; oppose wickedness; and correct ignorance. It is possible to pursue a gladiatorial attitude towards evil without impairing other values.
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The Walt Disney movie production which this reporter has not seen comes highly recommended in reviews that he has read, and he intends to see it when the opportunity arises. It is about the city of Boston where its citizens revolted when they believed their rights as Englishmen were denied. The review goes on to point out that the picture shows how hard-won and precious is our political heritage. This picture of Englishmen who had to become Americans in order to ensure domestic tranquility and secure the blessings of liberty comes highly recommended.
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It is a matter of increasing concern to many of us who like our system here in this country, and would seek to improve it, that so many take our freedoms, and this includes religious freedom, for granted, and refuse to see that if these freedoms are attacked, it will not be by a frontal assault but by persons seeking in the name of freedom to protect it by their own authoritarian devices and strategy. For example, in some parts of this country and by some elements of the population, both public and private, our Constitution is mocked and the Bill of Rights, disregarded. Within the past few years many reputations have been ruined by government stool pigeons. Citizens’ rights to travel are now being abridged and denied, and a possible new tyranny under the name of “internal security” sweeps over the land. Both private and public-appointed sensors survey the books we read are permitted to read, the magazines we buy, and the friends we have. Reports crop up now and then – how many more there are that do not get revealed cannot be estimated – of browbeating of the press and intimidating the clergy. The press, on its part, plays up the releases given out by investigating committees and censors boards, and thus participate in character assassination. The self-styled intellectuals in many churches busy themselves with the metaphysical contradictions of Barth, Niebuhr, and Graham, while defenders of our traditional liberties are called suspicious characters and enemies of liberties are given metals as patriots. Coercion at home becomes coercion abroad, and the U.S. could easily become a replacement of Britain as a bully among the nations, telling them what kind of government they can have and what their several foreign policies shall be.
These are not welcome facts, but they are facts. The Pollyannas will keep repeating to themselves that “God’s in his heaven, all’s well with the world,” and maybe some of them will actually believe it. Democracy flourishes only when all are informed and willing to face facts realistically in the face of them. Perhaps it will do us all good to see “Johnny Tremain” and reorient ourselves in the true spirit that activated the people of Boston who made it possible through their acts to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare.
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Some of the materials that crossed my desk this week contained writings of certain neo-orthodox disciples, writings that have very pious sounds. However, if one seeks the meanings behind these sounds, the writings become very confusing. What these neo-orthodox persons are saying in effect is that religious man must give up the idea of human understanding and place his faith in the absurd. To put it in their phrase, “The ways of God are beyond human comprehension; therefore absurdity is the ultimate basis of faith.” Well, if the ways of God are beyond comprehension, how are the neo-orthodox in a position to make any statement about God and God’s ways? Ancient theology, when subjected to a rigorous methodology, can often become incredible and absurd. But the neos, in an effort to hold the line, make a bold pitch for the incredible, the absurd, and the contradictory as the only basis of true faith. There appears little difference between Cadillac neo-orthodoxy and pedestrian fundamentalism.
There is a sense in which the church and believers in it are not free: They are not free to reject sound scholarship; They are not free to deny the valid conclusions of science; They are not free to believe where there is no evidence; And they are not free from mental discipline, whatever men may put into books to the contrary.
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The much-maligned Fund for the Republic, part of the Ford Foundation, recently announced the establishment of a Commission on Rights, Liberties, and Responsibilities of the American Indian. This commission is headed by O. Meredith Wilson, president of the University of Oregon. The purpose of the commission is to arrive at a better understanding of the obligation of other citizens, and the federal and state governments to the Indians. This particular cycle of studies, commissions, surveys, recommendations, studies, etc., infinitum, has been going on now for at least 150 years, and the Indian has shown a remarkable vitality, enough to survive and to make remarkable progress in spite of his continuing role as a guinea pig in a land where he ante-dated the bureaucrats, benevolent or otherwise.