New York: One-hundred-forty young Americans from 36 states are foregoing their summer vacation to work on goodwill projects overseas. Under sponsorship of the National Council of Churches, they will sail from New York and Montreal next month to do manual work in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. They’ll spend five weeks digging ditches, painting houses, and laying bricks in 30 Protestant church-sponsored work camps in 22 countries. The Americans are part of about 1,200 young people from 40 countries who will take part in the fix-up program.
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Washington: A prominent scholar of the Bible says the famed Dead Sea Scrolls contain nothing that will require any revision of orthodox Christian doctrine. Dr. J. Carter Swain says the famous scrolls are not nearly so revolutionary as some writers have pictured them. Dr. Swain is executive director of the English Bible department of the National Council of Churches.
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La Porte, Indiana: A British church leader says Billy Graham has had a good, but passing, influence on people during his visit to England. The Rev. Claude F. Freeland, secretary of the General Conference of the New Church in England says Graham did a world of good in making people stop and think. “But,” he adds, “I’m afraid they’ve stopped thinking again.”
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Washington: The House of Representatives has voted to let the major airlines carry clergymen at reduced fares. The House measure amends one already passed by the Senate in that it would confine reduced fares privilege to those airlines not drawing federal subsidies. In general these are the major airlines. Trains and interstate buses already can give clergymen cut-rate travel. A House and Senate conference committee must now act on the two measures to bring them into harmony.
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Knoxville, Tennessee: A prominent Presbyterian churchman says rural churches are declining in number at the rate of 1,000 a year because they are not doing the job they’re supposed to do. Dr. James M. Carr, secretary of the Town and Country Department of his church says in many areas, so-called sect churches which deviate from general religious tradition are rising because the older established denominations fail to meet the needs of the people.
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Chicago: A Negro minister has been appointed to a pastorate by the Rock River Conference Methodist Church, for the first time in history. He is the Rev. Charles E. Frost, who will become pastor of the Church of the Redeemer in Chicago on July 1.
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Vatican City: Pope Pius has elevated three American clergymen to new duties. Monsignor Philip Hannan, chancellor of the Curia in Washington, has been appointed auxiliary to Monsignor Patrick O’Boyle, archbishop of Washington. Monsignor James Byrne, bishop of Boise, Idaho, has been named to the suffrage of Portland, Oregon, and Monsignor William O’Brady, bishop of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has been appointed coadjutor with right of succession to Monsignor John Gregory Murray, archbishop of St. Paul, Minnesota.
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Washington: Congress has been asked to make St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Philadelphia a national shrine to religious liberty. The church was built in 1733 and the following year the colony’s government allowed it to hold service. If it becomes a shrine, it would become part of Independence Park, which includes Independence Hall.
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St. Paul, Minnesota: Doctrinal differences have blocked a proposed merger between three of the nation’s largest Lutheran denominations. The Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church has decided against joining with the United Lutheran Church in America and the Augustana Lutheran Church. However, in Minneapolis, the Evangelical Lutheran Church Conference urged its lawmakers to unite with any or all three other Lutheran groups. This branch has been negotiating since 1949 toward union with the American Lutheran Church, the United Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the Lutheran Free Church. The United Evangelical Lutheran Church has voted in favor of the merger at its conference in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
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At the University of Tennessee this past week there has been in session a summer school for town and country ministers. During the course of one of its sessions, Dr. A.E. Wilson, rural sociologist at the University of Wisconsin, emphasized that no phase of our life has been more affected by science than has agriculture. He went on to point out something that most of us knew already, however: that fewer and fewer people are needed on the land to produce the necessary food for our people. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that rural churches are declining in number, as I indicated a moment ago Dr. Carr had lamented about. Another speaker at the conference, U.T.’s farm management specialist, told the ministers that the church and improved farming programs go hand in hand, citing an instance of where one farmer had built up the fertility of his small hilly farm to support nearly twice as many dairy cows as formerly. “The farmer,” says Mr. Gambrill, “and his family are active church members, and often have daily worship at home.”
At this same conference, a poll of ministerial preference as to rural or urban churches produced an overwhelming majority in favor of the rural. However, the source from which my information was taken does not indicate whether it was a cross section of the entire conference, or merely a questioning of persons who are now rural pastors. The question put to them was: “Given your choice, would you serve a city or a rural church?” The [rural] church was their unanimous choice. Several of those asked had at one time or another held city charges. The Rev. Robert H. Bates, who has the Pleasant Mountain and McCain’s group of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Maury County, put it this way: “I feel at home with rural people. I feel I can do my best work among them. I also feel that a rural church offers more of a challenge than the average city church.”
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One wonders sometimes as he reads the news just what are the values of us Americans. We do a lot of talk about people being important, saying that our human resources are our greatest assets. With all of which this reporter can well agree. However, we pass, or have on the threshold for passing, a highway bill that plans on spending nearly $33 billion for a 41,000- mile super highway system. Now nobody seriously suggests that we do not need highways. However, this same Congress, as have many before it, has haggled over a puny federal aid to education bill. This bill is now bogged down and will not come out of committee this session. If it does, it will not get anywhere. There may be a lot of talk about it for political propaganda purposes, and Republicans and Democrats will blame each other for its not passing. The truth is that both are to blame, and have been for years. In the meantime, children will continue to go to increasingly overcrowded, inadequate, unsafe classrooms, while Mr. Eisenhower and his cohorts are worried about infringing upon the rights of the states by supporting an adequate educational program. Very apparently, to both Democrats and Republicans, highways are important; the education of the children of this nation is not. It is time for deeds, not words, as Mr. Dulles is so fond of saying about the Russians.
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Most peoples of the world subscribe to religion of some sort. In fact, religion is a universal phenomenon, occurring amongst all people, in some form or another. Most of us are likely to think immediately of our own denomination when we hear the word, but how many of us try to define just what our religion really is? Certainly, I have no comprehensive, all encompassing definition for it, but it might be well for each of us to try to put into articulate form just what it means to us. As a matter of fact, it is many things. It is yearning for more than life can give. It is an aching sense of the chasm between the what-is and the what-ought-to-be. Always we long for the full circle, completion, and fulfillment. We are not content to be going there; wherever it is, we want to be there. Thus the imagery of heaven and nirvana follow psychologically if not always logically. Are these emotionally fed feelings valid ambitions? Are they the way to progress and happiness? Apparently peoples of many religions think so, for they seem to be something of constants in a continuously varying world.
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Sometimes in this age of unreason (in some ways chaos), it is good to look at history. Today many timid souls fear freedom and try to find security in conformity – perhaps my educational colleagues would call it adjustment, though I personally detest the implication of that word.
Anyway, in the Middle Ages, the church was a state – really a super-state. To dissent from its dogmas was to revolt from the state and to threaten the vested interests of same. The heretic was the anarchist, the Red of his day. His dissent from majority opinion was so monstrously a wicked thing the motions of all decent people of the time were aroused to destroy him.
Yet, incredible as it seems, when this monopoly of the church was broken, both church and state survived, and the church survived as a purified and more respected institution. Today no one is an outlaw because of his religious beliefs or lack of them. There is security in religious freedom.
Today, however, the innovator in political, economic, or other social affairs, occupies much the same position as the heretic of the 13th century. As orthodox Christian belief was the test of good citizenship then, so an orthodox support of the present order is the test of good citizenship today. Again it is the vested interests of a few that are threatened. Whether the timid soul likes it or not, another reformation is on the way, after which, perhaps, no one will be an outlaw because of his social ideas or lack of them. There is security in this kind of freedom too, as well as in the freedom of religion.
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On a future broadcast, I propose to deal in some detail with the citizen’s responsibility to vote. However, today I should like to pass along a very few items resulting from a study just completed by the American Heritage Foundation.
Voting is, of course, a responsibility of every citizen, but it is especially one for the person who subscribes to religious faith, for government is the … institution that regulates many aspects of our living, including certain ones of religion. And I am sure that all of us can remember who the candidate in 1952 was that termed the campaign a “great moral crusade.” Anyway, the American Heritage Foundation found that in 1952 only 63 percent of the adults in the U.S. voted. Even this was an improvement over 1944 when only 53 percent went to the polls. Comparing our own record with that of other countries, we find that in Belgium 90 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots; in England the figure reaches around 83 percent.
The Foundation found also that education was a factor, for 90 percent of college-educated persons voted, and 88 percent of those in professions or management positions. City people voted in a greater percentage than did rural folks; and it is not surprising that socioeconomic status was a factor, with the more well-to-do voting in greater number than poor people. Low-income groups voted only 53 percent in 1952, that is, those with incomes of $2,000 a year or less. Understandably enough, Negroes had the lowest voting record. I say understandably enough considering poll taxes in many states, intimidation, and other discriminatory practices. The voting record of women was decidedly below that of men. The former cast only 59 percent of their potential 53 million votes. Some of the reasons given by women for not voting were: “I can’t make up my mind,” “One vote doesn’t count,” “Politics are a bore,” “I don’t understand how government works.” (Parenthetically, it might be asked here, does any one of us?)
One of the startling finds of the Foundation was the very low voting record of young people between the ages of 21 and 29. Those in this age category cast only 50 percent of their potential 20 million votes.
One encouraging thing is that not only the Foundation, but a great many other organizations are starting early this year to arouse people to a realization of the importance of their votes. One hundred twenty-five national organizations are starting early this year to arouse people to a realization of the importance of their votes. One hundred twenty-five national organizations have agreed to cooperate in getting people, regardless of party, to register and vote. The advertising council is cooperating, as well as magazines, radio, television stations, movies, and various other agencies. It is important that you register and vote, for each and every one of us has a responsibility to express his point of view on the most important business in this country – its government.