An unusual new church, built in the shape of a huge fish, was dedicated at Stamford, Connecticut. The $1.5 million building is the new First Presbyterian Church. The fish shape was chosen because it was the symbol for Christ used by early Christians forced to hide in the catacombs to escape persecution. It is an imposing structure, 60 feet high at its highest point, and 234 feet long. On both its long sides are some 20,000 jigsaw stained glass windows in the colors of ruby, amber, emerald, amethyst, and sapphire. The thousands of inch-thick windows are embedded in the shapely sloping gray slate walls. On one side of the nave the stained glass windows depict the crucifixion; on the opposite side, the resurrection. The basic structure is of precast concrete panels held together by steel rods. Inside the 750-seat church, the lack of supporting pillars gives a feeling of soaring space. Behind the communion table is a 320-foot cross faced with wood from the Coventry Anglican Cathedral, which was bombed in World War II. More than 2,000 persons attended two separate services at the dedication. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, clerk of the U.S.A. Presbyterian Church, delivered the dedicatory sermon at both services.
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At Youngstown, Ohio, a helicopter was used to lift the cross in place atop the city’s new Catholic cathedral. The helicopter rose from a parking lot across the street. Attached to the whirlybird by cable was the 300-pound aluminum cross. Workers stood on a scaffold on the 1330-foot church tower and guided the 20-foot cross into its socket. Bishop Emmet M. Walsh of Youngstown blessed the cross before it was lifted aloft by the helicopter.
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Many area meetings are being held around the country to acquaint Lutheran pastors, choir directors, organists, and others with a new Lutheran service book and hymnal. Lutheran officials announced at New York that advance orders from publishing houses have been received for all 635,000 copies of the first edition. The book will be distributed by publishing houses of the eight denominations belonging to the National Lutheran Council. Dr. Edgar S. Brown, executive director of the department of worship of the United Lutheran Church in America said the service book and hymnal is expected to hasten the day when more than 4 million Lutherans in the U.S. and Canada will be united in their forms of worship and their hymns.
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At Kansas City, Kansas, a commission of the American Baptist Convention recommended that the denomination locate its administrative headquarters and its agencies at New York’s Interchurch Center. The center is being built on Riverside Drive in Manhattan. The National Council of Churches and a number of denominations will occupy the center. These recommendations were made to the convention’s general council. Final action on the headquarters location will be taken in June by the convention’s annual session in Cincinnati.
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In Hastings, Nebraska, the evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society has acquired 419 housing units built 10 years ago by the federal Public Housing Administration. The cement block homes are in Hastings’ Spencer Park and are part of an 805-unit development. The society has an option to buy the remaining units. Four hundred persons now living on social security and old-age assistance will find homes in the area. This is the Lutheran organization’s most ambitious project to date. The society operates 58 homes and two hospitals in a dozen Midwest states.
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In New York, Saint Luke’s Chapel, one of the oldest church buildings, has been restored along with a block square setting in a five-year program costing $1 million. The chapel is part of Trinity Episcopal Church parish.
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At Jacksonville, Florida, a new flagship for the Presbyterian Mission Fleet in Alaska was launched. The 65-foot motor ship will carry a clergyman to isolated logging camps and fishing villages along the rugged Alaskan coast.
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At Hanover, New Hampshire, the Dartmouth College Library announced it had received as a gift a Breeches Bible once owned by Jon Alden. The Breeches Bible gets its name from the fact that this translation stated that Adam and Eve made breeches out of their fig leaves.
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In Boston, directors of the American Unitarian Association announced the nomination of Dr. Ernest W. Kuebler to succeed the late Dr. Frederick May Eliot as association president. Delegates must approve such nominations at the association’s annual meeting in May.
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In Warsaw, Poland, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski reported he has personally supervised the distribution of $2 million worth of American relief supplies. The supplies came from U.S. Catholics through Catholic Relief Services Agency of the National Catholic Welfare Conference.
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In Jerusalem, Israel, an American Jewish leader announced that an archaeological school will be opened there in the fall of 1959. Dr. Nelson Glueck made the announcement. He is president of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute in Cincinnati. The institution is sponsoring the archaeological school. It will be a graduate institution for both Christian and Jewish scholars interested in advanced biblical and ancient Near East studies.
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At Taipei, Formosa, a visiting American church relief official said he found Formosa still badly in need of relief supplies. The official was Dr. R. Norris Wilson, executive director of Church World Service, who is touring centers in 22 countries. He said nationalist Chinese officials had stressed to him their gratitude for the aid American churches already have sent to Formosa.
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In Madrid, Spain, a noted American Catholic priest announced plans for a series of religious radio broadcasts that he expects eventually will reach as many as 2 million Spanish families. He is Father Patrick Peyton of Albany, New York, founder and leader of the Family Rosary Crusade. He has been in Spain supervising the completion of color films portraying the mysteries of the rosary. The busy priest took time out to plan a Spanish network series of family hour broadcasts to be heard every Friday evening.
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And here is a sign of the times:
In Chicago, First Immanuel Lutheran Church became concerned over rising unemployment among its Spanish-speaking members. The church held an employment clinic, bringing in state employment service representatives to brief the members on job and training opportunities.
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A quotation garnered from the news somewhere this week seems worth passing on to you in these days of investigations of labor rackets, Federal Communication Commission shenanigans, etc., apparently ad infinitum. It goes like this:
“A weak man in office is like a squirrel in a cage, laboring eternally, but to no purpose; like a turnstile, he is in everybody’s way, but stops nobody; he talks a great deal but says very little; looks into everything, but sees nothing; and has a hundred irons in the fire, but very few of them are hot, and with these few that are he burns his fingers.”
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This program has consistently taken the position that religion, any religion, should objectively seek truth, and discard that which is unbelievable or unworkable, whoever said or advocated it. In short, religion should be practical and mature. There are several identifying features of a mature religion:
- It should be free, for growth can take place only where the human spirit is unshackled, and a mature religion will not be afraid of freedom. It will not shut up the human spirit in a prison of creeds, nor chain it to a single source of truth.
- It will be growing as man’s understanding of the universe and himself continually expands.
- It will go beyond indifference to a deep and abiding concern for the welfare here and now of humanity.
- It will practice, not a passive tolerance with respect to its great sister faiths, but an active cooperation in good works and in the appropriation and assimilation of all that is best in them into itself.
- It will give the feelings of the heart full scope and expression under the guidance of the alert and informed mind.
- It will be concerned with society and its problems as much as it is with the individual, for it is doubtful if the individual can be saved apart from his society; it is likely that we can be saved only within its context of struggle for righteousness, justice, brotherhood, and peace.
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Doubtless many of us experienced all sorts of reactions the other day when Randolph Churchill over TV blew his top. No monitor mercifully threw a switch to save him from his folly. His profanity and obscenity went out over the whole network. Churchill is a reporter and knows that the newspaper code is that when an actress gets drunk and abuses police officers, that is news. If she is the daughter of one of the world’s greatest citizens, that is hot news. There is some question about how much if any of juvenile and domestic court proceedings should be reported, but the freedom of the press is fundamental to a democracy and no restriction should lightly be placed on it. No such question is involved in this case. In the U.S. you just can’t get drunk and bawl out police officers and get away with it. Also, the more prominent you are the more likely you are to get your picture in the paper. In the Churchill episode, however, I suspect that many of us got a kick out of a reporter being subjected to his own impertinent technique. It was a case of the interviewer being interviewed.
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The last item comes from an editorial in our own local paper in its March 18 issue. It says:
“A Jewish community center is bombed … A federal judge’s life is threatened. Thus does hatred, in alliance with cowardice and sacrilege, rise again to challenge the citizenship of Tennessee. The forces of anarchy have demonstrated there is no depth to which they will not stoop. In their depraved insanity, they have defied both God and man. They have put themselves beyond the pale…. Law-abiding citizens must react with vigor and resolve. Total resources of the state must be made available to bring the guilty to justice. United public opinion must be mobilized so that its weight may prove an unbearable burden to any who would thumb their noses at law and constituted authority…. Nashville bows in shame today. It could be our town tomorrow…. All citizens have a continuing job to do. By respect and example, they must do their part to uphold that which is right. And they must labor in the knowledge that flouting of the law in a small way makes it easier to flout it in a large way. They must never forget, either, that one concession to the enemies of the law may open the floodgates of destruction.”
This reporter is not presumptuous enough to try to improve upon that statement. He should like to add that a great American, and former president, said some years ago that a threat to the freedom of any man anywhere is a threat to the freedom of all men everywhere. That is as true of the Jewish faith in the Nashville bombing as it is of the Christian or any other faith anywhere. A threat to one is a threat to all.