Christianity’s season of penitence and prayers begins this coming Tuesday. It is the period of Lent, the 40 days (excluding Sundays) preceding Easter and the resurrection of Christ after his crucifixion. Traditionally, some of the days immediately preceding Lent are a time of high merriment. The name of the festivities, Mardi Gras, comes from the French term for the religious festival, Shrove Tuesday. “Mardi Gras” is literally “Fat Tuesday,” and that goes back to the ancient French housewives who made last-minute efforts to use up the fats that would be forbidden by the church in Lent. Shrove Tuesday’s real meaning is as the day of confession preparatory to Lent. Lent begins the next day, on Ash Wednesday, which gets its name from the ashes that used to be put on the heads of public penitents. Now the Roman Catholic Church puts the symbol on the foreheads of its faithful.
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Today in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the U.S. celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Moravians begins. Throughout the world, the yearlong celebration is observing a global chain of prayer for peace. This has been arranged so that on every day of the year, one Moravian church will be praying from midnight to midnight for the peace of the world, the continuance of the Christian church, and the growth of the Moravian movement. The Moravian mission in Western Tibet began the chain in January. It will move eastward in Europe through Czechoslovakia, the birthplace of the church in 1457, on to California, and then end in Dutch Guiana in South America. A Moravian bishop is credited with editing the first Protestant hymnal in 1501. The church also was the first Protestant denomination to reach international scope. In the U.S., Pennsylvania has most of the nation’s 50,000 Moravians. Bethlehem is the seat of the Northern body, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the head of the Southern division.
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Yesterday, the Vatican City and many other places throughout the year marked a double event. It was the birthday of Pope Pius and the anniversary of his election as supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church in 1939. The main celebration to honor the pope will be a solemn pontifical Mass on March 12, the anniversary of his coronation.
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The head of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations says the official family of American Reform Judaism now has 540 “liberal temples” in the U.S. and Canada. Dr. Maurice Eisendrath adds that four new congregations were admitted in the first two months of this year. Eleven more congregations are applying for membership. Dr. Eisendrath states that at least 23 more would be awaiting admission if funds were sufficient. He says new housing areas and suburban developments have meant requests from all parts of the U.S. and Canada for aid in establishing new Jewish temples and religious schools.
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In Knoxville, Tennessee, a regional meeting of the Women’s Society of Christian Service of the Methodist Church has been told that the failure of the church to take a positive stand on social issues such as integration has permitted hoodlum elements in many communities to take over. The speaker was Bishop Richard C. Raines of Indianapolis. He said: “The church must be the conscience of the community. When the church only reflects the moral code of its members and fails to shine the piercing light of God’s judgment on human conduct it ceases to be the salt of the earth.” He emphasized that Methodists and other Protestants are in “dire danger” of permitting our churches to become museums. He listed four facets of integration as follows:
- Every person should have the right to work where he is capable;
- Every man should have the right to educate his children in public schools without artificial barriers;
- Every man should have the right to live where he can afford to live and should be accepted by the community as long as he is a good citizen. Christians, above all, should take the lead in stopping rock-throwings and bombings;
- The church should quickly cease to be the most segregated group in our society.
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Albany, New York: The New York State Council of Churches is against lowering the age at which a man can marry without his parents’ consent from 21 to 18. Speaking for the council, the Rev. Robert Withers told a legislative committee that lowering the age would lead to hasty and ill-considered marriages. He said too many young peoples had the erroneous idea that all sorts of problems could be solved by early marriage. Albany attorney Charles Tobin, representing the Roman Catholic Welfare Committee, said his group has not yet taken a stand on the question.
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Augusta, Maine: Roman Catholic lay leaders have threatened to shut down Augusta’s parochial schools unless the city provides the pupils with transportation. Such a move would compel the public schools to absorb 900 children now in Catholic schools. The city council refused bus transportation for parochial pupils even though it was approved last year in a referendum election.
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New York: The controversy over whether religious broadcasts should pay for radio and television time or should get it free will be an important topic at a meeting in New York next week. The meeting is that of the Broadcasting and Film Commission of the National Council of Churches. The national council took a stand last year that the broadcasting industry should furnish time for religious programs. It is difficult to see how such a stand could be justified if the religious programs are sectarian. If the government is prohibited from sponsoring one religion over another, then how can religious groups expect to use government force, indirectly, to compel private industry to do so?
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Chicago: The official newspaper of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Chicago has added fuel to the row over the film “Martin Luther.” The newspaper, New World, called it a hate-provoking movie. The newspaper censured the film especially for suppressing what it called the coarseness and violence which many historians say marked Luther’s character. The Catholic editorial caused television station WGN-TV to cancel a showing of the film. A Protestant group has protested to the Federal Communications Commission because of the ban.
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Williamsburg, Virginia: The General Board of the National Council of Churches had commended all church groups and individuals who are working to relieve racial tensions in the South. No names were mentioned in the resolution.
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Vatican City: Pope Pius’ pronunciation of the use of anesthetics this week appears to have settled a controversy that has agitated some Roman Catholics for many years. The pope declared that a doctor may give an aesthetic with a clear conscience when it is medically indicated, even if he knows it may shorten the patient’s life.
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With the controversy over Israel and her role in the Middle East continually in the headlines these days, a facet of the problem has made little in the way of news. That is the issue of the Jewish vote in this country, hinging perhaps on the position the U.S. takes on the matter of Israel’s withdrawal from Egypt. It is impossible to say just how much Jews vote as Jews. Many analyses of the so-called Jewish vote indicate that, other things being equal, Jews vote as they do for many reasons, only one of which is or may be a religious or socio-cultural bias. However, the Jews of the world have every right to be group conscious, in view of the perennial persecution to which they have been subjected, especially in Nazi Germany in recent years. But there is little doubt that the Middle East controversy could well crystallize a Jewish vote, just as did the impact of the Irish question produce an Irish vote during and immediately after World War I.
None with a memory of the bitter anti-British sentiments with which political candidates bought votes in the great Irish American communities was surprised when Mayor Wagner of New York scorned the visiting King Saud of Arabia, and refused him a municipal welcome in New York. Averell Harriman, governor of New York, backed Wagner in that position in all respects, and few were surprised. Whatever the motives of the mayor and the governor may have been, practical politicians counted their action as likely to hold or win them friends and votes among the very large Jewish community of New York City. Doubtless also how vividly the current dispute over Israel will be reflected in future U.S. elections. It may depend to a considerable extent on whether the United Nations, with U.S. support, takes a position that can be interpreted as penalizing Israel and how severe those penalties may be. If the Israeli have their backs up and the U.N. must hit hard to put them down, the blow may leave a big and perhaps ugly scar on the face of U.S. domestic politics. Fortunately, at this particular moment, it looks as if that eventuality may have been avoided.
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Four weeks ago I quoted some excerpts from and recommended the reading of an article entitled “What do You Mean ‘Religious Emphasis Week’?,” by Dr. Leland Miles of Hanover College, Indiana. The article appeared in the winter 1956 Issue of the A.A.U.P. Bulletin. Both organization and publication tend toward the conservative side in education, and both are as American as the name of the organization indicates.
The viewpoint of Dr. Miles, as set forth in the article, is that in most cases, so-called religious emphasis weeks are largely occasions where only Christian (usually Protestant) representatives are brought before the student body, with a result that, instead of stimulating thought and clarifying convictions, they constitute largely mutual admiration societies that merely confirm prejudices. He suggests that it would be an “exhilarating way to spend a real religious emphasis week … to have representatives of the world’s major religions appear before the student body.”
Your reactions to his suggestion have been about what I had expected and even hoped, for they were both for and against the idea. Had they been all one of the other, it would have been disturbing, for unanimity breeds stagnation, and stagnation is not conducive to thought, growth, or progress. What was surprising was that some of your reactions opposing the idea were based on the fear, expressed or implied, that to bring such representatives before college young people might lessen their faith in Christianity. Does that mean that our faith is so fragile we dare not submit it to open competition in the marketplace with contrasting thought systems in the field of religion? Do we believe in free enterprise only in the world of material objects, not in the realm of ideas?
Whether one agrees or disagrees with Dr. Miles’ suggestion is, within itself, relatively unimportant. What is important is the stubborn fact that in the world of today, bigotry and intolerance are twin luxuries we can no longer afford. We who believe in Christianity are a minority group in the 2.3 billion people that make up humanity of this planet.
The most important ingredient in the peace we hope to forge is a better understanding among people of diverse cultures. Iron curtains raised by the fearful will not bring that understanding about. It will be brought about only by creating an atmosphere that will permit the greatest possible exchange of differing viewpoints. And one can understand a philosophy that conflicts with his own without embracing that philosophy. To assume otherwise would be as ridiculous as to say that because I know the nature of electricity I cannot avoid electrocuting myself. Any religion, including Christianity, will live only so long as it gives purpose and meaning to the lives of people. When it no longer does this, it will perish, and all the great walls erected by the timid cannot prevent its decline. We may not like the idea, but it can be documented by the whole history of human experience.