May 18, 1958

More than a thousand teachers and community leaders will attend 38 human relations workshops this summer. The workshops will be held at leading colleges and universities throughout the country, with the help of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. The conference also will give $30,000 in scholarships for the program. The money will help pay the expenses of those taking part. Details on the program were announced at New York by Dr. John L. McMahon, national chairman of the conference’s commission on educational organizations. Dr. McMahon is president of Our Lady of the Lake College in San Antonio, Texas. The workshops will last from 2-6 weeks. They will train teachers and community workers in how to deal with interracial and inter-religious problems. Since 1941 the conference has aided more than 340 workshops in every part of the country, with more than 13,000 educators and other community leaders taking part in the sessions.

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Mrs. May Roper Coker of Hartsville, South Carolina, is the reigning American Mother of the Year for 1958. Her selection was announced in New York by Mrs. Daniel A. Poling, president of the American Mother’s Committee. Mrs. Coker was chosen for her success as a mother, her religious and spiritual integrity, her constant practice of the golden rule, and her sense of civic and international understanding. She has reared three daughters of her own and five step-children. Besides taking part in numerous civic, business, and cultural affairs, she is an active member of First Baptist Church in Hartsville and a Sunday school teacher.

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The National Council for Jewish Education held its 82nd annual conference at Atlantic City, New Jersey. All-faith support for Jewish religious schools was urged by Dr. Samuel Dinin, dean of the University of Judaism at Los Angeles. Dr. Dinin said better schools result in better communities and therefore deserve support from all residents of the community.

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Catholic mother of the year is Mrs. Leo Stupfel of McMinnville, Oregon. She was chosen by the Family Life Bureau of the National Catholic Welfare Conference. The bureau cited Mrs. Stupfel for her ability to devote time to her church and community and still be an extraordinary success as a Christian mother. Mrs. Stupfel is a member of St. James Church in McMinnville. She has eight children, four of whom are active in religious life.

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At Rye, New York, businessmen were urged to concern themselves not so much with profits as with spiritual production. The advice came from Alfred H. Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Mr. Williams spoke at the 17th annual conference of the Laymen’s Movement for a Christian World. He said the time has come for business to set new goals – the goals of broadening and deepening the lives of each individual within our large business organizations.

J.C. Penney, chairman of the board of the J.C. Penney Company, was another speaker. He declared that our challenge and purpose are to discover and translate the Sermon on the Mount into business conduct. The Laymen’s Movement is a nonsectarian association of individuals pledged to bring Christian principles into their everyday affairs.

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Plans have been announced for a multi-million dollar center in Washington to commemorate the religious heritage of America and its free institutions. The proposal was disclosed by the organization, Religious Heritage of America, at the conclusion of the 8th annual Washington Pilgrimage of American Churchmen. The intercreedal center would give recognition to the contribution of all religious groups. It would include an auditorium, a chapel, a library, and a museum where documents relating to religious freedom could be enshrined. A committee was named to survey sites in the capital and to plan an architects’ competition for a suitable design. Sponsors of the project acknowledged that it might take 10 years or more to raise the necessary funds. But they said it would fill an obvious need in the capital, which now has no shrine to the nation’s religious heritage.

Several awards were presented during the Washington Pilgrimage. Dr. Joseph R. Sizoo, a theologian at George Washington University, was honored as Clergy Churchman of the Year. Cecil B. DeMille, noted Hollywood producer, was cited as Lay Churchman of the Year. And Dr. Georgia Harkness of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, was given the Churchwoman of the Year award.

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The United States Steel Foundation announced in New York it had made $631,000 in grants to 415 church-related institutions of higher learning. The 415 were among 621 liberal arts colleges, science and engineering institutions, public and private universities, and medical schools included in the foundation’s Aid to Education program. Roger M. Blough, chairman of the foundation’s board of trustees, said the grants were intended to help maintain the vigor of educational institutions.

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At Melrose, Minnesota, a Catholic nun was honored on completion of her 60th year of teaching in Saint Boniface schools. She is Sister Celsa, a Benedictine nun who just passed her 80th birthday. For all but two of the 60 years she has been at St. Boniface, she has taught first grade. The National Education Association called her career a record for service in the same school. Sister Celsa says she’ll keep on teaching as long as her superiors let her do so.

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At Honolulu, three American Quakers and a Methodist were given 60-day jail sentences, which were suspended, for defying Federal Judge John Wiig, who warned them they would be jailed again if they made another attempt to set sail for the nuclear proving grounds. The men said after the court hearing they were undecided about their next move. They were taken to court after the Coast Guard stopped their 30-foot ketch, the Golden Rule, a half hour out of Honolulu Harbor. By sailing for the weapons testing area, they violated orders from the Atomic Energy Commission and the Navy, putting the testing grounds off limits. The Golden Rule was a protest against the continuation of nuclear weapons tests. The journey was sponsored by an organization called Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons. The crew of four included George Willoughby, executive secretary of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors. Spokesman for the group in court was Lieutenant Commander Albert Smith Bigelow. He told the judge, “It would have been contempt for God if I hadn’t done my best to stop those nuclear atrocities. They are contemptuous crimes against all mankind.”

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More than a million persons were served by the U.S.A. and the United Presbyterian Church social agencies in 1957. The figure was reported at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, by John Park Lee, executive secretary of the National Presbyterian Health and Welfare Council. He spoke at a conference of Presbyterian community and neighborhood house workers. Mr. Lee said 362 social welfare agencies of the two Presbyterian groups served 1,068,000 persons last year. More than half were served by 121 community centers and neighborhood houses. The two Presbyterian denominations will merge at the end of this month to form the New United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

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In Berlin, East German communist newspapers sharply attacked the synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany. The communists criticized the Protestant organization for failing to condemn West German atomic armament at its recent meeting. The Evangelical Synod adopted a resolution condemning atomic war. But the leaders were split on atom bomb production. Some argued situations were conceivable in which defense with equal weapons is justifiable.

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As the communists protested, seven prominent West German Catholic theologians issued a declaration upholding a country’s right to use atomic weapons if necessary for its defense. The statement, however, noted the devastating effects of atomic weapons and said a state must be prepared to make big sacrifices to preserve peace.

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Major churches around the world were in the news during the week. In the Philippines, Catholic officials announced that the new Cathedral of Manila will be solemnly inaugurated on December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The big Romanesque structure replaces an old one destroyed in World War II. American troops turned guns on the old building to dislodge Japanese suicide squads who made a last-ditch stand there.

In London, Queen Elizabeth II headed an overflow congregation at services marking the reopening of the east end of famous St. Paul’s Cathedral. The east end of the American structure was almost completely destroyed by Nazi bombs during the war. It has now been restored.

And in Quebec, Catholic Archbishop Maurice Roy celebrated a solemn Pontifical Mass opening an anniversary celebration. It is the 300th anniversary of the famous shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre in the tiny village of the same name 25 miles from Quebec City. Three million pilgrims are expected at the shrine during the five-month celebration.

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Yesterday, I perforce, watched the Armed Services parade in Johnson City. I say perforce, because I was waiting for a person to keep an appointment with me, and since he was late, I waited. I found myself in a place where it was almost impossible not to see the parade that was going by. It sadly lacked coordination and continuity.

But these are not important points about it. The major sensation that coursed through my consciousness as I watched the guns, tanks, uniformed persons go by was: What a graphic commentary upon the stupidity of man, who insists upon calling himself civilized. There was nothing civilized about the affair. My next reaction was to wonder how much all this equipment, these uniforms, and other expense of the show, a small one that was repeated many times over not only across the country but around the world, would do toward providing food, shelter, clothing, education, and medicine, for hungry, forlorn and destitute people, of whom there are entirely too many in this world. Yet, here we were making a showy parade out of the fact that mankind is so unwilling to profit by the lessons of history that he goes on kidding himself that by getting ready for war he can have peace.

No loyal citizen would question but what such trappings are a necessary evil of our present nationalistic system of things. But the discouraging and distressing thing about it all is that nobody in responsible place seems to be thinking about changing the system so that, in the foreseeable future, such grisly reminders of man’s inhumanity to man would no longer be necessary. Not only that, but those of us who would change the system, peacefully, substituting law and order where we now have nothing but the code of the jungle, are looked at askance, as if were were trying to destroy the country, when in reality we would save it from its own folly.

Peace has been established in ever-enlarged areas only to the extent that so-called sovereignty is wrapped in the orderly process of law. Such must be applied on a world-wide basis if a just and durable peace is to come about. We may not like the idea of world government, but an increasing number of us would much prefer world government to world suicide. There does not seem to be any alternative middle ground.

There are those who say world government is fine but we are not ready for it. The same thing was said about the formation of our own federation in 1788, but it has endured to prove the doubters wrong. One way to be defeated unnecessarily is to insist before beginning that something cannot be done. It is far more constructive and productive to seek, instead, ways and means by which it can be done, for be done it must if we are to survive.

 

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