This coming week will see thousands of Protestant churches throughout the nation holding special Thanksgiving services, the occasion being used to launch the 1957-58 Share Our Surplus food program. This is the project through which the Church World Service hopes to gain 300 million pounds of food from our national surplus stocks for free distribution to the world’s needy people. Three major observances will be held simultaneously this afternoon in Washington, D.C., Manhattan, Kansas, and San Francisco. Millions of Protestant Americans of all denominations will, during the course of the week, have the opportunity to express their gratitude for the abundance with which this nation is blessed. The Share Our Surplus, also called S.O.S., was inaugurated in 1954. By the end of 1958 about 8 billion pounds of U.S. government surpluses will have been distributed free to hungry people in many nations. The S.O.S. appeal to the people of American Protestant churches of the 35 denominations is for funds to cover overseas distribution, administration, and other handling expenses.
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It’s a crazy world in which we live. The nations get together and spend months in a so-called disarmament conference, when actually none of them wants to disarm. In this country we spend $60 billion annually trying to find more terrible ways to kill people, and we do this because mankind has not solved the problem of learning to live without war. Nobody apparently wants to find it; they had rather go on trying to patch up an old system that never has produced, and will produce nothing but war. That $60 billion alone would do much to buy housing, education, medical services, etc., for people who need such things far more than they need guns or to be killed. But I suppose vested interests would call the last under that vague and meaningfulness thing “socialized medicine.” Then here at home we take money from all the taxpayers to provide subsidy to farmers to grow more than is distributed. Then we go back and bombard those same taxpayers to give money to distribute to the world’s needy that which they have already partially paid for. At the same time we put on a so-called “United Fund” drive to help the needy here at home. I could go on, but how mixed up can we get?
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This past week saw the dedication in New York of the nation’s first Protestant Interchurch Center. The 19-story building, costing nearly $20 million, is scheduled to be ready for occupancy by the end of 1959. Its tenants will be 19 denominational and church-related agencies. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., whose generosity in the interests of civic and religious projects is well known, made the block-square site on Riverside Drive overlooking the Hudson River available on a 99-year lease, rent-free basis. In the dedication address, Dr. Clarence Cranford, the American Baptist Convention president, said, “To this site, the eyes of millions will turn with new hope because of this practical demonstration of unity.”
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In the neighboring state of North Carolina, a conflict between youth and the older generation, between modernists and fundamentalists, exploded on the campus of Wake Forest College at Winston-Salem, and, to a lesser degree, at Meredith College for Women in Raleigh. In 1937, the overall governing convention board imposed a ban on dancing at the colleges. In recent years the trustees of the two colleges took action to permit such activity. But pressure, apparently mostly from rural pastors, was soon brought to bear. Parishioners sending in donations to the church from the congregations of these ministers were adding a note that none of the money was to be used for the two colleges because dancing was permitted. The trustees now reversed themselves and imposed the ban again. A poll of the parents of the students showed that 80-90 percent favored campus dances under the auspices of the college. The trustees now changed their minds and permitted dancing. But this week the convention board was adamant – no more college dances.
This action touched off the fireworks, literally and figuratively. Mass protests were staged by the student. The president was hanged in effigy. Students walked out of the assembly program, and shouts of derision were heard, not only about the board and the president, but also about Baptists in general. A reported jitterbug dance – though it was probably more of a rock and roll affair – was held on the campus and a larger one in a square downtown, to the music of radios. That is about where the matter stands as of now.
It would be very easy to condemn the backwoods ministers for their mossback ideas; or the youngsters for their alleged waywardness, if that is what it is. The former are doubtless sincere in believing that dancing is immoral, and none of us parents would teach or advocate anything that would undermine the morals of our children. They hold to the idea that God and religion are fixed, unchanging concepts, and any deviation from what they learned as they grew up is a sin. They are not only unwilling; perhaps they are unable, to reconcile their life-long held ideas to something else.
The college students are normal youngsters of another generation. They look out upon the world with 1957 eyes, and, like their fathers, are fashioning their own pattern of values. That pattern is, quite naturally, not identical with the one of their elders. It is unfortunate, perhaps, that this conflict exists, but it has existed throughout history.
What the elders fail to grasp, or to admit, is that society is ever an ongoing concern. And while some of us might not like the direction it is going, society is bigger than we are, and there is little we can do. Certainly, to try to stop change would be about as effective as King Canute ordering the tide to roll back. It may be true that God does not change; but man’s conception of God changes, and few of us would go back in social matters to the rigid rules and regulation laid down in Leviticus, however appropriate those rules were for the Hebrews at the time. If we did, we would all stop brushing our teeth, for nothing is said there about this practice or about seeing your dentist regularly.
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A controversy which has been brewing for several months at the Haverford Quaker College has been settled by the turning down of Defense Department money for science projects on the ground that the philosophy of the department is inconsistent with the peace principles of the Quakers, and, in the words of the college statement, there “is increasing military control of research funds” which the college sees as a threat to free academic inquiry in America.
This all started when last autumn, three members of the science faculty at the college indicated their desire and intention to seek research grants from the Defense Department. One, a chemist, applied to continue study of unstable molecular fragments; and members of physics and mathematic departments wanted to secure funds for pure research. The debate that followed deeply stirred the campus. Haverford is proud of its pacifist tradition, which has been a mark of the Quakers for 300 years. And many feared that if the college became dependent on military funds, it would no longer be free to criticize and oppose war and war-like actions by the government.
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From the mess that has been permitted to develop around integration efforts in some places comes occasionally evidences that moderate, straight-thinking elements are merging. In a city election for membership on the governing board in Little Rock, Arkansas, some days ago, six out of seven candidates who stood for law and order instead of mob rule won out over opponents who were segregation die-hards. This does not mean that those six wanted integration; it probably means that they represent those of the population who prefer rule of law with integration rather than violence without it.
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Comes also additional evidence now from white students meeting for the sixth annual Youth Institute on Human Relations at Asheville, North Carolina. Stirred by disorders attending integration at Little Rock, Charlotte, North Carolina, and elsewhere, student delegates appeal to President Eisenhower to call or sponsor a national conference of high school youth as a counter measure to violence. In their statement they emphasize that they “are concerned with youth’s responsibility of making our schools a living example of democracy and brotherhood.” They go on to state “how saddened and disappointed we were when a few young people of our age group participated in acts of violence in their schools at the beginning of this school year, thus damaging intergroup relations within our community and unwittingly giving aid and comfort to America’s enemies….” Their recommendations went on to state that it is the belief of the delegates that the overwhelming majority of American youth judge each other on individual merits rather than on distinctions of religion, creed, race, or color, and believe that the law of the land should be obeyed without reservation. The students urged also that each school form a committee on friendly relations to promote intergroup harmony and understanding.
It is more than likely that most of us who are concerned with human betterment, without regard to prejudice, are convinced that if prejudiced parents would refrain from trying to project these prejudices into the lives of their children and let the young folks settle this integration hassle among themselves with a minimum of interference, it would all work out much better. After all, these young people are going to live out their lives in a world far different from that in which their parents grew up, and it is apparent that in that world, such prejudices are a luxury that cannot be afforded. The parents may not admit this, but it is also likely that if they did realize the importance of this truth, they would hesitate to perpetuate a prejudice that will be a handicap to children’s well being in the world that is emerging.
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In Nashville this week, the Tennessee Council of Churches came out for racial integration of the state’s public schools. It adopted a resolution urging that the state’s school system be brought into harmony with the Supreme Court decision of May 1954. Specifically, among other things, it stated, “In terms of Christian perspective it is our desire that we may be of service to the state and local agencies in working within law and order toward the fulfillment of requirements of the … decision.” The council represents 13 Protestant denominations with over 600,000 members in Tennessee. School and other people might take note of this number, for it provides a nucleus at least for developing a civic attitude among the public generally that will permit integration to come about without going to the disgraceful extremes that characterized Clinton, Tennessee, and Little Rock, Arkansas.
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And out in Los Angeles, the Rev. Nelson Higgins, a Negro who was appointed pastor of a white Methodist church, as reported here some months ago, has managed to galvanize the community into increased religious activity. From membership of only 43 at the time he took over, most of whom left because of the race of the pastor, it now has an average attendance of around 200 at Sunday school, and a corresponding increase in attendance at the church service. About 40 percent of those attending are white, while the rest are of various non-white racial groups.
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Ladies and gentlemen: I am reluctant to permit this last item to become something like the lone beat of the piano note in a rock and roll number, but there is still no evidence that the sheriff and attorney general are trying to find those who murdered Everett Jenkins. WHY?