ORIENTATION
Empty quiet has returned to the base camp now that the expedition is launched. A crumpled check-list blows across the floor where the last foot-locker was packed. The assault up the stern brow of Parnassus has been renewed. The children are off to school, and our first freshman is in college.
Paternal sentimentality becomes irrepressible at this point. A scion of a college romance returning to the alma mater.… Dreamy college moon! The only cure for such reverie is reflection on the relief the young man must feel in escaping this parental solicitude which has been teetering on the brink of bathos. No doubt in modern scientific education a college moon is a satellite to be observed through a telescope, with a view to selecting a landing field.
Still, there is so much advice I should like to give about Getting the Most from College. Orientation courses are probably very effective these days. I hope so. I have a disquieting recollection of how our freshman class put an orientation lecturer to flight by thunderously applauding his every hapless truism about the Facts of Life.
Just in case the orientation people still have some trouble communicating with the younger generation, I should like to recommend a source in the book of Job. In chapter 28, Job describes a mining operation. He must have stood at a pit-head, for he speaks vividly of miners swinging down deep shafts, tunneling into the roots of mountains and stopping underground streams to rifle the vaults of the earth. It was an engineering marvel in the ancient Near East. We take mining for granted now, until a catastrophe reveals its hazards. Modern technology prefers swinging in orbit to swinging in shafts.
Job’s point, however, applies equally well. He reflects that while mountains of rock do not hide earth’s riches from men, there is a treasure which cannot be mined. Neither research nor engineering technology can lay bare the lode of wisdom.
Even Job’s friends understood that better than we. The urgent confusion of debates as to the purpose of education in the space age shows how little we grasp the meaning of wisdom. Wisdom is more than practical knowledge. It drinks from the undivided stream where thought and life flow from the throne of God.
Son, even at a Christian college you cannot find wisdom apart from the Son of God, in whom those treasures are hidden.
EUTYCHUS
DESPISED BRETHREN
Again CHRISTIANITY TODAY has brought to light an issue many would like to ignore … in Russell Jaberg’s “Is there Room for Fundamentalists?” (July 18 issue). I hope there will be some helpful dialogue regarding the status of this almost despised segment of the Christian Church.… By facing the issue squarely in an honest and objective discussion, much light might be shed on the currently popular quest as to the nature and mission of the Church.… [We might discover] a true scriptural concept of ecumenicity which God will own and which the indwelling Holy Spirit can give powerful expression and confirmation in the lives of individuals and the churches.
KENNETH HARRY
Vineyard Estates Baptist Church
Oxnard, Calif.
There are always two sides.… Let’s have the answer to the other and equally relevant question: “In fundamentalist life and program in the concept of their church, in the nature of the unity(?) they seek for Christians, is there room for any cooperative witness to the living Christ who not only prayed that they may be one, but is revealed as the Chief Cornerstone of one Church?”
This question is even more relevant than the one to which you devote an entire article. Particularly in a day when man is determined to split everything, from atoms to churches. To wit, MacIntyre, Kingfish of the great mythical ICCC, in his abortive attempts prior to the Baptist World Alliance in Brazil, or the more successful effort which resulted in a thriving Presbyterian Church in Mexico, located across from a Roman Catholic cathedral, being not only shut down, but whose windows and doors are boarded over—a monument to “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” at Collingswood—to say nothing of what he and his motley band of ecclesiastical vagrants are planning already in the light of Billy Graham’s Philadelphia Crusade in the summer of ’61.…
AUGUST F. BALLBACH, JR.
Brookhaven Baptist Church
Chester, Pa.
Apart from the fact that Dr. Jaberg … is guilty of dodging the main issue at several points, his article contains a proposition which the right wing of American Protestantism should have articulated decades ago—the practice of libeling a group of sincere, dedicated Christians by indiscriminately tagging them with a label with negative connotations.
Dr. Jaberg is annoyed that dubbing certain men “Fundamentalists” may put their “professional careers” in jeopardy. Those anxious to do battle for the Fundamentals have not only placed the status of the so-called “Modernists” in jeopardy, but have often called their eternal destiny in question. For raising honest questions about the Mosaic authorship of Genesis, one might be consigned to hellfire forever. I was once subjected to an inquisition for expressing doubts about the Pauline authorship of Hebrews.
If it is wrong to discredit sincere Christians by the epithet “Fundamentalist” it is just as evil to disparage other sincere Christians by the label “Modernist.”
W. B. UPHOLD
First Congregational Church
Fresno, Calif.
Russell L. Jaberg’s plea that there be room for Fundamentalists in the major denominations, involves a plea that “they are not seeking to start new controversies; they are seeking to stand in the biblical and theological traditions of the churches to which they belong.” But while Jaberg would plead for them to be given room in the inclusive church, the men in power in the denominations know better than Jaberg, from past experience, that Fundamentalists standing in the biblical tradition will not forever sit at the Lord’s Table with those who deny the truth of the Gospel. Sooner or later Galatians 1:8, 9 will come to their lips, and when that happens, the “inclusive” church becomes intolerant, as did the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. in the expulsion of Machen in 1936.
EDWARDS E. ELLIOTT
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church
Garden Grove, Calif.
The article of Russell Jaberg immediately suggested the idea that another should be written on “Is There Room for Liberals?” If we think of the church as a world organization on the order of Romanism there is no room for “Fundamentalists.” If we think of the church as the “Body of Christ,” is there room for “Liberals?”
WILLIAM L. CARR
Calvary Baptist Church
Toppenish, Wash.
“Is There Room for Fundamentalists?” alone is worth the subscription price of CHRISTIANITY TODAY (even to a seminary student). Jaberg’s thesis that a “Fundamentalist” can be a sane, educated, and dedicated Christian must sound strange to many ears.…
BILL ANDERSON
Lorena, Tex.
‘MINISTERS ANONYMOUS’
Response to the article, “Ministers Anonymous” (July 18 issue) has been almost overwhelming. Some ministers are suggesting that we form a national organization to be known simply as “Ministers Anonymous.” The idea intrigues me. I would not want to get involved in any elaborate machinery but if we could set up a fellowship on the order of Elton Trueblood’s “Order of the Yoke” I think this might be practicable. I would like to receive reactions to the general idea.
JOHN ROSSELL
The Federated Church of Harvey
Congregational and Presbyterian
Harvey, Ill.
After reading John Rossell’s “Ministers Anonymous” I wondered how some preachers find time to write articles and serve their people. I do not see how they can do both.
EDWARD B. HOLLENBECK
Benton, Ark.
John Rossell was extremely effective in clearing the air for me as a busy pastor. He made me realize the real objectives of the often thankless pastoral mission. We want no horns blown in our behalf. We just want to be left alone long enough to seek out and save the lost, and heal broken hearts with the Word of Life.
FRANK I. BLANKLEY
First Wesleyan Methodist Church
Syracuse, N. Y.
As a young minister I find I am more and more concerned with ecclesiastical politics and … with church programs.… Do we not need to realize that our Lord’s standards of greatness and success—namely, gentleness and love, a cup of cold water in His name, fruitful study and proclamation of the Word in demonstration of the Spirit’s power—may be a far cry from some of our modern standards? May the number of “Ministers Anonymous” increase.
C. FERRIS JORDAN
New Hope Baptist Church
Franklinton, La.
AS IN DAYS OF THE JUDGES
I approved in general of your editorial “Is The Church Confusing the Body and the Head” (July 18 issue). But I personally have not yet seen, after over 40 years’ ministry, a church that deserves demoting. My work has been done in typical Protestant communities where the Roman Catholic Church was weak or non-existent.
There is the other side, from my viewpoint, of the Church Dominant. It is that of the Church Belittled. And I believe this is due to the fact that the Church has lacked self-discipline. It has permitted its members to be like the people in days of the Judges, who did every man that which was “right in his own eyes.” And the multiplicity of sects, sometimes called erroneously “churches,” has tended to break down the authority and the respectability of the Church.
It is my conclusion after all these years of struggle, that it may be too late for Protestantism—or nearly so. The people don’t really respect their own churches. They love their ministers in the personal capacity. But in the official capacity there is much to be desired. The doctrine of a strong Church—or, to say it better—a strong doctrine of the Church needs to be preached.
C. G. MCKNIGHT
Gibson, Iowa
SUNDAY SPORT
After thirty-two years in the work of impressing upon people the value and need of the Christian Sunday I must admit the letter of Donald Dee Shinnick is the most interesting and amazing I have ever read (Eutychus, July 4 issue).
Jesus preached more about the Sabbath than any other subject in his short ministry upon earth; He used the Day to help the sick, suffering and discouraged, and there is not one shred of evidence that He ever commercialized the Day. When we become Christians we become followers of Christ and follow His example. Where would our nation be if everyone used the Day the way Donald Dee Shinnick does? How could we develop spiritual life? How could the Church properly call the people to God?
I would suggest that Mr. Shinnick read the pages of history, and see what has happened to nations who misused the Day of the Lord when sports and games took the time of the people.
ROBERT S. WOMER Editor
The Sunday Guardian
Newark, N. J.
The only encouraging thing in his statement was the fact that he plans to enter seminary for study. Let us hope that this brother will be taught a better understanding of the Bible and the principles of Christianity.
WILLIAM A. POWELL
Chicago Southern Baptist Association
Chicago, Ill.
DIM VIEW OF BRIGHT
The issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY for May 9 contains a highly commendatory review of John Bright’s A History of Israel. The reviewer states that “this is one of the few great books in the field of Old Testament study.”
In order to set the record straight, it will be well to consider what must be regarded as covered by the reviewer’s statement, “Scholars will naturally not go along with him (Bright) at all points.” Following are some of the “points.” Bright accepts the documentary analysis of the Pentateuch substantially in the form which goes back to Wellhausen. He dates J in the 10th century B.C. and thinks that it cannot be proved that E is younger than J. Back of the documents there is, he tells us, a long period of oral tradition. But he holds that the study of these traditions by the Form Critic must be based on the documentary analysis. He holds that archaeological research has established the correctness of the background of the traditions of the patriarchal period. But how undependable he holds them to be at times is indicated by such a statement as, “Theologically legitimate though it may be to do so, it is not historically accurate to say that the God of patriarchs was Yahweh,” when studied in the light of Genesis 24:3, or for the Exodus period such a statement as “The number that participated in the exodus was hardly more than a very few thousand,” in the light of Exodus 12:37 (cf. the censuses in Num. 1 and 2).
Bright holds that Deuteronomy, or the early form of it, originated in the Northern Kingdom, was brought to Jerusalem after the fall of Samaria, and that it or an expansion of it became the basis of Josiah’s reform. He treats P as exilic or post-exilic. The Historical Books (Joshua to Kings) he calls “the Deuteronomistic history,” which means that they were written or compiled in accordance with the viewpoint of the reformers of Josiah’s day and consequently misrepresent the real course of the history. The question of the unity of Isaiah is ignored. It is assumed that Deutero-Isaiah begins at chapter 40. As to a Trito-Isaiah, the writer is not so positive, but he is disposed to favor it, and he dates chapters 24–27 in the post-exilic period along with Joel and Jonah. Daniel he describes as “the latest of the Old Testament books.”
The treatment of Daniel illustrates one of the major defects of the book. The reviewer assures the reader that “The footnotes are virtually a syllabus for a graduate course in Old Testament history, and they cover the field magnificently.” This statement should be modified to read, “and they cover the field of critical scholarship magnificently.” References to books and articles written from the conservative viewpoint are few and far between. Great stress is placed on the archaeological evidence. But in dealing with Daniel, for example, not a word is said about the confirmations of the historicity of the book by recent discoveries. R. D. Wilson, Boutflower, Dougherty, and E. J. Young are completely ignored. We are told, for example, that “No Jew would have had any difficulty in understanding the figure of Antiochus behind that of Nebuchadnezzar.” We would like to ask Dr. Bright what evidence he has to show that any Jews before the rise of modern higher criticism “understood” Nebuchadnezzar in that way.
These few examples will suffice to indicate that there are many important “points” at which conservative scholars “will naturally not go along with” Dr. Bright. If this book is to “supersede” all other books in the Old Testament field, this can only mean that what is commonly called “higher criticism” is to continue indefinitely to cast its dark shadow over the pages of the Old Testament.
OSWALD T. ALLIS
Wayne, Pa.
BALM OF GILEAD
Many of your readers trying to orally ingest this material (Christian Psychotherapy, June 20 issue) into their intellectual craw, will suffer from acute psychological indigestion.…
No one can sensibly deny the contribution trained psychiatrists and psychologists have made and are making in the healing of sick minds and emotions. The ministry has another field for its labor which can be a valuable help in working side by side with them. There is a sickness of personality caused by sin; it involves guilt which only the Gospel can resolve and clear up. Phychiatrists and psychologists have their place, but they can never replace the Balm of Gilead administered by the Great Physician.
WALTER BRUGGEMAN
Chicago, Ill.
RED PROPAGANDA
Your Protestant Panorama item of June 6 about the Soviet embassy release of 8,000 feet of film showing a worship service in Moscow’s Baptist Church … is a Communist No. 1 exhibit to create a false impression that there is religious freedom in this officially atheistic country.
A friend of mine who recently took a Communist government sponsored tour of Czechoslovakia found that—
Church members are under pressure to sever relations with their churches if they wish to hold jobs.
Church members are under penalty if they invite others to church.
There is no freedom of speech or press. Pastors are not permitted to publicize their services.
Church publications and Sunday School material can be neither printed nor distributed.
Pastors are under a heavy penalty for praying in a home or inviting anyone to church.
If a high school youth does not sever connection with his church he is denied further education.
All non-Communist congregations are very small.
To obtain a permit for the repair of a church is an exceedingly difficult task.
ROBERT W. YOUNG
North Presbyterian Church
Pittsburgh, Pa.
TRAGIC BIFURCATION
If the modern Christians desire to be realistic, they must decide whether they will worship and believe firmly in God—or in Jesus. No one can serve two Masters—sincerely. God needs no assistants. Santa Monica, Calif.
LOUIS BERGER
In the pamphlet “Winning the Jew” issued by the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, there appears the statement: “At present there are more than 5,500,000 Jews in America. Our Baptist theology teaches us that they are lost without hope, without Jesus Christ as their Saviour.”
This sounds like a voice from the Dark Ages. It was precisely such a belief that was responsible, directly or indirectly, for the persecution and massacre of millions of Jews throughout the ages.
SAMUEL NEWMAN
Danville, Va.
• The motivation of the Baptist quotation is the commission that fell from the lips of the greatest of all Jews, Jesus of Nazareth, which propelled another Jew, Paul of Tarsus, through the Mediterranean world with the conviction that he was debtor both to Jew and Greek.
—ED.
THEY HOPE IN HIS MERCY
I want to take this opportunity to thank you for the splendid editorial “God’s Judgment on the Summit” (June 6 issue).
Even as God was willing to spare Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of His people, so He will consider any country where His people reside. Christians can make a contribution to their country far above and beyond that of the non-Christian citizen in the Christian life they live. The Psalmist expresses it well when he writes, “The Lord delighteth not in the strength of the horse: He taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man. The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear Him, in those that hope in His mercy” (Psalm 147:10–11).
What tremendous power America has in its Christian people! If Christian people would just awake to this hour and serve God we would have no need to stand in fear of this country’s future.
WM. G. KENNELL
The Lutheran Church of the Epiphany (Missouri Synod)
Montgomery, Ala.
THE RESURRECTED ONE
Thanks for the review by Dr. Wilbur Smith of Weatherhead’s, The Manner of the Resurrection (Apr. 11 issue). I paid only a dollar for the book but found in it at least $10.00 worth of pseudoscientific, psychical nonsense that I could preach against.
I’m sure that if Mr. Weatherhead would truly meet the “Man” of the resurrection, he would more candidly understand the “manner” of the resurrection.
JOHN R. TERRELL
Riverside Brethren Church
Johnstown, Pa.
SURPRISING IMPRESSION
As I have read CHRISTIANITY TODAY I have been much impressed by the surprising similarity of the social goals of Conservative and Liberal Christians.… On the problem of the growing statism of this country … as a liberal I am interested to find that the most concerned men are those of very conservative theology, particularly the Lutherans.
HARRY R. BUTMAN
The Congregational Church of the Messiah
Los Angeles, Calif.
The Evangelical Ministerial Association of Fort Wayne has discovered some startling things regarding the separation of church and state. It is amazing to find even the Lutherans of our city accepting government help in the transportation of their parochial school students and regard this as no violation of the separation of the church and state.
JAMES KOFAHL
Assembly of God Church
Fort Wayne, Ind.
UNBIBLICAL RATIONALISM?
I have been disturbed by what I read.… Lest you think that you are receiving a letter from a disgruntled liberal, may I identify myself as a pastor of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. What disturbs me in your magazine is not its repudiation of liberalism, but the failure to distinguish the different forms of liberalism and its continual attempts to replace it with a very narrow and, for me, unbiblical rationalism. You treat the Christian message as though it were some sort of supernatural truth, rather than the Biblical witness to the enduring Christ.
DALE G. LASKY
Church of the Good Shepherd
Hamden, Conn.
It most certainly is the best Christian publication we know of, and it seems so good to see it direct itself to all denominations.
H. J. AAFTINK
St. Andrew’s United Church
Kaslo, British Columbia
Your publication is much appreciated and very stimulating. In this age of doubt, which latter like a creeping paralysis seems to get into so many books and periodicals, it is refreshing to find articles in CHRISTIANITY TODAY to be written by men of both faith and scholarship.
JOHN P. POSNO
St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church
Rose Bay, Nova Scotia
In the field of evangelical journalism, your magazine has transformed a glaring gap into a proud pinnacle.
W. G. MULLINAX
Rustburg, Va.
OPEN LETTER TO SEN. KENNEDY
I have addressed this letter to Senator John F. Kennedy and feel it is of sufficient importance to justify public consideration.
CHARLES CLAYTON MORRISON
Dear Senator Kennedy:
During your successful campaign for the Presidential nomination you publicly stated that you believe in the principle of separation of church and state. I am addressing this Open Letter to you in the hope that your comments and answers to my questions may clarify certain matters systematically ignored in political discussion on the ground that this discussion involves a so-called “religious issue.” But if the intentions, purposes, and objectives of a particular religion are or are believed to be incompatible with the American Constitution, it must be dealt with on the political level and by forthright political discussion. To ignore it because of its religious context is irresponsible and evasive. I believe that the American electorate will thank you, as I do, for your considered attention to the matters which I wish to bring before you.
First, I would respectfully direct your attention to a statement on church-state separation made by the American Roman Catholic hierarchy, consisting of the bishops, archbishops, and cardinals of the American Church. The statement was published in The New York Times of November 21, 1948. It declared that the conception of separation of church and state was a “shibboleth of doctrinaire secularism”; that it was neither a literal nor a historically correct interpretation of the First Amendment to the Constitution; that it is a “novel” interpretation and of recent origin; that it is a modern invention of the opponents of religion and is itself unconstitutional. The statement went on to say that the Supreme Court was in error when, in an 8 to 1 decision in the McCollum case, it declared that “separation” meant that the state could not constitutionally aid one church or some churches or all churches without violating the Constitution. The hierarchy announced its determination to work “patiently, peaceably and perseveringly” for the reversal of the Court’s decree. Question: Can you, Senator Kennedy, reconcile your belief in the separation of church and state with this authoritative position of your church; or do you repudiate it for yourself?
The Meaning Of “Separation”
Your public statement that you believed in the Constitutional principle of separation of church and state has been received with uncritical satisfaction by some and bewilderment by others. It is my desire in addressing you to clarify your position by directing your attention to some concrete and specific situations in which the principle of church-state separation is involved so closely that it can be detached from its religious context and considered as a simple political question.
Our correspondence, Senator Kennedy, will be more constructive if we try to get a clear conception of the meaning of church-state separation. I will lead off by saying that “separation” does not mean that church and state may not talk to each other! The church is continually and vigorously telling the state what it ought to do! And the state frequently tells the church by court decisions what it may or may not do. Nor does separation mean that church and state may not cooperate in certain ways such as the military chaplaincy and numerous other ways.
Separation of church and state means that at no point shall their respective jurisdictions be interlocked, or fused or otherwise united in support of any church, its doctrines or institutions or projects. The Constitution gives complete freedom to the church in the area of religion, as it defines and limits the powers of the state itself. This, I take it, is the meaning of the First Amendment to the Constitution which forbids Congress to make any law “respecting”—that is, tending toward or pertaining to—“the establishment of religion.”
Moreover, separation does not mean that the state may not itself perform religious acts, and our government has always performed them: Thanksgiving Day proclamations, chaplaincies in Congress and the armed forces, inauguration of the President accompanied by prayer, “In God we trust” on our coins, “So help me God” in the oath, and perhaps many others. These religious acts the state performs in its own way and without the slightest fusion or interlocking of its juridiction with the jurisdiction of any church. It is in the use of public funds to finance or aid a church or churches or church-related institutions or projects that the jurisdictions of church and state are most likely to overlap and thus violate the First Amendment. In our United States we have a free church along side of a free state, both in a free society.
Question: Do you agree with the above statement as to the meaning of separation? If not, will you state your own conception of the meaning of church-state separation?
Relations With The Vatican
Americans have always assumed that a President’s religion, or the lack of it, was a personal and private matter unrelated to his office or his official duties. Your public statement that if you are elected you would not appoint an ambassador to the Vatican has been received with satisfaction. Important as your pledge seems to be, it is actually superfluous. The Papacy could hardly imagine a better line of communication with the government of the United States than your Presidency would provide.
The Roman Catholic Church claims to be and is in fact a political state as well as a church. Its capital is Vatican City. It exchanges ambassadors with the leading nations of the world, the United States excepted. It should be made clear that you have no need of an ambassador to the Vatican, because you in yourself, as President, are such an ambassador. Indeed, you would be the first President of the United States to combine in yourself a dual political allegiance—one to your country, the other to the Vatican State. You would have more intimate entree to the Vatican than any politically appointed ambassador would enjoy. You would be our first President to kneel before anyone other than God. You would be our first President whose oath of allegiance to the Constitution would be qualified by his prior and equally sacred allegiance to another State. This is not a fiction, but a realistic political fact.
A request: I will be sincerely grateful if you will show me that I am wrong in the above paragraph.
Suppression of Personal Freedom
Another issue that emerges in connection with your candidacy, Senator Kennedy, is the authoritative clamp which your church places upon the personal liberty of the faithful. I refer to just one of numerous instances of invasion of the dignity of the American citizen by prohibiting him from entering a Protestant or other non-Catholic church. Disobedience to this prohibition is a sin that requires absolution in the confessional. It is hard for most Americans to believe that any of their fellow citizens in this land of liberty can be so cowed by ecclesiastical authority. But every Protestant minister knows of such examples. The interdiction of attendance upon the Billy Graham revival in New York issued by a Prelate of the Church is a case in point. Question: Do you, Senator Kennedy, approve of the restraint upon personal liberty exercised authoritatively, as for example, by the aforementioned instance?
Public Versus Parochial Schools
An alien phenomenon in our American democracy is the wide-spread withdrawal of Roman Catholic children from the public schools into Catholic parochial schools. Our public school system is an expression and a guarantee of our democratic government and a prime factor in maintaining our cultural unity. The public school has been rightly called the “melting pot” in which the immigration of heterogeneous cultures of many countries is fused in a national unity. This unity does not mean and has never meant cultural conformity. It has meant and has produced cultural freedom. The parochial school of the Catholic Church is oriented to an exactly opposite goal, namely, the fixation of the mind in every generation in the mold of its childhood dependence upon an authority in the field of religion. This is the field in which the greater problems of life arise. The technique for this procedure includes teachers dressed in conspicuously unfamiliar garb, and a pedagogy—not precisely of “brain-washing” but of brain-conditioning against infection by the democratic principle of personal responsibility and freedom.
The political effect of this denial of free intercourse with the environing community, produces a self-enclosed enclave within the democratic community which can neither assimilate nor be fully assimilated in the free society of American democracy. Canon Law 1374 forbids Catholic parents to send their children to public school (elementary, secondary or college) unless permission is granted by the bishop. The attitude of the Catholic Church toward the public school was recently vividly expressed.
On June 6, 1960 Archbishop Joseph E. Ritter of St. Louis issued a pastoral letter which rigorously applied to the young people of his area prohibition of their enrollment at public universities or other non-Catholic colleges. His directive read: “No student may attend a non-Catholic college or university unless he or she has obtained written permission. Permission will be granted only in individual cases and for just and serious reasons.”
In twenty of our states nuns dressed in their conspicuously distinctive attire are teaching in so-called public schools. They are teaching just enough of the subject matter to meet the requirements of state law, the remainder being subject matter taken over from the curriculum of the Catholic parochial schools. (A side-light on this situation is the fact that the nuns are paid the same salary as other teachers which they turn over to the church, retaining only the pittance which these dedicated women sworn to poverty receive from their order. These public tax funds are used to maintain this obvious violation of separation of church and state.)
Question: Will you, Senator Kennedy, if you become President, disavow your church’s boycott of this fundamental American institution, the public school?
Federal Aid to Education
It is unnecessary to remind you, a Senator, of the long and oft-repeated effort to secure Federal aid to public education, especially needed in those states whose resources are inadequate for the support of a standard educational system. I do not raise the question of the desirability or otherwise of such action by the Federal government. I would however, respectfully direct your attention to the long and often-defeated efforts to secure from Congress the required action for an appropriation of Federal funds for this purpose. These efforts were repeatedly defeated by a minority opposed on principle added to a minority which demanded that the appropriation should apply to parochial as well as publicly-supported schools. In view of the great need to level-up the standard of public education throughout the nation, I respectfully ask you the following question.
Question: If you are elected President will you oppose attempts to appropriate Federal funds for parochial schools?
Land Grants To Churches
You, no doubt, are fully acquainted with the practice of land grants by city, state or federal governments to educational institutions. I would invite your attention to the case of St. Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri. There, under a federal redevelopment project, a very valuable tract in the project was set aside exclusively for St. Louis University, a Roman Catholic institution, at a ridiculously low price, not at all commensurate with present land values in the area for any purpose. No provision was made for competitive bidding as to this particular tract, which was sold to the University at approximately one-tenth of its real value.
Also allow me to direct your attention to the case of a new Presbyterian College in St. Petersburg, Florida. The trustees of this institution, unaware of any legal principle involved, accepted the gift by the city of a tract of land as the site of their new Presbyterian college. Later, on being convinced that this was a violation of the principle of church-state separation, they returned to the city the deed and assumed without court action an obligation to pay a half-million dollars for the property.
Question: Will you, Senator Kennedy, please comment briefly on the implications of the Presbyterian procedure in contrast with that of the Roman Catholic Church in these land grant matters?
The Brandy-Making Monks
The monastic order of Monks, The Christian Brothers, in California, produces what is said by experts to be the finest brandy in this country. The federal government is pressing a claim for unpaid taxes amounting to one and three-quarter million dollars. These taxes have not been paid on the ground that their monastery is a religious institution. The law specifically provides a limit on which a commercial income may be tax-exempt. I believe there are similar evasions of taxes by churches (not all of them Roman Catholic).
Question: Will you, Senator Kennedy, if you become President, give your moral support to the activity now under way to discover and prosecute, if necessary, such violations of church-state separation?
Religion in Politics
In your speech accepting the Democratic nomination, you expressed satisfaction that the “religious question” had not been raised in your candidacy for the nomination, the implication being that it would not or should not be raised in your campaign for election. The “religious issue” has not entered decisively or conspicuously in any presidential campaign except in 1928 when Al Smith, a Roman Catholic, was the Democratic standard bearer. It is relevant for us to inquire why the religious issue arises chiefly in the form of opposition to a Catholic candidate. Our Presidents from the beginning have represented a wide variety of religious affiliations—Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Disciples of Christ, Unitarian, Reformed, Quaker—not to mention others. Their religion does not create a “religious issue.” Why does the “religious issue” emerge only when your church is involved? The answer is that all these other churches are content to live and work in the open domain of religious liberty which the state is forbidden to enter and the churches may not lawfully transgress. (I do not wish to be too complimentary, for there is a constant tendency for some Protestant churches to seek the backing of government aid for their otherwise laudable purposes.)
But your church, Mr. Kennedy, has no such inhibition on this score because it is itself a state, and its ultimate power is political, not religious. The Roman Catholic church does not feel at home in a thoroughgoing democratic society. Its hierarchy confesses quite frankly that it is uncomfortable, but it “adapts itself” to whatever political system beside which it lives, awaiting the time when, by concordat or by actual acceptance, it may attain its never-forgotten goal. It is the First Amendment to our Constitution (God be thanked for it!) that is the American bulwark of our religious liberty. A Request: I would be pleased if you would comment on my statement of the religious issue in politics.
The Deeper Concern
The specific issues which I have brought to your attention are only samples of many others which, if I included them, would unprofitably prolong this letter. But there is a single matter which comprehends them all. I refer to the monarchical structure and character of the Roman Catholic Church itself. The American mind wants to believe that its democratic structure is able to maintain itself in competition with any kind of a controlled society. But now there looms up in our midst this self-enclosed monarchical society, which, aided by our perhaps all too hospitable immigration policy, is steadily withdrawing from the general democratic process and asserting its right at many points to control it and swerve it from its native course.
The preceding matters upon which I have asked your opinion, my dear Senator, are only the visible manifestations of the deeper concern which American democracy feels toward the Roman Catholic Church itself. It has become clear to a large public that the very structure of this authoritarian church-state puts it outside of and inimical to a democratic structure of society.
What you are confronting as a candidate for the Presidency are not merely the disparate issues, samples of which I have enumerated. You are confronting a state of mind that fears you because it sees behind you the facade of a monarchical system which is both a church and a state. Moreover, it sees this structure defended by a Jesuitical ethic and logic with which the vocabulary of democracy cannot converse.
It is becoming clear that democracy faces two powerful monarchical competitions in our time—the Communist Dictatorship and the Infallible Papacy. Both control vast populations. Karl Marx could have had the Roman Catholic Church in mind as a pattern for the structure of his Communist dictatorship of the proletariat. The structures through which authority and power flow down to the people are alike and the end effect of both is to keep the people in bondage—the one through fear, the other through faith.
What I want now to say in conclusion is that if the American people elect you as their President, they unawarely but inescapably invite your church, if not to the council chamber of our democracy, at least to its threshold.
I beg you, Senator Kennedy, to believe that my political opinion in the matters which concern the separation of church and state is not an expression of what is meant by the term “anti-catholicism.” Our religious differences are profound, but we could live with them and meet each other in mutual friendship and fruitful conversation in the domain of religious liberty which your faith and mine enjoy in this American democracy. I hope you will feel that you can reply to my questions in the same spirit of mutual respect in which I have laid them before you.
CHARLES CLAYTON MRRISON
Chicago, Ill.
• Dr. Morrison was founder and for 40 years Editor of The Christian Century. He is honorary president of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State. CHRISTIANITY TODAY has advised Senator Kennedy that its pages are open to him for any reply he wishes to make.
—ED.
