PRESIDENT OF PEACE—President Kennedy’s funeral may well have been in many aspects the most elaborate and impressive farewell a modern ruler has ever received, yet its key elements—the union of religious solemnity and military display—have been familiar for centuries. But something new was added this time: the reading of a part of his Inaugural Address, … which above all made clear his desire—which he realized—to be a President of Peace, and not a President of War.—The New York Times.
PRACTICING CHRISTIAN—John F. Kennedy was a sincere and practicing Christian and none of his predecessors was more eager to be President of all the people, regardless of religious ties. Reared in a Catholic home and a Catholic community, he probably was not aware of the extent of religious rivalry that sometimes affects political life until his responsibilities encompassed the whole nation.—Hon. BROOKS HAYS, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and special assistant to President Kennedy.
BARBAROUS ACT—Whatever the motive that fired the assassin’s bullet that killed President Kennedy, it was an act of insane barbarity. We bow in shame and sorrow that this deed could be done among us.—FREDRIK A. SCHIOTZ, president, The American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran World Federation.
RENEWED DEDICATION—[Methodists have] a renewed dedication to the ideals of universal peace, brotherhood, human welfare, justice and national integrity for which [President Kennedy] lived and worked so well.—The Methodist Board of Christian Social Concerns.
DELIGHTFULLY AMERICAN—Everything about him was so delightfully American. [He brought] a veritable breath of fresh air into areas of human life too often a setting for the stuffy, the amateur, and the inexpert. President Kennedy was not a utopian dreamer. He was a contemporary figure who measured up to the requirements of our modern age.—E. F. CARPENTER, Archdeacon of Westminster.
1900 YEARS LATER—In the emotional aftermath of President Kennedy’s murder, the nation is being subjected to a seemingly endless series of sermons, both in pulpits and in the public prints, on the evils of “hatred”.… The sermons are sincere and, hopefully, edifying as well. But they happen to be irrelevant to the death of Mr. Kennedy.… If it is absurd to try to blame the assassination on the political rights, it is yet more absurd to insinuate that it was the result of something dreadfully wrong with American political life as a whole. Until we know something different, the reasonable assumption must be that the assassination was the result of something dreadfully wrong in the mind of Lee Oswald. It would be good and desirable if the world could now adjure all hatred. But since hatred still exists 1900 years after the Crucifixion, it is … unlikely that it will vanish now.—The Sunday Star, Washington, D. C.
COURAGEOUS STAND—He knew well the dangers of the stand he had taken on behalf of the American Negro. A weaker man would have avoided trouble, but Kennedy was a brave man and he would not back down from his courageous stand.… He dared to penetrate iron curtains and proclaim not just a policy of containment or co-existence but a braver and more dangerous policy of co-operation between the Great Power blocs. If he believed in the rights of man, he strove also for the liberty of man.—H. C. WHITLEY, St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh.
SYMBOL OF MATURITY—John F. Kennedy was a symbol of America’s coming of age. As our first Roman Catholic President, as a President who committed himself unequivocally to the cause of the forgotten and disenfranchised in our society, he symbolized our country’s long-delayed and long-awaited repudiation of religious bigotry, racism and hypocrisy.—LEWIS WEBSTER JONES, president, National Conference of Christians and Jews.
ATTACKERS RESPONSIBLE—Those who have been making irresponsible attacks upon [President Kennedy] and his policies are as responsible for his death as the one who pulled the trigger.—A joint statement by EUGENE CARSON BLAKE, stated clerk, and SILAS G. KESSLER, moderator, the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.
AMERICAN APATHY—We as citizens of this country are involved in this terrible act insofar as we have shrugged off the frequent expressions of bitterness and hate made by people on the extreme left or the extreme right as of no threat to our country.—ARTHUR LICHTENBERGER, presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
A GOOD STEWARD—Endowed with extraordinary talents and a great measure of this world’s goods, he was ever the good steward, never forgetting that these gifts were entrusted by God to his care for the benefit of his neighbor. He described his own life when he uttered his famous appeal “Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country.”—A joint statement by the American cardinals and bishops attending the Mass for President Kennedy at the North American College in Rome.
MAN OF CONVICTION—[President Kennedy] was a man of conviction. He stood for the separation of church and state in the face of demands for federal aid to parochial schools by his own Church hierarchy.… He symbolized a new era in the religious relationships of American citizens. He espoused the Civil Rights bill to guarantee the equality of all Americans regardless of race. He stood for the rights of the Negro as a first class citizen. He was a man of broad humanitarian sympathy.… He was a man of faith—faith in God, faith in country, faith in the American people and faith in himself as opposed to the nihilism of popular existentialism adhered to by the beatnik.—HAROLD J. OCKENGA, minister, Park Street Church, Boston.
