Religion in the Schools: A Divisive Issue for the National Council

During debate the Greeks threatened to pull out, Negroes responded to other action with high praise. It was not a United Nations meeting. In view was not the East River but the Hudson. The site was New York City’s Riverside Church hard by the Interchurch Center in Morningside Heights. It was the regular June meeting of the policy-making General Board of the National Council of Churches, and the usual placid air of the assembly had been thrust aside by cleavage-revealing debate which bore the threat of disruption of the body politic.

Waging a strong battle against long odds was retiring Union Seminary President Henry Van Dusen, who is becoming in some respects a prodding NCC conscience that sometimes prevails but often as not doesn’t. Allied preeminently with him was New York attorney and board member Charles Rafael, who painted with vivid strokes the Greek Orthodox viewpoint in his role as representative of absent Archbishop Iakovos, primate of North and South America.

At issue was a proposed NCC statement opposing devotional religious acts in public schools. Dr. Van Dusen strenously attacked the document for two “inexcusable” omissions: the realities of God and of truth. “The premise that lies behind this document,” he charged, “is that we are not a religious people, that religion is a past phenomenon of history and does not have a vital role in the education of a child for life.” He opposed the document’s endorsement of the United States Supreme Court Regents’ prayer ruling.

Yale Divinity School’s dean emeritus Luther A. Weigle called for revamping of the statement to eliminate misunderstanding of its content, and asked: “Do we need to beat the Supreme Court to it on its decisions?” (The revamped form did—see News, p. 29. The General Board has been criticized for not earlier issuing a statement on this vexing problem which creates divisions that cut across theological and denominational lines.) Concerning the NCC statement, Charles Rafael read in behalf of Archbishop Iakovos a memorandum which noted repeated references in the press to the statement as “representing efforts ‘by leaders of major Protestant and Orthodox churches to prepare the public for calm acceptance of a Supreme Court ruling which they expect will hold religious exercises in public schools unconstitutional.’ ”

For Orthodoxy this seemed a calm before the storm: “We find this disturbing.… We are not at all certain that this represents the Orthodox point of view, or the point of view any religious body should take. The NCC policy statement is apparently largely based on a forecast of results of two [Supreme Court] cases.… The results may well be as our policy statement assumes, but why should we capitulate so readily be forehand? Why should we play so directly into the hands of those whose interest it is to have Bible readings and prayers banned, when this is not in the true Christian and God-abiding interest?

“Our policy statement says that ‘major faith groups have not agreed on a formulation of religious beliefs common to all.’ But all sincere faiths must agree on belief in and dependence on God. If every mention of this profound truth is to be stricken from our educational processes, especially in our Elementary Schools, the loss will be great and eventually fatal.…

“… Should a well-intentioned desire to separate devotional religion from education go so far as to ban the mention of God in teaching, and to cast disrepute on the one great work which best pays tribute to and encourages respect for God?… This is not a case of a particular religious doctrine, which no man has a right to try to impose on another. It may well be a struggle involving whether or not the concept of God is to be fore most in our civilization, or whether step by step it is to be renounced. Therefore we believe that any policy statement by the NCC on this subject should exercise the most extreme care that it is not interpreted to be leading, however subtly and ‘progressively,’ to the repudiation of God Himself.”

After reading the memorandum, Rafael indicated that NCC adoption of the policy statement could mean Greek Orthodox withdrawal from the council. (A board member said later that Iakovos’ objections were based on a reading of preliminary documents rather than the policy statement itself.)

Van Dusen’s motion for revision of the statement passed, and the modified resolution was presented on the following day. The final draft added a preamble which acknowledged God as the ground of truth and stated in an exploratory mood that “the place of religion in public education must be worked out” within the “recognition of the prevailingly positive attitude of the American people as a whole toward religion.…” The pronouncement acknowledged the valid educational purpose of the Bible, especially in those studies “related to character development,” but also gave assent to “the wisdom as well as the authority” of last year’s Supreme Court ruling on the use of the Regents’ prayer in New York State. This endorsement of the Supreme Court ruling was much less direct than it had been in the original document. The revised resolution concluded with a query as to whether possibilities should not be investigated “for more adequate provision within the public schools of opportunities for the study of religion where desired, fully within the constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience and of religious expression.”

Van Dusen indicated reluctant approval of this revised pronouncement and expressed the hope, somewhat optimistically, that Iakovos would be satisfied. Rafael, the Greek Orthodox representative, abstained in the final voting however (the motion passed 65–1), and by week’s end the Greek Orthodox Church had formally dissociated itself from the NCC pronouncement.

As the nation smoldered under the increasing tide of racial violence, the General Board moved in this area to urge member churches to effective social action, “even costly action that may jeopardize the organizational goals, and institutional structures of the Church, and may disrupt any fellowship that is less than fully obedient to the Lord of the Church.”

In a series of specific proposals, the church leaders voted to set up a twenty-five-man Commission on Religion and Race “to focus the concern, the conviction, the resources and the action of member communions” and “to provide a national interdenominational liaison with inter faith and other concerted efforts.” The authorization to the commission included the encouragement of direct action in places of particular crisis and the mobilization of church resources to advance racial equality both within and without the participating denominations. Accompanying measures authorized the council to invite Roman Catholic and Jewish leaders to joint action and admonished members of the board “to engage personally in negotiations, demonstrations, and other direct action in particular situations of racial tension.” Such demonstrations, according to Stated Clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, who gave the report, could include “being on the receiving end of a fire hose.”

During the two-hour discussion which preceded adoption of the pronouncement, several Negro delegates rose from the floor to affirm their belief that the measures were a significant advance for the policies of the NCC and would doubtless find an echo in the hearts of Negro Christians throughout the nation.

Turning aside a strong protest from the broadcasting industry, the National Council challenged the course of television and radio broadcasting by urging that federal control over local and network advertising and programming be extended. The report, which highlighted “a disturbing lack of candor on the part of communications officials and commercial sponsors,” was seen by the National Association of Broadcasters, represented by Vice-President Paul B. Comstock, to “favor extreme changes in our system of governmental regulation of broadcasting” and to favor action which would “greatly increase federal control in the vital area of freedom of expression on the air.” A request by the NAB to table or defer action on the pronouncement was defeated by a majority vote, and the pronouncement was adopted despite some debate on whether or not the council should act due to the small number then in attendance.

At a testimonial dinner on the first night of the gathering friends and delegates paid tribute to Dr. Roy G. Ross, the retiring general secretary of the National Council of Churches, who has held this position since 1954. He is succeeded by Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy, associate general secretary of the NCC since 1958, formerly associate executive secretary of the council’s Division of Christian Life and Work.

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