he tells me he doesn’t like to travel on the same street car with the rest of us folks—it is a matter of principle with him, he is sincere—and he would like to finance his trip on another street car that is more to his liking by getting just a cent or two from each passenger. So for two weeks, I have been going around, mut tering and wondering if there is something abnormal about me. I find that most of the other citizens are saying very little about this matter, and I begin to wonder how much they know about the following: The Constitution of the United States, First Amend • ment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an estab lishment of religion.” The Constitution of the State of California, Article IX , 8: "No money shall ever be appropriated fo r the support of any sectarian or denominational school, or any school not under the exclusive control of the o ffi cers of the public schools.” I wondered if the people knew the reason for these laws. I wondered if people knew that only their own vigilance could keep these declarations of liberty alive through the centuries. A law or a constitution is merely printer’s ink and paper until people make them live. You notice that I said they were declarations of liberty, not guarantees of liberty. People who believe with all their hearts in these principles, people in sufficient numbers, people who will fight friend as well as foe for these principles are the only guarantee of them. The reason the Supreme Court rendered such a decision was doubtless because we have let this great American doc trine almost languish and die. Yes, as the sports col umnist said, the doctrine of separation of church and state is being dusted o ff once more. Sharpe on us for the dust! Gradually I began to see that there were others who were becoming aroused. In response to the two hun dred letters I sent out to Southern California ministers, I had replies indicating that they agreed with me about the gravity of the situation. Some wrote, some tele phoned, and not one thought the issue anything but vital to our liberties. In our own church, there were those who wrote Congressmen and Senators. Let me read you one of these letters, written by Mr. Roberts, who, with his wife has recently come into our fellowship: “I believe in a nation of free men and a nation can be free only when church and state are maintained as separate institutions. Protestants have schools sup ported by members of the church; so do the Jews. Catholics have schools and they should be supported by members of their church. “The point is that if America is to remain a great nation, our Congress must, of necessity, reaffirm the Constitution for the benefit of the Supreme Court. When a bare majority of these nine men will agree on granting a religious sect the right to spend money raised by taxes for the express purpose of extending that particular sect, then that body is guilty of a con spiracy to violate our Constitution. "Men came flocking to this great country to get away from such taxes and to be allowed to worship as they chose. These people wrote our Constitution, set ting up a state separate from the church. They fought bloody battles to gain that end. “We have fine schools, free to all, and I gladly pay taxes for their support, but I will not pay taxes to support any sectarian school, and I vigorously protest this, outrage by our Supreme Court. Public money is for public business—let private business take care of its own expenses and let patrons of private schools pay their own bills. Next thing we know, they’ll want public money for transportation to church on Sunday morning. Where will it stop?” (CONTINUED IN THE JUNE KING'S BUSINESS) T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
cratic means. What was the reaction of the Roman Catholic prelates? No less a figure than Archbishop Spellman said that these distinguished Protestant leaders were like mem bers of the Ku Klux Klan except that tiiey had clerical collars. Incredible! This distinguished prelate stoops to mud-slinging! And why? What had these men done? Without hate, without bigotry, they had expressed their deepest convictions, which were your convictions and mine. Simply because there is here a conflict with the Roman Catholic politico-religious philosophy, these noted Protestants are maligned and slandered by no less a figure than this Roman Catholic archbishop. I never see a picture, now, of the benign face of this man, nor do I see one of those beautifully contrived pictures of children kissing his ring, without remem bering the venom of his words, the lack of dignity in them, the unfairness of them. “As a man thinketh . . . so is he." Here again, as I have indicated, is the double stand ard: Reverence is due unto the Roman Catholic leaders, but gross insults are quite fitting for the Protestant leaders! Insolence such as this by the Roman Catholic Church in America is exceeded only by the apathy of the Protes tants. Most Protestants are so dead that they are beyond the stage of recognizing and feeling an insult. I am quite sure that the Archbishop’s un-Christian bad temper went entirely without rebuke. Do you say all this is a message of hate? I hate no man—no group of men. But there are many things that I do hate. I hate lies, whether they be the lies of Catholics or of Baptists; I hate evasions, whether they be ours or theirs; I hate any religious philosophy which is so presumptuous that it exalts itself above the law of our land and the liberties of men. I f my eyes were opened only to the sins of the Roman Catholic Church, I would be a bigot, but I want to say, parenthetically, that my indignation regarding un-American treatment of Negroes knows no bounds. I will fight against those whose principles, if such they can be called, are what I believe to be contrary to the great Christian and American tradition, and, in doing so, I will spare neither Catholics nor Baptists. The Parochial Bus Situation Now I come to the matter that has influenced me to speak up on this issue: the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States to permit the use of public money for parochial school bus transportation by a five to four decision. What I have said thus far indi cates that sharp elbows have been pushed into our sides rather rudely and we have not so much as spoken up to say, “Hey, mind your manners!” But how it has gone much farther than that. We have been silent while we were pushed around, jostled, made to feel foolish and bigoted every time we opened our mouths to protest. It was never the right time to speak, nor the right placer or perhaps our sincere attempt to straighten things out would be misunderstood and do more harm than good. And we knew there was a lot of traffic and the street car of democracy was rather crowded, and who knows, perhaps we jostled the other fellow a bit, too, without knowing it. But I just found out something: This other fellow I ’ve been talking about has his hand in my pocket. I’ve never taken to being jostled, especially when it seemed avoidable; but even a trusting soul such as I am finds it hard to accept the idea of his hand in my pocket. I debate the matter a long time, and at the risk of being called a bigot, I finally ask him what his hand is doing in my pocket. Quite composed, he tells me that he wanted a little money, not all I ’ve got, just a frac tion. So I ask him what he wants the money for, and PAGE TWELVE
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