THE BIBLE IN NEW YORK By Rev. David J. Fant, Litt. D.*
W HAT do you think of conditions in America as compared with those to which you were accus tomed in Europe?” This I asked of a Russian D.P., a former Russian Baptist pastor who suf fered for several years in a German concentration camp, but now has been relocated in a tenement apartment in a poverty-pocked district of Williams burg, Brooklyn.
areas which might otherwise be un touched by the Christian message. The Society’s work centers about the harbor with its Immigration and Marine Divisions, and on land in the hotels, hospitals and among the Negroes, Jews, the blind, and the many language groups. New York City is a microcosm which offers the challenge of one of the most unique mission fields in the entire world.
These were men of excellent charac ter, Russian Christians, part of the 250,000 D.P.’s permitted by our govern ment to enter the United States during the past two or three years. They had been met aboard ship by my interpreter, Reverend Timothy Peshkoff, an agent of the New York Bible Society, him self Russian-born. He had been able to converse with these twentieth-century pilgrims in their own language, assist them through customs, get them estab lished in a home and church, and employ ment for some members of their families, and set them on their way to a new life venture. Their appreciation of Mr. Pesh koff and of the Society’s aid was both vocal and heart-warming. I think I shall never forget my last view of their glow ing faces as we disappeared down the stairs, after receiving their God-speeds and repeated entreaties to return soon. Such episodes are the fruits of the Im migration work of the New York Bible Society, and a by-product of the distri bution of the Scriptures. But the Immi gration Division is only one of eight departments of the Society’s far-flung activities. How long has this been going on? Come December 4, 1951, and this Society will have completed 142 years of pub lishing and distributing the Word of God in the eighty-seven different languages required in this world metropolis, dur ing which the stupendous total of 32,- 710,491 Bibles, Testaments, or Scripture portions has been circulated. The method of distribution is two fold : first, through the 1500 churches and Christian agencies of the city, includ ing such organizations as Gospel mis sions, the Salvation Army, the Y.M. C.A.’s and Y.W.C.A.’s, as well as the established churches, and hundreds of volunteer missionaries and Christian workers; second, through our own agents, twenty in number, in special
Hospital Distribution People flock here from all corners of the globe—business men, tourists, mem bers of the United Nations, and seamen aboard ship. Our agents are on hand to extend to these strangers not only a welcome to our western democracy, but a taste of that Christianity which has given birth to the freedom and way of life we enjoy. About the harbor some 450,000 people earn their daily living. Our marine workers visit the men on the docks, and then with the co-operation of the various steamship companies, aboard ship. They cover the water front of the greatest harbor in the world, striving to present a copy of the Scriptures to every sea faring man, from captain to cabin boy. Sometimes as many as fourteen lan guages are required aboard a single vessel. We place the Bible in the transient rooms of the hotels of New York, as is the practice of the Gideons in other cities. The Hotel Statler alone requires 2,000 copies, and we supply more than 350 motels and clubs. When early this year a young woman jumped from the fifteenth floor of the Hotel Claridge, she left one of our Bibles in the window sill with a scribbled note inside imploring God’s forgiveness. A few days later, a guest at the King James Hotel telephoned to say that while in the city he had been taken ill, and on the preceding night for the first time had read the Bible at considerable length. Could we send one of our men over to explain some of its mysteries to him? Of course we could! When I learned that he was a Jew, I sent one
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With only a moment’s hesitation he replied, “ Dogs in New York City have it better than the children in the camp from which I came.” Now the relic in which the speaker lived was nothing for which we Ameri cans should be proud, reached as it was by three pairs of dirty, darkened stairs. Inside were the barest of furnishings— a bed without sheets, a straight wooden chair, and a couple of well-worn immi grant trunks. But to this newly- arrived stranger it was a Cinderella Home Sweet Home. Quickly we passed on to another apartment of quite similar appointments not many blocks distant. Here we found a man once a distinguished lawyer abroad, but who had been homeless since 1934. As I talked with him through an interpreter, he kept turning his head from side to side as if it were mounted on an axle. Finally I inquired, “Why are you so nervous?” “ I cannot believe even yet,” he replied, “that I am safe in America. In the night I still wake up with the sound of exploding bombs in my ears.” *General Secretary , New York Bible Society
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