A few months ago, I publicly praised this eminent jurist for his noble work at Nuremberg. In the good old American vernacular, I would say that he is still throwing strikes. * His conclusion is inevitable, “If the state may aid these religious schools, it may therefore regulate them.” I quote Time magazine, Feb. 22: “Justice Wiley Rutledge, for fifteen years a law professor, felt that there was so much more to be said that he filed an other dissent. In an impassioned opinion running to forty-seven pages, he lectured his learned colleagues and the nation on the relentless struggle by which the separation of church and state had beep' riveted into the Constitution. A quotation from Jefferson which Black had used was taken also by Rutledge, but put to different purpose: ‘To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical.’ Said Rutledge: ‘I cannot believe that the great author of these words . . . could have joined in [the majority] decision. Neither so high nor so impregnable today as yesterday is the wall raised between church and state.. . Thus with time, the most solid freedom steadily gives way before continuing corrosive decision’.” Again I quote Time, March 2, reviewing the Chris tian Century Editor Clayton Morrison’s blast on the subject: “The Supreme Court decision . . . should open the eyes of all American-minded citizens, and especially Protestant citizens, to the strategy of the Roman Catholic Church in its determination to secure a priv ileged position in the common life of this country. . . . The Roman Church wants the state to provide for the complete support of its parochial schools with money derived from taxes levied on all citizens.” I must make this observation, my friends, at this juncture: This statement by Editor Morrison has been widely publicized through the Christian Century and through Time. Every leading Roman Catholic ecclesi astic has read it. Watch now to see if there is a denial —a forthright denial, a good plain American denial which requires no interpretation, a denial without subterfuge or qualification. If this is not what they really want, they will hasten to deny it unequivocally. And if they are silent? Then our worst fears are con firmed. Again I heap praises upon one who brings such issues out into the open, and speaks his mind without mincing words. By such forthright tactics, we will smoke them out of their lairs, we will make them use the kind of speech Thomas Jefferson used, rather than John Duns Scotus; we will destroy their inscrutability. They will fit into the mold of American principles of fairness and liberty, or if they refuse to do so, the whole world shall know of their refusal before we are through. The era ftf polite silences is over. Protestant ism has found its voice. If there is ever to be under standing between Roman Catholics and Protestants, it will now come out of frank discussion. I would not have you think that I have forgotten other groups who do not fall into the category of either Catholic or Protestant. There are our neighbors, the Jews. I have talked to many of my Jewish friends, and I find they have the same aversion to this other fellow’s hand being in their pockets. You would expect us to agree on that; Scotsmen and Jews have much in common! I quote further from this plain-speaking editor: “The Protestant church have themselves to blame. . . . Few Protestant ministers have brought this issue to their people. . . . They felt that it was such a little thing to get excited about—first free textbooks, then free bus transportation for parochial schools at public expense. They were blind to the strategy of the Roman Church in using these apparently insignificant matters JUNE, 1947
C rater Lake, Oregon
7 / i e e M e & u & n ly Q u & it By Annie Johnson Flint
TF you open the door and let Christ in He will come as a courteous guest; He will take the space that you give Him And will leave you all the rest; If you crowd Him out of your largest room And give Him a comer small, If you scarcely remember that He is there And speak of Him not at all, A H, then He may grieve when He sees your mind By the cares of the world possessed, When your feet have strayed and your soul is faint And your heart by grief opprest; But He cannot comfort and lift and guide And help as He longs to do— Where He sits apart in your House of Life— For you have not asked Him to. /'"AH, make Him the Master of all you have, The Lord of your heart and soul, Yield all yourself for His dwelling-place And let Him take the whole; He will do with you, He will work for you, He will reign in your life alone, And you’ll find the blessing that you have missed And the joys you have never known. Copyright. The Evangelical Publishers. Used b y permission. as the thin edge of the wedge which would ultimately crack open the Constitution.” These are the very words I used in my first news letter—“the thin edge of the wedge.” Hear his solemn conclusion; mark well his warning; let there be a prayerful hush in this sanctuary while we listen to them, “If Protestantism passively tolerates any compromise of the principle of the equality of all religious faiths before the American state, it seals its own destiny. It dooms itself to become, in the end, a minority sect existing on the margins of American life." History is unfolding before our eyes. We think, especially in eras of war, that only the sword writes history. But words and ideas give birth to wars and slay wars. The conflict we are witnessing is of earth- shaking proportions; mark you well I am speaking words of thought and not emotion. The great question to be decided is, “What is America’s destiny?” There is no question about our history. Shall we continue in the footsteps of our political and spiritual forefathers, or shall we betray them by going back to religious tyrannies of medieval Europe? Page Seventeen
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