Hatchet Buriers

Though not every churchgoer knows it, there are at least ten religious concepts upon which broad-minded Protestants, Jews and Catholics can agree, believe in:

The fact that all their religions may have "worthy and Unworthy" representatives.

The primacy of religion. God. Ethical elements essential to religion. The Golden Rule. The capacity of human nature to grow and develop religiously. The sacredness of human life. The necessity of worship. The need for religious education. Social service programs.

These ten concepts today are a prime talking point of the National Conference of Jews & Christians, most important influence of its sort in U. S. life, founded ten years ago next month "to analyze, to moderate, and finally to eliminate a system of prejudice which we have in part inherited and which disfigures and distorts our business, social and political relations."

Currently headed by Roger Williams Straus, good Jew, Professor Carlton Joseph Huntley Hayes of Columbia University, good Catholic, and, until his death last week (see p. 41), by the late Newton Diehl Baker, good Episcopalian, the N. C. J. C. last week launched its tenth anniversary celebration. For this, President Roosevelt, honorary chairman of the organization, wrote a letter declaring that "philosophies dominant in totalitarian states must not be allowed to disrupt the cordial relationships which now exist among Protestants, Catholics and Jews in America."

During its ten years the N. C. J. C. has sponsored some 25,000 conferences and round tables among U. S. religionists. Its Institute of Human Relations every other summer at Williamstown, Mass, has been well covered in the U. S. press. Its mailed, mimeographed news service, which has 380 correspondents throughout the U. S. and abroad, and henceforth is to be called the Religious News Service, gained 92 paying clients in the secular and religious press during the past year. Since 1933 when it first sent out a touring "pilgrimage team" consisting of a minister, rabbi and priest, the N. C. J. C. has increased such activities until, last year, 25 teams traveled 25,000 miles preaching amity. Newest N. C. J. C. goodwill stunt is for a team to "bury a hatchet" in public, as was done in Seattle when Rabbi Solomon Goldman of Chicago wielded a spade while Presbyterian Rev. Stanley Armstrong Hunter of Berkeley, Calif, and Rev. Thomas Lawrason Riggs, famed chaplain of Yale's Catholic Club, deposited a small hatchet in the cold earth.

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