Godless Government

The Congressional battle royal over Henry Wallace almost drowned out the scuffle over the appointment of long, lanky Aubrey Williams as Rural Electrification Administrator. But last week the scuffle was still going on: it had shifted from politics to religion. In a telegram to Tennessee's Senator McKellar (a Presbyterian), the Rev. Joseph Broady (a Presbyterian) of Findlay, Ohio charged that Williams was "utterly unworthy for any Government position" because he had "renounced the Divinity of Christ." (This apparently referred to the fact that after being helped through college by the Presbyterian Church, Williams was not ordained a minister, instead almost became a Unitarian clergyman. Unitarians do not believe Christ uniquely divine.)

The Rev. David S. Burgess, Manhattan Congregational minister, cried that the attack was "unChristian and un-American." Requiring every Government official to accept the divinity of Christ, said he, "would bar all Jews, nonbelievers, and a good percentage of Protestants from state and federal appointments. If it had been applied in the past, it would have eliminated many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution from participating in national affairs." He might have added Presidents Taft and the two Adamses, Justice Brandeis.

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