2/18/68

Scripture: Read John 15: 1-17.

The Ku Klux Klan has been a sinister force in American for most of a century. It came into activity in post-civil war days as a means of intimidating Negroes and of “keeping them in their place.” But it has waxed and waned, flourished and subsided, and revived again for a long time. Back in the 1920s it was going strong in northern states as well as in the South. In 1925 I was a summer student pastor for a couple of small churches in South Dakota -- a village church and a rural church. When I took up my duties there, I soon found that the Klan was thriving there. A minister who had preceded me on that field was a featured speaker at Klan meetings. (He was not Congregational!) The man who operated the local “creamery” (as they called it) spent his late afternoons and evenings soliciting memberships and helping with Klan organization (on some sort of commission basis --- so much for each new member he enrolled). I soon found that I would be most welcome if I should decide to join up, and it was hinted that more than one of my predecessors on that field had done so. I had no desire to join. In fact I had an aversion to it. But I did talk with people in the Klan (some of them were my summer parishioners) and with people around the village who had opinions for and against it. I attended one of the evening Klan open air meetings which had been quietly advertised, and learned a little more about it that way.

Fortunately it proved to be something of a “fad” in that neighborhood and I think it died out after a while. It did not deserve to live. But why the Ku Klux Klan there in the northern part of the state of South Dakota? There were no Negroes living there. Seldom was a Negro to be seen visiting, or passing through, unless the person who traveled encountered a porter on the “through” passenger trains. There were some of the white residents who had probably never in their lives seen a Negro face. They had no experience by which to judge whether or not they might like or dislike a Negro person.

So the Klan had little or nothing to say, there, about race relations. But Klansmen were, as one fellow put it, “death on Catholics.” I heard more evil attributed to the Catholic Church and to Catholic people, and more vile conduct attributed, especially to Catholic priests, than you can well imagine! They were, it seems, not only bigoted and narrow; but they were guilty of the most heinous kind of sin. They were persecutors of the Protestants. They were out to rule the world. They were the anti-Christ in devil’s flesh. And anybody with some good Christian, Protestant gumption ought to join the Klan in order to keep America safe from the Catholics. I guess Jews were on their black list, too. But since there were comparatively few Jewish people anywhere around the area there, it would have been hard to get up much excitement about that. So the Klansmen concentrated on the Catholics.

By that time I had found enough Catholic friends to feel that not all Catholics could be as bad as depicted by the Klan. Some of them seemed pretty good to me, though I disagreed with the religious expression of their church. I had no reason to hate Jewish folk; or to dislike Negro people of any church, or no church. I believed in the brotherhood of man, under God’s fatherhood --- and still do. And so the Klan organizer got no membership fee from me, nor any other encouragement. (He never came to church, so I knew he was no churchman and no true Protestant.) And to those well meaning, but misguided parishioners who seemed to think the Klan was a good thing, I had to be an opponent at that point.

It was out of experience with the religious bigotry of these days and of a 1928 presidential campaign that some American people, now recognized as great leaders, formed the National Conference of Christians and Jews to try to promote sanity and understanding in our church-and-race-and-class relationships. Among these leaders were the Hon. Charles Evans Hughes, noted jurist, political figure and Supreme Court Justice; Rev. Dr. S. Parker Cashman, a great Congregational clergyman of New York; the Hon. Newton D. Baker, lawyer and Cabinet officer; Prof. Carleton J. H. Hayes, Catholic educator and historian; Mr. Roger W. Straus, influential Jewish citizen; and others. Dr. Everett Clinchy, Protestant minister, was the first president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

Their purpose was not to convert the Jews to Christianity, nor vice versa; not to make Protestants out of Catholics, nor to drive Protestants to the Catholic fold; not even to evolve some one kind of religion or church. The purpose was to learn understanding of each other; to practice respect for each other, and for the good to be discovered in their religious faiths --- the kind of brotherhood that means good neighborliness without the surrender of identity. The conference program is not an encouragement to proselytizing, but an educational program in acquaintance, understanding and fellowship --- no slashing accusations, but learning and tolerance --- no work for a religious synthesis, and certainly no approval for indifference. And the National Conference of Christians and Jews has promoted Brotherhood Week in many hundreds of communities ever since 1933. Right here in Wisconsin Rapids, Brotherhood Week has been a “going observance” for a long time. But it ought to be far more than an annual formality. It ought to be a celebration of year-round reality.

Brotherhood is democracy at work. It is not just a word. It is an attitude in action. It finds expression in such community concerns as (1) housing for all sorts of people; (2) education in intergroup relations; (3) full opportunity for satisfying religious expression accorded to every individual on the basis of his conscience and his chosen expression of faith; (4) employment opportunity for all on the basis of merit; (5) health and hospital facilities available to all people of the community; (6) recreational facilities open to all, including access to resort areas; (7) public accommodations in hotels, restaurants, theaters, libraries, open to all who will use them properly and with due consideration for others; (8) community organizations without standards of exclusion; and other facets of the common life.

Our own community is now seeing more of clergy dialogue and seeking more of lay participation in inter-faith conversations; and we have only begun. One writer has suggested that Brotherhood Week is an excellent time for each of us to search ourselves for the presence of at least seven Christian virtues: (1) justice; (2) prudence; (3) temperance; (4) fortitude; (5) faith; (6) hope; and (7) charity or love. If we will use it this way, Brotherhood Week, more than any other event celebrated in the course of the year, can lead us to reflect on our failure to exercise these virtues in our lives; in our attitude toward others. And it can awaken us to enthusiasm for what life can be if we will improve our attitude toward all others.

I hope we are emerging from an ignorant, bigoted, blind hatred for those not of our particular church, class, race or parenting. There is some disposition in our time to be understanding of other churches’ practices, modes of worship, expressions of faith and action. This does not mean that we have to run out and join another church. It does not mean, I think, that we must expect to create one single religious establishment. It does mean that we know our own church “family” well enough to offer its excellence to the welfare of the common community, as well as to appreciate what the others have to offer.

Our failures are sore indeed. Some twenty years have passed since first attempts to establish any appreciable amount of civil rights legislation in the nation’s capital. Wheels are still spinning in the Congress. But the implementation of what has become law is slow and clumsy and often circumvented. And the whole cause of civil rights involves not only granting those rights, but earning them. Both of these are required if the American Negro is to emerge from the city ghetto, or the American Indian from the ghetto of the government-directed reservation. It will take more than lip service to bring it about. The faith that we proclaim ought to help to bring it about. The hope and the love that we talk about should help to override our man-made prejudices and petty hatreds, foolishly holding that one race (black, white, or red, so long as it is our own) is better than another; or that our church is intrinsically the only true church and therefore better than all others.

As to the theological virtue of hope, we need to take stock of the word itself. So long as there is hope that men and women -- any of us --- will awaken from complacent attitudes and from unwillingness to be concerned or to be involved, there is still hope that we can stave off future rioting, future wars, future bigotry. The virtues of justice, temperance, prudence and fortitude should prod us to action. We must seek justice for all, or be prepared to see justice for none. When justice for all is set aside in favor of senseless rioting -- or even trigger-happy anti-rioting measures --- we must be prepared to see many innocent people suffer.

Only with prudence and fortitude will we be able to rectify the many years of injustice which we have allowed to set some stubborn patterns in America. It means more that hiring a few Negroes into business to offset the discontent of the individual Negro for not being given opportunity to better himself. It means more than electing a Catholic or a Jew, or a Protestant to some public office to placate groups of voters. It means more than doling out welfare checks to the unfortunate and poorly trained in the hope of keeping them pacified. It means money, intelligent understanding, genuine concern to reestablish lines of communication. It means such open-eyed trust and love as will open the way to the return of law, order and goodwill in our cities and towns and villages.

And it means waking up to real danger on the part of those who can not see why they should be concerned because violence or bigotry --- anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Protestantism --- has not erupted where they live. Apparently people in Newark were not concerned when riots erupted in Watts. Detroit was not much alarmed when others marched in Selma. Chicago did not feel especially involved as police fought mob violence in Cleveland.

Instead of shrugging shoulders and saying, “It won’t happen here,” and then going about our daily chores, it would do well to awake from our complacency and give thanks for the opportunity to do those positive things that may build good will.

For many of us, a good place to begin is in our homes. What do we seek for ourselves and our families? What do we expect to be as families in a community? What opportunities do we want, and what opportunities will we share? What attitudes do we express, and by what language do we impress our children? How can we use this Brotherhood Week to bring alive the seven theological virtues of justice, prudence, temperance, fortitude, faith, hope and love?

Among people of the religious faiths encompassed in the National Conference of Christians and Jews, one belief is central, and common to all --- belief in the Fatherhood of God as Supreme Goodness. The world that is profoundly influenced by this faith is different from the world that is largely influenced by communist dogma. In the Communist world, brotherhood is found only in adherence to the party line. It is for conforming proletarians --- not for anyone else. Others may be liquidated without mercy or any twinge of remorse. In the religious community, belief in the Fatherhood of God leads logically and realistically, to the Brotherhood of Man --- all mankind --- under God’s fatherhood. That’s where we start; that’s where we continue.

It is a man named Julius Schreiber who has said, “Man has within him the talent and the power to remodel the earth. He can perform miracles -- he has moved himself forward and upward from the caves to the stars, from splitting rocks to smashing atoms, from beating message drums to radio, radar and television. .... And these man-made miracles came from the hearts and heads and hands of Jew and Gentile, black and white, Protestant and Catholic, native and foreign-born.”

It was a Protestant, Congregational minister, Henry Smith Leiper, who wrote this imaginative and disturbing observation: “When,” he says, ‘we compress 3 billion of the earth’s people into a group of 1000 persons living in a single town, here the contrasts become vivid and a little frightening. 60 persons of that 1000 would represent the population of the USA; all others would be represented by the 940. The 60 Americans would have one-half the total income of the entire town; the 940 the other half. 36 of the 60 Americans would be church members, and 24 would not. In the whole town, 300 would be Christian, 700 would not. At least 80 would be believing communists, and 370 would be under the domination of communists.’

“303 people in this town of 1000 would be white, 697 would be non-white. The 60 Americans would have a life expectancy of 70 years; all of the other 940 would average under 40 years of expected life. The Americans would have 15 1/2 times as much per person as all the rest. They would produce 16% of the town’s total food supply, eat up all but 1 1/2 % of that total supply, and keep most of that for their future use in expensive storage equipment. The 940 others would always be hungry and not quite know when, or it, they would have enough to eat. The 60 Americans would have 72% more food than their optimum daily requirements. More than 1/2 would never have heard of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but very soon more than 1/2 will be hearing of Karl Marx.”

It is the Catholic bishop of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Bishop William E. Cousins, who appeals to clergy and lay Catholics of his area to examine their conscience as to personal belief and attitudes in the fields of racial relations and civil rights; to be Christian in clearing away prejudice and misunderstanding in home, at work, at school, among neighbors; to recognize the tremendous complexity in controversial, emotion-generating problems; to dedicate themselves to seeking valid answers for their guidance. He assured all others that his church is interested, willing and anxious, to cooperate with all members of the community in promoting God’s kingdom and the essential dignity of all men; interested in the growth of a city where justice, in all fields, and honest regard for the rights of all our neighbors will be the foundations for a lasting civil peace.

It is Dan McEvoy, a director of the Georgia Region of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, who makes the startling statement: “Brotherhood Week bugs me!” That’s what he said: “Brotherhood Week bugs me!” He admits it sound strange coming from him. He gets his paycheck from the organization that has promoted Brotherhood Week for 35 years since 1933. He works hard to get governors and mayors to proclaim it; urges newspapers to editorialize; radio and television stations to publicize; churches, schools, civic clubs, PTAs, Chambers of Commerce and Labor Unions to dramatize.

But Brotherhood Week still bugs him. He loves its ideal -- human dignity, liberty, justice, freedom, democracy -- great concepts which give life meaning. It is not these things that Brotherhood Week stands for that depresses him. He is concerned for something else --- the absurdities of Brotherhood week: things like the vast chasm between what is and what ought to be; the terrible gulf between where we are and where we should be; the contradiction between our announced intentions and the reality of our continuing injustices to so many of our fellow human beings; the very thought that, after so many years we still think we have to have a special time to emphasize the basics of our life together.

Here we are, two centuries after Jefferson’s ringing declaration that “all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,” and at least one out of every ten Americans has never for a single day enjoyed promised equality. Here we are nearly two hundred years removed from Washington’s letter to the Touro Synagogue at Newport assuring them that “Happily the government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction; to persecution no assistance.” Yet who of us has met an adult Jew who has not at some time in his life suffered taunts and indignities about his religion from the non-Jewish majority in America. Here we are, still finding it necessary to observe Brotherhood Week on a national scale, because of the obvious appalling need for it!

Of course, McEvoy admits, there’s a bright note, for much progress has been made. Whether we cared for his political stance or not, the election of John F. Kennedy marks a reversal of the lesson that one’s church affiliation alone may keep him out of the highest office of the land. The passage of some civil rights legislation puts a stamp of approval on our Constitutional proclamations. The emergence of inter-faith dialogue opens a new freedom of communication between people of differing religious traditions. The Vatican Council’s denunciation of the age-old charges of Deicide against Jews, and similar pronouncements by some Protestants as well, are relief from an ancient wrong. Decisions of church groups to be an open church in an open society are heartening.

But, (says McEvoy) children have still been beaten for the crime of trying to attend a school where courts have assigned them, even with the police looking on. Bombs still shatter the windows and endanger the lives of black Americans who have moved into non-black neighborhoods in pursuit of decent housing for their families. Jobs on the supervisory level and in executive suites are still denied on the basis of religion and race. The economic gap between while Americans and black Americans continue to widen despite the new legal posture of the nation. Obscene epithets of “nigger,” “greaser,” “whitey,” “kike,” and the like still fall from the lips of those whose presence in church pews should have issued differently. Gentle prejudices still show up in pious tones: “We all love Mary; she’s worked for us for 15 years you know” -- but understand, the church is not to get involved in any of the efforts to change the structure of society in such a way as to grant basic justice to these friends and loved ones.

Don McEvoy finally admits: “It isn’t Brotherhood Week that bugs me, really. It’s the misuse of it, the misunderstanding of it, the continuing need for it.”

Jesus did not oppose the Law, but he warned those who adhered to its minutiae that they must not forsake the weightier matters of love and justice, as they observed the law. Surely God accepts man in his songs and ceremonies, his prayers and his praises. But God’s prophets railed against those who did so without any resulting change and action and social transformation. Is it, then, too much to hope for --- and strive for --- and pray for --- that day of grace when a new age shall dawn with no need for Brotherhood Week.

When “justice shall flow down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” [Amos 5: 24].

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, February 18, 1968.