Religion: Flag Fuss

In the quiet Jersey hamlet of West Milford last week, a small-town rumpus took on a national significance. The First Presbyterian Church (membership: 176) decided that the symbol of the church takes precedence over the symbol of the state. Despite the vigorous objections of Police Chief Somers Stites, the Presbyterians kept the Christian flag to the pastor’s right and the Stars & Stripes to his left in their little white clapboard church.

Chief Stites, like many another American male, keeps his religion in his womenfolks’ name. His wife, daughter and sister are members of First Church; he is not. When he learned last spring that the church emblem had the place of honor, he swung into action and insisted that the two flags be reversed. Pastor Lewis Gaston Leary refused to make the change. So Chief Stites made it himself. Dr. Leary changed the flags right back. Last week the governing body of his congregation backed his stand that the “most sacred symbol of our religion should be second to nothing.” Said Dr. Leary, whose son is in uniform and whose sermons have previously been criticized for making “the eagle scream too much”: “I don’t think I shall be misunderstood when I say that is one of the freedoms for which we are fighting.”