Religion: Interfaith Cooperation

Cigars were passed, to the surprise of many a Protestant leader present. One of them smiled, said the gesture was like “serving ham to a Catholic on Friday.” Catholics had provided both meal and cigars, so everybody laughed and went right on talking shop—Roman Catholic to Methodist, Jew to Episcopalian, Lutheran to Congregationalist.

Thus ended a luncheon in Peoria last week that made American church history. For the first time ever, a non-Catholic delegation of religious leaders was officially entertained and received at a national Catholic conference. The occasion was the 20th annual convention of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference (TIME, Oct. 20, 1941).

The N.C.R.L.C. president, Bishop Aloisius J. Muench of Fargo, N.D., welcomed the guests of other faiths. “Cooperation of all is required,” he said, to strengthen rural life. At convention’s end the conference went still further along the road of cooperation, elected a Protestant—Dr. Oliver Edwin Baker, professor of economic geography at the University of Maryland—to its board of directors.