Religion: As to War

In the first eight months of World War 11 most U. S. churchmen were pacifist, isolationist. Likewise isolationist were most other U. S. citizens. But since May 10, remarkable changes have come over plain U. S. isolationists: With German Blitzkrieg in the Low Countries, they veered from isolation almost as fast as German columns advanced.

Have U. S. churchmen also changed their minds about U. S. neutrality? Queried last week by TIME, many a U. S.

churchman revealed that indeed they have.

Two isolationist groups admitted no official change: Lutherans, Catholics. German traditions played some part in Lu theran neutrality; but Lutherans of Scandinavian and Netherlands origin were no less stanchly isolationist.

Their fingers crossed, Catholics (with a strong anti-British, Irish membership) continued to pray for peace. But there seemed to some to be qualification in the statement by New Orleans’ Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel that the U. S.

must maintain neutrality “by every honor able means.”

A small minority of U. S. religious pacifists still stuck by their plowshares. Conspicuous among them, as in World War 1, was John Nevin Sayre, dynamic chairman of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Some what fatalistically he declared: “I am not one of those who think that all is lost yet.”

Peppery Isolationist Charles Clayton Morison, editor of Christian Century, means to carry on, too. “This is not our war,” said he, “it is not a war for saving civilization, but is itself the destruction of civilization.” Quakers remained men of peace at any price. Some Mennonites perhaps did not yet know a war was going on: they spurn newspapers, magazines, radios.

But most clergymen who have been preaching pacifism and U. S. neutrality now favor all help to the Allies short of war. Typical are two Chicago churchmen: Methodist Bishop Ernest Lynn Waldorf and Dr. Louis Leopold Mann, influential rabbi of Sinai Temple. They believed stanchly in the Johnson Act. thought U. S. defense ample. But last week they strongly urged all credit to the Allies, all speed in building U. S. defense.

The Federal Council of Churches met last week in Manhattan to draft a statement on the war. Badly split on isolation policy, it found a weak compromise: to set aside June 2 as a day of peace prayers. ∧ In Chicago, Dr. Harold Washington Ruopp (non denominational) decided not to talk on war before his big congregation in Orchestra Hall (home of Chicago Symphony) last week. Each new headline, declared he, changes his mind. In Jefferson City, Mo., the Rev. A. B. Jackson (Presbyterian) admitted: “I realize the Allies are fighting our fight for us. But we ought not to enter the European war.”

— In Portland, Ore., the Rev. Henry Guy Goodsell (Methodist): “We can’t be neutral. … I think we should preserve the status quo . . . I’m not the simon-pure pacifist I used to be.”

Church Militant. Many & many a churchman favored immediate intervention on the Allied side. ∧ Before 600 delegates from his 266 parishes New York’s Episcopal Bishop Manning declared at the Synod House of Manhattan’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine last week: “We are facing the most stupendous crisis in the last 2,000 years. … In such a situation, can any Christian or any American be neutral?” — In Albany, N. Y., Bishop George Ashton Oldham (Episcopal) went Bishop Manning one better. The word “neutrality,” said he, is “an abhorrent thing,” and “isolation” is “a dangerous anachronism.” ∧ Proclaimed Dr. Colder Lawrence (Methodist) of Tulsa, Okla.: “I hold with Thomas Mann that ‘Christianity and Democracy deal with the same human stuff’ … I believe we should go in the war.” His fellow Tulsan, the Rev. Edward Henry Eckel Jr. (Episcopal) quoted Dean Inge: “It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism when the wolf is of a different opinion.” ∧ San Francisco clergymen held their fire until after Mother’s Day, then let fly a volley. “If we don’t fight now, we’ll have to fight alone,” prophesied Congregationalist Dr. Jason Noble Pierce, chaplain in World War 1. Publicity wise Methodist Julian C. McPheeters told his big, enthusiastic congregation: “I regard their [the pacifists’] position as both unscriptural and dangerous to the future safety of America. . . .” Well-beloved, 72-year-old Episcopal Bishop Edward Lambe Parsons declared:

“The whole isolationist policy is stupid, futile and unchristian.”

Confused isolationists, militant interventionists, even some pacifists all found agreement on one point: that the U. S. should speedily prepare its defenses. Even World Peaceways joined the cry. Proclaimed World Peaceways’ Spokesman J. Max Weis: “This is no time to sit around and pray. God gave us our faculties and for God’s sake, get busy and use them!”

*Exceptional were the 35 Protestant leaders, mostly clergymen, who last January signed a frankly pro-Ally manifesto. Denounced by many another U. S. clergyman, they were accused of “making it easier to travel the tragic road of 1914-17″—a reference to bellicose sermons of World War I.