Church & State

Regardless of whether there is still a great ''church vote" in the U. S. today, churchmen throughout the land like to think of themselves as potent opinion-makers in any election year. Although the 1936 Presidential campaign officially got under way only last week, U. S. men of God were already assuming their roles in it. Editorialized The Christian Evangelist, organ of the Disciples of Christ: "We do not recall any other recent Presidential contest in which the Ins and the Outs tried so vigorously to capture for their respective parties the sanctions and blessings of organized religion."

President Roosevelt put in an early bid for pious votes through the Good Neighbor League of Dr. Stanley High, who issued 60,000 copies of The Social Ideals of the Churches and the Social Program of the Government (TIME, June 1). The Rev. Dr. Walter Wofford Tucker Duncan of Cleveland's Lakewood Methodist Episcopal Church, promptly pooh-poohed Dr. High as a New Deal hireling. Church Management, pastors' trade journal, criticized the Good Neighbor League for its silence regarding the New Deal's liquor, disarmament and college military training policies. The League moved its headquarters from Washington to Manhattan, where it began publicizing its activities over the names of not one but three laymen of three faiths.

Its Protestant is Dr. High. Its Jew is Mrs. Estelle Sternberger, dynamic director of World Peaceways. Its Catholic is that voluble Louisville, Ky. varnish maker, Col. Patrick Henry Callahan. As their first joint achievement last week, Good Neighbors High, Sternberger and Callahan produced an eminent anticlimax by announcing that the Good Neighbor League is for President Roosevelt.

Rapped the Methodist Christian Advocate: "Common decency should suggest that they let the churches alone."

Meanwhile the Republicans had not been idle. Last month The Lord's Day Alliance, in semi-annual meeting in Manhattan, plumped for Presidential Nominee Landon because he had declined to deliver a political speech on Sunday; for Vice Presidential Nominee Knox because he declared he would not publish his Chicago Daily News on the Sabbath. But the National Peace Conference, a coalition of 34 peace bodies, voiced its "intense chagrin" at the weak foreign affairs planks in the Republican platform.

As its Bulletin No. 10 the Republican National Committee released excerpts from a speech made last spring by William Edgar Hull, onetime (1923-33) Illinois Congressman, who accused President Roosevelt of making ready to tax "the billions of dollars in church property in the U. S." Said G. O. Partisan Hull: "I do not say that Mr. Roosevelt wants to tax the churches. But his spending policies make it impossible for him to escape this action long." To this the Commonweal, liberal Catholic weekly, replied: "Preposterous piffle."

So far as piety-in-politics was concerned, last week left Governor Landon well in the lead over President Roosevelt. Never adept at bringing the name of God resoundingly into his speeches, Episcopalian Roosevelt has all but given up mentioning his Creator. In his acceptance speech last week Methodist Landon showed himself in the evangelical tradition of Republicans Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, all expert at invoking God from the rostrum. Began Nominee Landon: "In accepting this leadership I pray for Divine guidance to make me worthy. . . ." Concluded he: "God grant us, one and all, the strength and the wisdom to do our part. . . ."

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