Baptist Objections

There are more Baptists--10,000,000, black & white--in the U. S. than there are Protestants of any other persuasion, and they do not like the Roman Catholic Church. Last week Baptists were the quickest and loudest of protesters against President Roosevelt's Christmas Eve appointment of Myron C. Taylor as ambassador to visit the Pope. Technically Mr. Taylor is not Ambassador to the Vatican, for Congress has not created any such post. This particularly stirred the Baptists.

The Rev. Louie D. Newton, pastor of Atlanta's big Druid Hills Baptist Church, publicly addressed six questions to Mr. Roosevelt, suggesting that the President was trying to put something over on Congress, the Constitution, the people. In Washington, representatives of Northern, Southern and Negro Baptists drafted a letter to the White House (text not released), which they said praised Mr. Roosevelt's peace efforts but deplored the appointment of Mr. Taylor. Last week Christian Century, non-sectarian but Baptist in sympathy, bluntly editorialized:

"To strip away all camouflage, the President has, in reality, established diplomatic relations with the Vatican without legal authority. He has done so, we believe, not as a peace move but as a political move. . . . The American majority does not want to see relations established between this Government and any religious body, and it will hold Mr. Roosevelt responsible for having tried to do this under the nearly sacrosanct cover of a campaign for peace. . . . In every respect . . . the dispatch of Mr. Taylor to the Vatican is of ill omen to the neutrality and religious freedom of the U. S."

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