Canned Sermons Panned

Punchinello LaGuardia led with his chin again last week, this time got it punched by various assorted clergymen. As the country's Civilian Defense Director, New York City's Mayor asked all pastors, priests and rabbis to preach on religious freedom and democracy next Sunday, enclosed a pretty fair 1,500-word "outline" of the sort of sermon he hoped for. In a nation where Church and State are constitutionally separate, the mere suggestion made numerous ministers mad. Maddest was Editor Charles Clayton Morrison of the arch-isolationist Christian Century.

"This is an unspeakable insult to the clergy of the U.S.," thundered Dr. Morrison. "Who would have imagined that an agency of the American Government would go so far as to tell preachers what to preach . . . [and] guarantee the right kind of preaching by presenting each pastor with a canned sermon and a text of Holy Scripture printed on the label.

Totalitarianism is already here. . . . Hitler and Goebbels never went further." Editor Morrison well knew this last statement was not true. The same day the LaGuardia request became public, word leaked out of Germany that the Gestapo had jailed the dean of Berlin's Roman Catholic cathedral for "offering prayers for Jews." By way of contrast, the Mayor pointed out that nobody had to use his sermon, and sundry clergymen rallied to his support.

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