The Churches v. Jim Crow

With no ifs, ands or buts, the Federal Council of Churches last week flatly denounced racial segregation as "unnecessary and undesirable and a violation of the gospel of love and human brotherhood.."

The Federal Council, in its "Statement on Human Rights," went on record as opposing Jim Crow in any form--and called for equal, nonsegregated participation of all races in all phases of the "social and public life of the community," including housing, education, recreation, transportation and businesses serving the public "such as stores, theaters, hotels and restaurants."

During a busy three-day biennial convention in Cincinnati, the Federal Council's 269 delegates also:

P: Received into membership two new church groups--the Religious Society of Friends of Philadelphia & Vicinity (membership: 4,865), and the Rumanian Orthodox Church in America (membership: 21,000). This raises to 27 the Council's roster of member church groups.

P: Elected as new Council president white-haired Bishop John Samuel Stamm, 70, of the Evangelical United Brethren. Son of a lay preacher, jovial, ham-handed John Stamm grew up on a Kansas farm with an early hankering to be a soldier in the Spanish-American War (he was "just too young for the job"). As good an administrator as he is a preacher, President-elect Stamm has served as vice president of the Federal Council for the past two years, under the presidency of Layman Charles P. Taft. He doubts that his administration will "set the world on fire." Said he: "One of the dangers of all religious and social movements is the urgency of the perfectionists--the men who want to reach their goal immediately . . . The task facing the churches can only be accomplished if the thought, prayer and service of the churches are pooled in a large way . . . The most important thing is not church union but Christian unity."

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