1953
der
Let Us Show What We Believe
In the hurry and scurry of preparing for Christmas—buying gifts, selecting a tree, perhaps planning a vacation—we sometimes become so absorbed in the activities of the holiday season that we give little thought to its real significance.
This is, after all, a solemn time—a time for rededication to God, to church, to basic moral and spiritual concepts.
Whatever our particular faith may be this is the season to reaffirm it—and to realize our eternal need of it. For in this tense and uncertain year of 1953 we need the support of religion more than we have ever needed it before.
Why? Because we are in conflict in one corner of the world with a power that flatly denies God and the validity of His teachings. The Communist philosophy holds the State to be superior to everything else, including God. And to such a sacrilege we of the free world can never subscribe. For we have built our way of living, our way of thinking, our very liberty, on God's laws. What is the American Constitution itself but a new statement of the dignity of man as sanctified in the Bible?
Thus, on the foreign scene, we are this Christmas at death grips with a force that would, if it could, wipe out our most sacred religious beliefs. ALL OF US . . . Protestants, Catholics, Jews . . . face the threat TOGETHER!
And on the domestic scene we find ourselves beset by other forces of moral disruption—gangsters, corrupt officials, even narcotic poisoners of our children.
To fight off these enemies of decency at home and abroad we need to call on our utmost moral strength, our firmest spiritual convictions. And where can we find such strength? There is only one enduring source:
IN OUR CHURCHES.
No matter what faith we profess, the Pulpit stands as an inexhaustible fount of spiritual power. In the scriptures and sermons of our clergy we can find the answers to all the vilifications of God that flow from Communist mouths.
This can and should be a holiday season in the truest sense of the words—a holy day season.
Let us make it that. Let us affirm its real meaning by going to the church of our preference—not once, not only on Christmas itself, but again and again. To fill our houses of worship to overflowing, to claim our loyalty to the teachings of God—what greater defiance could we hurl at those who scorn and assail those teachings?
Crowded churches would be a true measure of Communism's failure. They would, moreover, be the strongest attestation to prove that American decency has not given way to the onslaughts of domestic evil.
Let us turn to our houses of worship—and let us continue to fill them as long as we believe in man's fight for freedom, integrity and decency.