Unique Religious Good-will Meeting Backed by Students at University of Michigan

Five hundred men and women, students and townspeople, representing nearly every religious creed at the University of Michigan, Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant, met at a banquet table in the Michigan Union this evening, to pledge cooperation and express mutual good will. The two-hour meeting, sponsored and supported by every prominent student organization on the campus, sectarian or secular, including the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation, was the first of its kind ever held at a major American university.

Leaders of the University’s and city’s civic, educational and religious activities met with the outstanding representatives of the Michigan student body. Regent James O. Murfin, of Detroit, delivered the principal address of the evening, on behalf of the people of the State. A message of good-will was extended by Dr. Alexander P. Ruthven, recently inaugurated president of the University. Mayor Edward W. Staebler spoke for the towns-people.

Rabbi Adolph H. Fink, director of the Hillel Foundation, Father Allen J. Babcock, and Reverend Allison Ray Heaps, spoke for the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant groups. Graduates of the University were represented by T. Hawley Tapping, general secretary of the Alumni Association, who acted as toastmaster.

Under the combined auspices of the Hillel Foundation and the Episcopalian student guild, Dr. Frank Gavin, one of the outstanding intellectual figures in the Episcopalian clergy, and professor of ecclesiastical history at the Theological Seminary in New York City, was brought to Ann Arbor for an open lecture on “The Jewish Background of Christianity.” Dr. Gavin also addressed one of the Foundation’s weekly religious services.