Dr. Karpf Attacks Racial Discrimination at University of California Conference

Racial and religious discrimination was attacked as inconsistent with democracy and the highest religious values in an address by Dr. M. J. Karpf, executive director of the Federation of Jewish Welfare Organizations of Los Angeles, delivered here before a distinguished audience of professors, representatives of various religious denominations, university students and community leaders.

Dr. Karpf spoke at the Institute on Religion and Contemporary Civilization sponsored by the University of California and the University Religious Conference. Thoughtful students, he declared, find it impossible to reconcile the emphasis by all religions on the sanctity of man with their failure to speak out against persecution and discrimination of religious and cultural minorities in the United States and elsewhere. “In their emphasis on human values, religion and democracy have the same goal,” he said “and religion should, therefore, associate itself with democracy in encouraging differences in culture, including religious beliefs, practices, and observances.” He insisted that even as it is the obligation of the majority in a democracy to protect the minority, so must the religious majority in a community protect the religious minority.

Dr. Karpf criticized all religious leaders and all denominations for condoning activities and programs designed to create strife, competition and prejudice against other religious and racial groups. He also pointed out that thoughtful young people find it impossible to reconcile the constructive role of religion with its failure to identify itself with the struggle of democratic forces throughout the world against tyranny under Mussolini in Italy, in France under Petain, and in Germany.

Young people of all denominations are losing faith in religion as an effective ethical guide, according to Dr. Karpf, and their confidence can be restored only ” by a revitalized religion which will speak out boldly and courageously on all matters affecting the relations between capital and labor, between religious and racial groups and international relations. Only when religion will fight injustice, discrimination,intolerance and tyranny wherever and whenever they manifest themselves, will it make its vital contribution to the social order.”