Bigotry Was a Voided in Presidential Campaign, Leaders Establish

Six religious and lay leaders of the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish faiths, who last July urged rejection of political arguments based on religious or racial prejudice, today said public opinion was ” totally opposed to bigotry ” during the recent Presidential campaign.

They said the major candidates ” scrupulously avoided appealing to the intolerance of the prejudiced ” and urged that “considerable public education ” be used to avoid unjustified charges of bigotry and misguided appeals to particular groups in future campaigns.

Issuing this statement were the Right Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill, president of the National Council of Churches of Christ; the Most Rev. Edwin V. O’Hara, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City; Rabbi Simon G. Kramer, president of the Synagogue Council of America; Dr. George N. Shuster, president of Hunter College and a prominent Catholic layman; Dr. Arthur S. Flemming, vice president of the National Council of Churches of Christ, and Jacob Blaustein, president of the American Jewish Committee.