A number of outstanding Christian leaders joined today in signing a statement asking American withdrawal from the Berlin Olympic games as a matter of fair play.
The statement was signed in request to a telegraphic request sent out over the signatures of Henry A. Atkinson, S. Parkes Cadman, Henry Smith Loiper, Fred B. Smith and Michael Williams.
“The impression has been created,” the statement said, “that only Jews are interested in the question of American refusal to participate in the Olympic games under Nazi auspices. We who
are not Jews desire to make it as clear as possible that we do not regard this as a Jewish question. It is an American question. It involves the principle of fair-play in sports.
“We know that in Nazi Germany, which has by decree robbed all “non-Aryans”, Jewish or Christian, of citizenship rights, there can be no fair-play in the arrangement of the Olympics.
“We who exercise our right as American citizens in the interest of clean and honorable sport oppose American participation and hope that it will be clear to the German people that the Nazi treatment of ‘non-Aryans’ is repugnant to the conscience of mankind.”
Among the signers of the statement were: Carrie Chapman Catt; John H. Finley; Harry Emerson Fosdick, Pastor, Riverside Church; James W. Gerard, former Ambassador to Germany; William Green, president of the A.F. of L.; John Haynes Holmes of the Community Church; Paul Hutchinson, editor, “Christian Century”; Mayor F. H. LaGuardia; Charles S. MacFarland, secretary emeritus, Federal Council of Churches; Reinhold Niebuhr, Professor of Christian Ethics, Union Theological Seminary; Amos Pinchot; Wm. J. Schief-felin, chairman, Citizens’ Union; Jack Shea, former Olympic champion; George Shuster, managing editor, “Commonweal”; and Dr. Mary E. Woolley.
A resolution adopted by the New York University chapter of the American Association of University Professors against American participation in the Berlin Olympics was made public today by Carl Raushenbush, economics professor and chairman of the chapter.
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