An appeal to the Protestant World Missionary Congress which is now meeting in Budapest that the Congress raise its voice against anti-Jewish persecutions and “the curse of anti-Semitism” was sent by members of the Good Will Committee of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America.
In a cable addressed to Dr. John R. Mott, General Secretary of the International Young Men’s Christian Association, who is Chairman of the Budapest Congress, Dr. Alfred Williams Anthony, Chairman of the Committee on Good Will Between Jews and Christians, Dr. Sidney L. Gulick, Secretary of the Commission on International Justice and Goodwill, and Dr. John W. Herring, stated:
“In line with our recent conference we sincerely hope you will recommend that the Congress issue a call to Christians everywhere to purge the world of the curse of anti-Semitism and to accord to the Jews that highly respected place in the brotherhood of peoples which they richly deserve on the basis of their sacred literature and history, and which is their inalienable right. We further hope that the Congress will express disapproval of any enterprise that utilizes or implies patronage, majority pressure, or disrespect for a brother’s faith.”
Dr. Anthony, when interviewed yesterday by the representative of the “Jewish Daily Bulletin”, commented on the cable and also on the objection raised by the Central Conference of American Rabbis to the renewal of proselytizing activities of Protestant missionaries which are to be a subject of discussion at the Budapest and Warsaw Congresses.
Dr. Anthony stated that the Federal Council as such nor any of its Commissions are represented at the Congresses.
“The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America is a central, national organization, composed of twenty-nine different Christian communions, or denominations,” Dr. Anthony stated. “No two of its constituent bodies are exactly alike. Within the fellowship of churches connected with these different bodies are Christians of every stripe and characteristic. Modernists and Fundamentalists, Conservatives and Liberals, and practically every variety of men who call themselves Christian, including even members of the now disintegrating organization which, spreading from the South a short time ago, threatened to disrupt communities on the false issues of ‘100% Americanism’, are represented in some of these churches, North, South, East and West.
“Because of its diverse membership, the Federal Council cannot be expected to give a public utterance which will be agreed to by all its constituent bodies, although they have certain great fundamental characteristics and principles in common.
“I think, however, every denomination of the Federal Council is strenuously opposed to anti-Semitism, and to the spirit which keeps it alive, and to the acts of violence through which it has sometimes found expression.
“The message which has been sent to Budapest, I believe, carries the conviction of a vast majority of the non-Jews of America.
“Neither the Federal Council, nor any of its commissions, nor committees are represented in these conferences at Budapest and Warsaw, although some of the denominations in the Federal Council are there represented.
“The agreement quoted, that ‘these committees have no proselytizing purpose,’ is true. But these committees, one Jewish and the other Christian, have no power by their utterances to bind, either all Jews, or all Christians,” he declared.
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