A Baptist minister said today that neither he nor his fellow Baptist clergyman in Little Rock could participate in a city-wide prayer service for a “ministry of reconciliation” in the school integration crisis because those service were sponsored by Jews, Roman Catholics and Protestants of “the modernistic persuasion.”
The Rev. M. L. Moser, Sr., pastor at the Central Baptist Church here for 26 years field a 15-minute service, in which 23 other Baptist ministers participated on Friday nigh at which prayers were offered that the nine Negro pupils of Central High School would withdraw and go back to the all-Negro high school. Eighty-five of Little Rock’s 200 churches held concurrent prayer services Saturday morning.
Rev. Moser. opening the Friday night services attended by 600 segregationists of serious denominations, said that Baptists were required to boycott the Saturday service because of their sponsorship, which included support by Jews “who do not believe in the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
The entire Jewish religious leadership of the nation, including 2,500 rabbis and 4,000 congregations, had been urged by the Synagogue Council of America to join with their Christian neighbors yesterday in a special Sabbath of prayers supporting “reconciliation” prayer meetings in Little Rock.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
