Religious prejudice is more difficult to overcome than racial prejudice and interreligious cooperation is more difficult to achieve than interracial harmony according to the sixteenth annual report of the Commission on Religious Organizations of the National Conference of Christians and Jews released today.
Surveying the obstacles in the path of interreligious cooperation, the report points to “perennial factors” as well as “special aspects of the current scene” which create group prejudice and obstruct good will. Among the perennial factors, it blames “old and deep rooted emotional attitudes” stemming from the history of religious conflict which are passed down “from generation to generation.” It also lists among the enduring difficulties the act that “the clergyman more frequently than the layman finds it difficult to accept the realities of our pluralistic culture.”
Barriers to harmony among American groups may also emerge as by-products of current international disputes, the report says. As an instance the statement offers the Arab-Israel conflict noting “Because the anti-Zionist campaign is not infrequently filled with anti-Semitic propaganda we have sometimes witnessed the unhappy wedding of a rightly concerned Christian conscience with unfair attacks upon another religious group.” The picture is not entirely negative, however, and of a positive nature the reports lists number of factors promoting interreligious understanding and good will.
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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.
