Baptist Surprises with Panegyric Instead of Anti-semitic Sermon

A local anti-Semitic scare blew up Sunday evening right in the faces of a determined group of protectors of Jewry’s honor.

An investigator from the McCormack-Dickstein Congressional Committee, a representative from the New York Times advertising department, reporters from the Democratic Day, the Republican Morning Journal and the Socialist Forward, not to mention your own correspondent, attended services at the First Baptist Church, Broadway and Seventy-ninth street. So, too, did a representative gathering of local Jews.

All were present to hear the Reverend W. H. Rogers sermonize on the subject: “The Jew, the Jonah of the World. Why Is He in New York? Why Can’t We Get Rid of Him?”

HAD ADVERTISED SERMON

Right in the center of one of the best Jewish residential sections in New York, a minister was talking on how to “get rid of the Jews.” Moreover, he had advertised his sermon in the religious columns of the New York Times.

Earlier in the day the Jewish Daily Bulletin was harried with telephone calls by indignant readers telling the editor what he already knew. And judging from the turnout, other newspapers had similarly been called.

With such a build-up, the sermon proved a distinct anti-climax in which a Baptist minister merely related the disobedience of the Jews that caused Jehovah to chastise them with the suffering they have endured through the centuries. An audience with ears cocked for anti-Semitic utterances heard a Baptist minister describe Jews as everlasting people, a people with a glorious future.

REACTION IN LOBBY

Judging from the reaction of his parishioners, gleaned in the lobby after the sermon, the net impression was that the Reverend Doc-