The summer has ended, and autumn and harvest time are upon us. But there is no end to the troubles that are plaguing our national life. Anyone who thought the confrontation of the radical left with the Chicago police signaled the last outbreak and a return to normalcy was wrong. Since then the smoldering student feud at Columbia erupted again. New York City schools were kept from opening by a teachers’ strike. Cardinal O’Boyle of Washington cracked the knuckles of priests whose ideas of liberty of conscience conflicted with the Pope’s encyclical on birth control. The Senate voted a gun-control bill that didn’t control guns. And the aspirants for the presidency stalked up and down the land trying to whip up enthusiasm among apathetic citizens whose minds, for the most part, were already made up.
The bright spot was the wealth of news for the journalists. Their big problem was choosing what stories they should highlight. Among newsworthy items to which the press gave little attention was Billy Graham’s Pittsburgh campaign and his nationwide telecast of earlier San Antonio meetings. Yet the thousands of decisions registered at the ball park and in letters that flowed from every state in the union may have been the biggest news of all.
We suggest that readers take a hard look at the last editorial, “The Christian and the World.”
While we pray for peace, we need moral clarity about this war.
Church movements need magnetic leaders. But the best leaders need more than charm.
After this week’s UMC votes on LGBTQ issues, African Methodists should join American conservatives in the new Global Methodist denomination.
