September 13, 1963
CANADIAN JEWISH REVIEW
107
gether Across religious lines to make our community, our nation, and our world a better, more peaceful place.
Joint social action is the best key to inter-faith relations. It is the urgent challenge to religious institutions who are called upon to use their immense prestige in America for the enhancement of human life and the confrontation of the real problems of our age.
The over-riding issue of our time, peace, is one which must profoundly challenge the people whose prophets first gave the world the dream of universal peace. Yet, it would be quixotic to pretend that Jews in our time serve as a "light unto the nations" in transmuting Isaiah's Peace Vision into reality in this haunted age.
Individual Jews, such as Norman Cousins, have served as tireless Paul Reveres, seeking to rouse the conscience of the American people to the awesome moral implications of a nuclear arms race. But Jewish organisations, like most other American groups of all faiths (except perhaps the Quakers) have apparently been numbed by the magnitude and complexity of the problems of securing an enduring peace in a nuclear age in a contest against a cunning and ruthless foe.
Whereas churchmen in England and elsewhere have succeeded in stimulating the public imagination into broad-ranging debate on peaceful alternatives, there has been a palpable failure of creative imagination and social vision on the part of America's religionists. Jewish organizations, for the most part, have contented themselves with tepid resolutions on disarmament. The spokesmen of religion
in America have not succeeded in presenting that leadership which can rise above political and military stratagems and speak to one mankind under God.
CREEDS IN COMPETITION
Leo Pfeffer has characterized the current stage of inter-religious relations in the United States as one of "creeds in competition." He. contends that religious bigotry is swiftly declining and that the faith groups in America, including Judaism, now feel sufficiently confident and secure to strive actively to shape American society in accordance with the values each cherishes.
The differing value systems of the various faiths contend in the market place of ideas, resulting inevitably in religious conflict and tension on such deeply emotional issues as birth control, censorship, Sunday laws, religion in the schools, divorce, federal aid to parochial schools. In a religiously plural society, this is not only inevitable; it provides the yeast of progress.
The increasing maturity of American society requires that such religious conflicts take place in an atmosphere of mutual respect for difference. There is considerable evidence that this is happening. More and more, issues of immense controversy are being discussed openly and agreeably in inter-religious dialogues by men of good will of all faiths.
But the heartening fact is that on many vital social questions the church and synagogue can, and do, work together. Sophiticated workers in inter-faith relations regard joint efforts in behalf of
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civic and social causes to be the most efficacious kind of inter-faith program. Joining hands to combat juvenile delinquency, or to strengthen civil rights, or to eliminate slums, or to establish a mental health center, Jews and Christians find a large measure of shared concern.
The National Conference of Christians and Jews has moved from its original emphasis on "brotherhood" in general to a growing awareness that concrete social action the year around is both more effective and more lasting in its impact on the relations among the faiths.
America has given its Jewish community a golden opportunity. As one of "the three major faiths," Jewry is invited to project its ideals and articulate its values in the life of the general community.
Under the protection of separation of church and state, and the beneficence of religious pluralism, American Jewry, unlike any Jew-
ish community in history, has no need to defend its right to existence. In this free land, Jews are able to go beyond self-defense and anti.defamation into a positive affirmation of the noble ideals which animate the Jewish view of the good society.
Judaism has much to say about family relations, race relations, capital punishment, economic affairs, world hunger, and the plethora of social problems that shadow our time. America, hungering for moral leadership, sorely needs the best spiritual and moral guidance which each faith can offer.
If American Jews can cherish and deepen their ethical distinctiveness, and draw from an ancient tradition the courage to speak out and act on God's will as they interpret that will, then future generations of American Jewry will be messengers of God in building His Kingdom here on earth. And both Judaism and America will be enriched thereby.
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