Words & Works

P: The Retail Merchants Bureau of Fulton and South Fulton, Ky. voted to meet for half an hour every Monday morning with a minister in attendance to pray for better business.

P: Meeting 25,000 strong in St. Louis for their annual convention, the Southern Baptists gave enthusiastic support to the Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in U.S. schools. The "underprivileged and disinherited masses" are moving toward a "revised status," said Texas' Dr. Carl E. Bates, one of the convention leaders. "The last, the lost and the least of this earth are now on the march . . ."

P: TheU.S. is well on the way to a nervous breakdown, declared the Rev. Edward Aloysius Conway, S.J., associate editor of the Jesuit weekly America, at the commencement exercises of the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul. "The mind of the nation is becoming troubled, and its nerves are already frayed . . . How else explain the rising mistrust of each other, the roaring bitterness, the ranging of Americans against Americans, the scapegoat hunts, the assault on freedom of opinion, the intolerance of opposition, the increase in calumny, demagoguery, bigotry and smear? I am afraid it is because fear and frustration abound: fear of the unseen death-laden struggle in which we are locked, and frustration at our inability to get directly at it."

P: Launching a fund to preserve historic churches in Britain, Prime Minister Churchill dispatched Four-Minute Miler Roger Bannister and three other runners to dash through London's traffic in their track suits delivering checks to different churches.

P: A hymn written for the forthcoming Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Evanston, Ill. was judged best of nearly 500 submitted and was sung for the first time in New York City. Its author: Dr. Georgia Harkness, professor of applied theology at the Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, Calif. First stanza (to the tune of Ancient of Days):

Hope of the world, Thou Christ of great

compassion,

Speak to our fearful hearts by conflict

rent.

Save us, Thy people, from consuming

passion,

Who by our own false hopes and aims

are spent.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.