Quaker Thought and Life Today
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Quaker Thought and Life Today VOLUME 13 JUNE 1, 1967 NUMBER 11 Part of the Phoenix crew. From left: Akie Reynolds, Phil Drath (seated), Earle Reynolds, Robert Eaton, Horace Champ_ney, Ivan Masser. (See page 295) !l!EI us ~a,;, faUh that right make> might, and in that faith let "l to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it. TttiRTY CENTS l -ABRAHAM LINCOLN $5.00 A 'YEAR 290 FRIENDS JOURNAL June 1, 1967 FRIENDS JOURNAL CJ'Iaoufllats {rom '7'urtfe J3aa QUAKER UNITED NATIONS P RO G RAM Please, No Back Talk to the Radar Beam HE index of frustration is high h ere because the day when T the United Nations will operate as it is supposed to in inter national political affairs looks so far away. The mood this spring has been as discouraged about the U.N. as it has about the weather. There has been little sign of either spring or peace. Sometimes the tall Secretariat Building suggests a control Published semimonthly, on the first and fifteenth of tower-as if it stood waiting to be used in a sort of new Brasilia each month, at 152-A North 15th Street Philadelphia Pa. 19102, by Friends Publishing Corporatfon (LO 3·7669): type airport. There is a great deal of traffic, but the tower is Vol. 13, No. 11, June 1, 1967 not functioning as a tower. Only its receiving installations are Editor and Manager working. A large staff of technicians, advisers, and policy· FRANCES WILLIAMS BROWIN Assistant Editors makers gathers data about flights and circulates it to informa EMU.Y L. CONLON RUTH A. MINER tion officers, passenger desks, and public address systems. The Contributing Editors WU.LIAM HUBBEN RICHARD R. WOOD terminal is busy. But practically nothing goes out from the Advertising Circulation tower to the aircraft, and if anything does-even an emergency MYRTLE M. WALLEN MARIELUISE HEACOCK alarm-the pilots ignore it. BOARD OF MANAGERS Partly this is because the field opened before the transmis 1965-1968 sion equipment was properly installed, and it never has been Winifred C. Beer Emerson Lamb Carol P. Brainerd Alfred Stefferud finished and put in order; partly it is because a tradition has Arthur M. Dewees Daniel D. Test, Jr. grown among the flight crews that no attention is paid to the Miriam E. Jones Mildred Binns Young 196&-1969 tower and that one relies solely on one's own instruments, one's Benjamin R. Burdsall Ada C. Rose own judgment, one's own will, and one's own good luck to get Laurence Jaeger Eileen B. Waring Walter Kahoe Gordon D. Whitcraft in and out of the field as best one can. Planes compete for John Kavanaugh Carl F. Wise 1967-1970 position and advantage like taxicabs in Rome. Small ones have Helen Buckler James R. Frorer to keep clear of large ones, which land and take off as they Mary Roberts Calhoun Francis Hortensttne Eleanor Stabler Clarke Walter H. Partymtller please, proclaiming over their radios their concern for safety Elizabeth Wells and regulations and their faith in reliance on the tower as the JOURNAL ASSOCIATES are those who add not less than five dollars to their subscriptions annually to only means for keeping traffic under control. As the number help meet the over-all cost of publication. Contrtbu· tlons are tax-exempt. of flights and the size of planes are both steadily increasing, SUBSCRIPTION RATES: United States possessions: everyone knows that sooner or later there is going to be a $5.00 a year, $2.75 for six months. Forelgn countries, Including Canada and Mexico: $6.00 a year. Single terrible crash. copies: thirty cents, unless otherwise noted. Sample copies sent on request. At one end of the field a whole group of smaller airline Second class postage paid at Phlladelphta, Pennsylvania. craft are kept off a runway by the South African company that Copyright © 1967 by Friends Publishing Corporation. Requests to reprint excerpts of more than two hundred insists the strip is for its use alone. They protest, as they have words should be addressed to the editor. every right to do. The tower promises to straighten this out. The large lines, not wanting anything to disturb the status quo, tell the tower not to try to regulate matters that it obvi Contents ously cannot handle. The secretary-general has become more and more outspoken Please, No Back Talk to the Radar Beam-Quaker U.N. Program 290 about where the present trends in the Vietnam war are lead Editorial Comments-William Hubben ..................... 291 ing. On the eleventh of May he said flatly that the world was Canada and the Draft-Douglas Sanders . 292 already in the first phase of World War III. To the most "Some Can't Get Back Up by Themselves" .................. 293 Dichotomy-Pollyanna Sedziol . 294 powerful member nation he repeated his plea to take the bold Te Deum-Ann Dim mock ................................... 294 step it could take without loss of prestige or power: "Stop the Cargoes for the Phoenix-R.A.M . .... ... .................... 29.5 bombing of North Vietnam ." From his appointed post on the Helping to End an Era-A Letter from the Past . 296 thirty-eighth floor he can see no other immediate maneuver Quiet Moment-Lisl Auf der Heide ......................... 297 that can lead to getting things under control again. The per· Are Quaker Hopes for Growth Mistaken?-Erling Skorpen .... 298 Quakerism in the Sun-Oaroline N. jacob . 299 manent representative of the United States at the U.N. talks Diversity Among Friends ................................... 301 back. He says that we have heard the secretary-general's views New York Friends Peace Institute-Margery Haring .......... 301 clearly, that we as much as any nation want catastrophe to be Book Reviews ............................................. 301 averted, but that in our opinion we are on a correct course Friends and Their Friends . 303 and if there is to be a disastrous collision it will be the fault Letters to the Editor . 306 Coming Events . 308 of other governments. Announcements . 308 Is this any way to run an airport? FRIENDS JOURNAL Successor to THE FRIEND (1827-1955) and FRIENDS INTELLIGENCER (1844--1955) ESTABLISHED 1955 PHILADELPHIA, JUNE 1, 1967 VOL. 13-No. 11 Editorial Comments By CoNTRIBUTING EDITOR WILLIAM HuBBEN The Blurred Spectrum this country may ultimately lead to an organic relation HANGE is the hallmark of contemporary Quaker ship. Our warm relationship with United Meetings that C ism in the United States and elsewhere. It is the represent pastoral as well as unprogramed Meetings never kind of change that eludes the easy trend-spotters who has been disturbed by either side side in theological dis gallop behind or ahead of events in our time. Quaker putes. The sense of spiritual renewal has had unham ism would not be true to its genius if it failed to see in pered sway in our present search for unity; there is more the stirrings of the modem mind signs of the ongoing that binds us than may separate us. creative spirit of God and adhered instead to tradition We are therefore all the more surprised to read D. alone. A contemporary Protestant leader appeals to us Elton Trueblood's article entitled "The Quaker Spectrum to search for God not only in the burning bush of bib in America" in the April, 1967, Friends Quarterly (Lon lical tradition but in the burning issues of our time. don). It appeared shortly before N ewsweek, in its May These human dilemmas need the divine-human relation 8th issue, echoed similar views of Wilmer Cooper of the ship that is at the core of our aspirations. Earlham School of Religion, the purpose of which is to The present Protestant and Catholic malaise has its train Quaker men and women for pastoral or teaching parallel in t1he spiritual discomfort that characterizes services. · (Incidentally, the illustrations printed with Friends. There are still with us those who take their Newsweek's article hardly enhance its purpose.) Obvi comfort in absolutes of creeds, as we can see in the ously the newly appointed publicity manager of the April, 1967, issue of the California Friend, which con Earlham School of Religion cannot be accused of inertia, tains as dogmatic a statement of creed as the most con although he may yet have to acquire a broader knowledge servative Catholic could wish for, including a reference of American Friends. Both articles suffer from a narrow to the Virgin Mary. focus, if not from a severe lack of information. They The FRIENDS JoURNAL on several occasions has dis will hardly inform Friends or the wider public on the cussed some of the differences in Quaker groups that problems of our ministry. The volume No Time But must be taken more seriously than this creedal one. How This Present, published by the Friends World Commit ard H. Brinton (FRIENDS JouRNAL, November 1, 1966) tee in preparation for this summer's World Conference, wrote authentically about problems surrounding the is a much more broad-minded and informed introduc· silent meeting versus the programed or pastoral services tion to contemporary Quakerism; its charitable spirit is which D. Elton Trueblood promotes in his book The deplorably absent in Elton Trueblood's article. The ma Incendiary Fellowship. Friends General Conference, with terial on Friends in the 1964 Encyclopedia Britannica is its growing membership of Yearly and Quarterly Meet· also a reliable and commendable source of information. ings (Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, South Central, Trueblood's account speaks of unprogramed Meetings New England, Canadian, Illinois, Indiana, and Green as being on "the far left position" and calls their mem Pastures Meetings), never has made a secret of its reserva bers "humanists." He says these Friends make "very little tions toward pastoral or programed Meetings, yet it reference to Christ and pay little attention to the Bible." always has accorded such Meetings the respect due to They tend to be ignorant of Fox, Penn, Penington, and their tradition.