Reforms Summarized

"Turkey presents today the most promising and challenging field on the face of the earth for missionary service." Thus wrote James L. Barton, missionary executive, in last week's issue of Christian Work. But first he summarized the revolutionary changes in Turkey since 1923. The changes:

1) For the first time in Mohammedan history, Church and State have been separated. The Angora Government, having deposed the Sultan-Calif, appointed a Calif without temporal power, then proceeded to depose the Calif it had made; so there is no Primate of Islam today.

2) Religion, which once dominated Turkish courts, is now not even permitted to enter' the courts. The Code Napoleon has completely supplanted the Koran and religious tradition as the law of the land.

3) Any religion compatible with public order and good morals may be freely practiced in public or private. The press too is free.

4) Religion (Mohammedanism) has also been effectively kicked out of the schoolroom, which had hitherto been its most precious domain. The white turban has been torn from the ignorant heads of the hodjas, whose influence was once unassailable. Hodjas, if they wish to continue as teachers, must now pass examinations in subjects of which they formerly knew nothing. (Education is national, based on Western systems of both sexes.)

5) The Dervish sects, implacable defenders of Islam, are abolished.

6) The Koran, hitherto safe behind a dark shield of impenetrable Arabic, has been officially circulated in Turkish to defend itself, naked, before common sense.

7) Women walk forth, unveiled, without protective eunuchs. Laws against polygamy are talked of.

8) For the sake of conformity with the West, Sunday may be substituted for Friday as the weekly holiday.

For a hundred years Christian missionaries have struggled hopelessly to capture the hearts of the Calif-awed Turks. They had come, said Mr. Barton, to suspect that "the Moslem was outside the sphere of the operation of divine grace."