God & Lend-Lease

Diary of a deep-laid Roosevelt plan to make Russia's atheism look a bit better to U.S. churchmen:

Tuesday. The President says the Soviet Constitution guarantees "freedom of religion" as well as "freedom to use propaganda against religion"--says this is the same as in the U.S.

Thursday. The churchmen rise in protest. Father Edmund A. Walsh of Georgetown University, onetime papal envoy in Russia, says the Soviet Constitution "guarantees nothing but a hollow shell of religious freedom." Methodist Bishop Raymond J. Wade of Detroit, former bishop of the Russian area, says: "Undisputed imprisonment and slaying of tens of thousands of priests . . . together with thousands of closed churches, speak louder than printed words."

The President shifts his tack, says he hopes "an entering wedge for the practice of complete freedom of religion [in Russia] is definitely on the way." President Luther Allan Weigle of the Federal Council of Churches attacks the weasel wording of the Soviet Government, says it "supports atheism as the accepted philosophy of the State." Monsignor Michael J. Ready, general secretary of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, is closeted with the President for 45 minutes.

Friday. The President intimated that some time ago he told his envoy to Moscow to try to swap some Lend-Lease for some religious freedom. Father Walsh backtracks, praises the President's constructive efforts.

Saturday. Official Soviet spokesman says, this is "much ado about nothing," blames "the big rumpus" in the U.S. on pro-Germans. The British announce their Ambassador has urged Stalin to suppress atheistic propaganda.

Sunday. Mrs. Roosevelt gets into the debate via her commercial radio program, blames irreligion in Russia on lack of educational opportunity for priests.

If the upshot of all this is the return of Russia to the Gospel, it will not be the first time the faith has been propagated by the extremities of war. Constantine gave Christianity official status in Rome in Gratitude for his victory at the Milvian Bridge. Clovis made the Franks Christians after winning the Battle of Tolbiac. Charlemagne made the Germans Christians with death as the alternative. Much good probably came of these earlier conversions, more good may come of the President's deal.

Religion needs somebody's helping hand in Russia. After the 1918 revolution, it was more rigorously persecuted there than more recently in Germany and Nazi-occupied territory. Cathedrals were turned into anti-religious museums, village churches into clubs, schools, storehouses for grain. Not all this was due however to hatred of Christianity. The Russian church was close to the monarchy and had done its selfish share in preventing progress among the Russian people.

Edicts still forbid the teaching of religion to children under 18, distribution of the Bible or church literature, any form of "religious propaganda." Yet even the League of the Militant Godless admits that millions of Russians (in 1936 it estimated half the total population) still cling to their Greek Orthodox faith.

But Patriarch Sergius of the Orthodox Church and his clergy may well rejoice if President Roosevelt can procure more religious freedom in Russia. The number of churches in Russia has declined nearly 90% since the Revolution. In 1917 the country had 70,000, plus several thousand synagogues. In 1933, when Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinoff went to Washington to arrange for U.S. recognition of Russia, he said there were 40,000. Last August, Russia announced that it had 8,338 churches, mosques and synagogues for its 192,695,710 people.

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