Sectarian Tract?

As the boys & girls of the elementary and junior high schools in Davenport, Iowa, filed out of assembly, a book was handed to each of them. The book: the New Testament, plus the Book of Psalms and the Book of Proverbs. But last week, after the Gideon Bible Society had given away more than 2,500 copies, the Davenport Board of Education called a halt. Rabbi Abram Vossen Goodman of Davenport's Temple Emanuel had protested. Wrote he:

"The distribution of sectarian literature violates the historic separation between church and state. Although acceptance of the material distributed by the Gideons is on a voluntary basis, the procedure offers a precedent for the dissemination of literature by other groups. . . . Non-Protestant children who did not take copies of the New Testament were embarrassed. . . ."

In Berlin, Conn., last week the Board of Education moved to sidestep the touchy issue of religion in public schools, turned down a Gideon offer of 650 New Testaments. The Gideons were unperturbed. Said one: "Our goal is to get [New Testaments] to the . . . school children in America from the fifth grade through high school. . . . We are carried by faith. . . . We've just started."

The Gideons were up against a tough customer in the meticulously creedless U.S. public school system, where religious training tends to consist of a daily, Shintoesque pledge to the flag.*

*Though the Supreme Court in 1943 reversed its previous decision, decided that refusal to take part in the flag ritual was no crime.

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