Words & Works

P: Communist North Viet Nam published a decree ordering full freedom of religion, thus becoming the first Red nation in Asia to deviate publicly from the Moscow line. The order, said Radio Hanoi, was intended to correct "a mistaken policy of the government in the past." In all likelihood it was also intended to woo back some of the 700,000 Roman Catholics who fled to free South Viet Nam to escape Communist persecution.

P: The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a plea that nudism is a religion and therefore entitled to the protection of the Bill of Rights. The case was brought by a nudist group (which claimed that nudists "maintain high and strict moral standards") to challenge an Ohio anti-nudist law.

P: U.S. churches should re-examine their tax-free status, said Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, president of the National Council of Churches, "before the U.S. may find itself dominated by the wealth of a church or churches, so that at last no alternative but revolution and expropriation will be before the people . . . One of the reasons for what popular support remains for the Communist governments is the people's satisfaction that at least one good thing has been accomplished--the wealth and political domination of the church has been broken."

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