Religion: P.O.A.U.F.S.C.S.

A new organization, formed this week, bears the nonstop name: Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State. P.O.A.U.F.S.C.S.’s aim: “To assure the maintenance of the American principle of separation of church and state.” President of the new group is Dr. Edwin McNeill Poteat, Baptist president of Colgate-Rochester Divinity School. V.P.s are the Christian Century’s Dr. Charles Clayton Morrison, Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam of New York, and Dr. John A. Mackay, president of Princeton Theological Seminary.

In a meticulous “manifesto” the new group warned the U.S. against a certain “powerful church” which “has committed itself in authoritative declarations and by positive acts to a policy plainly subversive of religious liberty as guaranteed by the Constitution.” But, announced the group carefully: “As Protestants we can be called anti-Catholic only in the sense in which every Roman Catholic is anti-Protestant. Profound differences … of religious faith . . . have no relevancy in the pursuit of our objectives. . . . The issue of the separation of church and state has arisen in the political area, and we propose to meet it there.”