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(THE REV.) CLYDE SHOWALTER Red Hill Lutheran Church Tustin, Calif.
Sir: I wonder what significance lies in the fact that throughout this long article the word "love" is mentioned only four times. In each instance, you do so rather incidentally: you make no reference to the pre-eminent role of love in the history of religious thought and experience. Whether this omission happened by accident or design, you have managed to reveal one great flaw in your approach and in the whole modern approach to religion—the absence of love. Your article would have brought more light to this vital issue if those who wrote it had first asked themselves, "Is modern man unfeeling?" and "Is love dead?"
ALEXANDER REID MARTIN, M.D. Former President of The Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis New York City
Sir: So Reader Rowland Allen [April 15] feels that the existence of intangibles can't be proved! Ever put your hands around love? Pour loyalty into a test tube? Examine courage under a microscope? Of course not, Mr. Allen, intangibles don't exist!
JOSEPH HOFFMAN Livingston, N.J.
Sir: What bothers me about the "death of God" theologians is the amazing failure of these informed men to take seriously the implications of psychology. We do not have to agree with all psychoanalytic theory to recognize the fact that our view of God involves a projection of ourselves. Talk of God's death reflects our personality condition. The weakness of the death-of-God theology lies not so much in what it says about God as in what it does not say about man.
(THE REV.) JAMES G. EMERSON JR. Larchmont Ave. (Presbyterian) Church Larchmont, N.Y.
The Dispeptic Generation
Sir: You're wrong if you think that today's youth aren't conscious of an American tradition [April 22]. They are—and are rebelling against it more than any previous generation did because they are more aware of the difference between America's creed and its deed. Young people are sick of the hypocrisy, the double standard, the platitudes of American tradition. They sense acutely the absurdities of life, thus live it as one big "goof."
I. A. STEINFINK Flushing, N.Y.
Southern Justice
Sir: Your Essay, "Breaching the White Wall of Southern Justice" [April 15] is a responsible effort to explain a complicated problem. 1 was particularly interested in your discussion of segregated juries. One approach is to challenge them county by county in federal district courts. But this is slow, costly and painful. With Phillip Burton of California and Joseph Remick of New York, I have introduced a bill that would employ federal jury registrars and use a population sampling system to insure that juries represent a cross section. Whatever formula Congress adopts, essays like yours encourage enlightened debate.
WILLIAM F. RYAN New York Congressman Washington, D.C.