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AN AMERICAN BISHOP’S SEARCH FOR A SPACE-AGE GOD

BY CHRISTOPHER S. WREN

LAST September, the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of California left on sabbatical for Cambridge University in England “to find . out what I really do believe.” The Rt. Rev. James A. Pike —m had just been cleared by his fellow bishops of heresy—the third such charge against him since 1961.

What he believes is hardly typical of a bishop. “I’ve jettisoned the Trinity, the Virgin Birth and the Incarnation,” he told Look in his Cambridge flat recently. These were the heresy accusations of last fall. Bishop Pike also rejects the accepted views of God and prayer. “Everything I’m saying has a question mark at the end,” he explains. Even his musings will be controversial when he comes home.

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Why does it not surprise me that modern customized direct mail fund raising was invented by the Catholic church?

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Faith, Hope and Computer

By Donald Young

Aided by the most sophisticated use of ultramodern electronic data processing equipment, the world’s most efficient, most effective direct mail operation is used to raise funds for the charitable activities sponsored by the Society of the Divine Savior, an order of the Catholic Church dating back to 1881. These charities include the support of seven American seminaries, numerous foreign missions, three Southern Negro missions and five American Indian missions.

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I think that this was one of the first really critical articles about Scientology.

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Scientology: A growing cult reaches dangerously into the mind

The lights in the hall go dim, leaving the bronzed bust of the Founder (spotlighted) at center stage. From the loudspeakers comes L. Ron Hubbard’s voice, deep and professorial. It is a tape called “Some Aspects of Help, Part I,” a basic lecture in Scientology that Hubbard recorded nearly 10 years ago.

No one in the intensely respectful Los Angeles audience of 500—some of whom paid as much as $16 to get in—thought it odd to be sitting there listening to the disembodied voice. Among believers, Scientology and its Founder are beyond frivolous question: Scientology is the Truth, it is the path to “a civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war . . .” and “for the first time in all ages there is something that . . . delivers the answers to the eternal questions and delivers immortality as well.”

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Giant Figure of Christ in Odd Church Design

Patents have been issued for an odd architectural design for churches. The plan calls for a giant figure of Christ, to be constructed of burnished copper, which would dominate the church building made of cement in natural stone color. The design has Christ seated on a rock at Gethsemane, with the church entrance in the rock, beneath the flowing robes of the figure. A halo for the figure and illumination for the entire structure would be provided by a system of floodlights.

BIBLE HIDES DRUGS
Mechanical ingenuity of narcotic smugglers is constantly being tested in devising new methods of bringing their contraband goods safely into the country. The picture shows a Bible which has been hollowed out in the center to provide a hiding place for thousands of dollars worth of morphine and other opiates. The book was confiscated by Internal Revenue inspectors.

AIRPLANE IN CHURCH PAINTING HAS SAINT AS PATRON

Adapting the airplane, locomotive, and automobile to motifs for religious frescoes, a French artist has achieved unique results in the decorations on the walls of the new church of St. Christopher, the patron saint of those engaged in hazardous occupations, recently completed in Paris. The figure of the saint is seen protecting a falling aviator, an engineer, and a speeding auto-ist. The machines, shown in detail, form the chief note in the designs and the imminence of danger is effectively suggested. The building has become known as the “sportsmen’s church,” and the novel decorations have caused wide comment.

I’ve read this ad three times now and I still have no idea what they are saying. Though I must say that the “good” future they present sounds a lot like what post-singularity transhumans are supposed to be like:

“Will the future know a superior, Godlike race of humans—each a genius and each the masterful creation of an unerring formula”

If the formula is unerring, wouldn’t everyone be identical? How is this different from the second option? Also, how can everyone be a genius? That’s sort of like saying everyone will be above average.

And why does the creation of life always require giant tesla coils?

Will Man Create Life?

DOES THE SECRET of life belong to Divinity alone?

Will Nature’s last frontier give way to man’s inquiring mind? Can man become a creator, peopling the world with creatures of his own fancy? Was the ancient sage right, who said: “To the Gods the Soul belongs, but to man will belong the power of Life”? Will the future know a superior, Godlike race of humans—each a genius and each the masterful creation of an unerring formula—or will Soulless beings, shorn of the feelings which have bound mortals together in understanding, dominate the earth?

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Trailer Chapel Has Speaker System

Built into a trailer, a chapel on wheels brings church services to isolated mountain sections of Virginia and West Virginia. Its rear wall unfolds to form a platform before the altar, and a canopy containing two loudspeakers for a public-address system, which carries the preacher’s voice to the congregation. A gasoline-driven generator mounted in the back of the sedan that draws the trailer supplies electric power for the public-address system and for cooking and lighting. Supplemented by a storage battery, the generator unit automatically starts when a light or appliance is turned on, and stops when all are switched off.

“THIS WISDOM MUST DIE!”

Truths That Have Been Denied Struggling Humanity

FOR every word that has left the lips of bishops or statesmen to enlighten man, a thousand have been withheld. For every book publicly exposed to the inquiring mind, one hundred more have been suppressed—damned to oblivion. Each year of progress has been wilfully delayed centuries. Wisdom has had to filter through biased, secret sessions or ecclesiastical council meetings, where high dignitaries of state and church alone proclaimed what man should know.

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Psychic Phenomena and The War

On the Threshold of Danger — Strange Things Happen!

Have you ever sensed the imminent danger of a loved one-even though he is across sea or continent? Have you been suddenly awakened by the call of your name—then realize that the one who spoke it was thousands of miles distant? If you ever had these experiences — as millions now have — learn the truth about them.

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Atomic Clock Verifies Oldest Bible Manuscript

By James T. Howard

They shall heat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

—Isaiah II, 4.

WHEN the atom bomb first mushroomed its message or death and destruction into the sky six years ago, there were many who speculated on the future uses of atomic knowledge. But few if any put Bible study on their list.

Now, as Christmas of 1951 nears, we find the seeming miracle has come to pass. Science is revealed as the handmaid of religion; radioactive carbon-14 and the Geiger counter are instruments for casting new light on the accuracy of our modem Bible. Cosmic rays that bombarded the earth when Christ was born have left behind a coded message for nuclear physicists to decipher.

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This article sounds like it could have been written today, except the authors seem more accepting of evolution.

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The Conflict Between Science and Religion

A Discussion by Leaders in American Life, with an Introduction By BRUCE BARTON

Author of “The Man Nobody Knows” and “The Book Nobody Knows”

THE printing of these statements is a public service. It ought to bring us closer to the day when the absurd phrase “the conflict between science and religion” will be permanently in the discard.

When theologians presume to prescribe the boundaries of truth they put themselves in the impossible position of most of their predecessors through the Middle Ages. When scientists presume to announce that man is merely material, coming from nothing and bound nowhere, and that the universe is a meaningless riddle, they are equally out of their depth.

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