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Show David Briscoe Rights and Religion: A New Outlook? An unsympathetic observer of the march on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Administration Building at Winter Quarter's end must have gone through at least noted that the Mormon Church was represented by Lowell Bennion of the University, rather than by one of the Church's recognized leaders. HE MIGHT have wondered at the picture of Catholic Nuns, protestant preachers and Jewish Jew-ish rabbis marching along with the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr. Martin Luther King, 50 miles to Montgomery, Ala. Surely he. must have undergone under-gone at least a little mental squirming as the President of the United States (though our observer may have voted for another fellow,) echoed the song sung by 40-odd Negroes -I?' ; , 1 Yi some sort ui mental reorganization reorgan-ization in the interim between quarters. If he were a reader of either of Salt Lake City's big newspapers, news-papers, he might have spent a few m i n u t es skim- and whites in downtown Salt Lake City "We shall overcome!" over-come!" If such a man were not in the last two weeks converted to the cause, if he could not bring himself to at least scrutinize the position of Mormon Mor-mon leaders, he certainly must have recognized a major and dramatic turn in the civil rights movement even in Utah. Mr. Briscoe ming over tne short blurbs on the obituary pages and might have chuckled to himself, "Coverage they deserve, de-serve, damn radicals!" AS THE demonstrations continued, con-tinued, the unsympathetic observer, ob-server, driving along South Temple shaking his head in disgust, might have been further fur-ther incensed by a letter in the Tribune "Forum" from Dr. Sterling McMurrin ("one of those eggheads from the University,") Uni-versity,") supporting the aims of the marchers. But if our observer were a reasonable person (which is not completely improbable,) he might have based his lack of sympathy on grounds that the Constitution intended complete separation of Church and state, that a church should not support sup-port legislation. BUT ALSO, if he were a reasonable person, he might have stirred just a little when he noted that the demonstrators demonstra-tors were asking the Church to do only for civil rights legislation legisla-tion what it had done against recent Utah liquor and betting bills to publically take sides. He might have been at least mildly contemplative upon reading another letter in the "Forum" by John W. Bradley, district president of the Reorganized Re-organized Mormon Church, stating that the church's support sup-port for rights legislation in Utah. BUT THE real ideological (or theological) shocker must have come for our observer as he watched events unfold in Sel-ma, Sel-ma, Alabama, and, assuming that he has an associative mind, as he related them to the picketing picket-ing he had witnessed at 47 E. South Temple. If our observer were a possessor pos-sessor of human compassion, he might have been a little dismayed dis-mayed when he read of the inter-faith service held in Salt Lake City for Unitarian James Reeb, murdered in Selma, and |
