Worldview

Vote on Sunday?

Should National Election Day be changed from Tuesday to Sunday? U.S. Rep. Mario Biaggi (D-N.Y.) believes so. He has introduced a voting bill that would require all general elections to be held on Sunday, and all polls across the country to open and close during the same nine-hour period of 12:00-9:00 P.M. (EST). The six-year trial period would begin in 1982, with the Federal Elections Commission monitoring the impact of the changes on voter turnout. Identical legislation was recently introduced into the Senate by Sen. S. I. Hayakawa (R-Calif.). Biaggi says that his proposal "has received enthusiastic endorsements from religious leaders, State election officials, leading newspapers, and numerous other interested groups and individuals around the country."

Certainly the change would pose no problems, theological or otherwise, for Seventh-day Adventists. And I suspect it would not for most Sundaykeeping Christians. But I wonder how the Lord's Day Alliance feels about this. A group that has so long striven to make Sunday a day of worship could hardly applaud exercise of partisan political preference, even if during nonchurch hours.

Adventists have long decried the legalism of the Lord's Day Alliance, and not a few times through the past century have been on the opposite side of legislative proposals. But should the Alliance or other Sundaykeeping Christians object to elections on Sunday, I suspect Seventh-day Adventists will join them in opposing the bill. Not because Adventists are inconvenienced or their conscience compromised, but because that of our Sundaykeeping brethren is. Therefore we will seek to do for them as we would wish them to do for us if the issue were a seventh-day Sabbath voting bill. Every American should be given opportunity to exercise his franchise as a voting citizen without, at the same time, violating his religious convictions.

The U.S.S.R—does belief survive?

How many Soviets retain religious beliefs after a generation of atheism? The last official census to ask this question—in 1937—revealed that 40 million Soviets still believed in God. (The question was asked contrary to the Soviet Constitution itself; so disturbed were the authorities by the number still witnessing to belief in God that the census returns were burned and the census takers imprisoned. No question on religious belief has been asked since.) Today Soviet churches are experiencing a new infusion of youth disillusioned with the empty promises of materialism. Some church congregations are predominantly youth—under 25. But statistics on believers remain hard to get.

A recent visitor to the Soviet Union came up with his own method of computing belief. While in Leningrad he went to the Yuzhnoye Kladbishche ("Southern Cemetery"), which appears to have been open since 1973-1974, and studied a total of 222 graves. These fell into three categories: Those marked with a cross, those with no distinguishing marks apart from names and dates, and those marked with a red star. According to his data:

Year                  Cross          Nothing          Red Star

1974                     31               24                     8

1975                     51               18                     4

1978-1979         22                 17                    5

                            132                73                   19

Thus: Crosses, 59.5 percent; Nothing, 33 percent; Red Star, 7.5 percent.

Of course, a cross on a grave does not mean that the funeral was conducted by the clergy. But its being there indicates a statement of faith either by the deceased or his relatives. It would seem fair to say that the word from the beyond is: Belief survives in the U.S.S.R. Emphatically!

When to stay off your knees

Who said prayer always pays? Not for Morris Davie it didn't. Morris was accused of setting a forest fire in Cariboo County, British Columbia. Alone in a police precinct room shortly after his arrest, he fell to his knees, raised his hands, and prayed: "Oh, God, please let me get away with it." His plea was picked up by police monitoring the room with a closed-circuit camera and a hidden microphone.

The prosecution was barred from using the evidence against Mr. Davie, and he was acquitted. But on appeal the prosecution argued successfully that the law protects only private communication with another person and not with a theological or spiritual being such as God.

Just how this case will end up is hard to predict, so far as human justice is concerned, that is. When it comes to the last appeal before the judgment seat of Christ, it doesn't seem likely that He who knows even the thoughts and intents of the heart will be in doubt concerning the facts of the case. And one must suspect that a plea for forgiveness would receive more consideration than an appeal to "get away" with it.

Rhetorical redaction

Have you ever noticed that most dictionaries take a decidedly morbid approach to definitions? For example, separate is not defined (as a happy preacher might have written) "to separate, as truth from error," but rather "to disunite, disconnect, or sever, as friends." Proceed to definition Number 2 and you'll find that it means "to part, as by a legal separation, as man and wife."

Matters only get worse with such a term as Jew. All leading English dictionaries have included such definitions as "usurer," "an extortionate tradesman," "money lender," "unscrupulous usurer," and "a shameless or dishonest bargainer."

But now, if Marcus Shloimovitz, a Manchester, England, textile merchant, has his way, definitions are going to be turned sunny side up, at least so far as Jews are concerned. After 10 years of trying, he has got English dictionaries to remove some negative definitions of a Jew. His first success has come with the latest edition of Cassel's, one of the leading publishers of English dictionaries, and others have promised to follow suit.

The new edition has eliminated all descriptive definitions condemned by Mr. Shloimovitz as unjustifiable and maligning and has substituted: "Jew. Heb. Y'hudah, Judah, son of Jacob, but later used for all adherents of the Mosaic Law, frequently also called 'Israelite' or 'Hebrew,' now applied to professing members of the Synagogue and, loosely, to racial descendants of the Hebrew tribe; incorr., a citizen of the State of Israel."