ADDRESS, IMMANUEL EVANGELICAL
LUTHERAN CHURCH

MANCHESTER

February 14, 1960

This is a momentous occasion in the history of this community, and
I am grateful to your pastor for inviting me here to celebrate the
200th birthday of Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church. For two
centuries, this church has stood as guardian of the spiritual lives of
the generations of men and women who have lived in Manchester
and the surrounding area. At this milestone in its history, it is appro-
priate that we pause to contemplate the great contributions the church
has made to the community and the State, and to pay homage to the
courageous, God-fearing men who founded it and guided it on its long
course of history.

Within recent months, some of the newspapers of the country pub-
lished an exchange of letters between Adlai Stevenson and John Stein-
beck, the novelist, in which these two great men discussed today's battle
between the forces of good and evil. The ideas they expressed were
both frightening and inspiring as the two men discussed what they re-
garded as a decline in the morality of the people and the possible effect
it may have on the fate of our civilization. Mr. Steinbeck described it
as ''a creeping, all pervading, nerve-gas of immorality which starts in
the nursery and does not stop before it reaches the highest offices,
both corporate and governmental. " He said he was troubled by "the
cynical immorality of my country, " and added that he did not believe
the nation can survive on this basis unless "some kind of catastrophe
strikes us. " This was the frightening part of the picture he painted.
The inspiring part came at the very end of the letter, where he said to
Mr. Stevenson:

"Maybe nothing can be done about it. but I am stupid enough and
naively hopeful enough to want to try. How about you?"

The evil of the age in which we live, we read and hear almost every
day, is its uncertainty and its instability. We seem to have moved too far
away from the fundamental concepts of right and wrong adhered to by
the followers of Martin Luther who founded and nurtured this
church....

Maybe we need more of the fundamental religion that was pos-
sessed by the men who founded this church. Maybe a little fire and brim-

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