Remarks to the Christian Citizenship Seminar of Southern Baptist Leaders.

Dr. Valentine and registrants at the Christian Citizenship Seminar:

It is good to have you here this afternoon. Our last meeting, I seem to remember, was held on the same day of the year, and almost here on the identical spot. I guess you might say that one sign of spring is when the Baptists come to the Rose Garden. I am sorry we could not have been here earlier when more spring was here and the sun was out. I am not fortunate enough to be a Baptist. I am a member of the Disciples of Christ, but I have always felt very close to your denomination. Everybody else in my household that I grew up in was Baptist. My part of the country is Baptist. My mother was a Baptist. My grandfather and great-grandfather were Baptists. George Washington Baines was an early Baptist preacher who became the second president of Baylor University during the Civil War.

He came to Texas in a buckboard to be a circuit-riding preacher. He came the way that most of the Baptists came to the frontier: very early, by the cheapest form of transportation. He was determined to do one thing--and that was save souls.

The Methodists waited until times were somewhat more prosperous; then they came by horse and buggy.

The Presbyterians came later--but by that time we had trains.

Finally, they say, when Pullman cars were added to the trains, the Episcopalians arrived.

But the Baptists--as all of you are prone to point out--came "firstest with the mostest!"

My good friend, Brooks Hays, told me once about a victory for my church, the Disciples of Christ--the Campbellites.

He said the Disciples converted a whole full church of Baptists down in the hill country. Right away, the new converts passed a resolution. The resolution read something like this, "Be it herewith resolved that we are no longer Baptists. Henceforth, we will be Christians."

Those pioneers left us not only a heritage of courage and rugged individualism. They left us a legacy based on steady faith and earnest good works.

For them, religion was concerned not only with the hereafter, but religion was concerned with the here and the now. There was no faith without works.

For them in a less complex time, caring for the sick and helping their poor and standing by their neighbors were acts of very simple morality. They were rooted in faith. They could be trusted. They were loyal to their fellow man.

Now, things are not so simple. The man who is sick, or the man who is poor, or the victim of discrimination, the man who urgently needs our help may live across the city or could be living across the entire country.

But for us, as for our forebears, there can be only one answer to that old question, "Who is my neighbor?"

That man--even though he lives far away--we should trust him. He is our neighbor. We should be loyal to him. He is our responsibility. And we must not pass by on the other side.

This is not just a religious truth. I think it is a very urgent social fact. So, for all that you are doing to support compassion and for all that you have done to bring about better understanding, I want to say that your President is grateful and your country is the beneficiary. I think your countrymen are thankful, too.

I am glad that you have chosen to study your responsibilities in the face of change and upheaval and disorder.

This is a subject that is very much on the minds of all Americans who care these days.

We believe--in fact we think we know-that the past few years have been a time of considerable progress that history will take due note of. The actions of the Congress, we think, show it. The statistics, we believe, show it--in health, income, education, housing, race relations, and in a dozen other fields.

But we know also that times of progress and change can be times of restlessness and discontent and great tensions. Now we are living through such a time--when men who once accepted poverty and once lived with discrimination as their lot in life simply do not accept it any more. So we know that there must be even more work and even more rapid progress in the days ahead.

Those who have studied this problem most deeply have suggested to us a wide range of solutions for us to consider. The Congress will be considering those solutions. They are now. We will be debating them in the months to come.

Those solutions suggest that crime and violence and despair arise from one cause-from a cause of ignorance and poverty and joblessness. And I think there is very good evidence to that effect. They suggest that the cure for joblessness is a job. They suggest that the cure for ignorance is some training and some education. They suggest that the cure for bad rat-infested slum housing is better housing. And the ultimate cure for crime is to give every citizen a sense of pride and a chance to participate in the development of his community--a sense of his stake in law and order.

I think all of you will agree with that. So, therefore, we are working--we are working just as hard as we know how--to try to evolve a program to meet all these distressing conditions. We are--this afternoon, and yesterday, and tomorrow--asking for as much, as often as we believe the Congress and the people can and will accept.

But those who have pondered the problem see a deeper solution.

The only sure and lasting solution to frustration and discontent and disorder, they say, lies far beyond these government programs. The only lasting solution won't cost a cent but it is going to be, really, the hardest to achieve.

It will require, actually, a great change-a change in men's hearts--in the way that men treat their neighbors. It will require a change in men's eyes--in the way men see their neighbors.

There, my dear friends, is where each of you can come in. You are teachers. You are preachers. You are religious leaders of a great congregation in a great section of this country, the American South.

As I have said many times before, when it comes to the rights and it comes to the well-being of American citizens, when it comes to the relationship between a man and his neighbor, there is--and there must be-no Southern problem. There is no--and there must be no--Northern problem. There is--and there must be--only an American problem.

But because much of that American problem began in the region which you and I call home, I would like the solutions to begin there, too. So I am glad that each of you has shown your concern about it. I am looking to you for action and for leadership and for inspiration.

We have our debates from time to time. Some of us are advocates of sprinkling and others insist on total immersion. But I think that all of us can agree on one very essential fact: All of us believe--as George Washington believed--that the roots of public policy must lie in private morality.

So all of us, whether we are political leaders or religious leaders, have a very urgent stake in answering that old Biblical question, "Who is my neighbor?"

I might add in parting that I would hope very much that each of you and all of you could always "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

Thank you very much.