Speeches Of Roosevelt - Brotherhood Day Footage

Speeches of Roosevelt - Brotherhood Day
	Tape Master:	293
	Catalog #:	523559
	Clip Number:	523559-2
	Orginal Film:
	Timecode:	01:09:17 - 01:12:59
	Location:	Various
	Year Shot:	1936 (Actual Year)
	Audio:	Yes
	Color:	No
	Headings:	BEHAVIOR, HUMAN: Tolerance LOCATIONS/NORTH AMERICA: USA PERSONALITIES: Roosevelt, Franklin D. (FDR) POLITICS: Public Address (Speech) RELIGION: Misc
	Description:	Feb 23, 1936 President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT in celebration of Brotherhood Day; accompanied by his mother & ELEANOR ROOSEVELT. (the good neighbor idea) I am happy to speak to you from my own home on the evening of a Sabbath Day which has been observed in so many of your home communities as Brotherhood Day. The National Conference of Jews and Christians has set aside a day on which we can meet, not primarily as Protestants or Catholics or Jews but as believing Americans; a day on which we can dedicate ourselves not to the things which divide but to the things which unite us. I hope that we have begun to see how many and how important are the things on which we are united. Now, of all times, we require that kind of thinking. There are honest differences of religious belief among the citizens of your town as there are among the citizens of mine. It is a part of the spirit of Brotherhood Day, as it is a part of our American heritage, to respect those differences. And it is well for us to remember that this America of ours is the product of no single race or creed or class. Men and women—your fathers and mine—came here from the far corners of the earth with beliefs that widely varied. And yet each, in his own way, laid his own special gift upon our national altar to enrich our national life. From the gift that each has given, all have gained. This is no time to make capital out of religious disagreement, however honest. It is a time, rather, to make capital out of religious understanding. We who have faith cannot afford to fall out among ourselves. The very state of the world is a summons to us to stand together. For as I see it, the chief religious issue is not between our various beliefs. It is between belief and unbelief. It is not your specific faith or mine that is being called into question, but all faith. Religion in wide areas of the earth is being confronted with irreligion; our faiths are being challenged. It is because of that threat that you and I must reach across the lines between our creeds, clasp hands, and make common cause. To do that will do credit to the best of our religious tradition. It will do credit, also, to the best in our American tradition. The spiritual resources of our forbears have brought us a long way toward the goal which was set before the Nation at its founding as a Nation. Yet I do not look upon these United States as a finished product. We are still in the making. The vision of the early days still requires the same qualities of faith in God and Man for its fulfillment.