The Outsider by Howard Fast Page B

seven hundred seats in the hall filled, with people in the aisles and standing in back. At this point everyone in town and in the surrounding towns and cities, and in New York too, knew about the swastikas.
    Todd Burns, the town manager, opened the meeting by saying that all of the selectmen wanted to be speakers here tonight, but they decided to leave the issue to the two men of the cloth involved, Rabbi Hartman and the Reverend Carter.
    Rabbi Hartman felt strange. He still had to nerve himself to speak to his congregation, and here was a larger and mixed group. “For the first time,” he said, “I knew how the Negro felt when he looked out of his window and saw a burning cross in front of his house. But I don’t fully know how the Reverend Martin Carter felt when he saw this desecration on the oldest symbol of democracy this country has, the Congregational church. The people and the movement that raised up these symbols, the symbol of the hooked cross, caused the deaths of fifty million human beings and the crippling of a hundred million more. No one can ever calculate the suffering they brought upon mankind. Does anyone want us to create a similar movement here at home? I am still fairly new in Leighton Ridge. Martin Carter has been here much longer. He has agreed to talk about this.”
    Carter said, “When Rabbi Hartman called us the oldest symbol of democracy this country has, he was quite correct. The Pilgrims built our first church in America, holding that a man needs no intercessor before his God, that each man is responsible for his deeds, his sins, and his cruelties, and that his church is a symbol of a man’s dignity, his independence, and his willingness to participate in the democratic process. That is why, years ago, when we were a much smaller town than we are now, the town meetings were held in the Congregational church, which was as often called the meeting house as it was the church. When the time came to forsake the old church, which would no longer hold our congregation, I wondered what would become of it. We are not affluent enough to turn the church and the parsonage into a museum and maintain such a museum — yet this should be done. For the church was built in the seventeen seventies, and the parsonage is even older. How could we face the thought of these two beautiful old buildings being torn down —”
    Lucy, sitting with Della Klein, whispered, “He’s forgotten what it takes to keep that beautiful old building warm in winter.”
    â€œâ€” but fortunately, we never faced that. Three of our Jewish neighbors came to me and asked whether they could buy the church for a synagogue and the parsonage as a home for the rabbi they hoped to find. Of course, I was delighted. It was like an act of hope and faith, a prayer answered, and when I put it to the entire congregation, they were pleased, too. We felt that it was a God-given opportunity to affirm our faith in Christianity, so sorely shaken these past years, and to perform an act of brotherhood toward the most bitterly hounded and persecuted people on earth — yet the same people from whom God chose his Son. And now we have this act of mindless desecration. I think that tonight, by coming here and packing this place, we have performed the first act of an exorcism. As for the second part of the exorcism, that will be performed tomorrow, starting at ten in the morning. I know that most men will be at work, but women can perform it equally well. The Jewish congregation, needing larger quarters for Temple Shalom, have sold the church and the parsonage to the Unitarians, who are quite desperate for a house of prayer. But we cannot hand it over in its present condition. So at ten o’clock tomorrow, armed with paintbrush and good outside white paint, we will meet at the church and complete the exorcism. Frank Hessel, our in-church painter, tells me it will require three coats for a proper job, and he