Record Group 5: Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion

• Dates: 1939-1977, (1940-1968, Bulk)
• Size: 48.75 linear ft.
• Number of Boxes: 39
• Languages:
  • English
  • Hebrew
• Location: Special Collections Reading Room, Jewish Theological Seminary Library.
• Restrictions: Jewish Theological Seminary records are available for research, with permission, through 1972; records dating from 1973 and afterward are currently closed. For permission to see records of The Jewish Theological Seminary write to: Archivist, Ratner Center for the Study of Conservative Judaism, Jewish Theological Seminary, 3080 Broadway, New York, NY 10027. Reproduction of fragile items is not permitted; consult the archivist about literary rights.
• Related Collections: The JTS library has a set of the published proceedings of the conference. R.G.1, General Files, includes a significant amount of additional material (correspondence with participants and potential participants and conference papers) about the conference. It is filed largely by name of correspondent. See also: R.G.16, Records of the Institute of Religious and Social Studies, and the oral history interview with Jessica Feingold, Ratner Center oral history collection. The Ratner Center photograph collection includes many publicity portraits of conference and institute participants.

SGS, 7/24/91

Table of Contents:

• A Note on Folder Headings
• Historical Note
• Scope and Content Note
• Series List
• Series Descriptions
• Selected Participants Represented in the CSPR Records
• Box List

 A Note on Folder Headings

Individual folders are identified in the following way: record group# -- box# -- folder#, as in R.G.1-10-32. Please use this format in citations and when referring to files for any other reason.

 Historical Note

The Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion and Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc. was founded in 1940 by seventy-nine leading American intellectuals including Louis Finkelstein, Harold D. Lasswell, Mortimer J. Adler, Paul Tillich, Robert M. MacIver, Van Wyck Brooks, Franz Boas, Enrico Fermi, I.I. Rabi, and Pitirim Sorokin. Originating in a meeting of academics and seminary presidents called by Jewish Theological Seminary president (later chancellor) Louis Finkelstein in November, 1939, the conference constituted a response to the rise of totalitarianism in Europe. Its founding members and their successors sought to create a framework for the preservation of democracy and intellectual freedom through the collaboration of scholars from a wide variety of disciplines in the sciences and humanities. Conference members, many of whom blamed the development of "value-free" scholarship for the rise of European fascism, additionally hoped to synthesize traditional values and academic scholarship.

The conference met on a regular basis from 1940 to 1968. These meetings, held alternately at The Jewish Theological Seminary, Columbia University, Harvard University, The American Philosophical Society, the University of Chicago, and Loyola University, provided participants with the opportunity for cooperative discussion based on papers prepared in advance. The conference papers were, in most cases, subsequently published as a volume.

Although originally conceived as a temporary measure related to wartime concerns, the conference grew into an established institution in the postwar years. During the 1950s, the topics treated during meetings shifted from issues of the preservation of democracy and world peace to questions of race relations, labor relations, governmental administration, and educational policy. At the same time, the membership of the conference expanded to include government officials, industrialists, and officers of private foundations. Members from Catholic, Jewish, and non-Western religious backgrounds also held prominent roles, reflecting a growing interest in intergroup relations on the part of Louis Finkelstein and other Conference organizers. New participants included John LeFarge, Bayard Rustin, Swami Akhilananda, Robert C. Angell, William E. Hocking, Albert Hofstadter, Hannah Arendt, Mordecai M. Kaplan, Daniel Lerner, Swami Nikhilananda, and Perry Miller.

From its origin, the conference maintained a special relationship with the Jewish Theological Seminary. Under chancellor Louis Finkelstein, who also served as president of the conference and editor of many of its published volumes, JTS actively promoted such interfaith activities as the conference and the Institute for Religious and Social Studies (founded 1938). Seminary faculty, including Mordecai M. Kaplan, Ben Zion Bokser, Simon Greenberg, and Gerson Cohen, contributed actively to conference sessions. The administration of the conference was also handled by JTS employees, most notably Jessica Feingold, who served as the conference's executive vice-president, sat on its board of directors, and edited one of its published volumes.

By the late 1950s and 1960s, the conference began to meet less frequently. The last sessions were held in 1968. For more information see: Fred Beuttler, "Organizing an American Conscience: The Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, 1940-1968." Dissertation at the University of Chicago, Department of History, March,1995

Scope and Content Note

The records of the Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion 1939-1977, consist principally of files documenting the administration of each individual conference, 1940-1968 and stenographic reports of the proceedings of conference meetings and sessions, 1940-1968. Also included are administrative records from the period of the conference's creation, 1940-1941; questionnaire responses from conference members, 1942-1943; financial records of the conference, 1940-1957; and the permanent administrative files of the conference, 1940-1977. The stenographic reports of the conference sessions form a complete record of the organization's proceedings over the course of its development, and thus are particularly valuable.

Collection Description

Series List

I. Administrative Records, 1940-1941

II. Questionnaires, 1942-1943

III. Financial Records, 1940-1957

IV. Conference Records, 1940-1968

V. Conference Permanent Files, 1940-1977

VI. Proceedings, 1939-1968

Series Descriptions

I. Administrative Records, 1940-1941

Contains documents related to the creation of the conference, including copies of the by-laws, memoranda and correspondence concerning incorporation and copyright, and participants' suggestions for the planning of conference sessions. Also included are minutes, lists, agendas, and related material of the conference's board of directors, nominating committee, and steering committee. A statement by Van Wyck Brooks entitled "Reasons for the Conference," issued in 1941, is of special interest.

II. Questionnaires, 1942-1943

The series contains about forty responses to a questionnaire sent by members of the conference board of directors to participants. The questionnaire itself, which asks three broad questions about contemporary conditions and postwar possibilities, is also included. The responses, some of which constitute medium-length essays, provide a valuable perspective on the backgrounds and beliefs of these conference participants. Respondents include Gregory Bateson, Maximilian Beck, Ben Zion Bokser, Edgar S. Brightman, William G. Constable, Hoxie N. Fairchild, Hudson Hoagland, Ralph S. Lillie, G. Bromley Oxnam, Lincoln Reis, and Ruth Strang. In addition, this series contains correspondence and memoranda surrounding the distribution of responses for comment by other participants.

III. Financial records, 1940-1957

The records include account books and financial statements documenting the receipts and expenditures of the conference over most of its existence. Information relating to the finances of specific conference meetings may be found within the records of individual conferences (see series IV). Valuable financial information is additionally located within the tax records of the conference permanent files (see series V).

IV. Conference records, 1940-1968

The largest group of records in the collection, the series consists of the administrative files of the eighteen individual conference meetings and the two meetings of conference fellows. Included are book files, which contain correspondence, memoranda, typescripts, reprints, galleys, reviews, and other materials relating to the publication of each conference volume; financial records; form letters sent to participants; invitations and responses signifying acceptance or refusal; agenda, notes, minutes and memoranda from meetings of various conference committees (board of trustees, planning meetings, art seminar, business meetings, nominating committee); and paper files, which incorporate copies of conference papers, printed comments, and correspondence related to the distribution of papers. Also included are lists of participants' names and biographical information; press files, comprised of press releases, clippings, and correspondence; conference programs; and registration sheets which participants signed at conference sessions.

The records of individual conferences also contain various items of particular interest. The files of the first conference contain typescripts and programs for radio addresses given by conference participants Lyman Bryson and Karl K. Darrow; a typescript of a "statement on rational empiricism" authored by participants with scientific expertise; photographs of conference participants (descriptions of which have been entered into the Ratner Center's photograph database); reports from Conservative rabbis relating to interfaith activities; and memoranda to an advisory committee describing the origins, program and future of the conference. The files of the second conference include the by-laws of the conference and correspondence relating to the radio broadcast of a roundtable discussion by conference participants. (Additional material on radio broadcasts by Conference members can be found in the records of the fourth, sixth, ninth, tenth, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth conferences.)

The earliest conferences often drafted consensual statements at their conclusion. Of particular interest is the statement of the sixth conference, on the subject of the atomic bomb, issued less than one month after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Although the conference sessions were closed to the public after 1943, the files of the seventh conference (held in 1946 at the University of Chicago) include a poster for a public meeting at which Professors Lyman Bryson, Caryl P. Haskins, and Robert M. MacIver engaged in a panel discussion entitled "Culture and Power in the Modern World." Smaller, more private meetings are also documented: the records of the eighth conference include the minutes of a meeting of a seminar which discussed developments in contemporary religious art from the Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant perspectives; the records of the seventh conference contain a statement, correspondence, and agenda produced by the "Chicago group," which included Professors Robert J. Havighurst, Wilhelm Pauck, Louis Wirth from the University of Chicago. Records of meetings held at the Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York are located within the files of the ninth, fourteenth, fifteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth conferences, as well as in the files of the 1955 meeting of conference fellows. These meetings generally featured planning for upcoming conferences and/or small discussions of topics related to conference themes.

The files of later conferences reflect the transformation of the conference into a permanent organization. The tenth conference records hold a series of typescripts which seem to have been submitted for a prize contest sponsored by the conference. The files of the twelfth conference include ballots for the election of conference fellows, a practice which accompanied the institutionalization of the conference in the 1950s. Also contained in the twelfth conference records are lists and correspondence relating to the conference's attempts to involve foreign scholars in conference activities.

The files of individual conferences are occasionally interspersed with records of the Institute of Religious and Social Studies, an interfaith endeavor which operated within The Jewish Theological Seminary and involved many Conference participants. Documents relating to the Institute are found in the files of the thirteenth, fifteenth, and seventeenth conferences, and in the files of the 1955 meeting of conference fellows. As part of their ongoing interest in intergroup relations, the conference administrators collected a wide array of printed material related to race relations in the war period. These "race relations files," which cover the years 1944 to 1947 and document such issues as discrimination in defense employment, the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans, and antisemitism, are found in the files of the fifth conference.

The files of individual conferences sometimes contain materials from other years. The records of the third conference, held in 1942, contain correspondence covering the years 1941 to 1943.

V. Conference Permanent Files, 1940-1977

The permanent files consist of records set aside for permanent retention by the conference's administrators. Included are copies of by-laws and certificate of incorporation, 1940, 1954-1956; lists of the board of directors, 1945-1955; lists of officers, 1950-1960, lists of fellows, 1956-1958; and lists of conference members, 1945-1960. Also noteworthy are the conference's tax files, which document the funding and expenditures of the institution from 1946 to 1960; files of comments on the conference, 1951-1977, gathered from published and anecdotal sources, which depict the scope of the conference's impact on participants and non-participants in the world of scholarship; and a binder which contains both selected minutes of various conference committees and a collection of other important conference documents.

VI. Proceedings, 1939-1968

The series consists of the complete stenographic reports of the eighteen conference meetings and two fellows' meetings convened between 1940 and 1968. A record of the luncheon meeting held in November 1939, at which the idea for the conference was developed, is also included. These proceedings document discussions which were informed by (but do not replicate) the content of individual papers, and thus provide an additional source of information. Conference papers may be found within the individual conference records (series D), as well as in the published volumes of the conference. The Seminary's General Files, Record Group 1 of the JTSA records, also contains many conference papers. The records of many conferences are comprised not only of the stenographic reports of the discussions sessions, but also of the proceedings of business meetings, critique meetings, executive committee meetings, and other special sessions.

Selected Participants Represented in the CSPR Records

• Mortimer J. Adler
• Swami Akhilanda
• William F. Albright
• Rudolph Allers
• Robert C. Angell
• Salo W. Baron
• Gregory Bateson
• David Baumgardt
• Maximilian Beck
• Daniel Bell
• Ruth Benedict
• Stephen Vincent Benet
• A. A. Berle
• David Bidney
• Franz Boas
• Ben Zion Bokser
• Quirinus Breen
• Edgar S. Brightman
• Van Wyck Brooks
• Lyman Bryson
• James MacGregor Burns
• Millar Burrows
• Douglas Bush
• Harry J. Carman
• Eliot D. Chapple
• Harlan Cleveland
• Stewart G. Cole
• William G. Constable
• Norman Cousins
• Bingham Dai
• Taraknath Das
• Thurston N. Davis
• Karl W. Deutsch
• Arnold Dresden
• Albert Einstein
• Friedrich Engel-Janosi
• Hoxie N. Fairchild
• Clarence H. Faust
• Jessica Feingold
• Nels F. S. Ferrè
• Louis Finkelstein
• Thomas K. Finletter
• Ralph Tyler Flewelling
• A. Campbell Garnett
• Eli Ginzberg
• Mark Graubard
• Daniel Greenberg
• Simon Greenberg
• Caryl P. Haskins
• Robert Havighurst
• Melville J. Herskovits
• Arthur Hertzberg
• Hudson Hoagland
• William E. Hocking
• Albert Hofstadter
• Sydney Hook
• Frank E. Horack, Jr.
• George B. deHuzar
• Aldous Huxley
• Charles S. Johnson
• F. Ernest Johnson
• I. L. Kandel
• Mordecai M. Kaplan
• Clyde Kluckhohn
• Jospeh Wood Krutch
• John LaFarge
• Harold Lasswell
• Daniel Lerner
• David Lilienthal
• Alain Locke
• Robert Lowie
• Eugene J. McCarthy
• R. M. MacIver
• Richard McKeon
• James Marshall
• Margaret Mead
• Perry Miller
• Hans J. Morgenthau
• John U. Nef
• Swami Nikhilananda
• Justin Wroe Nixon
• Howard L. Nostrand
• Harry A. Overstreet
• Talcott Parsons
• Anton Pegis
• Gerald Phelan
• Liston Pope
• Pitman B. Potter
• Bertrand Russell
• Max Schoen
• William Seifriz
• Harlow Shapley
• Roy Sellars
• Roger L. Shinn
• Pitirim A. Sorokin
• Mark Starr
• Donald C. Stone
• Ruth Strang
• Ordway Tead
• Laura Thompson
• Paul J. Tillich
• Henry Wieman
• Amos N. Wilder
• Louis Wirth
• Quincy Wright