Signs of the Times

John B. Connolly

The Honorable John B. Connolly Governor of Texas in his address at the 17th Anniversary Dinner of The Religion in American Life Program New York, New York

It seems to me that in this era of relative ethics, a return to the training of people in the highest of ethics is mandatory.... I doubt if there are many in this room who do not believe that aside from their parents and their church, their teachers had the greatest influence for good or bad upon their characters. It is incumbent upon teachers and upon that profession to realize this and to adhere to an especially high code, in order to lend to their teaching that important dimension which can have so profound an effect upon their students.... With an ethical background in the lower schools, the student in college is better equipped... to see... that in the pursuit of a career seemingly far removed from any religious connotation, he is going to have to call upon his ethical training and his religious beliefs as never before, every day of his life.

Many a man, self-sufficient and complacent in his youth, has learned after the buffeting of years that his personal well-springs, even the intellectual well-springs accumulated and replenished through the ages, are not enough. He has learned that he needs the plumbless depths of religion, the boundless power of his God to bring him unscathed through ... a continually challenging life....

For many individuals today, there is a very real fear that all that we cherish is being lost. Don't many of these fears stem from the fact that we are tending to abdicate personal responsibility in favor of a collective effort to solve our problems? For example, we rarely think of juvenile delinquency in terms of individual responsibility ... the duty to provide decent training and a stable home. ... Our only real fear is an over-reliance on group action, or even government action, to provide all of the solutions.... The challenge then is to keep such group action in its proper context, realizing that an individual, at the time of great decision, must rely on his individual training, his individual ethics, his individual courage and his own individual faith to face his most critical trial. It appears to me that, far from drifting away from religious and ethical concepts, we are being forced into their greater implementation.

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