Reasonable Control or Too Much Christian Zeal?

The action of the church to require all members of its nursery school staff to be professing believers in Jesus Christ is the same zealous religious fundamentalism that produces the strife in the Near East that you report daily. Now we have its parallel in Sherman Oaks.

In direct contradiction of the mission of all churches to foster respect for all mankind, regardless of faith, the co-pastors of First Presbyterian Church are encouraging the divisiveness that zealous pursuit of a single religious belief will produce in any community. Witness the almost daily events in Lebanon and Israel, to name the more prominent international areas where religious strife exists.

Destroyed in the process was a pre-eminent Valley nursery school, the careers of superior professionals and the plans of hundreds of parents who must now scramble to find elsewhere the same quality of preschool training for their children. When a single Presbyterian church can be so insensitive to the needs of its community and the lives of its members, how can any of us expect to see a world at peace in our lifetime?

LEMUEL H. ARNOLD

Van Nuys