Raleigh, Nov. 18—The wide-open Sunday, the laxity of divorce laws and the “flagrant violation and indifference of officers to the state law prohibiting the sale or giving of cigarettes to minors,” were attacked in a report of the board of temperance and social service of the North Carolina Methodist conference, adopted by the conference today. The adoption of the report put the conference on record for a national divorce law.
“The wide-open Sunday advocates must be defeated or soon our Sabbath as a day of worship, meditation and prayer will be gone,” the report states. “We oppose the playing of baseball, golf and like games on Sunday. We fear automobiles used on Sunday is often an agency for evil rather than a means of service.
“The levity with which the state law and the courts treat the matter of divorce is to be deplored,” the conference report stated. “It is so easy under the state law for a man or a woman to secure a divorce that some people have gotten that in all instances but one it is wrong, sinful and adulterous. We urge our lawmakers to consider this growing evil. The committee believes that divorce laws should be national rather than state laws in order that the same law may obtain all states.”
Issuing a warning against gambling, the report continues:
“The buying or selling of contracts in cotton, corn, wheat, bacon, sugar and such like is another and very insidious form.”
Announcement that the conference will come to an end Monday at noon, when appointments for the new year are read, was made.
Two gifts to the Trinity college alumni revolving fund were made public. S.C. Vann of Franklinton and R.H. Wright of Durham, each contributing $10,000. The conference board of education increased its annual allotment to the college from $5,000 to $10,000, which will equal the amount allowed the institution by the western conference.
The gifts of Vann and Wright and the board’s action followed the Trinity alumni banquet held last night.
Submission of further reports and routine business occupied the sessions.
Bishop Collins Denny, presiding officer of the conference, will deliver a sermon tomorrow at 11 o’clock. He will be followed in the evening by Bishop James Cannon, who will speak on the near east. The late Bishop J.C. Kilgo will be among the deceased ministers and officials of the church who will be honored at memorial services to be held in the afternoon.
From the front page of the Charlotte Observer, Sunday, Nov. 19, 1922
