The Charlotte News
Sunday, July 19, 1936
EDITORIAL
On the Button!
Four old men who have given an aggregate of 150 years to teaching in Wake Forest College, to living life and observing it philosophically, have just wound the rather rabid Biblical Recorder's ball of yarn with a neatness which puts the religious journal in the corner with a paper cap on its head. With a vehemence amounting almost to malediction, The Recorder had taken the Wake Forest trustees to task for permitting supervised dances on the campus, warning them to
... be sure the Baptists of North Carolina, and we believe the God in Heaven, will hold you accountable.
Dr. W. C. Cullum, of the department of religion, who has given instruction to a majority of Baptist ministers in the state, thought that until homes, churches and schools fostered a deeper spiritual life, dancing was a mere side issue. Dr. J. W. Lynch, his associate, saw only one question, inasmuch as there would be dancing: whether it was to be in better or worse surroundings. Dr. J. H. Gorrell, pastor and teacher, observed sedately that since dancing was increasing by leaps and bounds that the leaping should be within the bounds.
But it was Dr. Needham Y. Gulley, 81-year-old dean emeritus of the law school, who applied the coups de gras of humorous common sense to the argument:
"Men and women have been seeking association with one another for a long time. It seems that Adam did not have association when he was first placed in the Garden of Eden, and it takes very little of the record to narrate what he did until he met Eve. She may have gotten him into a lot of trouble, but we are all bound to admit that his progress was no longer stationary. Heretofore dances have been held in neighboring towns or elsewhere with no supervision or control. ...I think the Trustees have acted wisely."
All of which, as we see it, is a family fight among the Baptists. But, lawsamercy! hasn't that Gulley fellow got a nifty left!