In a letter to parsons that appeared in Gegen den Lärm, the magazine of the Swiss Noise Abatement League, the president and director of the League raised religious reasons for fighting noise:
For the Christian, silence is a prerequisite of the spiritual disposition, for in silence he is able to perceive the voice of God. Already in the Old Testament was this connection evident. Often in the New Testament one reads of how Jesus went out into the wilderness...If He, the Son of God, felt a need for silence, He, who...never fell under the influence of His surroundings, how much more do we need that stillness in order to come before God in silence! Uncounted numbers of men can no longer find this inner quiet amid the daily ever-present noise, and they thereby lack the natural basis for the deeper delving or believing to take place...
The Swiss are not the only ones seeking commitment from clergymen. In the United States, the first president of Citizens for a Quieter City was Jerome Nathanson, a Leader of the Society for Ethical Culture; Rabbi Edward E. Klein and Rev. Frederick M. Morris, D.D., are charter members of its Advisory Board. In what may have been thc first such address in the United States, Mr. Nathanson presented an Ethical Culture Sunday Platform on the subject "Can We Have a Quieter New York?" Among his points: "Whatever in the environment undercuts or adversely affects people in their relationship is plainly unethical...Unquestionably the human environment we have been building in this city, as well as in cities throughout the country and the world, [has] been destructive of human well-being...A quieter city is part of the civilization we deserve and must achieve."
Rev. Morris, Rector of St. Thomas Church in New York, asks his parishioners to use their influence to support a reasonable control of unnecessary noise. And Rabbi Klein was active in preventing the West Side STOLport from being built in the middle of a congested residential and cultural complex.