Religious Messages

Last week two happenings important to the effectiveness of religious liberalism took place--the merger of Christian Work and the Christian Century and the establishment of a Chair of Religious Literature and Drama in the Chicago Theological Seminary. The Christian Century and Christian Work have long been the two outstanding undenominational organs of this country. Their causes have been progressive religion, Christian idealism, Christian unity and the Christianizing of the industrial and international orders. To this end they have for the most part duplicated their efforts, although everyone knows that the Christian Century has been by far the more aggressive of the two.

On the Christian Century staff are Dr. Charles Clayton Morrison, Dr. Herbert L. Willett and Dr. Paul Hutchinson. This triumvirate and their associates have ever been pugnacious for Christian standards. Often they have been thought "too independent." When most churchmen believed sincerely that the best way to enduring world concord depended on the U. S. joining 'the World Court, this periodical opposed it. An example of unusual enterprise for religious journals was their despatching of questionnaires over a year ago to every minister of every Protestant denomination in the U. S. They wanted to know which of their co-workers these ministers thought were the best preachers, and from the answers they set off 25 names with the highest numbers of votes. The sermons of these 25 the Christian Century published fortnightly over the year, issuing them later in book form. The pugnacity and frankness of the editors often bring them condemnation from the more conservative of ecclesiastical dignitaries. Somewhat as the Nation is highly esteemed for its brilliance by capitalists who damn its views, the Christian Century is read by churchmen whom it castigates.

Deemed less "radical" is Christian Work. Some 60 years ago T. DeWitt Talmage was its editor; succeeded by Dr. William M. Taylor of the Broadway Tabernacle, Manhattan. Dr. Frederick Lynch became editor in 1913. In 1919 came Henry Strong Huntington as associate editor, in 1923 Dr. Frederic Remington as executive editor, and in 1924 Fred Eastman as managing editor.

The staff of the consolidated paper, whose first issue will appear this week, will include: Dr. Morrison as editor, Dr. Hutchinson as managing editor, and Dr. Lynch, Mr. Huntington and Mr. Eastman as contributing editors.

Fred Eastman, as he is known in magazine circles although he is an ordained minister, will thus be left freer to fill the Chair of Religious Literature and Drama at the Chicago Theological Seminary, which is affiliated with the University of Chicago, to which he was named last week. This is the first Chair of the kind to be established by any theological school, and carries out the policy of the Chicago Seminary to make the development of personality the basis of training for religious leadership.

Mr. Eastman will teach biography, and other literature, advanced composition and religious drama.

The value of proper drama to spread the message of religion has received more and more due attention in recent years. The first handicap to this type of religious work was the lack of suitable plays. A library of these has developed in a slow, haphazard way, a tardiness which induced the use of supposedly esthetic, "higher" drama. Certain playlets written especially for church production were offered. But most of these made no provisions for the curtailed stage facilities of practically all churches.

Mr. Eastman takes exceptional qualifications with him to his new duties at Chicago. Only 39 years old he has already held a five-year pastorate on Long Island; was business manager of the Red Cross Magazine until the end of the War; was director of educational work for the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions; associate editor of The Survey; and up to last week managing editor of Christian Work. During all these activities he managed to get in two years of postgraduate work in advanced composition and drama at Columbia. His books are: Fear God in Your Own Village (under the pseudonym of "Richard Morse"), Unfinished Business, and Playing Square with Tomorrow.