Bradley's 25th

In Chicago's Palmer House one night last week some 1,300 people, including Mayor Edward Joseph Kelly, the British Consul General, Rabbi Louis Leopold Mann and numerous ministers, paid $2 apiece to eat fruit, asparagus soup, chicken, Salade Peoples Church, Frozen Cake 25th Jubilee. The jubilee was that of the world's largest Unitarian church (2,500 members), founded with 67 members in 1912 by a rotund, swarthy little man who today is Chicago's most popular Protestant pastor.

Preston Bradley, son of a blacksmith of Linden, Mich., preached his first sermon at 15, studied law and obtained a D. C. L. degree, then returned to the church as a Presbyterian student pastor. Before he even got around to studying theology, Preston Bradley withdrew from the Presbyterian Church, began preaching independently, set up Peoples Church as an "all-sectarian" group in a Chicago theatre. By 1926, when he built a $750,000 church on the North Side, Dr. Bradley had found Unitarianism to his taste, affiliated his congregation with the American Unitarian Association. Peoples Churchgoers contribute $4,000 a week, fill its 1,400 seats to overflowing at Sunday morning and evening services. For 14 years--longer than any minister west of Pittsburgh--Dr. Bradley has broadcast his services, now gets 1,000 letters a week.

Preacher Bradley, 48, drinks lemon juice before breakfast, walks an hour a day, spends his vacations piloting his 30-ft. cruiser on the lakes of northern Minnesota. An able angler, he became president of the Izaak Walton League of America in 1930, was made president emeritus when his four-year term expired. Fond of publicity, Preston Bradley gets it not only by preaching, reviewing books in his pulpit every Wednesday, making speeches nightly--his schedule for paid appearances extends into next March--but by such activities as serving on Illinois library, prison and school boards. Last year 10,000 Chicagoans signed a petition requesting him to seek the Republican mayoralty nomination to run against Mayor Kelly. Dr. Bradley said he preferred to round out 25 years with Peoples Church, from which he has been absent (because of illness) only five Sundays.

At Dr. Bradley's jubilee dinner last week he was given a check for $2,000. Catholicism was represented, unofficially, by his good friend Judge John McGoorty, who, though a devout Catholic, is often called "assistant pastor of Peoples Church." Spokesman for Jewry was popular Rabbi Mann, who rejoiced that Adolf Hitler declined to allow Preston Bradley in Germany last year. Prayed Rabbi Mann, in Hebrew: "May you go on, dear Preston, from strength to strength. May your dust continue to serve even unto your 100th year."

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