God & Steel in Pittsburgh

The Rev. Dr. Samuel Moor Shoemaker, 61, is a ruggedly handsome divine who thrives on Gilbert & Sullivan and finds the preacher's lot a challengingly happy one. Ever since his unlined face and gentle voice became a fixture in Pittsburgh's Calvary Episcopal Church three years ago, religion has been moving out of the Sunday-morning shadows and into the steel mills and executive suites. The casual young members of the "Golf Club crowd" have found themselves talking religion at cocktail parties and even turning out for Bible-study meetings with "Dr. Sam" at the H-Y-P (Harvard, Yale, Princeton) Club. Steelworkers have attended prayer meetings right in the factory.

This month Dr. Shoemaker and his friends launched a new movement--the "Pittsburgh Experiment." It is designed as a saturation campaign against "nonconductors" in Pittsburgh's business world, to be carried out through small task forces. Explains Shoemaker: "Today . . . the small group is both a sign and an instigator of spiritual awakening.''

Apart from Dr. Shoemaker, the experiment's prime mover is Admiral Ben Moreell, board chairman of Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., longtime seven-day-a-week Christian and one of those responsible for bringing Dr. Sam from Manhattan's fashionable Calvary Church. Layman Moreell, who will serve as chairman of the Pittsburgh Experiment's board of trustees, announced that the campaign will be guided by a full-time executive director, the Rev. William H. Cohea Jr., graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary and former pastor of the Daniels Park Presbyterian Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Between 60 and 70 "young marrieds" will work in couples, getting others like themselves started in Christian discussion groups, or as religious ambassadors to men's and women's groups. Businessmen will be approached at their places of business; downtown luncheon sessions have already been set up, and department heads in some companies are planning brief sessions in their offices during coffee breaks.

Sam Shoemaker, once an enthusiastic member of Dr. Frank Buchman's M.R.A., has high hopes for Pittsburgh's role in changing the U.S. Said he last week: "I like to envision Pittsburgh as a city under God, so that God would be the same to Pittsburgh as steel is to Pittsburgh. The backlog of Christian conviction and belief in this city' means more to it than all the coal in the hills and all the steel in the mills. If these forces can be trained and mobilized. Pittsburgh might become a spiritual pilot plant for America . . ."

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