Religion: Boys & Girls Together

The boys & girls who jostled into Purdue University’s Music Hall last week looked like ordinary small-town kids about to see a western. They wore ankle socks and saddle shoes, sweat shirts outside their trousers, hair-ribbons, skull caps. But it was not a western they had come to see. Suddenly, some of them began to hum “Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!” In clear, young voices, the whole 5,000 took it up, and the auditorium was transformed into a meeting house.

For five days, the National Convocation of Methodist Youth was in full throat and full swing at Lafayette, Ind. “I wonder what you have to do not to get applause in this crowd,” said one speaker, after they had applauded him for sneezing. “I noticed last night that we even applauded after prayer.”

But the sum total of the conference added up to something like a religious experience for many of them. Its organizer, president and precocious patriarch, pole-tall (6 ft. 3 in.) Smith Jameson Jones Jr., who at 22 is already an important figure in U.S. Methodism, did his best to put it into words. “The very size of the conference makes it wonderful for them. Back home they’re bobby-soxers, maybe not too interested in the church. For one week they are transformed . . .

“The jolt a young person gets here will help him to build his youth group at home. We grow a little chain reaction. They won’t forget that they were here with 5,000 kids like themselves . . .”