Religion: Preaching Team

With vigor in their bodies, fervor in their souls, aphorisms in their minds, a band of high-pressure Protestant missionaries last week began a three-month tour of 25 religiously significant U. S. communities. The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America advertised the undertaking as “the greatest united venture in religion on the part of Protestant churches of America in this generation.” Starting with Albany, N. Y. last week, preaching teams of at least ten men and women will spend four days in the following communities: Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Detroit, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Birmingham, Louisville. St. Louis, Cleveland, Des Moines, Omaha, Billings, Mont., Seattle, Vancouver, Portland, Ore., San Francisco-Oakland, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Washington, Raleigh, Philadelphia, Boston, winding up with a multitudinous evangelical mass meeting in Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden the second week of December.

On the preaching team arc such pious notables as Mrs. Harper Sibley, wife of the president of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce; Francis Bowes Sayre. Assistant Secretary of State, and Woodrow Wilson’s son-in-law; Dr. T. Z. Koo. a leader of Christian youth activities in China. The eleven Bishops of the Team included Episcopal Archbishop Cecil C. Quainton of Victoria, B. C., Methodist Bishop Ralph Spalding Cushman of the Denver area. Episcopal Bishop James Edward Freeman of Washington. A Team member who was to preach in Pittsburgh last week was Manhattan’s Presbyterian Dr. Edmund Bigelow Chaffee. Minister of famed Labor Temple and editor of the Presbyterian Tribune. Three days before, he dropped dead at the University of Minnesota while addressing a conference on social work.

Visiting star is an importation from India—Dr. E. (for Eli) Stanley Jones, who humbly calls himself “evangelist 10 the high castes of India.” Born in Baltimore in 1884, Dr. Jones went to India as a Methodist missionary in 1907, has since made frequent excursions to the U. S., has sent forth several best-selling books. —The Christ of the Indian Road (over 600,000 copies), Christ at the Round Table, The Christ of Every Road, The Christ on the Mount, Christ and Human Suffering. In 1928 the Methodist Episcopal Church elected Dr. Jones a bishop. He immediately resigned, preferring to pursue a calling which kept him in contact wi:h Brahmin Saint Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Poet Rabindranath Tagore. the Maharaja Gaekwar Sir Sayaji Rao III of Baroda.

When the Federal Council asked Dr. Jones to reawaken U. S. Protestantism, that good man retreated to the Himalayas. There in mountain solitude he studied, prayed, meditated for three months. This summer he emerged, proceeded to Capetown, Johannesburg and other South African communities, arrived fortnight ago at Beaver College at Jenkintown, Pa. There with other members of the National Preaching Mission Dr. Jones prayed, played, planned.

Last week Preaching Teams at Albany. Buffalo and Pittsburgh followed the regular program laid out for future missions: Contact with every minister and influential layman in the community. This was achieved through: ij morning meetings of ministers and women; 2) luncheons for lay leaders, women, all office holders of all local churches; 3) noontime evangelist meetings in a downtown church or theatre; 4) afternoon seminars for ministers and laymen, conferences for young people; 5) evening mass meetings and sings; 6) huge Sunday popular mass meetings.

At each of last week’s meetings Missionary Jones set the themes which probably half a million Protestants will hear before Christmas. Samples: ”The gospel will solve every human problem. . . . The Kingdom of God is for all of Man. . . . The Kingdom of God as Jesus described it is founded directly on good will and brotherhood—life as it ought to be. . . . Poverty is not the will of the God who intended the earth to be beautiful. We could banish poverty tomorrow if this thing of the Kingdom of God were taken seriously by Christians. We have the technique, science, everything to do away with poverty. All we lack is the collective good will. . . . The ideal of the Kingdom of God on earth does away with the equality between earth and heaven. The problem is to bring together these worlds into a great unity of life. I believe that the Kingdom of God has a wonderfully individual and collective meaning. But I believe that in order to get into that Kingdom we have to be born again.”