Religion: For Protestants at War

>Said Secretary of the Navy Knox: “In this war, to a degree never approached before, men are turning to God. . . .”

>Said Dr. William B. Pugh, chairman of the General Commission on Army & Navy Chaplains, just back from a 48,000-mile tour of the battlefronts : “The chapels are not overcrowded but there is some thing underneath that is really religion.”

These statements were both made at a celebration in Washington last week. The occasion: the birthday of a year-old religious organization for military men and women, the Service Men’s Christian League. Later Secretary Knox and Dr Pugh sang in unison in praise of the League’s monthly magazine, The Link.

The Service Men’s Christian League represents Protestantism, but no one Church. Its 1,012 units, with 100,000 members, organized wherever U.S. troops are stationed, provide a substitute for home-town church youth groups. Under the chaplain’s guidance, League members hold Bible classes, prayer meetings, discussion groups, debate many a religious and postwar problem.

A big task at the League’s Philadelphia headquarters is getting out its pocket-size monthly, The Link. The magazine, which runs to some 60 pages, contains stories with a moral, inspirational articles from chaplains, book reviews, Bible readings, a question box for soldiers’ problems (“How does a guy keep dirty thoughts from coming to his mind?”), poetry, innocuous jokes, a letters column. Of the current issue’s contributors, some 75% are in the armed forces.

The Link goes free to any chaplain who asks for it. Some 3,000 (including Roman Catholics and Jews) now get it. The Link’s first issue was a modest 50,000 copies. The current issue: 250,000. Cost for the year: $84,000.