Religion: Clerical Movie Fan

When the pubs open in London’s dockside district of Stepney at 6:30 pm., once a month the Rev. Cecil Edwyn Young starts making the rounds. Among the cheery, bleary gatherings, he finds some of the best customers for his parish paper at threepence a throw. The customers, in turn, find smiling Anglican Young’s publication like no parish paper they ever saw before; it is crammed with up-to-the-minute movie reviews, theater chitchat and interviews with Hollywood stars, usually illustrated by photographs of the star and Interviewer Young. The advertising columns carry out the un-Puritan atmosphere with ads for beer and ale (“Guinness for Strength”).

Tall (6 ft. 2 in.), spectacled Father Young, 41, became rector of St. Dun-stan’s, the “mother church of the East End,” six months ago and lost no time startling as many of his 19,000 parishioners as possible with his Americanophile movie-fanning. When he is not studying the King James version of the Bible, he is likely to be deep in the pages of Variety, the bible of U.S. show business. “We have a good deal in common, the church and the entertainment world, in one sense at least,” he says. “We must both proclaim or perish. Sometimes I think we might improve church attendance by charging admission so that people could feel they were getting value for money instead of merely something for nothing.”

In six months, Minister Young’s efforts have boosted the parish monthly’s circulation by 500 to 1,700 and brought the advertising revenue up to an annual level of £300-“almost enough to cover our costs.” So far, church attendance has not notably increased, but Rector Young is sure that his new look in pastoral journalism is stimulating a new awareness of the church. “We are simply trying to bring outsiders to the church,” he said one day last week, “to show them that we’re wide-awake and human and willing to play ball, as it were.” Then he went off to peddle his papers, happily turning over in his mind the chances of getting Gregory Peck to make a personal appearance at St. Dunstan’s annual fete next month.