Holy Depression

Gloomy figures confronted U. S. Protesant churchmen last week. To the monthly meeting of the administrative committee of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America went Rev. Arva Brush Keeler, director of the department of Buildings & property of the Presbyterian Board of National Missions. Director Keeler told the committee that Protestant churches in the U. S. owe some $135.000,000. Church bonds amounting to $6,000,000 or more have been defaulted by twelve denominations alone. Church credit, said le, is none too good; church building projects are being held up by Depression. Director Keeler suggested a remedy: let a small group of rich men establish a fund of $10,000,000, to draw 3% interest, to be lent to needy churches on long-term notes at 4%. The Council appointed a committee to study the matter.

Even more gloomy than church-builders were church journalists last week. Special in their appeal, ecclesiastical papers find paid advertising skimpy, subscriptions few. Many weeklies, like those of the Methodist Episcopal Church, are subsidized by their denominations.

Last summer The Living Church (high-church Episcopal weekly) begged for help (TiME, Aug. 24, Sept. 14). Last week it announced that aid had come "from anonymous sources." The Southern Churchman (low-church Episcopal weekly) also needed help, and still does. Three weeks ago the World's Christian Fundamentals Association, publisher of The Christian Fundamentalist, announced it was $1,600 in debt because "one dear friend" is no longer able to give from $1,250 to $2,500 a year. To these names were added last week two more: The Churchman (independent, liberal Episcopal weekly) and The Presbyterian Advance (Southern independent weekly). Both are old, respected. The Churchman, edited by Dr. Guy Emory Shipler, is the oldest church paper in the English-speaking world (founded in 1805).

Appealing to "the friends of liberalism and progress," The Churchman said it had had "to push aside certain forms of available financial support, representing concentrated authority that would have used the journal to work its will." In its news columns The Churchman printed a statement of the National Council of the Episcopal Church, expressing distress at "the precarious financial condition" of religious journals. Pointing out that the General Convention of the Church had refused to permit it to make special grants to its press, the National Council said it spent more than $5,000 for advertising in 1931, hoped to continue.

To The Presbyterian Advance have also come offers of money "which, if accepted, would make impossible the continuance of The Advance as an independent paper." The issue last week seemed plain.

Should Protestant churches be represented by independent or controlled publications? Said The Advance: "Alert Presbyterians would do well to face that issue squarely before it is too late. . . ."

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