Colyumist

"If you sing a song, dance a bit or write a book, keep your feet on the ground. Too many of us in the ministry talk over our audiences." That was Dr. Joseph Fort Newton's thought when, three weeks ago, he began to syndicate a daily 500-word religious talk called "Everyday Religion," first feature of note since Rev. Dr. Samuel Parkes Cadman went into pious colyumny. Famed liberal preacher, now co-rector of St. James's Protestant Episcopal Church in downtown Philadelphia, Dr. Newton had been solicited by General Manager Monte Bourjaily of United Feature Syndicate, who had heard of him from Editorial Director Malcolm W. Bingay of the Detroit Free Press.

Dr. Newton had written many a little piece for church papers but he wished to know the mood of the average non-religious editor. He wrote a dozen samples, sent them around for criticism, told the editors to be "ruthless." Aware that religious writers are often verbose, given to cliched sectarianism and stale prettiness, most of the editors were pleased to the point of enthusiasm. Editor Edward T. Leech of the Pittsburgh Press, "strongly impressed," could find no criticism to make. Editor Bingay predicted that Dr. Newton would gain an even bigger following in his field than Walter Lippmann (New York Herald Tribune, Chicago Daily News, et al.) in politics.

Born 54 years ago in Decatur, Tex., Joseph Fort Newton was brought up a Baptist. At Louisville's Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, he rebelled against the dogma that there had been an unbroken line of Baptists from apostolic times to the present. The Seminary's president, Dr. William Heth Whitsitt also rebelled and was deemed a heretic. Student Newton spent one more year as a Baptist, then became an independent. In 1916 he was called to the famed City Temple ("Cathedral of Non-Conformity") in London. In three years he went through 28 air raids, preached many a forthright liberal sermon, once conducted a funeral for 500 British soldiers.

Back in New York, Dr. Newton became pastor of the Church of the Divine Paternity which he gave up in 1925 because of the ''arid liberalism" of Manhattan theology. He went over to the Episcopal Church which he called, in the words of Phillips Brooks, "the roomiest church in Christendom." Dr. Newton needed room. Burly, round-faced, sharp-eyed, a fluent preacher, he had brought with him poetic mysticism without losing any of his old-time Baptist zeal. An authority on Abraham Lincoln, he read 2,000 works before writing Lincoln and Herndon. For McCall's Magazine he now edits a column of sermons-of-the-month.

By last week Dr. Newton's "Everyday Religion" was running in nine Midwestern and Southern newspapers. "Everyday Religion," explained Dr. Newton in his first piece, "is dedicated to take the stuff of life and find out how it can be fashioned into shapes of beauty and power and joy. . . ."

A Newton paragraph on Living with Ourselves: "It is a fine art of life to know how to do it. Few of us have mastered the art, hence we are afraid. We shun loneliness; we do not know the secret of solitude--a very different thing. First, we must face the facts, especially the things that make us hateful to ourselves and others, and deal with them. . . ."

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