Future of Preaching

''Preaching is doomed," cried a preacher last week at the Northern Baptist Convention in Washington. He was Dr. Bernard Chancellor Clausen, slight, blond, emphatic pastor of Syracuse, N. Y.'s First Baptist Church, a onetime Navy chaplain and communications officer on the U. S. cruiser North Carolina. Dr. Clausen began broadcasting sermons in 1920. He now speaks eight or ten sentences to "appropriate" music in a morning radio service, conducts a Saturday night radio Bible class with dramatized Bible stories. Last February Dr. Clausen spoke by air to the "largest audience of Baptists ever assembled," his listeners tuning in at their churches. Of the future of preaching he said last week: "We little, unimportant preachers may retire from the field with disgruntled resentment, or we may be a part of a joyous acceptance of this new tool which science has placed in our hands for the winning of the world."

Dr. Clausen did not tell the Northern Baptists about the "new tool" but he explained later to newsmen that he meant television--possible in ten years. Then, he thinks, half a dozen preachers will serve the whole world. Churches will so time their services that they can tune in on studio sermons. This will not throw little, unimportant preachers out of jobs. They will become executives, helping their parishioners to understand and live by the televised messages.

Besides hearing Dr. Clausen the Northern Baptists:

P: Refrained, after brisk debate, from withdrawing from the Federal Council, and from repudiating the Laymen's Foreign Missions Inquiry which was financed by Baptist John D. Rockefeller Jr. P: Came out for peace and disarmament, flayed Repeal and sweatshops. P: Elected as president Dr. William Shattuck Abernethy of Washington's Calvary Baptist Church.

P: Met with the Southern Baptists for the first time since Slavery divided them. Retiring President Charles Oscar Johnson of the Northern Baptists and Dr. Monroe Elmon Dodd of the Southern Baptists visited President Roosevelt. Said they: "Mr. President, we are back of you 96.8%. We can't go the 3.2%."

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