''Tones of Thunder"

Last week in Oklahoma City Rev. Homer Lewis Sheffer told his congregation at First Unitarian Church that he was resigning, to accept a call from the First Unitarian Society of Spokane. Wash. "I assure you," said Pastor Sheffer crisply from his pulpit, "that there have been no pious conversations with the Almighty. Other opportunities have come to me but I have turned them down. This time I cannot do so. . . ."

For seven years freckle-faced, red-headed Pastor Sheffer, 44, had been in Oklahoma City. Although Unitarianism is far from strong in the Midwest he doubled attendance in his big, rambling church. Once a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church from which he was ousted for heresy. Pastor Sheffer publicly flayed the churches for their machine-like governments, their excessive "talk about God." He encouraged dances in his quarters in the church, twice lent his pulpit to his good Presbyterian friend Norman Thomas. But it was not his theological or social liberalism that caused Pastor Sheffer to resign last week. Bluntly from his pulpit he explained :

"Money is speaking in tones of thunder and I am answering its calls."

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