Broadcasts

There is a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but these things have passed away. There is a time to fight, and that time has now come!

Having thus from his pulpit addressed his congregation in Woodstock, Va. one January Sunday in 1776, John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg flung wide his Lutheran minister's gown, revealed himself in the uniform of a colonel of the Continental Army. The congregation cheered. That day Pastor Muhlenberg gained 300 recruits to his 8th Virginia regiment, called "the German regiment" and a model of efficiency. Colonel Muhlenberg, son of a German who in 1748 organized the first American Lutheran federation, the Pennsylvania Ministerium, had gone to Woodstock in 1772 after journeying to England to be ordained an Anglican minister, since the Colony's laws required that all its ministers, no matter what their sect, be nominally of the Established Church. A member of that province's House of Burgesses, Muhlenberg fought in the battles of Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, Yorktown, was a major general at the close of the Revolution. A friend of Jefferson and Monroe, he represented Pennsylvania in Congress during its early years, was chosen as Pennsylvania's Senator but resigned to be district supervisor of revenue, which he thought a more useful post. John Muhlenberg died in 1807, aged 61.

Last week, on approximately the 162nd anniversary of this Lutheran hero's greatest sermon, the United Lutheran Church in America took to the radio to honor him and itself, the date (January 1) being also the 20th anniversary of this largest U. S. Lutheran body (1,523,022 members), which was formed by merging three of the many scattered groups which make up U. S. Lutheranism. Listening in on NBC's Red network, Lutherans heard Muhlenberg's recruiting sermon dramatized, heard his connection with "The Cradle of the Nation" glorified by Virginia's Governor George Campbell Peery and Senator Harry Flood Byrd.

Seventeen years ago last week, in smart Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh's East End, Westinghouse engineers installed a wireless telephone and three transmitters, announced that they were sending "up to a radius of 2,000 miles" on station KDKA the complete Calvary service. Only two months before, Calvary's Rector Edwin Jan van Etten had listened to the world's first radio broadcast, on KDKA--the Harding-Cox Presidential returns.

Last week on the anniversary of this pioneer broadcast in Calvary Church-- largest Episcopal Church between New York and the Mississippi--Rector van Etten again broadcast on KDKA. He organized a choir with numerous boys whose fathers had sung in the 1921 service, had it accompanied by the organist of the original broadcast. An extempore sermonizer, Dr. van Etten found the notes of his first broadcast, attempted to reconstruct his 17-year-old words, ad libbing as well on the wonders of radio.

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