A Woman & a Book

Helen Kenyan always managed to keep busy. At school in Brooklyn, where she was born 60-odd years ago, she had to work hard to keep up with her three bright brothers. At Vassar she was well known for her prowess as center halfback on the hockey team. She was elected alumnae president of her college, and in 1929 she became first woman chairman of Vassar's board of trustees.

Last week, grey-haired, grey-eyed, forceful Helen Kenyon was handed another "first" and a big job along with it. The General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches elected her Moderator--the first woman to head the church. Her election was recognition of Miss Kenyon's work as a director and vice president of the church's Board of Home Missions and as first woman chairman of the Missions Council.

In addition to Moderator Kenyon, Congregationalists also acquired a book last week. Titled A Book of Worship for Free Churches (Oxford, $1.50), it is designed to bring new order into the every-minister-for-himself system of worship that has hitherto been the practice in Congregational churches.

The new pew-book is by no means as rigid or binding as the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer or the Roman Catholic missal; liturgical alternatives are offered for almost every occasion. But even so, the General Council's Seminar on Worship, which spent ten years preparing the new pew-book, "expects" (there is still no way of forcing a Congregationalist congregation to conform) that parsons will put it to good use.

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