Whose Front?

One surefire way of getting publicity is to present some sort of award to an authentic celebrity. This tried & true device has been put to good use since 1939 by the Rev. Guy Emery Shipler, who edits and pressagents Manhattan's fortnightly, unofficial Episcopal magazine, The Churchman. The annual "Churchman Award" dinners have honored such eminent folk as Franklin Roosevelt, Bernard Baruch, General Eisenhower and Mme. Chiang Kaishek. Last year Editor Shipler got extra big publicity, but the wrong kind, when Secretary of State Marshall decided that he would rather not accept The Churchman's award. Last week, with his 1949 dinner to honor Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam only a few days off, Dr. Shipler was having trouble again.

President Benjamin F. Fairless of U.S. Steel Corp. and Board Chairman Cass Canfield of Harper & Bros, withdrew as vice chairmen of the dinner committee. Minnesota's New Dealing Senator Hubert Humphrey canceled his engagement to speak. President Spyros Skouras of 20th Century-Fox withdrew his sponsorship. Like General Marshall before them, some of Dr. Shipler's guests were discovering to their surprise that The Churchman involved more complications than the pious good work that its name implies.

When the Rev. Leon M. Birkhead, national director of Friends of Democracy, Inc.,* was asked to be a sponsor, he wrote:

"The Churchman has become so involved with the Communist party line that it is quite impossible for me any longer to participate in its activities."

"Selected List." The thin, slick-paper Churchman is the "oldest [145 years] existing religious journal in English." Long-jawed, fiery Editor Shipler, 67, has been guiding its destinies for the last 26 years. He had always wanted to be a journalist. After high school in Clyde, N.Y., he spent a year reporting for a Rochester paper, later worked for two years on the Boston Traveler before he went to Manhattan's conservative General Theological Seminary. "For three years," he says, "I suffered there, cut off from the world's affairs." After his ordination, Dr. Shipler spent a year as rector of an Episcopal church in St. Louis and six years at a parish in Cincinnati. He joined The Churchman in 1917.

Shirtsleeved Editor Shipler got into plenty of fights, never backed away from one. Pounding out slam-bang editorials against the corruption of Hollywood, he ended up on the wrong end of a $10,200 libel judgment against The Churchman. But in the late '305, his zeal, which was also sharply anti-Rome, began to find new, political channels of expression. The details of the trend were laid down in a 3,000-word document produced last week by Leon Birkhead to support his statement that The Churchman is "involved with the Communist line." The Birkhead document includes "a selected list" of 25 "Communist front or Communist organizations" to which Dr. Shipler lent his name between 1939 and 1949. Nine of them, says Birkhead, are listed by the Attorney General as "Communist":

American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, American League for Peace & Democracy, American Youth for Democracy (see EDUCATION), Civil Rights Congress, Council for Pan-American Democracy, Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, National Committee to Win the Peace, National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, National Federation for Constitutional Liberties.

Birkhead cited other examples to prove his charge of Communist-fronting: Shipler's participation in the Tito-sponsored delegation that visited Yugoslavia to study religious freedom in 1947 (TIME, Sept. i, 1947); his signing of a statement last April demanding suppression of The Iron Curtain, a movie based on the Soviet espionage cases in Canada.

"Helpful Agencies." Birkhead summed up: "It seems clear that Guy Emery Shipler--perhaps in the belief that he has found the only alternative or antithesis to the Vatican--has gone over to the side of the fronters ... He could not be more helpful to the Kremlin policy if he were a member of the party ... By his gesture of support to countless Communist organizations and his championing of a line consistent only in that it protects Stalin's foreign policy, Guy Emery Shipler and his magazine are very helpful agencies by which the Communist Party does its work in America."

Quick was Editor Shipler with an angry answer. "It is obvious to me that Birkhead is fronting for the Roman political hierarchy," he said. He flatly denied that he had ever knowingly sponsored any Communist front activity. Said he: "Many Protestants who are opposed to Marxism, as I am, have sponsored a particular conference or dinner in behalf of peace ... by some of the organizations listed by Birkhead. If any of the organizations are in fact Communist fronts, it should be remembered that what was sponsored was not the organization but a particular event in behalf of a worthy cause ... I challenge anyone to find any pro-Communist material in The Churchman in the 31 years I have been on the staff . . . The Churchman and its editor stand for the application of the principles of the prophets and Christianity to all social relationships. That is why we are under attack by those who wish to confuse social Christianity with Communism."

In the midst of last week's brouhaha over who is a fellow traveler and who isn't, who was coming to dinner and who wasn't, Bishop Oxnam released his letter accepting the award. Wrote he: "I count this a high honor . . . The Churchman has stood courageously and creatively for our Christian faith and likewise for our democratic principles. In such an hour . . . it is good to know that there are really fearless journals that believe in liberty enough to stand resolutely for it. . ."

But to Unitarian Birkhead, liberty is not the only thing that Oxnam and Shipler stand for. Said he last week: "Both Dr. Shipler and Bishop Oxnam have become darlings of the anti-Catholic movements in this country."

*A nonprofit organization founded by Unitarian Minister Birkhead in 1937 to research and propagandize against the anti-democratic activities of the extreme right and extreme left.

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