Churches on the Air

The lonesome whoo-whoo of a train whistle wailed through the rushing chug-a-chug of a locomotive. Then a cowboy guitar picked up the forlorn rhythm of "I'm a-goin' where the climate fits my clothes" to introduce the treacly resonance of a radio announcer. In the oak-paneled commons room of Chicago Theological Seminary last week, 39 Protestant ministers and religious workers listened intently to the transcribed radio show that followed, How Christmas Came to Maggie Martin.

It was, as one Episcopal minister said, "15 minutes of unabashed tearjerking." Maggie, the daughter of an itinerant beanpicker, was rescued from social ostracism by the beautiful Baptist mission worker, Miss Lacey, whose well-modulated voice converted Maggie from a self-pitying brat to a self-sacrificing angel. As the program ended, the listeners began hurling comment and criticism at the head of Chicago Theological Seminary's Professor Ross Snyder, moderator of the session and co-chairman of Chicago's Religious Radio Workshop.

New Techniques. This week, the Workshop wound up its fourth annual month-long session in Chicago. Along with smaller subsidiary workshops held throughout the country, it is the answer of the Protestant Radio Commission to the problem of putting radio to work for religion. Through the workshops have gone the leaders of most U.S. denominational radio committees.

The results are already easy to detect even from the loudspeaker end. The old sing-preach-and-pray formula that made radio religion a drug on the market is giving way more & more to the kind of religious programming that competes with secular shows: religious newscasts, interviews, round tables, special events and dramatic shows.

New Ideas. Co-chairman of the Workshop with Snyder, and a recognized leader in the field of religious radio, is energetic, balding Everett C. Parker, 36. He was working for a radio station in Chicago when a Methodist minister asked him to help get a sponsor for a religious show. Parker became so interested in the field that he began experimenting with new program ideas, ended by getting 152 churches to cooperate in a regular broadcast. Parker quit his job to study for the ministry, was ordained a Congregational pastor in 1943, and began to devote his full time to the radio field. In 1944, with Yale's late James Rowland Angell, he set up the Joint Religious Radio Committee, mainly supported by the Congregational Church. Last year the J.R.R.C. became the Protestant Radio Commission, financed by contributions from 16 major denominations and eight leading interdenominational agencies.

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