Words & Works

P: The Southern Baptist Convention, which claims to be the fastest-growing major U.S. denomination, last week released a striking progress report. During 1953, the Southern Baptists built themselves 631 new churches, and increased their church giving by 12.4% for an all-time high of $278,851,129. Sunday-school enrollment showed a gain of 268,072 (present total: 5,759,128), and 361,835 people were baptized. Present membership: 7,886,016.

P: Executive Director Clifford Petitt of New York City's Protestant Council warned council members about the disproportionately small number of Protestant judges in a city whose church membership is close to 30% Protestant. In Brooklyn, for instance, the ratio of Protestant judges is five out of 75, with the other judgeships divided roughly evenly between Roman Catholics and Jews. The court situation, said Petitt, is "crying for help from Protestantism," but New York's Protestants are still badly handicapped in making demands by the lack of unity among denominations. P: Writing in the British weekly Spectator, the Rev. Michael Gedge found the concern of Anglican bishops for clerical job security excessive. Said Anglican Gedge: "Obsessed by the national mania for security in all jobs, troubled by the very natural difficulty of maintaining a wife and family on the lowest of professional wages . . . bishops are apt to insist that a house, a stipend of -L-550, dilapidations paid by the parish, and perhaps a few other extras, are the absolute minimum [for undertaking] charge of a parish. Yet one cannot help feeling that there is something wrong in all this; that young men are not moved by the call to security . . . that, in short, the Gospel should not really be rewritten: 'If any man will come after me, let him assert himself and insist on a house and follow me; for whosoever receiveth not -L-550 a year cannot be my disciple.' "

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