National Church

No longer does the voice of God, as it is reputed once to have done, drum across the sky in the sound of storm or make a friendly whisper in the wilderness. Angels come to earth no more and the night is never filled now with the strange chime of their singing. But last week the voice of one of God's servants ran through the sky like an invisible lightening, came, out of many boxes, into the parlors of many U. S. homes. God's servant, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, was preaching his sermon through a microphone at the first service of the National Church of the Air. When his sermon ceased, hymns and anthems, sung by a quartet, came out of the parlor radio sets.

In 1923 the Greater New York Federation of Churches began its radio activities by broadcasting Bishop Herbert Shipman's sermon from a public meeting in Manhattan. Since then the Federation has broadcast daily morning prayers, a weekly Youths Radio Conference, a weekly interdenominational service, a weekly hymn service, a Sunday vesper service. Last autumn, the sermons of Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, of Union Theological Seminary and of the Park Avenue Baptist Church in Manhattan, were added to the vesper services. Last week, these were formally organized as the National Church of the Air. A representative of the radio committee of the Federation is now touring western cities to stimulate interest in the National Church of the Air, perhaps to enlarge its audience which is reached now through 13 stations.