Blatant Straton

When it became known that the Rev. John Roach Straton, blatant Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Manhattan, was to engage in a debate with Alfred E. Smith (see p. 10), many an honest church man was puzzled and annoyed. The proposed controversy was one in which they might not remain neutral. Their sympathies were not with the presidential candidate. Hence they were forced to take the side of the fundamentalist clergyman. But before they did so, even as he had cast reflections upon Governor Smith's record, they found it advisable to reflect upon Dr. Straton's.

Roach Straton has never achieved unusual prominence except in the negative sense of emerging, at frequent periods, from obscurity. He emerged for the first time from obscurity in Norfolk, Va.; (see p. 10) in Manhattan he has found increasingly ingenious methods of achieving publicity.

In 1920, Dr. Straton started a crusade against Manhattan "night-life." He spoke from his pulpit of painted women who "plied their trade"; he described with astonishing intimacy the nudity on view in Aphrodite, a current revue. So detailed were his accounts that many members of his congregation deserted it and some of the trustees took exception to his eloquence.

In 1921, Dr. Straton attended the Dempsey-Carpentier fight and described it from his pulpit. More members of his flock skipped off.

In 1923, Dr. Straton dropped 29 members of his congregation for an alleged "plot" to oust him. Returning from Europe he cast calumny on its capitals and said: "The high society girl is the lowest thing on earth."

In 1924, he conducted a series of "debates" with Dr. Charles Francis Potter on issues of Fundamentalism, was worsted.

In 1925, he proposed to erect a skyscraper with Calvary Baptist Church as its core. Trustees resigned while Dr. Straton organized legal battles to justify his design. In this year also he frequented dance halls and composed his pornographic peroration upon the modern dance: "Crowded together . . . surging up and down . . . locked tightly in each other's embrace . . . with the cheek of the man against the cheek of the girl . . . sensuous strains of oriental music . . their bodies vibrating together and often coming into postures that were actually indecent . . . cigaret smoke . . . fumes of whisky . . . tipsy girls . . . young women who were raving drunk . . . surging . . . women of the town ... 'I shall never dance again'."

In 1926, four trustees of his church attacked him for accepting a salary from a Palm Beach Church while on a long vacation from his Manhattan pastorate. The four trustees were expelled from Calvary Church, after they had resigned.

In 1927, he told what he would do if he were president: "Get Henry Ford to serve in my cabinet . . . call out the army and navy, yes sir, and I'd close the dance halls and sinks of iniquity . . . jail Nicholas Murray Butler . . . build a brand new Federal Penitentiary. . . ." He achieved the height of his fame by encouraging conflagrations of emotional Pentacostalism instigated in his church by Girl Evangelist Uldine Utley. During this fervent ferment his son, Warren Badenock Straton, had his soul saved and received the gift of tongues.

In 1928, Dr. Straton haled into court Charles C. Smith, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism (see col. 1) for sending him atheistical propaganda and annoying letters.

Out of eight important debates in which he has participated during the last six years, Dr. Straton has won two.

Having surveyed this unhappy scroll, only the most rabid and unfastidious fundamentalists could be proud of Gov. Smith's adversary. Honest churchmen were mortified that such a man should share their feelings, much more that he should have undertaken to voice them. They could not fail to see more evidences of vice in the clergyman's record than in the candidate's and they were forced to acknowledge a characterization of their lamentable spokesman which was offered by the Chicago Tribune ". . . narrow-minded, pompous bigot . . . gluttonous for printer's ink, publicity and the front page. . . . Even those who have heard him do not know whether he is Roach Straton or Straton Roach. .