Advance into Tribune

Bold and optimistic indeed is the man who sets up shop as a religious journalist. Small in number, his subscribers are choosy, opinionated. Few church magazines are currently given denominational subsidies. Almost no big advertisers buy space in them. (Exception: the homey, nondenominational Christian Herald.) With theological controversy and petty driblets of church news as his stock-in-trade, the religious editor must cut his thoughts to a consistent pattern. And of all denominations the one whose journalists are the most orthodox is the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. Its magazines are: The Presbyterian (conservative weekly), The Presbyterian Ban ner (middle-of-the-road weekly), Christianity Today (arch-Fundamentalist monthly) and The Presbyterian Advance. The last, a journal founded 24 years ago, has, like many another church paper, accumulated a handsome deficit--$101,044. Last week it became known The Presbyterian Advance would cease publishing this month. Undeterred by the hazards of the field a Manhattan preacher was ready to take it over, call it The Presbyterian Tribune and give Presbyterians nothing less than a liberal journal.

Editor of the new biweekly is Rev. Dr. Edmund B. Chaffee, an energetic, square-faced, 40-year-old churchman with a great passion for social betterment. Born near Detroit, he studied law at the University of Michigan, went to Union Theological Seminary, got a Manhattan pastorate in 1916 which he promptly lost because of his pacifism. Mr. (as he prefers to be called) Chaffee served in Jerusalem as a Red Cross captain. When he returned to the U. S. he took the job he still holds--director of the Presbyterian Labor Temple on Manhattan's radical 14th Street. Founded by the New York Presbytery which, to the great pain of its conservative members, foots half its bills, the Labor Temple is a forum for people of all sects. Because "people who are willing to work among Labor should live among them." Director Chaffee lives with his wife and two children on the top floor. A grey-haired, wiry man who much resembles Economist Stuart Chase, he sits on New York's Central Trades and Labor Council as a representative of the city churches, is head of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Though Methodists and Congregationalists are more famed for radical zeal, there are nevertheless plenty of Presbyterian liberals. To those members of his great, cautious, rock-like church Editor Chaffee will address himself, avoiding theological controversy. Says he: "We seek unity in the Presbyterian Church, not divisions." Guided by a council of able Manhattan pastors, The Presbyterian Tribune will be backed by Presbyterians whose names he declines to reveal.

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