Anti-Mothballers

"People do not attend church in the summer months," deplored the Protestant Episcopal Chronicle last week, echoing many another earnest denominational organ. "This seasonal lull seems for the present, at least, to defy solution." To the problem of hot weather shirking, two ministers last week reported two original solutions.

In Philadelphia, Rev. John Robbins Hart of midcity St. Stephen's Episcopal Church heard his secretary observe that a number of local churches were being "put in mothballs." In no time lively, curly-headed Dr. Hart, longtime unofficial chaplain of the University of Pennsylvania, was propagandizing among his colleagues for an Anti-Mothball Society. Motto: DON'T SLOW UP. Last week the Society had more than a score of participating churches, busy not only in organizing steady services but in promoting an inter-church tennis tournament, an employment agency, weekly interdenominational stunt nights. At St. Stephen's stunt night the Anti-Mothball unit ceremoniously dumped bags of mothballs over the floor of the Community House, recited a funeral ode. Energetic Dr. Hart also found time to play left field in twelve games last month with his semiprofessional baseball team, Jack Hart's Collegians, perform 30 weddings.

In Los Angeles, Pastor Carl Allen of Woodcrest Community Methodist Episcopal Church got the approval of his governing board to change the Sabbath services for his flock of 115 to Thursday evening. A confirmed reformer who went on the stump for Upton Sinclair's EPIC last year, long-faced, sober Pastor Allen explained: "The residents of this community are working every possible day to make up for the worry during the Depression. ... I believe they should be free to go to the beach or mountains Sunday without feeling it is wrong. . . . Jesus consistently taught that man was to have preference over any creed, custom, dogma or law."

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