Babson's Retort

Most famed U. S. businessman who has tried to run a U. S. church is white-haired, white-goateed Statistician Roger Ward Babson, who next month completes a two-year term as moderator of the General Council of the Congregational-Christian Church. Moderator Babson is conscious that he has fished all night and caught little. As a parting message to Congregationalists, he wrote an article for Advance, Boston Congregational monthly, making certain specific suggestions for improving the church's work. The article was scheduled to appear in the June number of Advance. Last fortnight, every Congregational minister in Massachusetts received from Moderator Babson a letter charging that an attempt was being made to suppress the Advance article. Moderator Babson detailed, from memory, a telephone conversation he said he had with a representative of Congregational headquarters in Manhattan-- called "287" by Congregationalists, in reference to its street number. In the course of the conversation, said Babson, he was told that a personal attack on him would be published unless he withdrew his article.

Treasurer William Thomas Boult of the Congregational Board of Home Missions, who had had a telephone talk with Moderator Babson, denied that he had threatened reprisals, although he did suggest that the article be withdrawn. In Dedham, Mass., last week, during the annual Massachusetts Congregationalist convention, Moderator Babson confounded his critics by speaking his piece out loud.

Denied the floor of the convention, Babson hired a Unitarian church, attracted about 75% of the Congregationalists to a rump convention of his own in which he denounced "287" as a dictatorial Congregational ''Vatican." His recommendations, he declared, were that the "Vatican" should be liquidated, that the average pay of a Congregational minister--$1,650 and a parsonage--should be raised, that Advance should be made useful to the whole ministry rather than to "287." Said Babson: "Religion is all right so long as you keep money out of it--keep it homely, simple and Christian. Just as quickly as you make a church a money-making organization, politics creep in and the essence of its fundamentals is lost."

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