Southern Prophets

Most Southern churchmen are theological, economic and political hard-shells. Eleven years ago one of the oldest and richest churches in Chattanooga, Tenn., Third Presbyterian, called a Scottish-born-and-burred clergyman who was anything but shellbacked--Rev. Thomas B. Cowan. In 1934 Pastor Cowan held a meeting of a new, radical organization, the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen, later became its president. Thereupon 22 Chattanoogans seceded from Third Church. More left when Mr. Cowan helped organize labor unions, worked among sharecroppers, invited a Negro to a church dinner. Of late the chief listeners to Pastor Cowan's Sunday sermons have been newcomers and strangers in town.

This week Mr. Cowan moved to a more congenial pulpit. He had accepted a call to the Community Church of TVA's model town of Norris, Tenn. In this nondenominational, New Dealish church he could continue the activities which have made his Fellowship an example, mostly horrible, to Southern churchgoers.

> Meantime, at the other end of Tennessee, in Memphis, a colleague of Mr. Cowan was doing likewise. Lean-&-hungry-looking Rev. Howard ("Buck") Kester, secretary of the Fellowship, appeared at a meeting of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, preached a "funeral sermon" over a "coffin" (a black cigar box) representing the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing & Allied Workers Association (C. I. O. union), from which S.T.F.U. had broken off (TiME, March 20). Said "Buck" Kester: "I have racked my memory for something good to say about the deceased, but I have found none."

Like Thomas Cowan, "Buck" Kester once had a conservative Presbyterian charge (in West Virginia), left it and Presbyterianism together. Now a Congregationalist, he busies himself with lecturing, organizing labor, and escaping from Southern towns which dislike agitators. Once he avoided being lynched by crawling on his belly for a quarter-mile to escape from a Florida town. He explained: ". . . There was nothing to be gained by staying and I was scared." Against the likes of "Buck" Kester, Arkansas and Mississippi planters protested last February, publicly appealing to Southern churches "not to make their tenants and sharecroppers class-conscious."

The Fellowship of Southern Churchmen made no reply. Since its founding it has been on record against "a growing fascist spirit within the Southern States, evidenced in floggings, teachers' oaths . . . concentration camps, vigilante service of deputized landowners and hoodlums in certain sections. . . ." The Fellowship is for: "The right of freedom of the pulpit which is historically identified with the prophetic character of the Judaic and Christian religions."

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