Plymouth to Plymouth

The minister who last year was voted Seattle's "First Citizen" is leaving Seattle to take over the most famous Congregational pulpit in the land: the pulpit of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims, once occupied by the greatest preacher of Civil War days, Henry Ward Beecher, and later by the prime ministerial drumbeater of World War I, Newell Dwight Hillis.

Their successor is husky, cleft-chinned, 50-year-old Dr. L. (for Lawrence) Wendell Fifield, for the past 14 years pastor of Seattle's Plymouth Congregational Church. Downtown churches, such as his in Seattle, have special, tough problems. Dr. Fifield tackled his with the same zeal which, during an earlier pastorate in South Dakota, earned him a State handball championship. Well-liked by men as well as women, he reduced his church's indebtedness by $116,000, brought nearly 1,600 new members into the congregation (now over 2,000). He built a radio audience all over the Northwest not only for his Sunday sermons but for his weekly book review talks. His work among boys was credited with reducing juvenile delinquency in Seattle by 50%--an achievement which was singled out for praise when the Seattle Real Estate Board named him First Citizen for 1940.

Brooklyn's Plymouth Church is also a downtown rather than a neighborhood church. The big old homes of the district it serves--the Heights overlooking the bay and the Manhattan financial center--have been converted into small apartments or torn down to make room for shops. The church today has 1,200 members, but it spends only $34,000 a year on upkeep and good works. Said Dr. Fifield last week of his new parish: "It should be the beacon for all our churches in America. At present it is not."

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