Bell's Broadside

"I do not know if men will understand. I am persuaded that God understands, and that He is telling me to go ahead."

Thus Bernard Iddings Bell, gadfly of the Episcopal Church, introduces his latest book, The Church in Disrepute (Harper; $1.50). Bell is a modern Episcopal Jeremiah who, speaking in cultivated accents, excoriates the thing he loves--the Church --and has attracted his own, modern version of the prophet's unpopularity.

Bell absolves man from blame for the world's dilemmas. After all, he is "a small and unreliable creature . . . erratic, frequently fooled by his five inaccurate senses, largely irrational, unduly emotional, seldom sane." The blame, he holds, lies on the Church, which has grown soft, functions as "a minor decorative art," carries on its work like any big business corporation, supports ministers who warble "minor platitudes . . . [like] twittering birds almost alone in unawareness of the hurricane."

The Church's purpose, says he, should be the same as it was nineteen hundred years ago: to proclaim "the nature of God, the nature of man, the right relationship between the two, as these are revealed in the person and teaching of Jesus called the Christ." The result of such proclamations, Bell is sure, would be trouble. But if the Church would get out in the world and make trouble, people would respect it. Bell wishes there were more churchmen like the Archbishop of Canterbury speaking out on economic questions. He confesses that all the "earnest chatter" of churchmen about religion in the postwar world leaves him cold. The Church itself, he claims, does not take Jesus' teachings seriously--why should it expect politicians to take the Church seriously?

Bell's seven fundamentals: 1) the things which matter most are beyond the power of the grave to destroy; 2) all men are made to live for one another in a mutually sacrificing sociality; 3) servants are literally more pleasing to God than masters; 4) only a fire of self-effacement can bring happiness to mankind; 5) the task of world improvement should not be left to future generations; 6) children are the most important people in the world and the Church should educate them; 7) it is immoral to lay up riches to buy exemption from productive labor, and a Christian security must be a social security.

Short, chubby, beetle-browed Bernard Iddings Bell, 56, went to the University of Chicago, was a chaplain at the Great Lakes Naval Station in the last war. Then for 14 years he headed St. Stephen's College, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. With the help of the late Metropolitan Life Insurance president Haley Fiske, and the late vaudeville impresario Edward Albee, Bell raised about a million dollars to revolutionize the St. Stephen's faculty and methods. But the depression spoiled his alans and Columbia University took over :he college, renamed it Bard.

Bishop James De Wolf Perry of Rhode Island made Bell an honorary canon of St. John's Cathedral, Providence. But of late years he has steered clear of parochial duties. Bell offends some listeners by his acid speech, Socialist ideas and condescending manner. He also lost a great deal of his popularity in Britain by constant gibes at imperialism.

His brilliance is generally conceded, but he is not popular with bishops. He lists his politics in Who's Who as "Radical Independent." Today Bell writes in the Atlantic, lectures in the leading universities, broods about a civilization "corrupted through and through with malignancy."

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