Forward, Laymen

The first 100% layman ever to head the Federal Council of Churches (TIME, Dec. 16), Cincinnati Lawyer Charles P. Taft, looked like a fine new broom--and the cluttered house of U. S. Protestantism is thick with ancient ecclesiastical dust. The situation suggested a lot of house-cleaning ideas to sharp-tongued Magazine Writer Stanley High. Wrote angry Presbyterian High in this week's Christian Century:

The most hopeful fact about Mr. Taft by all odds is that he is not a clergyman. Therein, I think, is his unique and prophetic opportunity. . . .

I am pretty well briefed in those twin evils with which Protestantism currently is striving; namely, secularism and denominationalism. There is a third evil. . . clericalism. The Protestant enterprise in the United States is preacher-ridden. What Protestantism speaks, the language, the voice and the meaning are clerical. What Protestantism does is planned by preachers. What Protestantism refuses to do is explained by preacher-reasons. The laity's vision, as is often alleged, may be foreshortened. But in the effort which he now must make to inch Protestantism forward, Mr. Taft will find himself more often afoul of the clergy. . . .

From my observation I would say that the average layman at a denominational assembly is heard about as often and felt about as potently as the average freshman member of Congress. ... In the actual business of determining where the church shall stand, what it shall do, the preachers --by virtue of their acquaintance with each other, their familiarity with the proceedings, their training and their capacity to get excited about ecclesiastical and theological obfuscations, and their facility in public speech--are the works

It is exceedingly difficult to persuade top laymen in any denomination, if they are still young enough to be in active business or professional life, to serve at all or more than once . . . due to their unwillingness to spend that much time twirling their thumbs, particularly under ecclesiastical auspices. . . .

I believe that Mr. Taft has no greater prophetic opportunity than to begin the righting of this unbalance--righting it, not for the laymen's sake, but for the sake of Protestantism. Clericalism is a perversion of the Protestant idea. . . . The Catholic hierarchy can put the Roman Catholic Church on record, and is listened to accordingly. But both the general public and the churchgoing public are aware, I think, that no such authority is vested in the Protestant clergy. That fact has been part of the Protestant boast. Protestantism will speak with authority, and be listened to accordingly, when it is apparent that Protestantism, and not chiefly its clergy, is speaking. And very often what it says will be more worth listening to and certainly more clear and understandable. . . .

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