Dynamo of Good Will

When church circles were bemoaning the morals of the speakeasy generation, the Rev. Daniel Alfred Poling used to say, "Stop slandering youth!" Strapping (6 ft. 1 in.), 62-year-old Dan Poling still has a good word for the younger generation. This week, as keynote speaker, he opened the San Francisco convention of some 5,000 delegates of the Christian Endeavor Union, the flourishing, 4,000,000-member youth organization which he has headed for the past 22 years.

Fullback in the Pulpit. His leadership of Christian Endeavor and his editorship of the influential lay religious magazine, the Christian Herald (circ. 390,000), make big Baptist Dan Poling a potent figure in U.S. Protestantism. He throws most of his weight into two-fisted action, rather than into theological ideas. In college, he played football on Saturdays and preached on Sundays; once he appeared in the pulpit with two black eyes and a swollen knee. In 1912 he ran for governor of Ohio. Even if he had won, he was too young (27) to take office legally; but Dan Poling thought it was a fine opportunity to stump the state for Prohibition.

A dynamo of high-voltage good will, Dr. Poling has been at various times author (20 books published, including five novels), pastor, radiorator, lecturer, world traveler, columnist and editor. In 1921 he broke his back in an automobile accident, but that scarcely slowed him down. Last month he was awarded the War Department's Medal for Merit for his morale-building efforts in World War II.

A lifetime Republican and close personal friend of Herbert Hoover, Dr. Poling was among the first churchmen to declare, when war came in 1939, that "there is no isolation or neutrality any more." From then on he was Franklin Roosevelt's man. On one occasion, Roosevelt called him "America's spiritual ambassador of good will" to front-line troops of all the Allies. His son, Clark, was one of the U.S. chaplains killed in World War II.* His latest extracurricular activity: membership in President Truman's committee on universal military training.

Slick-Paper Religion. As pastor of Manhattan's Marble Collegiate Reformed Church (1923-30) and Philadelphia's Baptist Temple (since 1936), Dr. Poling has managed to be at home often enough to keep his congregations happy. (He thinks he is the only living member of both the Dutch Reformed and Baptist Churches.) In 1927 he became editor of the Christian Herald, a slick-paper religious magazine which gives deep theological issues short shrift, keeps its religion simple and down to earth.

Under Dr. Poling the Herald changed from a weekly to a monthly, grew five times fatter, acquired its present booming circulation. He still writes all the editorials and book reviews, and conducts a question-&-answer page. His copy is mailed in from wherever he happens to be at deadline time. He also writes a daily piece for the New York Post.

Sometimes Herald readers try to pin Dan Poling down on his exact shade of belief. In the current issue someone asked flatly whether he is a modernist or a fundamentalist. After hedging a bit, he blithely suggested that perhaps he is a "gentle fundamentalist." Dr. Dan has little time for pondering the subtleties of his religion --he is much too busy working at it.

* One of the famed four who went down together with the torpedoed troopship Dorchester, after giving their life belts to soldiers who had none.

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