The New Lutheran

(See Cover)

"Well," said Satan, "what's new with the Protestants?"

"You mean in America, don't you, sir?" answered the Demon for the Democracies, who was showing him around. "It's all pretty old stuff over in Europe."

"Of course I mean America," snapped Satan, tapping his hoof impatiently. "We've put a lot of work into the churches, and I'm not at all sure it's paying off the way it should. Who's Mr. Protestant these days?"

"There isn't exactly a Mr. Protestant, sir. But there's Franklin Clark Fry ..."

"A nice name," said Satan. "Where is he?"

"He's a hard man to find. But this--if you'll forgive the expression--is Easter Week, and he just might be home."

He was. In a roomy white stucco house with sweeping lawn and two-car garage, on a quiet street of suburban New Rochelle, 35 minutes from Manhattan, a tall (6 ft. 1 1/2 in.), jowly clergyman was reading to his four-year-old granddaughter Anne. In the kitchen, his wife Hilda was baking a cherry pie. It was a rare domestic interlude, for the figure in black clericals with the silver pectoral cross* is more familiar these days in Washington or London or Africa than in New Rochelle. Dr. Franklin Clark Fry is perhaps the most influential leader of world Protestantism --one of the two or three American churchmen with a wide international reputation. He is also the most powerful figure among U.S. Lutherans, third biggest Protestant group in the U.S. (after the Baptists and Methodists).

Dr. Fry's accumulation of jobs is impressive. He is a top man in the ecumenical movement as 1) chairman of the policymaking Central and Executive Committees of the World Council of Churches, and 2) member of the Policy and Strategy Committee of the National Council of Churches. At the same time, he is a force in Lutheranism as 1) president (since 1944) of the United Lutheran Church in America, 2) member of the Executive Committee of the National Lutheran Council, and 3) first American ever elected president of the 50-million-member Lutheran World Federation. All these titles illustrate one fact: of all the denominations in the U.S., Lutheranism is experiencing the most dramatic new birth, and Franklin Clark Fry, more than any other Lutheran, is its symbol.

Man with a Gun. "The Lord called me into the ministry and the church called me away from it," says Franklin Clark Fry. "This is a deep psychological problem for me. I would much rather have a pastorate than have to squirt grease into ecclesiastical machinery."

Yet Dr. Fry, who has not had a pastorate for almost 14 years, is known as the best man with a grease gun in the business. He has a phenomenal memory (which serves him well on a dais or a Double-Crostic), a lawyer's avidity for meticulous briefing, and relentless persistence. Elected president of Lutheran World Relief after World War II, he ranged Europe on a mammoth repair job that was just as much spiritual as material. "It wasn't just a question of relief," he explains. "Danish and Norwegian Lutherans hated German Lutherans; they felt contempt for Swedish Lutherans. No one would talk to anyone else. At first we got nowhere. But at the 1947 convention of the Lutheran World Federation we surrounded every anti with several pros so he would have to talk to them. And it worked. Now the federation is the most cohesive body of its kind. We've begun to think together more than ever."

A new tendency to think together has been growing in Lutheranism during the past decade. For generations, most U.S. Lutherans were ethnically centered, holding their services in German or Dutch or Scandinavian, and seeing to it that their children grew in the faith and folkways of their fathers. This exclusive attitude put Lutheranism in a special position among U.S. Protestants. It protected the Lutheran churches from the excessive emotion in the wave of revivalism that swept America in the late 19th century. As for the theological liberalism of the early 20th century, it barely touched the Lutherans at all. But the Lutherans' position apart had its disadvantages too. Snug, smug and embattled in their mighty fortresses called synods, they often looked down not only on their fellow Christians but on fellow Lutherans as well. Today, while still strongly tradition-bound, U.S. Lutheranism is emerging from isolation.

Disappearing Labels. Some downtown churches such as First English Evangelical in Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle have had to turn themselves into "friendliness" churches, reaching out among the 9-to-5 weekday population around them for what congregations they can get. Lutherans in the mushrooming suburb of North Hollywood have organized a drive-in church. Pastor Glen E. Pierson of Manhattan's 92-year-old Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran Church describes a process that is taking place all over the U.S. when he says: "We used to be thought of by our own members, as well as by people in the community, as 'the Swedish Church on 22nd Street. We still have a service in Swedish every Sunday as well as one in English. But now, as our older members are dying off. the national label is disappearing. Our congregation includes Indonesians, Chinese. Negroes and people from almost every European country."

Converts are pouring in. attracted by billboards, magazine ads. TV programs and. in the Lutheran Hour, the most widely broadcast sermon on radio (1,209 stations). A campaign of "Preaching. Teaching and Reaching." organized by the Evangelical Lutheran Church, is ringing doorbells and organizing study groups. The Lutherans support 1,460 parochial elementary schools. New congregations are springing up at the rate of one every 54 hours, and there are by latest count, 7,379,819 U.S. Lutherans, nearly 2,000,000 more than ten years ago.

Theologically Specific. What do the Lutheran converts find in their new churches? They find, above all. two things still relatively unchanged--liturgy and theology. Martin Luther, a prolific composer, himself handed down the most famous Lutheran hymn: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. Bach is the pride of musical Lutherans, and the tradition continues. Just off the press, with a sellout first edition of 635,000 copies, is a brand-new Service Book and Hymnal more than twelve years in the making, with 602 hymns, many of them new.

The new Lutherans also find an emphasis on disciplined thinking about the nature of God and man that is anything but typical of U.S. Protestantism. Says Lutheran Jaroslav Pelikan. professor of Historical Christianity at the University of Chicago's Federated Theological Faculty: "We are theologically specific and theologically concerned. We are not concerned with positive thinking, with hustle-bustle for its own sake. We are not just a chummy group. The interesting thing is that while the historic differences remain. Lutherans have begun to recognize that they are closer to Roman Catholics in many ways than they are to other Protestants."

the Word. Lutherans' "theological specifics" come directly from Martin Luther. who through his stormy life faced up to the problems that Protestantism has been coping with ever since.

Against Rome, Luther denied the church's administration over God's grace --either to grant it or withhold it. Not church, he held, but scripture is the true channel of grace--the Word and man's will lead to faith, and faith in Jesus Christ will redeem man from his sins. So sure did he feel of "justification by faith" that in his translation of the Bible he dared to insert the word "alone"' on his own authority. Against what he saw as a privileged caste of priests, he maintained "the priesthood of all believers.'' and against the Roman institution of canon law. he held that each Christian had a vocation to change the world with his own daily life.

Luther recognized only two sacraments: baptism and communion. And in the Lord's Supper he insisted that the bread was not changed into Christ's body by the priest but revealed as Christ's body by the faith of the recipient. Nevertheless. Luther did not give an inch to those who saw- the Eucharist as symbolic only. ''This is my body,'' he wrote in chalk on the conference table at which he met with his fellow reformer Zwingli in 1529. and Luther always maintained that when the Christian believer received the host, the bread contained the body of Christ as a glove contains a hand. Luther also stood fast against such other variants of Protestantism as the humanists represented by Erasmus, and the radicals like Nicolaus Storch and Marcus Stubner, who wanted to do away with the apparatus of the church altogether. The ordained minister and the liturgy. Luther maintained, were necessary to the sacraments and the sacraments were necessary to the Christian.

The Confessions. The Augustinian monk named Martin Luther had no intention of founding Lutheranism--either in fact or in name. In 1522. when some of his followers referred to themselves as Lutherans, he wrote: "Please do not use my name; do not call yourselves Lutherans, but Christians . . . The doctrine is not mine; I have not been crucified for anyone . . . Why should I, a miserable bag of worms, give my meaningless name to Christ's children?'' Only later, when Roman Catholics used the term as an insult, did Luther consent to let his name be applied to those who agreed with him.

Lutheranism -- and Protestantism--came formally into being 16 years before Luther's death with the public reading on June 25, 1530, of the Augsburg Confession. This official summation of the doctrinal position of the Lutherans was drawn up by Philip Melanchthon, Luther's wise and temperate friend, and like Luther a well-founded theologian. This and two later creedal statements are included in the Book of Concord of 1580 and supply the Lutheran answers to almost every spiritual problem the Christian soul is prone to--Anti-Trinitarianism, humanism, Pelagianism, synergism, determinism, Manichaeism, spiritualism, enthusiasm, sacerdotalism, sacramentalism, mysticism, asceticism, perfectionism, antinomianism, chiliasm, apocalypticism, Donatism, Novatianism, etc.

The Lutheran confessions reached the New World nearly a century after their publication.* They remained a kind of sub-Scriptural scripture, and the attitude a modern Lutheran takes to them places him on the scale somewhere between liberal and conservative.

The Groups. The most conservative U.S. Lutheran group is the MISSOURI SYNOD, which regards the confessions not only as "a doctrinal standard" but as "kerygmatic and prayable, i.e., they belong in the pulpit and the pew. They are a doxology [and] establish the consensus with the fathers." The Missouri Synod and its conservative associates in the SYNODICAL CONFERENCE (see Chart) stand unalterably on acceptance of the confessions "because"--not "insofar as" --they are in agreement with the Bible. They are equally firm on 1) literal interpretation of the Bible and 2) refusal to join any group whose members do not interpret the Word exactly as they do.

Most of the other U.S. Lutheran groups, loosely allied in the NATIONAL LUTHERAN COUNCIL, agree with these points in principle, but with varying degrees of seriousness. Their more flexible attitude has made many mergers possible. The proliferation of Lutheran churches and synods that existed at the turn of the century has been steadily reduced by mergers until today there are only 17 separate church bodies. Three synods joined in 1918 to form Franklin Clark Fry's UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH, the largest and most theologically relaxed group in U.S. Lutheranism. But even the so-called liberal Lutherans split more theological hairs than most U.S. Protestants; the famed trial of three Wisconsin pastors for heresy (TIME, Aug. 8, 1955 et seq.) took place in Fry's United Lutheran Church. Two more mergers are currently working their way through the labyrinthine ways of ecclesiastical amalgamation. In 1961, three groups will unite to form THE AMERICAN LUTHERAN CHURCH (known in Lutheran circles as TALC). Another merger, still in the planning stage, will join Fry's U.L.C.A. with Augustana Lutheran, Suomi Synod and the American Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Open to Insights. Though the rock-bound Missouri Synod stands aloof from all mergers, it has felt the shocks of change. Main reason: the synod's own growth. It started with an expedition of 665 Lutherans, mostly from Saxony, who sailed from Bremerhaven in 1838 to escape the laxity of the European state churches; today it has a baptized membership of more than 2,000,000. The synod's intellectual center--St. Louis' Concordia Seminary--rates as one of the top divinity schools in the world. The synod's salesmanship is traditionally aggressive. Its Lutheran Hour radio program is the best known denominational broadcast on the air, and its TV program. This Is The Life, is the biggest-budget religious telecast in the U.S.

With such growth, ferment is inevitable. Says Historian Pelikan, himself a Missouri Synod Lutheran: "There is a growing restlessness with the literal attitude toward the Bible. This comes from the science-minded laity who are unwilling to ignore the meaning of modern science and cosmology. Then too, the clergy is reading all sorts of things and finding the authors don't have horns. Thus the predictability of the Missouri Synod position has gone down considerably. If Lutheranism is what it claims to be--open to the insights of both the fathers and the brethren--then this is a healthy shift."

Heavy Gavel. Literally presiding over Lutheranism's move toward the outside world is Franklin Clark Fry. He is, in fact, considered to be the outstanding presiding officer in his or any other church; with Roberts' Rules of Order at his fingertips and a mind like an I.B.M. machine, he seems able to get purposeful action out of the most unpromising assembly. When he presided at the opening session of the constituting convention of the National Council of Churches in 1950, he insisted on no fewer than 44 amendments to the proposed constitution before permitting the United Lutherans to join. One lady delegate, sinking into her seat after missing one of the sessions, whispered to her neighbor: "What do the Lutherans want now?" Says a Lutheran colleague: "He can see a goal and get to it faster than anyone I've known. That's perhaps one reason why he gets along better with men than with women--the women always want to debate. He is not exactly the warmhearted shepherd. He has a tendency to kick the rumps of the sheep, rather than lead them."

Some of the sheep have learned to fear Dr. Fry's brisk impatience. One such was a delegate who held the floor at a conference with a tedious speech declaring his readiness to "go to bat" for some project. On his third repetition of this phrase, Fry banged down his gavel and intoned: "Three strikes--you're out!" Other sheep become altogether too sheeplike--as did one bemused delegate who rose to proclaim: "I move what President Fry thinks."

Advice to the Faculty. Franklin Clark Fry has rarely had doubts about what to think, and the certainty of his background helped. Heinrich Frey, a mechanic who traced his ancestry to William Tell, arrived in Pennsylvania from Germany about 1670. His descendant Franklin Clark Fry--the third in a row to enter the Lutheran ministry--grew up in Rochester, where his father was pastor of the Church of the Reformation. The small Fry showed an early attachment for the church; at the age of four he was heard to warn a friend: "You keep off! This is my father's church." He brushed up his reading technique on the minutes of synodical conferences.

Young Fry whizzed through Rochester's East High School and Hamilton College with top marks, gained a reputation as a shrewd campus politico and a smooth orator. He also spent a year at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Though Fry's religious activities at college "consisted of playing pool at the Y.M.C.A." (he explains: "Hamilton's undifferentiated Protestantism didn't appeal to me"), there was never any doubt where Franklin Clark Fry was headed. It was Lutheran Theological Seminary at Mount Airy, Philadelphia, where his grandfather Jacob had been professor of homiletics. Here he underwent his first and only spiritual crisis. "Inadequate instruction was the problem. I already had a firm grounding in the faith, but the defense of it presented by the professors didn't begin to match the caliber of the archaeology instruction I'd had at Athens. I got very impatient with the seminary. But it made me think."

Fry headed the student body at Mount Airy and led a movement to advise the faculty on revision of the curriculum. "The seminary has caught up with him now," says President Emeritus Luther D. Reed. "He was simply ahead of the faculty in those days."

Democratic Heresy. His first pastorate, in 1925, was the Church of the Redeemer in Yonkers, just north of Manhattan. Fry remembers his four years there as "wonderful, difficult years"; his parishioners remember him as the young man who increased the congregation from 200 to 400. In the choir he found "the first and only girl I was ever attracted to--I suppose because she was a strange, offish person, too. She sang soprano solos, was quiet, not especially pretty, and she was going with another fellow at the time. We would go to the opera together. I remember asking permission to kiss her --it was granted, to my surprise." Hilda Drewes and Pastor Fry were engaged in 1926, and married the next year. They have two sons, Franklin Drewes, a Brooklyn pastor, and Robert T., a Manhattan lawyer; daughter Constance is married to a Lutheran pastor.

In 1929 Pastor Fry was called to his second and last parish: Trinity Lutheran

Church in Akron. Soon Fry's congregation was hard hit by the Depression; it was then that he became a Democrat, an allegiance that causes considerable head-shaking on the part of his 90-year-old mother, widowed for 25 years. "Franklin is such a brilliant fellow," she says, "I don't see how he can be so stupid on political matters." Comments Fry: "Mother would vote for the Devil on the Republican ticket--and frequently has."

"Who Wanted It?" The turning point in the life of Franklin Clark Fry came in the 1944 convention of the United Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. On the first ballot his name appeared on 114 of 520 votes. Says Fry: "It was the first time anyone had received that number on the first ballot--but who wanted it?" On the fourth ballot Fry was president of the United Lutheran Church in America. Without a word, he rose from his chair and went upstairs to the hotel room where his wife was waiting. As he recalls it, they looked at each other for a long moment, and Hilda Fry said quietly, "I'm sorry." Said Fry to a friend last week: "I have always suspected that of those who voted for me in 1944, half thought they were voting for my father and half for my grandfather."

Fry's somewhat impersonal efficiency-combined with a zest for combat and a habit of slapping his thigh and laughing uproariously at his own jokes--makes it unlikely that he will ever be voted the best-loved churchman of the year. But his ability to handle the workloads of several ordinary men is legendary.

President Fry's schedule from last December through the middle of February was fairly typical: the General Assembly of the National Council of Churches in

St. Louis, Mo.; the Executive Committee of the U.S. Conference of the World Council of Churches in Manhattan; the U.L.C.A. Board of Education in Washington, D.C.; the Joint Commission on Lutheran Unity in Chicago; the Consulting Committee of the U.L.C.A.'s Department of Press. Radio and Television in Manhattan; the Assembly of the International Missionary Council in Ghana, West Africa; an inspection trip for the U.L.C.A. Board of Foreign Missions and a Pastors' and Workers' Conference in Liberia; a sermon at Manhattan's Cathedral of St. John the Divine; the Consulting Committee of the Military Chaplaincy in Manhattan; the opening of the School of Missions of the U.L.C.A. in Chicago; the annual meeting of the National Lutheran Council in Atlantic City; the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches in London; the Officers Meeting of the Lutheran World Federation in Frankfurt. In June he is scheduled to preach in Warsaw; in August he will meet in Western Europe with leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Ecumenical Man. Fry's acquaintance is more international than that of many a diplomat. He is in fact a new kind of Protestant leader--the Ecumenical Man, testing ways and means to denominational unity and interdenominational understanding. Not all of Fry's fellow Lutherans--and not all Protestants--care for the picture of Ecumenical Man and his works. They feel that Protestantism's special genius lies in a kind of spiritual individualism, and that the attempt to organize "unity" may produce a half-baked replica of a church hierarchy that would eventually try to dictate members' beliefs. The attempts, in committees, councils and assemblies, to hammer out agreement among Protestant groups may eventually (so the critics fear) submerge all sharp theology in a syrup of good will and compromise.

Fry disagrees. Says he: "The World Council exists to hold Christianity together, to keep the means of communication open, to keep conversations going, even if there is no success in our lifetime. When I was in Budapest preaching an unadorned sermon, I could see the immediate application of my words--face after face lighted up. The Gospel becomes a startlingly immediate thing. Our people in Eastern Europe don't know whether we've remembered them or forgotten. They need to feel the touch of the rest of the Christian family."

If Luther were alive today, Fry thinks, he would labor mightily to knit the divided Protestants together again. "American Protestantism of a generation or two ago," Fry says, "would have appalled Martin Luther with its fragmentation--some groups exaggerating one or another aspect of the Scriptures, others almost ignoring the Bible entirely in their emphasis on emotional experience or human fellowship. The spirit of the ecumenical movement is the spirit of Luther to the extent that it is a movement back toward the center of the Christian faith."

* Pectoral crosses are usually associated with bishops, but U.S. Lutheranism has no bishops, the result of immigrant prejudice against the aristocratic traditions in the old world. In Fry's United Lutheran Church crosses are sometimes worn as a symbol of supervisory office. * Dutch Lutherans came first to America (New Amsterdam) in 1623. In 1638 Swedish Lutherans established a colony in Delaware. By mid-18th century Lutheranism was firmly established, mostly by Germans, along the eastern seaboard. Patriarch of Lutheranism in the U.S. was the Rev. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, organizer and theologian, who in 1748 formed the first Lutheran Synod in America. In the early 19th century Lutheranism joined the great westward move, swept along by new waves of immigrants from Germany and Scandinavia.

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