IN TIME'S 43 years of publication, no story has been approached with more deliberation than this week's cover treatment of the contemporary concepts of God. The project was under consideration by the editors for nearly a year. What first brought the idea into the continuing discussions of possible cover subjects was the visibly growing concern among theologians about God and the secularized world of the mid-1960s. It was given impetus by the emergence of the "God is dead" group of theologians (TIME, Oct. 22), and the stir they created.

When the decision was made to go ahead with the project, Writer John T. Elson, for whom this is the tenth Religion cover story, approached his task, quite literally, with prayer. "It would have been easier to do in the Middle Ages in a magazine perhaps called Tempus," he said. "Easier because they had a God then that was consistent."

Before he was through, Elson had read 40 books in direct preparation for the story, as well as Researcher Monica Dowdall's review of the concepts of God in religion and philosophy since Xenophanes. For the more immediate facets of the story, Elson and Senior Editor William Forbis drew on the results of more than 300 interviews conducted by 32 TIME correspondents around the world. The reporters had talked to theologians, philosophers, scientists, artists, teachers and students, among others, discussing notions of God that varied from pop atheism to the faithfully traditional.

After months of searching for a work of art suggesting a contemporary idea of God, the editors came to the conclusion that no appropriate representation could be found. In designing the first TIME cover ever to use only words, they decided that the ferment in modern theology was best suggested by the startling question hurled at a baffled world by the new theologians.

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