FEW TIME stories have created so much stir and comment as has our April 8 cover, which posed and probed the epistemological question that has become pervasive in the new theology: Is God dead? From all over the U.S. and abroad, thousands of readers wrote us, many--especially churchmen--praising the story, some criticizing us for dealing with the question as a cover subject, and a few inattentive ones berating us for announcing the end of God. A vast majority of those who themselves answered the question did so, in widely varying ways, with a resounding "No!" Some thought that the week of Easter and Passover was an inappropriate time to bring up the subject, but others agreed that there was no better time to encourage thought about God.

Many clergymen used the story as a text for sermons. Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike of California held up a copy of the magazine as he began a discussion of the subject from the pulpit of Manhattan's St. Thomas Church. Newspaper columnists and editorialists, radio and television commentators, religious and lay periodicals joined in the discussion. Malcolm Muggeridge devoted three columns to the subject in London's New Statesman. "Is TIME Dead?" was the title of a spoof in William Buckley's National Review. The Christian Century offered a tongue-in-cheek estimate that 143,684 Easter sermons "grappled with TIME'S cover story question"--and it may not have been far off.

For us the most heartening reaction was the appreciative, thoughtful and positive response we received from churchmen of all faiths. "A most courageous cover, I must say!" wrote a Presbyterian minister. "At last the word is out that the sovereignty of God is not bound to the chains of medieval and Puritan culture. The hope of the future lies in an enlightened, united force based on spiritual awareness and conviction." From a Jesuit: "I was delighted with your excellent article. Writer John Elson has put all of us readers in his debt for presenting such a complex subject so well." A United Church of Christ minister stationed in the Philippines thought it "another fine review of contemporary theology." From an about-to-graduate Illinois seminarian (Concordia) came a discerning thought: "Paul wrote: 'I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.' (1 Corinthians 9:22). Perhaps your cover story will help both my classmates and myself become more shrewd discerners of the time in which we live so that we may better follow the ideal of Paul."

Less enchanted was Jim Bishop, who wrote in his syndicated column that he had read the story twice, looking in vain for TIME'S answer to the question. Author Bishop's mind must have been on another Day, for TIME'S positive view of God permeated the story. Perhaps he skipped too hurriedly over such lines as: "Faith is something of an irrational leap in the dark, a gift of God."

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