Programming the Flock

Infallible in its memory, incredibly-swift in its mathematical skills, the electronic computer is one of the marvels of modern science. Utterly impartial in the exercise of its talents, it is also becoming a valuable servant of contemporary religion. All the computer does, of course, is correlate facts and attitudes that have been gathered by questionnaire. But clergymen are be coming convinced that, properly programmed, the transistorized prophet can help the church adapt to modern spiritual needs.

This past winter, at their monastery near St. Louis, the Roman Catholic Redemptorist Fathers put into operation an electronic data-processing service de signed to provide "a 71-facet view of each practicing Catholic." Pastors who want to make use of the service must distribute a questionnaire to their faithful, then wait for the Redemptorists to feed the answers into an IBM System 360 computer. The 180-page printout that the machine delivers gives the pastor a cybernetic summary of his parishioners' religious attitudes.

The information is often as surprising as it is valuable. In one St. Louis suburban parish, a priest discovered that 60% of his flock still prefer devotions to the Virgin Mary -- though some church reformers in recent years have endeavored to de-emphasize the importance of Mary in Catholic ritual. Of the same parishioners, 40% report ed that they went to confession only three or four times a year, and 39% declared that sermons in their church were generally uninteresting. In a Chicago parish, priests were ready to start a public-relations campaign to improve the image of their parochial school among the congregation. The computer reported thaf most parishioners already thought well of the school; it was the priests themselves who needed to refurbish their image. Parishioners felt that they were not getting enough personal attention from the clergy. The school PR campaign was dropped and the clergy made new efforts to meet with parishioners.

Honeywell Hymns. Other faiths are also satisfied computer customers. The Methodist Church utilizes electronic data processing to keep tabs on its 37,600 U.S. parishes. This spring the Southern Baptist Convention plans to install a Honeywell 1200 computer in its Nashville headquarters. Among other chores, the machine will help design a new Sunday-school curriculum --including hymns--to be offered the Convention's 34,000 churches. Eventually, a Sunday-school superintendent will send in a questionnaire giving a profile of his students--and back will come a customized curriculum tailored to his church's individual needs.

The Boston headquarters of the Unitarian Universalist Association has used computerized bookkeeping for years, and is about to hook up with a larger computer bank in Manhattan for additional service. With its new facilities the church will study members' views on a wide range of questions, from sex to the hereafter.

Some churchmen worry that overdependence on computerized information might distract theologians from more creative ways of revivifying organized religion. But the consensus is that cybernetics can be of legitimate help. Royal Cloyd, director of the Unitarians' communications division, points out that the Bible is in great part "a distillation of human experience." Computers, he suggests, are capable of correlating an even greater range "of experience about how people ought to behave." Thus, adds Cloyd only half-facetiously, "when we want to consult the deity, we go to the computer because it's the closest thing to God to come along."

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