Journalism – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2i: Putting the Graveyard in the Foreground

Excerpt from Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted—A Congregation, Second Phase—Preacher and Newspaper,” Christian Century, August 19, 1920.

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” He is talking about a minister who wants to enlarge his audience and is writing an abstract of his sermon for the local newspaper.]

“Or again, suppose the preacher has been talking about ‘the things for which we are remembered’ – not a half bad topic, by the way; though of course one would never think of announcing it in that fashion. Searching his notes for the ‘lead,’ the minister does not top his sermon abstract with a dissertation upon the graveyard; the tombstone toward which our footsteps are inevitably hastening; and the long grass growing in God’s Acre where that which is mortal of us will eventually rest while other people go on just as if nothing had happened, forgetting the departed pilgrim except for the two or three little things that he had chanced to do – deeds destined to live forever. No! And again, No! You cannot bait anybody to read a sermon that sets out in a hearse and ambles along to the cemetery. The public is obliged to make that trip often enough to satisfy all curiosity it has on the subject. If the preacher will talk about death, let him view it as a glorious beginning of something rather than discourse upon its less promising aspects. People do not relish a sermon that smacks of the undertaker’s suave instructions to the pallbearers, ‘Handles all down, please. Face the car, as I do. That’s very good – thank you. Take the third and fourth carriages, if you will. Very greatly obliged, I’m sure.’

“No; this preacher hunts for the one striking fact that had brightened the eyes of his audience, and he leads his sermon on ‘the things for which we are remembered’ somewhat after the following manner:

It was the worst road in Scotland. The supervisor told John Louden MacAdam that if he did not mend that road which made his estate almost impassable, he would be fined.

John Louden’s dignity was damaged. He had neglected that road because he was busy with more important matters. He was writing a monumental history of the MacAdam family.

But, required to repair his road, he decided to make one that would cast open shame upon all the roads of his neighbors who had made complaint.

He had all the clay hauled off the highway and the excavation filled with crushed stone and gravel. It was a good road.

Then he went back to his history of the MacAdams and spent the rest of his life celebrating their great deeds; but nobody remembered any other MacAdam but John Louden, and he is remembered not because he wrote a five-foot shelf of histories, but because he invented the macadamized road.

“The reader will go on and try to find out what all this leads to, it may be supposed. The preacher should have no trouble in coaxing him along into the next paragraph which deals with the little deeds rendered incidentally and the kindly words spoken casually – but saturated with that which makes for immortality.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2h: Newspaper Style

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. He is talking about a minister who wants to enlarge his audience but was taught nothing at seminary about reaching the surrounding community through the local newspaper.]

“If he is of an extremely practical sort in estimating his assets, this preacher can console himself with the thought that whenever he wishes to do so he can use the column of The Morning Star as if he were the editor himself. This is not a negligible consideration to any man who wishes to give his pulpit some publicity. All he lacks now is the ability to use this space in such a manner that the reader will shout, ‘Fine! We must go around and hear this man Blue!’ – instead of muttering, ‘What rot these preachers get off in their churches! What bewildering stupidity!’

“Speaking generally, if the preacher who has been given an opportunity to preach to the public through the newspaper does not contrive to grip his readers with the first line, he had better save his typewriter ribbon. However, in his anxiety to lead his copy with something clever to attract attention, he must not forget that he is not selling shaving soap, or advertising a circus, but attempting to spread the good news of salvation. To spread that good news, it is necessary that he shall be honest with his constituency. To be honest does not mean, necessarily, that he must be dull. Possibly a few illustrations will help here.

“The preacher has talked about the importance of living up to one’s best self – a not infrequent theme among us. Of course, no attempt is made here to phrase the subject for announcement. Any man who would advertise that he was going to preach on ‘Living Up to One’s Best Self’ has really accomplished nothing but a deepening conviction on the part of the public that he has nothing to unload of interest to a populace sated with good advice.

“Whatever he may call the sermon, however, for purposes of arousing interest, this is his thesis – ‘living up to one’s best self.’ He thinks it is good enough to be given to the general public through the press. As he glances over his notes prefatory to composing the abstract, he searches for the one striking incident, anecdote, or ‘human interest fact’ most likely to reach out and grab the casual reader. When his sermon appears in print, next morning, it does not lead with a stiff procession of platitudes, marching along in single file with their chins in the air and their skirts carefully clutched to avoid the mud, but with the simple statement of a concrete fact.

“A study of newspaper style will show that a proper name, in the first line, is not uncommon. The mention of dollars and cents is always attractive to the reader. It interests him to learn that somebody has made some money. He is not much less interested in learning how somebody else lost some money. In the present instance, the sermon abstract begins as follows:

Wedgwood could not afford to lose the $40.00 which he had been offered for the vase. He was just starting in the pottery business and needed the money. But the vase was imperfect, and he ordered it broken and thrown upon the scrap-pile; for he vowed that no man could ever buy a ‘Second’ at his shop. He was going to make no ‘seconds.’ It looked like poor business at first; but Josiah Wedgwood became the most famous potter in the world.

“Now, after that, the preacher can say almost anything he likes about the importance of living up to one’s best self and expect to retain the interest of a considerable percent of his readers. Is there anything claptrap about that? Is it any more undignified to begin with ‘A certain man had two sons; and the elder of them said to his father,’ etc.? Indeed, isn’t this about the same process? Is the preacher to be more dignified than his Master? Is the servant greater than his lord?”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2g: Preacher and Editor

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. He is talking about a minister who wants to enlarge his audience but was taught nothing at seminary about reaching the surrounding community through the local newspaper.]

“Anybody who is not more than two-thirds blind needs not be informed that most people derive their information and form their opinions from the papers. It is to be doubted if responsibility for public opinion rests so heavily upon any other man as the editor. That being true, this important individual should receive some moral support. He is entitled to the intelligent cooperation of the preacher. When he strikes exactly the right note in an editorial, registering on the side of honor, justice, and morality, he has a right to expect that his good friend the minister will call him up or drop him a line of appreciation and encouragement; not a long-winded, piously-phrased homily which may produce precisely the opposite effect than the one intended, but a mere, ‘Bully work, Jim! You are doing fine business! The people who count are with you to the limit! More power to your elbow!’

“Not only does a little recognition like this have the effect of keeping the editor buoyed up to his task, but it serves as a deterrent in moments when he is strongly tempted to trim and hedge in some situation where the nasty little virtue of Prudence is admonishing him to ‘keep in right’ with Big Tom of the Steenth Ward.

“If the minister is not too far absent in the spirit, and habitually has his ear to the ground to detect impending seismic vibrations likely to disturb The Morning Star and cause the tripod thereof to wobble, he will happen in about this time and invite the editor out to lunch. Two dollars spent in this manner will sometimes bring larger returns than invested in a volume of Thirty Thousand Thoughts for the Theologian.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2f: A Running Start

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. He is talking about a minister who received a request from the local newspaper for an abstract of his sermon from the previous Sunday.]

“Now, the introduction to that sermon had cost the preacher many hours of labor. He had toiled over it until it was flawless; not a tool-mark in sight; smooth, euphonistic, rhetorically sound in wind and limb. Not on any account could he escape the temptation to repeat this introduction in his abstract. Of course, the introduction was historical. It had dealt with the dramatic incident of Israel’s abandonment of the national ideal in the building of the golden calf. To clear the way for that theatrical event, Mr. Blue had backed up about a score of years, into the Valley of the Nile, so that he might get a long, running start at the calf story.

“Confronted, now, with the necessity of boiling the whole sermon down to a scant nine inches of eight-point, instead of jumping into the very ruck of things and hurling red-hot chunks of his appeal at the public in the first paragraph, the only method his inexperience could suggest was to begin with the calf.

“We are forever lamenting that the public knows so little about the Bible. The public knows more about the Bible than we suspect. It does not understand the causes of biblical events very well, nor does it have much sense of sequence, but the majority of the reading public can recite the more stirring stories of the Bible with considerable fidelity to detail. It knows, for instance, the story of the golden calf. It knows it so well that the mere mention of that incident acts in the nature of a narcotic.

“Well; Mr. Blue had squandered his five hundred words in riotous introduction. He had told the story of Israel’s defection, but there was nothing in it – except possibly in the last few lines, which nobody reached but the proofreader – even vaguely suggestive of a modern application. The editor had found nothing in it, so far as he had gone, to warrant an attractive caption. In fact, he had labeled it, frankly, ‘The Golden Calf – Dr. Blue Recites Well-Known Story – Idol Worship.’ Think you that anybody would read it, after such a recommendation? Verily, a silly question.

“Our friend’s pride nearly bleeds to death when he reflects upon the matter. He had been given a chance to preach to every man in Centerville on Monday morning, and this is the way he had done it – by rehearsing the moral lapses of another country and another age, as if he were afraid to approach America’s and Centerville’s lapses by less than thirty-three hundred years and seven thousand miles! To be sure, this wasn’t true of him! Anybody hearing him on Sunday would have admired his fearlessness – but he kept it very carefully concealed from the public in his report on Monday.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2e: Better Late Than Never

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. He is talking about a minister who was contacted by the local newspaper and asked for an abstract of ]

“Very much in earnest over this matter, Mr. Blue proceeds to do what he ought to have done back in 1905 when he lived in Robinsonville. He subscribes for several periodicals published in the interest of writers and pores over their contents with zealous industry. He is surprised and delighted to learn that he may have easy access to a voluminous literature on the subject of composition. He is heartened to find that the rules for newspaper writing are very simple. For example: he discovers that the newspaper reporter tells his story in the first paragraph – just the bare fact that John Smith robbed William Brown’s hen-coop and was assessed a fine of $50 and thirty days in the workhouse. If the reader is consumed with curiosity to learn all the thrilling details of this event – Smith’s former record, Brown’s attitude toward his bereavement, the fate of the fowls, together with such facts and fancies as the reporter may see fit to make public – is it not written in the story, further down the page? Mr. Blue discovers that this is a hard-and-fast rule in newspaper writing, that the reporter must throw down all his salient facts in the first three or four lines.

“Judging his feeble efforts in composing ‘sermon abstracts’ for the Monday papers on rare occasions by this inviolable rule indicated above, Blue smiles wryly over the remembrance of the stuff he had submitted. If it was never read by anybody – small wonder. He can easily understand now why he is so seldom asked for reports of his sermons. He recalls the day when he had preached a really remarkable sermon on the general subject of the danger of losing a national ideal. Very few had heard it. He had announced it in the Saturday column of ‘church notices’ under the title, ‘The Golden Calf.’ Blue never had known how to compose a sermon theme, though one scarcely needs be told that. ‘The Golden Calf’ is sufficient to explain Blue’s ignorance on this subject. But it was a good sermon; and if it had been given a fair chance, it might have drawn a better audience.

“It was so strong, indeed, that a discerning auditor had called upon the editor of The Morning Star, requesting him to print an excerpt. The editor had telephoned Blue, asking for about five hundred words. Blue had consented, somewhat gingerly, to furnish the required copy.”

[But all did not go well for Blue, as Douglas will reveal in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2d: Journalism and the Seminary

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” Douglas is talking about Rev. Blue, a minister who has decided to increase his audience. Blue knows he must make use of the local newspaper as a means of communication, but he doesn’t know how.]

“Had the theological school which claimed D. Preston Blue among her alumni offered a short course in Journalism for Preachers, she might have done herself and her output more credit than she ever received for the painstaking interest with which she had explained the Apocrypha in the original. Indeed, had she given this man so little as ten hours instruction in the art of composition intended for the public press, she might have served him better than with her entire wealth of erudition anent the Minor Prophets.

“When the minister, twenty years out, compares what he studied in the seminary with the actual problems he has faced daily in his profession, he wonders how his theological alma mater could have contrived to miss the mark with such systematic completeness. Almost nowhere had his instruction even remotely touched his job. He had been loaded to the gunwales with the history of doctrines, which the public didn’t care to hear about; crammed with rules for the manufacture of sermons which, if carefully observed, were guaranteed to stultify any spontaneity likely to shine through the gloom; stuffed with dogmatics, apologetics, hermeneutics, liturgics, homiletics, catechetics, exegetics, and a host of lesser ‘ics’ – now happily forgotten. But nobody had ever considered it necessary to inform him how to prepare attractive and readable ‘copy’ for a newspaper or magazine, probably for the very excellent reason that not a man on the faculty was possessed of such information. Nobody had ever so much as hinted that there were at least two ways – a right and a wrong – of phrasing sermon topics for public announcement. Never had anyone talked about the close and helpful contacts possible and desirable between preacher and editor.

“Of course, great changes – laus Deo! – have been registered in recent years in theological schools. These matters are now receiving in some quarters just a very little bit of attention. But that doesn’t help D. Preston Blue, who acquired his B.D. in the good old days when the seminary graduate was equipped only with such information as might fit him to aspire to one of the professorial chairs of the institution that had graduated him.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2c: The Crowded Church

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. The Reverend D. Preston Blue is excited thinking about increasing the size of his audience.]

“Moreover, Blue has learned upon inquiry that there is no room in the crowded church for such petty annoyances and puerile squabbles as customarily prey upon the frail vitals of the less prosperous. Little rackets which might do serious damage in a puny church are smothered, ignored, and forgotten in the crowd. Deacon Edgewise, peevish because his wishes have been disregarded in some minor manner, may announce to his fellow members of the Fifty-Percent-Efficient-Church that he is going to withdraw – he and his wife, man-servant and maid-servant, heirs and assigns, ox and ass, money, influence, prayers, and presence – thus creating sad havoc in Zion and necessitating the minister to undignify himself, his profession, and the cause he serves by trotting around to the Edgewise headquarters with his trusty molasses bucket. But if the Edgewises belong to a church habitually crowded, they will be somewhat cautious about ‘checking out’ in a moment of irritation, being fully aware that they will be missed about as seriously as a handful of clover blossoms plucked from a forty-acre meadow.

“All things considered, Blue believes that a crowd would mean the salvation of his church. He resolves to have one, if it is to be achieved by honest means. He lays out a definite campaign. We have seen his early efforts to line up the people who are already of his following. Now he has arrived at a decision to make his pulpit known to the general public. The most natural medium is the newspaper. He is going to avail himself of it. Only one condition holds him back. He hasn’t the faintest idea how to go about it.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 1f: Second Only to Blood

by Ronald R Johnson

From the first installment of Douglas’s series, “Wanted — A Congregation!” in the 8/5/1920 issue of The Christian Century.

[This is from Part 1 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted — A Congregation!” This first installment was in the August 5, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. He’s talking about a minister who has decided to enlarge his audience.]

“Our friend must be equally on guard now that he does not become so infatuated with the preparation of his sermon that he neglects the other important features of his campaign for a crowd. Much remains to be done. So far, he has lined up his active congregation. He has won the support of his ‘prospectives’ for this particular Sunday morning’s service. And he has a sermon under construction. This is only part of the process. The general public must be given to understand that there is an attraction in the gospel he preaches. How does one reach the public?

“Next to human blood, ink is the most redemptive chemical in the world. Let the preacher keep this in mind. More Americans form their opinions from the public press than by any other process. The minister who draws himself up haughtily, muttering his distaste of what he dubs ‘newspaper notoriety’ has boxed himself in from active contact with the people at the one place of all places where he is sure of access to them.

“The editor of the daily newspaper – (At this point, the editor of this paper is reaching for the axe. He says that no one man is permitted to monopolize all of the talk. Not if he can help it.)

“It still remains for us to discuss the further processes by which our anxious friend, the minister-without-a-congregation, is to recruit a crowd, and preach to it with a new kind of fervor, and thrill it to its fingertips, and touch it with the contagion of his faith until it wants to come back – again and again – provided he really has a message to deliver!

“No amount of campaigning, calling, writing, advertising, is going to result in a permanent gain unless he is able to deliver a message touched with the breath of the Holy Spirit.

“This is no wild dream that we are talking about. The best proof that this thing can be done is the fact that it has been done. Not always is it attended with the same degree of success: sometimes a hundred-fold, sometimes sixty, sometimes thirty. Most discouraged preachers will probably feel that is they could only multiply what they have at present by so little as thirty, it would be good business.”

[In my next post, I’ll tell you about the second installment in the series, “Wanted – A Congregation!”]

Lloyd C Douglas and the Akron Newspapers

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

As always, when Douglas arrived in Akron, he connected immediately with the editors of the local papers. It was like Washington, DC, all over again: he became the darling of the local press. But Akron was not Washington; it was a small town that had become a city overnight (due to the tire industry), and was now in the grips of an economic depression. Douglas was a fresh, prophetic voice for such a time. The papers hung on his every word, even when they disagreed with him.

There were three Akron newspapers (The Beacon Journal, The Times, and The Press), but other papers in the region also took notice of him. He appeared occasionally in the Toledo Times and was often in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The local Rotary Club also had a newsletter called The Akrotarian, and since Douglas was a member of the club, he figured prominently in its pages, as well.

After his first year in town, Douglas introduced the idea of answering pre-submitted questions at the Sunday evening service, mostly so that he could concentrate all his energies on the morning sermon. But the Sunday evening Q-and-A’s were reported in the local papers and made Douglas the talk of the town.

He expressed his opinions on a number of hot topics:

The Ku Klux Klan: He not only criticized them but made fun of them. When a police officer pulled him over for speeding and realized who he was, the officer thanked him for all that he was doing to squash the Klan and sent him on his way without a ticket. But there were lots of other people who were angry at his remarks. His wife, Besse, worried that the parsonage would be bombed.

Chiropracters: As I’ve already mentioned, Douglas was an enthusiastic fan of modern medical practice, and he fought hard against people’s tendency to accept medical advice from the untrained. He was especially vocal about “the quackery of chiroprackery.”

Blue Laws: The other churches in town wanted to limit what people could do on Sundays. They were especially against moviegoing. Douglas took the unusual stance of opposing blue laws. (Unusual for a minister, that is.) He said that this was the kind of thing that turned people against Christianity. Newspapers all over the region reported his remarks.

Soldier’s Bonus: Decades before the GI Bill, Congress tried to pass a Soldier’s Bonus for veterans of WWI. Douglas mentioned, in an offhand way, that, given the current state of the economy (this was the depression before the Great Depression), he couldn’t support the idea of a Soldier’s Bonus. He felt it would be better to bolster the economy and give veterans jobs rather than make them dependent on the government. He received a lot of angry mail, besides all the talk in the Letters to the Editors. To clear things up, he gave a speech before an audience of veterans at the local American Legion post and explained his stance. There isn’t any indication that he changed people’s minds, but at least one letter from a veteran stated that they respected Douglas for all that he was doing to help the unemployed. (And he actually was doing something. He had accepted Mayor Carl Beck’s invitation to chair the city’s Unemployment Committee, which looked into ways to overcome unemployment. The letter to the editor claimed that he was also known to have contributed time and money into helping individuals find jobs. That’s a somewhat mysterious reference, but very much in line with his belief in investing in others.)

In all these cases (and others besides), it’s clear that local journalists respected Douglas even when they disagreed with them. Here’s my favorite example. In one of his Sunday-night speeches, Douglas claimed that the AP and other wire services were dominated by wealthy individuals who controlled what the newspapers would publish. “It may be that some of this lecture will be printed by the Akron papers,” Douglas said, “but this part of it will not.”

The Akron Times printed it, along with this headline: “Here It Is, Doctor, Even Tho It’s Bunk.”

I’ll tell you more about Douglas’s ministry in Akron in my next post.

For a free PDF copy of the booklet, The Secret Investment of Lloyd C. Douglas, fill out the form below:

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Inheriting a Scandal

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

When Lloyd Douglas preached his first sermon as the new pastor of Luther Place Memorial Church on October 24, 1909, he knew he had a big job ahead of him. His predecessor, the late Rev. Dr. John G Butler, had engaged in a very ugly fight with his church council during the last several months of his life, and they had taken it to the newspapers. In fact, the scandal was front-page news over the course of several weeks, and it led a number of the members of the church to form a splinter group that began to meet at a location not far from Luther Place. It was a complex and troublesome situation for any new pastor to inherit.

But Douglas was the man for the job.

He did a number of things, right away, that helped the congregation move on.

He took the Press Corps firmly in hand. He started out winning their trust and affection by describing himself as a newspaperman who left the trade to go into the ministry, and then he told them that Luther Place had been too much in the news in recent months and that he would not comment on the earlier trouble. And he stuck to that promise.

He made positive changes to the worship service. He had always tried to create a more aesthetically-pleasing service by skillful use of music, and in the nation’s capital he had access to even more talented individuals who could help him accomplish that goal. Douglas persuaded Prof. Emile Mori, organist at the German-speaking Concordia Lutheran Church, to be his choir director, and Prof. Mori quickly put together an ensemble of twenty trained voices.

He paid due respect to Dr. Butler. In his inaugural sermon, he said, “You hold in solemn and sacred reverence the memory of the man who, through these many years past, labored so tirelessly and efficiently in the interests of this church. I have not come here as his rival, but as his successor.”

He also showed respect for the people themselves. “I have not come here to upset what I have found, or ruthlessly destroy that which has been achieved in the past. Those things that have been dear to you will become dear to me; your traditions will be respected; your customs honored; your church usages kept inviolate.”

But he made his own priorities clear. “I have not come here for the sole and exclusive purpose of writing names in a church book,” he told them. “That we will write many names there I have no doubt, and that we shall be most happy to do so goes without saying. We will strive to make Memorial Church great, and when, by patient application to her trust, she shall have demonstrated her usefulness, her greatness is assured.”

He would focus on being the Church of Jesus Christ in this place, and on projecting that image to the larger community. “Our business—mine as a minister and yours as a layman—is to hold the church with a regard so high and a reverence so deep that her welfare and standing in the community shall be one of the supreme desires of our hearts. It is true that church members do not always see eye to eye. It is true they cannot always bring their ideas of methods, polity, doctrine, and administration into perfect juxtaposition. But that does not impugn their sincerity or reflect upon the honesty of their convictions.”

“You may not care whether I am a Democrat or a Republican,” he said, “whether I am in favor of capital punishment for murderers, what is my personal taste in the matter of books, music, art. You have a right to be interested in my conception of the kingdom of Jesus Christ and my individual belief as to the methods of its advancement.”

Finally, he gave them a promise: “That with God as my guide and helper, I shall endeavor, so far as lies within me, to render to Him and to you an acceptable service. And I should be happy if each one of you might silently offer a pledge at this moment that so long as you believe in my sincerity you will give me your hearty co-operation and support.”

Regarding the split in the church, there was another factor working in his favor: one day earlier (Saturday, October 23), the local synod had voted to accept the splinter group as a legitimate Lutheran congregation. Although some members of Luther Place had hoped that Douglas would find a way to lure them back to the fold, the conference action of the previous day had relieved him of that responsibility. Only one thing remained to be done, and he did it the following Sunday (October 31): he “officially recognized the independent Lutheran congregation,” the Washington Herald reported, “when, in the morning service, he offered prayer that its meditations and efforts might be attended by success.” And that was the end of that.

It started out as front-page news and might have hounded him throughout his pastorate, but Douglas had the wisdom to deal with the issue and put it behind him within the first eight days. And for all practical purposes, he never had to deal with it again.

For a free PDF of the booklet, The Secret Investment of Lloyd C Douglas, fill out the form below:

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