Religion: To the Woods

The manse of the Rev. Leslie A. Bechtel is modestly called the "Cottage." But Pastor Bechtel of the Presbyterian Kirk-in-the-Hills in suburban Bloomfield Hills, Mich, has three gardeners to take care of his 30 acres of grounds, including the nine-hole golf course and the badminton and tennis courts. The manse itself is furnished with such creature comforts as antique chairs valued at $1,000 each and a $10,000 Persian carpet. Under construction near by is a new church, modeled after Scotland's Melrose Abbey, that wilt have cost about $3½ million by the time it is finished sometime in 1956.

In short, 66-year-old Pastor Bechtel enjoys what are probably the most lavish and luxurious Presbyterian surroundings in the world. This week, of his own free will, he turned his back on it all. and set out for a log cabin in the Wisconsin north woods, where he plans to spend the rest of his life.

Poker First. Many of Bechtel's parishioners in Detroit's ultra-fashionable suburb and some of his fellow ministers cannot understand why he is giving up so much for so little. Perhaps it is more surprising that he ever found himself in the Cottage in the first place.

His father owned and operated the best hotel and saloon in Butte, Mont., and Leslie Bechtel grew up there. "I think I could play poker before I could read or write." Bechtel went to school with copper miners' children who were sent down into the pits when they were 14. Growing up, he decided to be a lawyer and do something about such social injustice.

Studying law at the University of Wisconsin, he got a job as janitor at the Christ Presbyterian Church in Madison. Its pastor was the Rev. George E. Hunt, a smoking and drinking, social-gospel liberal who was something new in young Leslie Bechtel's experience. Hunt took a liking to the earnest young janitor, and set out to prove that he could do more for humanity as a minister than as a lawyer. "One day he got me to agree to a debate," Bechtel remembers. "The topic was to be 'Where can you get more out of life—in the law or in the ministry?' and he gave me the side of the ministry to defend. Well, by the time I was through defending my position. I had convinced myself."

Socialism Second. After a three-year course at Manhattan's Union Theological Seminary on a scholarship, Bechtel went' to Butte in 1913 as pastor of the Immanuel Presbyterian Church there. Salary: $75 a month. His angry pro-labor sermons won him the support of the Socialists, who ran him for state senator. Though he refused to campaign, he won anyway. Senator Bechtel introduced bills for adult education and workmen's compensation and against capital punishment. But when he introduced a bill for Prohibition, the Socialists dropped him.

All this political activity did Bechtel small good with his church. After three years, they refused to renew his contract, and he moved on. For the next three decades, he served a series of parishes, on both sides of the tracks, gained some reputation as a radio preacher in Wisconsin, and in 1944 found himself executive secretary of the Detroit Presbytery.

One day in October 1946, his telephone rang. Someone he had never heard of before wanted to give the Presbyterians a church. Bechtel hurried right over.