Religion: Practical Pastor

Few modern pastors know more than Manhattan's popular Methodist Dr. Ralph W. Sockman about getting the most out of the practical tools and duties of his calling. Last week, in addition to his other duties, he was appropriately appointed associate professor of practical theology at Union Theological Seminary.

Every Sunday morning at 10 E.S.T., from October through May, 60-year-old Dr. Sockman preaches on NBC's National Radio Pulpit to one of the biggest religious radio audiences in the U.S. Then, at his Byzantine-style church on Manhattan's Park Avenue, he holds a regular Sunday morning service (with enough ceremony and liturgy to jolt many a low-church Methodist). So many people come to hear him that at 5 in the afternoon he repeats his morning service.

For a week or ten days out of almost every month he is on a lecture tour. (In the past week he visited Fort Worth, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids and Cleveland.) During Lent, he will preach every day at least once, and sometimes twice.

Besides keeping up with the duties of his congregation of 2,500 and many outside organizations, Dr. Sockman writes books. Published last week (and the January selection of the Religious Book Club) was his 14th, The Higher Happiness (Abingdon-Cokesbury; $2). Devoted to a discussion of the Beatitudes, it serves as a typical sample of the effortless, untheoretical Sockman way of making religion a seven-day-week concern to his readers and listeners.

Moving with relaxed urbanity through a round of activity that would faze most captains of industry, busy Preacher Sockman likes to paraphrase Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley: "It is my business to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."