Religion: The New Lutheran

(See Cover)

"Well," said Satan, "what's new with the Protestants?"

"You mean in America, don't you, sir?" answered the Demon for the Democracies, who was showing him around. "It's all pretty old stuff over in Europe."

"Of course I mean America," snapped Satan, tapping his hoof impatiently. "We've put a lot of work into the churches, and I'm not at all sure it's paying off the way it should. Who's Mr. Protestant these days?"

"There isn't exactly a Mr. Protestant, sir. But there's Franklin Clark Fry ..."

"A nice name," said Satan. "Where is he?"

"He's a hard man to find. But this—if you'll forgive the expression—is Easter Week, and he just might be home."

He was. In a roomy white stucco house with sweeping lawn and two-car garage, on a quiet street of suburban New Rochelle, 35 minutes from Manhattan, a tall (6 ft. 1½ in.), jowly clergyman was reading to his four-year-old granddaughter Anne. In the kitchen, his wife Hilda was baking a cherry pie. It was a rare domestic interlude, for the figure in black clericals with the silver pectoral cross* is more familiar these days in Washington or London or Africa than in New Rochelle. Dr. Franklin Clark Fry is perhaps the most influential leader of world Protestantism —one of the two or three American churchmen with a wide international reputation. He is also the most powerful figure among U.S. Lutherans, third biggest Protestant group in the U.S. (after the Baptists and Methodists).

Dr. Fry's accumulation of jobs is impressive. He is a top man in the ecumenical movement as 1) chairman of the policymaking Central and Executive Committees of the World Council of Churches, and 2) member of the Policy and Strategy Committee of the National Council of Churches. At the same time, he is a force in Lutheranism as 1) president (since 1944) of the United Lutheran Church in America, 2) member of the Executive Committee of the National Lutheran Council, and 3) first American ever elected president of the 50-million-member Lutheran World Federation. All these titles illustrate one fact: of all the denominations in the U.S., Lutheranism is experiencing the most dramatic new birth, and Franklin Clark Fry, more than any other Lutheran, is its symbol.

Man with a Gun. "The Lord called me into the ministry and the church called me away from it," says Franklin Clark Fry. "This is a deep psychological problem for me. I would much rather have a pastorate than have to squirt grease into ecclesiastical machinery."