Protestantism: Methodist Whirlwind

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The Methodist Church. Bishop Garfield Bromley Oxnam once hinted, needed both the whirlwind evangelist and the stable, district-bound administrator; for it owed as much to George Whitefield, who "preached and passed," as to John Wesley, who "organized and abided." Methodist Oxnam, who died last week at 71 from bronchial pneumonia,* shared in the qualities of both men. No U.S. Protestant leader of his time preached more ardently about the causes he cared for; few churchmen were his equal at the homely, slighted arts of governing a district or chairing a conference.

Brisk, stocky G. Bromley Oxnam. the liberal son of a politically conservative mining executive, was one of those men to whom success seems as natural as sleep. He was a tennis champion and a football star at the University of Southern California. Assigned to a rundown parish in the Los Angeles slums, he renamed it the Church of All Nations and rebuilt it into one of the showcases of his faith. He was president of DePauw University in Indiana from 1928 to 1936 and then became, at 44, the youngest bishop of his church at that time. Oxnam took the honor lightly, and with some wit. Shortly after he was elevated to the episcopacy, a friend began a conversation with "My God, Bishop . . ." "No," Oxnam interrupted, "it's Milord Bishop."

Passion for Punctuality. Oxnam was a thorough and energetic church official. In the four areas he directed—Omaha, Boston, New York and Washington—he made it a point to inspect every one o"f his churches from basement to belfry, sometimes at the rate of 25 churches a day. His passion for punctuality allowed him the luxury of additional churchly duties: he served as president of the Federal Council of Churches (predecessor of the National Council) and as co-president of the World Council of Churches.

A lifelong advocate of leftish causes, Oxnam joined scores of semipolitical groups, including some—such as the Council of American-Soviet Friendship—that were later exposed as Communist fronts. Republican Congressman Donald Jackson of California in 1953 charged on the floor of the House that Oxnam "served God on Sunday and the Communist front for the balance of the week." Oxnam requested and got a well-publicized hearing from House Un-American Activities Committee, belligerently went through a ten-hour session countering the subcommittee's sloppily documented charges. At the end, the Congressmen wearily agreed that Oxnam had no tinge of Red.

"Exploitation of Man." Perhaps inevitably, Oxnam developed a fairly wide circle of enemies. He riled businessmen with his comments on the inequities of capitalism, stirred a number of Catholic bishops—including New York's Francis Cardinal Spellman—to public protest by his angry, blunt attacks on the political aims of Catholicism. Yet his opponents never questioned his moving belief in the brotherhood of man under God.