The Recession in Church Construction

After reaching a peak of more than one billion dollars a year for three consecutive years, the amount spent on the construction of new church buildings declined to an estimated $975,000,000 in 1963 and is going to drop another 8 to 10 per cent in 1964, according to the U. S. Department of Commerce.

Department of Commerce experts say they underestimated the 1964 decline, and a mid-year revised forecast due about the end of July will predict a level of not more than $920,000,000. Some forecasters feel it may drop as low as $900,000,000, which would be the lowest figure since 1958.

The latest report on building permits indicates that the number of religious buildings erected this year will be less than 5,000 for the first time in five years.

Why has this decline occurred after church construction held remarkably level at $1,013,000,000 in 1960, $1,003,000,000 in 1961, and the record figure of $1,035,000,000 in 1962?

The first and main reason is that churches are not gaining new members to the extent that they did during the post-war religious boom and thus are not under the same pressure to expand plants and establish new “daughter” congregations.

Second, the urgent needs for new church construction that built up during the depression years of the 1930s and the war years of the 1940s have largely been fulfilled. Mid-city churches that felt under strong pressure to relocate or to replace old and inadequate sanctuaries have completed their building programs. Suburban churches and onetime rural parishes that underwent phenomenal growth have also succeeded in meeting their immediate needs.

A third factor is that the great population movement to the suburbs which characterized the post-war era has now slowed down. Building developers during the last two years have moved away from large, sprawling, single-family suburban developments to urban redevelopment and the erection of high-rise apartments on the city fringes.

When hundreds of homes are built in a new suburban development, a new community is created that requires schools, churches, and other facilities. But when a high-rise apartment development of several hundred units rises on a site near mid-city or in an old established suburb on the city’s edge, it is near already existing churches. Clergymen may find more worshipers in the pews as a result of the new housing development, but church administrators do not have to rush to build a whole new church to accommodate the newcomers as they do when new outlying suburbs suddenly mushroom.

A final factor that may account for 1 or 2 per cent of the decline is the use of lower-cost construction materials in place of the traditional stone and brick. The vast expanses of glass and open metal framework that characterize some new churches may not always please the traditionalists, but this type of building costs significantly less than the classical Gothic structure. (It is likely, however, that building committees use up most of the savings to erect larger buildings.)

One factor that can be ruled out, according to construction experts, is any lack of money in the mortgage market. Banks and loan companies found churches an unusually good risk in the post-war years. With plenty of money available on the lending market, congregations in most areas now have little difficulty in floating a loan when they want to build. At the present time, however, church groups are not rushing to apply.

The decline in church building is in marked contrast to construction activity in all other fields. While church construction was declining 8 per cent during the first five months of 1964 as compared with the same period of 1963, construction activity in general had increased by a record of 11 per cent. Construction of new housing units by private builders was up 12 per cent from 1963. School construction has been going forward, with a 9 per cent gain on the public level and a 4 per cent increase in private and parochial schools. Building of hospitals and institutions for the care of the elderly also is moving ahead, with a 20 per cent gain for public and 45 per cent increase for private institutions. Private social and recreational construction, which includes everything from YMCA’s to bowling alleys, shows a gain of approximately 12 per cent so far this year.

Church construction alone is dropping. No other field of construction measured by the monthly Census Bureau reports shows a decline in 1964.

The Big Shift

The Methodist Church took long strides in recent weeks toward racial integration of its government. All six of its jurisdictions recorded progress at their quadrennial meetings toward the voluntary restructure sought by the Methodist General Conference, supreme legislative body of the church. The Central Jurisdiction, which has embraced all Negro annual conferences, adopted a series of measures designed to spell its own abolition.

Meanwhile, the big shift of Negro conferences and churches to regional, integrated jurisdictions was already under way. The Washington and Delaware Conferences were the first to be transferred. They will join the Northeastern Jurisdiction, which also invited and received the transfer of Bishop Prince A. Taylor of Baltimore. Taylor thus becomes the first Negro Methodist bishop assigned to supervision over a region with predominantly white churches.

Eleven new bishops were elected by the jurisdictional conferences: W. Kenneth Goodson, Edward Pendergrass, H. Ellis Finger, Earl Hunt, W. McFerrin Stowe. R. Marvin Stewart, Dwight E. Loder, Thomas M. Pryor, Francis Kearns, Lance Webb, and James S. Thomas.

Lutherans And The Bible

The problems which plague and beset the Lutheran Church in general are manifold and there is a need for conservative Lutherans of all synods to study and discuss their common problems in … open forums.

So says a committee of the new and unofficial “Lutheran Free Conference,” which drew some 290 pastors, teachers, and laymen to Waterloo, Iowa, last month for three days of sessions centering on an eight-essay series, “The Bible Today.” The conference was convened by a group who are concerned about the “growth of liberalism in the Lutheran Church.” The assortment of participants included individuals from the Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, the American Lutheran Church, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, and other smaller synods. A second such conference will be held in 1965.

Something Religious

Religious Heritage of America, which promotes annual pilgrimages to Washington in the interests of “holding before the nation an awareness of the place and importance of religion in a democracy,” still is a somewhat obscure group after fourteen years of tour sponsorship. But its 1964 Pilgrimage Awards Dinner in the Grand Ballroom of the Mayflower Hotel drew some 820 Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Jews and included a substantial portion of out-of-towners as well as local guests. The encouraging word for this year’s pilgrims was that President Johnson’s idea of a “memorial to God” in Washington could be interpreted as stimulus for a pet project.

Religious Heritage of America has for a number of years been promoting establishment in the nation’s capital of what it now calls a “Religious Freedom Center.” Johnson never has spelled out his own idea of a memorial, but the pilgrims apparently are satisfied that the two conceptions coincide—or at least that they are amalgamable.

Dr. Joseph R. Sizoo, noted religious scholar who is first vice-president of the group, said that Johnson “has been advised of our program to build a Religious Freedom Center in the Nation’s Capital and I am confident that he is pleased that we are following through on his suggestion for such a project.”

Originally, Johnson had suggested that International Christian Leadership spearhead a drive, but ICL is not enthusiastic about promoting real estate.

The plans for the “Religious Freedom Center” envisioned by Religious Heritage of America are tucked away in a filing cabinet. No public release date has been announced.

Pilgrimage awards this year went to Professor Edward W. Bauman of Wesley Theological Seminary, Mrs. Jo-Ann Price Baehr of the New York Herald Tribune, and Dr. Marion M. Preminger, who has been associated with the work of Dr. Albert Schweitzer. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale was named Clergyman of the Year, James C. Penney was chosen Lay Churchman of the Year, and Mrs. Dale Evans Rogers was elected Churchwoman of the Year.

Evaluating Shared Time

More than 60 per cent of 183 public school superintendents polled in a National Education Association study said that on the basis of their experience with shared-time programs of instruction, they would recommend the practice to other school systems.

The NEA study report, believed to be the first nationwide survey in the field, did not attempt to reach any conclusion or recommendations as it highlighted the problems, advantages, and disadvantages of shared time (also called dual school enrollment).

The study was confined to arrangements in which non-public schools send their pupils to public schools for instruction in one or more subjects during a regular school day. All schools involved had enrollments of 300 or more.

The report is based on information drawn from questionnaires sent to school superintendents who had responded to an earlier NEA poll of school systems. The replies did not cover all shared-time arrangements in the country nor even a representative sampling of them, but they did produce some insights, spokesmen said.

Industrial arts, vocational education, and home economics were the subjects most frequently provided by the public schools. Others, in the order of frequency, included instrumental music, physical education, physics, chemistry, driver training, advanced mathematics, foreign languages, general science, and business and clerical subjects.

The question was asked: “In the light of your experience, would you advise other school districts to provide a program of shared time?” Sixty-three per cent of the superintendents answered yes, nine per cent said no, and the remainder either did not answer or gave qualified replies.

Government And Glossolalia

The Lutheran Medical Center of Brooklyn, New York, says it has been awarded a research grant by the U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare for a psychological and linguistic study of glossolalia.

It was reported that the study will be carried out by a professional team made up of a psychiatrist and a clinical psychologist, who are also seminary graduates and ordained ministers, and a linguist, Dr. Eugene A. Nida, secretary for translations of the American Bible Society.

Dr. John P. Kildahl, the psychologist, and Dr. Paul Qualben, the psychiatrist, will travel to San Pedro, California, and Glendive, Montana, where they will follow up an initial study conducted last year. Members of church congregations in these two cities who practice glossolalia will be given a battery of psychological tests. In addition, a control group made up of members of the same congregations who do not speak in tongues will be tested. One aim of the study is to determine differences in personality, if any, between the two groups tested.

In Minneapolis, meanwhile, the American Lutheran Church announced that it will terminate the services of one of its staff evangelists who says that two and a half years ago he received “the gift of the fullness of the Holy Spirit” which enables him to speak in tongues. The minister, the Rev. A. Herbert Mjorud, will be retained as a clergyman and will be eligible for a call to a congregation.

Guests For The Vatican

Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffmann, preacher on the international “Lutheran Hour” radio program, says he has accepted an invitation to be a guest at the third session of the Vatican Council this fall. The invitation was extended by the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity.

Hoffmann, former public relations director for the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, will not be an official delegate-observer of his denomination.

Announcement of the invitation was made by Dr. Oliver R. Harms, president of the Missouri Synod, at the forty-seventh convention of the Lutheran Laymen’s League in Lincoln, Nebraska. It also was announced that the Rev. Norman L. Temme, who succeeded Hoffmann as the synod’s public relations director, will be at the Vatican Council session as an accredited press representative.

No Longer Among Them

After deliberating for two hours behind dosed doors earlier this month, the British Methodist Conference expelled one of its ministers. In a prepared statement on behalf of the assembly, Dr. Frederic Greeves, its president, said: “The conference resolved that in view of his refusal in two successive years to give the doctrinal assurances required annually of every Methodist minister and his declared intention to continue his refusal, the Rev. Walter Gill be no longer a minister among us.”

Mr. Gill, 49, married and the father of two children, earned $1680 in England’s industrial northeast as minister in West Hartlepool. After twenty-four years in the ministry, he is now required to leave his manse by the end of next month. Before the conference met he talked about his allegedly heretical views, chiefly his description of the Virgin Birth as “just a piece of mythology,” worthless as history.

He pointed out that this was the issue involved also in the last trial for heresy, when the accused man was Dr. Donald Soper. Another famous Methodist, Dr. Leslie R. Weatherhead, had been arraigned as a heretic because of his disbelief in eternal punishment. Both these men were acquitted: both became presidents of the conference.

“I am an ordinary Methodist minister,” said Mr. Gill, “operating in what might be called perhaps the backwoods of Methodism.” He plans now to get a job teaching religion in high school.

J. D. DOUGLAS

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