AMAZING AND CHALLENGING WORDS FROM A 1953 ISSUE OF "LIFE" MAGAZINE

"Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." (2 Timothy 4:2-4)

My son Jon gave me a wonderful birthday present this past September. Jon works at Framingham Public Library. It seems the library was getting rid of quite a few outdated periodicals which were taking up too much space. This included decades worth of Life Magazine. Over several days, Jon brought home several boxes worth of the Life Magazine issues which were being discarded. His birthday present to me was a copy of Life from the week I was born in September of 1954, and a copy of Life for that week in September for each year for eighteen years; and then some other issues of Life, as well.

Jon also gave a creative Christmas present to my sister Dianne from his Life magazine collection. Dianne is a huge fan of Lucille Ball, and particularly of the old 1950s "I Love Lucy" sit-com. For Christmas, Jon gave her the April 6, 1953 issue of Life. Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball, and their children are featured on the cover. The title is, "TV's First Family". Dianne loved the gift. On Christmas Day in her living room, I found myself leafing through that issue and was absolutely amazed at what I discovered! This must have been the "Easter" issue that year. I was absolutely "blown away" by the Editorial and by a very prominent article. I can't imagine either of these pieces being proclaimed or published by modern secular media; and I especially can't imagine the Editorial being published, let alone written or even considered for use. This issue came out over a year before I was born. If anybody doubts how much our country has changed in sixty years, all you have to do is look through that April 6, 1953 issue of Life!

The editorial's title is, "The Churches of America". The subtitle is, "A Generation of Crisis Has Brought Them Not Only Members but a Stronger Faith". The editorial is long. It takes up an entire page, and in those days, the actual size of a magazine's page was huge by today's standards. The editorial begins by observing that just twelve days after his inauguration, President Dwight Eisenhower was baptized and joined the National Presbyterian Church of Washington, DC. Eisenhower had attended non-denominational chapel services throughout his military career, but had never publicly professed faith in Christ nor joined a church. He wanted to start off his presidency by doing these things. The editorial discusses the struggle within American Protestantism of the previous one hundred years or so between the theologically liberal modernists and the much more conservative and literal fundamentalists, but concludes that the church of the 1950s had come to a satisfactory balance between the two and was effectively proclaiming the Gospel. The final paragraph is powerful:

"The churches exist for one thing only; they have the ultimate evidence that each man's life and human history are alike meaningful. This evidence is the life, death and resurrection of the Son of God. At Easter church members review the evidence, and discover anew the deep, tragic, hopeful and eternal meaning of life. Others who sense that meaning, but are dissatisfied with their reasons, might well follow their President's example, and join a church."

The other "religious" feature of the April 6, 1953 issue of Life is a piece entitled "12 Great Preachers". An impressive black-and-white portrait of each man (yes, they were all men- this was 1953) is presented, as well as a paragraph about what made each of the twelve preachers great. I suspect the only one of the twelve who is still alive is Billy Graham. He was number 9 on this list, and was 34-years-old at the time. The entire list is as follows:

1. Dr. Louis Hadley Evans (Presbyterian)
2. Dr. Theodore P. Ferris (Episcopal)
3. Dr. Ralph Washington Sockman (Methodist)
4. Dr. Harold Thurman (Baptist) (a black man)
5. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver (Jewish Reformed)
6. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale (Reformed Church in America)
7. Dr. George Arthur Buttrick (Presbyterian)
8. Dr. Robert James McCracken (Baptist)
9. Rev. William Franklin Graham (Southern Baptist)
10. Dr. Joseph R. Sizoo (Reformed Church in America)
11. Very Rev. Robert Ignatius Gannon (Roman Catholic)
12. Most Rev. Fulton J. Sheen (Roman Catholic)

How does our country (spiritually speaking) stack up with the United States of America of 1953? It's something we really need to think about as we stand at the threshold of 2014.