Bicentennial Note

It is an honor to be invited by Chairman John Swomley to write a note for this 200th anniversary year of THE CHURCHMAN'S Human Quest.

This celebration is synonymous with tenacity, the watchword of survival. This journal's first editor, Samuel Seabury, began his enterprise as Lewis and Clark's corps of discovery in 1804 entered an optimistic journey toward enlightenment.

Thomas Jefferson was entering his second term as President of the United States in the spirit of "the illimitable freedom of the human mind," as Jefferson's optimism paralleled this journal's beginnings.

Honesty and grace attended the founders of this journal. But they were realistic enough to see pitfalls. A contemporary fellow philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead (1881-1947) faced a Christianity that historian E. Clowes Chorley recognized as "catering solely to the socially privileged" with "neither thought nor care for the poor." In one of Whitehead's dialogues, published by the Atlantic Monthly Press, he challenged:

"I consider Christian theology to be one of the great disasters of the human race . . . . It would be impossible to imagine anything more un-Christian than Christian theology. Christ probably couldn't have understood it."

But in 1917, two Episcopal clergymen took the helm.

Dr. William Austin Smith and Dr. Guy Emery Shipler, in a spirit of iconoclasticism, with some opposition along with approval, love and altruism, grew into an organization of distinguished men and women called The Churchman Associates. Several times they saved this journal from poverty & extinction.

These generous-hearted leaders of Episcopal Church society were political leaders including Governors Elmer Benson of Minnesota and Herbert Lehman of New York. Prominent church and community leaders included Margaret Sanger, Georgia Harkness, Linus Pauling, Corliss Lamont, Robert St. John, and J.P. Morgan.

Overlooking the race with poverty, this journal's writers and editors never forgot the fun of incisive commentary. One fellow author recognized Dr. Guy Shipler as "master of the genteel insult."

We willingly went without salaries and cheerfully clung to ideals of Jesus' teachings. The business manager of The New Yorker, Pete Spaulding, was Shipler's good friend and served on The Churchman's board of directors.

Cornelia Otis Skinner met frequently with Editor Shipler in Episcopal Church dramas. Paul Robeson's rich bass voice highlighted Churchman award dinners, one highlighting Henry Wallace, at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Frequent visitors to the Churchman office were the Spoffords, father and son, presenting us with their latest issue of The Witness, an 8-page sheet within the Episcopal fold, the editors quipping about church foibles. Bill Spofford, Jr. has fulfilled his father's ambition by becoming The Rt. Rev. William B. Spofford, Bishop of Oregon, with headquarters in Portland.

By Edna Ruth Johnson, Editor Emeritus, 1968-1998

Copyright The Human Quest Jan/Feb 2004
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