Pulpit v. Pew

A few months ago the ebullient, earnest Dean of St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Cathedral, Detroit, the Very Rev. Dr. Herbert Landsdowne Johnson, shocked his congregation, vexed his vestrymen by despairing: "How can I give my views on Prohibition when I know that six of my nine vestrymen have cellars?"

Last week Dean Johnson resigned, sailed for Europe on the Volendam with his wife, whom he married less than a year ago. But before he left Detroit Dean Johnson had a final fling at vestrymen and congregation, made a final plea for the freedom of the pulpit.

Said he: "If the gospel cannot be applied to our modern problems, sex, world peace, war, industrial conditions and race relations, of what use is it? The pulpit today ought not to try to preach on the basis of authority, but to try to challenge men's minds. That is what I have tried to do. ...

"[I am resigning as a protest against] the limitation by the cathedral vestry of the freedom of the pulpit--and against opposition by the vestry and the Bishop [Herman Page] to the policies I have sought to pursue in the cathedral parish."

Most churchmen saw in the Johnson resignation a vestige of the familiar controversy of pulpit v. pew, pondered the evasive question of where freedom of the pulpit should end, where freedom of the pew begin.