St. Louis Blues

If there was one churchman the Southern Baptists didn't want to see at their convention in St. Louis last week, it was the Rev. John Franklyn Norris. But there he was, as usual, bigger and louder than life.

Tall, gimlet-eyed, Alabama-born J.Frank Norris, 69, rejoices in his ecclesiastical reputation as the "stormy petrel of the Southwest," and sees to it that the description keeps up-to-date. In his church study at Fort Worth in 1926, the Rev. Mr. Norris killed an unarmed political enemy by shooting him four times in the belly and was acquitted on grounds of self-defense.

A few years later, a jury acquitted him of burning down his church. Meanwhile, Fundamentalist Norris' tobacco-denouncing, hallelujah-shouting following grew bigger & bigger: by 1935 he was shepherding one congregation in Detroit, another in Fort Worth, commuting between them by plane.

Most Northern Baptists sighed with relief when Pastor Norris took Detroit's large Temple Baptist Church out of the Northern Baptist Convention, which he accused of "communistic, unscriptural and socialistic leadership." But he became a perennial heckler at Southern Baptist conventions. Delegates, called "messengers," are allotted on the basis of one per 250 church members--or $250 donated to the convention fund.

This year, Pastor Norris sent the Southern Baptists his personal check for $250, got his credentials.

"Throw Him Out!" The day before the convention opened, its president, the Rev. Louie D. Newton of Atlanta, Ga., climbed to the rostrum in St. Louis' Second Baptist Church to tell 1,000 of his fellow pastors how nice he had found it in Russia last summer (TIME, Aug. 26). Up popped grey-headed Pastor Norris with a list of 17 embarrassing questions.

The presiding minister, Dr. M. E. Dodd of Shreveport, La., raised a forbidding hand, but Norris had already started in his high, strident voice. Desperately, Dr. Dodd fell back on the pastor's last resort: he raised his voice and sang, "How firm a foundation. . . ." The congregation loyally joined in. But grinning Heckler Norris was right with them on the second verse, bellowing the words louder than any.

Dr. Dodd raised his hands for silence. Said Norris: "I want to present these questions." By this time, nobody on the rostrum could be heard. From the clerical congregation came an angry hubbub interspersed with cries of "Throw him out!" and around Norris gathered a menacing knot of young minister veterans. Eventually four policemen showed up and explained that they had been summoned to quell a riot. By that time the uproar had quieted and Louie Newton continued his report.

Returned Traveler. In later, more edifying sessions the convention: 1) resolved in favor of admitting to the U.S. approximately 400,000 of Europe's D.P.s; 2) condemned the motion picture industry for glamorizing immorality; 3) planned a long-range program of education in race relations; 4) re-elected President Louie Newton.

They also heard from a Baptist layman who had been to Russia, but who was far cagier in his report than Traveler Newton had been. G.O.P. White House-hunter Harold E. Stassen voiced his "sober optimism" that the U.S. could win the peace by remaining strong and being wise, and hoped that Americans "will never surren er to the insidious whisper of the inevitability of war." He also had something to say about the convention's business: "I wish to state simply and directly that I do not agree with" two of the convention's resolutions: 1) for withdrawing the President's special representative at the Vatican; 2) opposing the Supreme Court's decision permitting the use of public funds to transport children to Roman Catholic parochial schools. Stassen's frankness earned mild applause from his fellow Baptists--and perhaps some approving nods from Roman Catholic voters who had looked suspiciously at Stassen's cozy interview with Old Joe Stalin.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.