Meeting the Community

To many theologians, Christianity's biggest problems are: first, to get the church out of the cathedrals and into the marketplace; and, second, to make the Gospel message a life-changing reality in men's hearts. The American Lutheran Church thinks it may have found one solution in its "Faith in Life Dialogue," a week-long experiment that concluded last week in the neighboring towns of Fargo (pop. 50,500), N. Dak., and Moorhead (23,000), Minn. The venture, says Methodist Church Historian Franklin Littell of Chicago Theological Seminary, is "the most important thing of its kind to occur in America."

The dialogue, modeled loosely on the German Protestant Kirchenwoche, or church week, was organized by Lutheran Pastor Arnold Mickelson "to get people to talk about their problems and their faith, to meet the community outside the church and discuss issues the public wants to talk about." A special interfaith committee scheduled more than 200 talk-stirring events, most of them under secular auspices, while clergymen stayed discreetly in the background. The dialogue was supported by nearly all local churches and service clubs.

Fargo theaters had special showings of "problem" movies, such as Becket and Black Like Me, followed by panel discussions on their meaning. There were neighborhood kaffeeklatsches at which parents discussed ways of raising the moral standards of their teenagers. Minnesota's Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy, who once taught economics and sociology at Roman Catholic colleges, lectured on the moral problems of political responsibility, while New York Attorney William Stringfellow, an Episcopal lay theologian, addressed the bar association on law, conscience, and civil rights.

The dialogue was intended to stir consciences rather than save souls, and it seems to have done just that. Said a farmer: "Now it's O.K. to talk religion in the feed mill." A teen-aged girl was so moved by the discussions that she gave $40, all her savings, to her church. Hearing of a Negro G.I.'s disappointment in not finding a home, a landlord immediately offered him an apartment. The local Catholic and Protestant clergy, meeting for the first time while preparing for the week, found the experience so agreeable that they have set up monthly conferences. And Lutheran officials are so cock-a-hoop over the results that they want to test their luck in larger communities. Next year a Faith in Life Dialogue is planned for Duluth, the year after for Minneapolis.

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