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<text>
<title>
(1950s) Suburban Religion
</title>
<history>Time-The Weekly Magazine-1950s Highlights</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
TIME Magazine
July 15, 1957
Suburban Religion
</hdr>
<body>
<p> One of the surprising facts about the postwar surge of
religion in the U.S. has been the caliber of its critics--the
most telling jeers have not come from the village atheists but
from the men of God. And of all the vineyards suburbia draws the
most unremitting hail of clerical belittlement. One Presbyterian
in a grey flannel suit who has long fumed at these attacks,
behind his paper on the 7:28 from Bound Brook, N.J., is
Personnel Manager George S. Odiorne of Manhattan's American
Management Association. In the current issue of Presbyterian
Life he rises to the defense of suburban Christianity.
</p>
<p> Skewering the Bourgeois. Suburbanite Odiorne runs through
the standard attitudes of the suburban churchgoer's critics--the "genteel disdain" for the quality of his faith, the "elegant
reservations" as to the value of his energetic pursuit of
bazaars, suppers, plays, baseball teams, bowling leagues,
discussion groups. For these critics, says Odiorne: "The Johnny-
come-lately, making up the pulpy mass of this return to religion
it seems, has several basic flaws which make him offensive to
the intellectual bourbons of the cloth," i.e., his preoccupation
with getting ahead in the world, conforming to his neighbors and
raising his children.
</p>
<p> "While this skewering of the bourgeois comprises excellent
sport for the staff thinker at national headquarters or at the
seminary, it leaves a few important things unsaid." For one
thing, the church gains in suburbia have not all been in numbers
and money. "Within the suburban churches there are more people
listening attentively to the preaching of the Word, who are
taking part in administering the sacraments of the church, who
are moving steadily toward lives of Christian devotion, and who
are carrying the mission of the church through education and
missionary endeavor."
</p>
<p> Also on the plus side, Odiorne rates suburban indifference
to sects and even the suburban tendency to conformity, which he
finds is modeled on "the proper mixture of doctrinal emphasis
on the Bible, the Lordship of Christ, witness in life and by
word."
</p>
<p> Group Therapy. Odiorne concedes that the suburban church's
proliferation of activities may be a waste of time and an escape
from more spiritual undertakings, but he maintains that to the
seasoned church worker this is "the available frontier" from
which people can be brought deeper into the spiritual life. As
for the frequent charge that suburban churches are top-heavy
with the managerial elite, he replies that this is true of the
communities themselves--hence of their churches. But "even
suburbia has its drawers of water and hewers of wood, who enjoy
positions of influence in suburban churches in rough proportion
to their number and extent of their commitment to the church and
its Lord."
</p>
<p> Critics of suburban religion, says Odiorne, are really
attacking the suburbs, not just their churches. "The conformity
which characterizes suburban life is the real object of their
derision. They would have suburbia turn its back on this `other
directness' and arrive at individual commitment through an
atomistic thinking-through or insight." But "the very suburban
mind which is looked at with fear by detractors may well be the
basis for a beginning of a new Christian era." Perhaps it is
because the critics of suburban religion "lack insight into the
nature of modern society and the group process that they would
scratch out the gains of suburbia and start all over again in
a comfortable model closer to their hearts' desire. But, after
all, the patient who is cured by group therapy may be healthier
than the person who doesn't respond to individual treatment."
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>