'Pressure Group' Urged By Fifield

Minister Calls for Protestant Unit to
Develop Moral Aid for U.S. Democracy

A plea for the creation of a national Protestant "pressure group" dedicated to "developing and strengthening the spiritual and moral qualities that are essential to American democrary" was voiced yesterday morning by the Rev. Dr. L. Wendell Fifield in a Reformation Sunday address before 450 laymen and clergymen at the sixth annual communion breakfast of the Federation of Protestant Men in Brooklyn.

The breakfast, which followed an early morning communion service, was held at the Reformed Church of Flatbush, Church and Flatbush Avenues, Brooklyn.

Deploring the influence that "powerful and selfish pressure groups" might have on the outcome of the coming Presidential election and charging that lobbying by economic and racial groups was a "peril to our democracy," Dr. Fifield -- who is the minister of the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims, Brooklyn -- urged that Protestants unite and bring moral pressure upon the American people in the cause of Christianity.

The minister made it clear that Protestant unity would be the basis of a Protestant pressure organization and implied that he would support a sound program to merge the Protestant denominations.

"Jesus is the answer to Plato, said that we could have a cohesive principle in the social order," Dr. Fifield explained. "That principle is the love of the Lord, and that is the cohesive force which can bind Protestants together."

"Of course, problems would arise," he said, "such as the separation of church and state. It should not be our desire to change the methods to achieve our goals."

Throughout the nation yesterday, thousands of Protestant churches celebrated Reformation Sunday with special services and communion breakfasts.

At the Broadway Tabernacle Church at Fifty-sixth Street, the Rev. Dr. Albert J. Penner spoke on "Protestantism and Freedom."

"Good Intentions and the Reformation," was the subject of a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Hugh McCandles at the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, York Avenue and Seventy-fourth Street. At the Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran Church, 153 East Twenty-second Street, the Rev. Victor E. Beck preached a sermon entitled "Where Do You Stand?"

The New York Times
Published: October 27, 1952 Copyright The New York Times