Sperry Claims Religious Convictions, Now Firm, Will Not Falter in Peace

Dean Willard L. Sperry, chairman of the Board of Preachers, followed up his annual report by saying yesterday that churches, as well as other institutions such as colleges and schools, must meet the returning veteran three-fourths of the way. "It will take all the imagination and sympathy we can muster," he said, "to cope properly with their problems."

Dean Sperry feels that real religion is strengthened but not created in fox holes. Going through the experiences of battle makes a man more thoughtful and receptive to religion, he claimed, but does not of itself put religion into him.

Predicting further that the movement toward unity of the Protestant churches will receive even more impetus after the war, he stated that this tendency is much stronger today than it was twenty years ago and that it will accomplish something concrete.

Axis Sacked Religion

In his annual report Dean Sperry expressed his conviction that church attendance will not fall after this war as it did after the last one. "The enemy has shown us only too plainly the logical consequences of immorality and irreligion," he said. "His example turns us in the opposite direction."

The fine work of chaplains in front-line service, and the feeling of the people that "sober moral purpose in the future conduct of our affairs' is needed, are factors which will encourage postwar religion, according to Sperry.

"There is no reason to suppose that our congregations will fall rapidly away when the war is over. They went up during the years from 1918 to 1920. Thereafter, it is true, they began to decline and thus to reflect the mood of disillusionment which was abroad at that time. We shall undoubtedly see some waning ardors when the present war is over. Such a reaction is in the order of nature, due simply to human weariness. But it is not probable that the trough of the wave will be as deep as it was the last time. To put it on no other ground, we know that we cannot afford such a lapse," Dean Sperry stated.

"Meanwhile we have learned enough from these latest times not to expect some miracle of novelty which will save us hereafter. We must work out our own salvation. It will be to the gradual perfection of the institutions we now have, rather than to the quest for some entirely new institutions, that we shall have to look for help and guidance in fashioning a better world in days to come. Our churches, like our schools and colleges, accept, therefore, the duty of self criticism and self-discipline which the times demand."