Religion: The Baptist Invasion

The spacious, air -conditioned Des Moines Veterans Auditorium was jammed with 3,000 convention delegates and 5,000 visitors last week, but the burnished-copper ashtrays stayed empty. The assembled 8,000 were American Baptists (Northern), on hand for their 52nd annual convention and, as one official explained: "Some Baptists smoke, but never when they gather together like this."

As president for the coming year, the delegates elected Dr. Herbert Gezork, 58, onetime leader of the German Baptist Youth Movement who fled Germany in 1936 just before the Nazis closed in on him, is now president of...

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