Religion: Applications Taken Here

¶ A technical sergeant wrote: “I have been a department store buyer; will the ministry, in which I am now strongly interested, pay me enough?”

¶ A Navy cadet wanted help: “The atomic bomb has made me do some fast, serious thinking. What shall I do when the war ends?”

¶ A captain in Georgia wrote: “My wife being a staunch Southern Baptist and I a Presbyterian . . . can we get into religious work which involves no denomination at all?”

More than 3,000 servicemen have said they hoped to become Protestant ministers. To guide them, the Federal Council of Churches has set up a sort of vocational-guidance unit, Commission on the Ministry. The Commission’s aim is to raise the general level of the Protestant ministry —all denominations — by helping the churches to select candidates who are as occupationally fit as they are willing. In future, it will borrow the tactics of big business and use talent scouts to pick the most promising young men from each year’s crop of college graduates. Hardest job may be sorting the candidates out by denominations : thus far, most of the servicemen applicants have exhibited a vast indifference to denominationalism.