Religion: Hopes & Plans

“The faith must not lag behind contagious diseases in spreading.” This was Toyohiko Kagawa’s new watchword for the Japanese faithful. He gave it to the 3,500 delegates of the Christian churches of Japan who had assembled on the windswept campus of Tokyo’s bombed-out

Aoyama Gakuin Methodist School, for the first time since the war, to pray and plan for the future of Christianity in Japan.

Their hopes were high: Protestant church attendance has already doubled since V-J day. Their plans were ambitious: a three-year evangelical program, in which 1,000-odd ministers and lay preachers will be expected to gain 3,000,000 converts.*To rebuild the 500 Protestant churches destroyed by American bombs, Japan’s interdenominational Church of Christ has budgeted $3,500,000—90% of it to come from U.S. contributions.

Not included in the evangelical and reconstruction program (though represented at last week’s convention): Japan’s lone-wolf Catholics and Episcopalians. They stubbornly resisted the Government’s efforts for a wartime merger of Christian churches, and are continuing to go their own way in peace.

*Approximate number of Japanese Christians: 220,000 Protestants, 110,000 Catholics.