Next June a congregation of 68 families, most of them from Texas, and their minister, will begin a mass move to the unassuming town of Bay Shore, L.I., a New York City suburb chosen for what the migrants conceive to be a novel blend of wholesomeness and godlessness. The purpose of "Exodus—Bay Shore" is to give that part of Long Island its first "pure-gospel" church, and the move is being sponsored by one of the nation's few big made-in-U.S.A. religious groups—the evangelical, expansive (2,250,000 members) Churches of Christ,* which dot Texas, Tennessee and Southern California.
The exodus was planned as carefully...