¶ The University of Chicago announced appointment of the Rev. Granger Westberg to a new post: professor of religion and health. Lutheran Westberg, 42, chaplain for the past three years at the university's clinics and before that at Chicago's Augustana Hospital, will serve on both the medical and theological faculties, putting into practice his conviction that patients' physical, mental and spiritual health are all of a piece, and that medicos and ministers should work together.
¶ Editor Edward A. Byersdorff of the official publication of the Lutheran Men in America of Wisconsin, suggested that churches jointly hire psychiatrists to help out their pastors, who face "a constant parade of marital, emotional and mental problems . . . While these problems give the pastor an opportunity for a most personal ministry ... it should be recognized that such people frequently need a psychiatrist as well as a pastor . . . Without in any way attempting to minimize the power of the word, or prayer, or comfort that a pastor can bring ... it is obvious that the pastor alone cannot cope with all the problems of a big city congregation, and most pastors will readily agree."
¶ West German churchmen expressed satisfaction at the latest figures for divorce in the Federal Republic—44,438 in 1954 v. more than 88,000 in 1948. But they frowned at ready recognition of Soviet zone divorces by West zone courts. The new East zone family relations law permits divorce when a marriage has "lost its sense for the spouses, the children and society," and this, Evangelical and Roman Catholic leaders declare, even allows the dissolution of a marriage for political reasons.
¶ Last Sunday, in a kind of denominational dry run, some 500 ministers of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church anticipated their official merger in June 1957 by a countrywide exchange of pulpits.