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"We have a phrase which is spoken in our church at every service: that religion is for all sorts and conditions of men. But in too many Episcopal churches, if all sorts and conditions of men were to walk down the aisle on Sunday, the vestrymen would drop dead."
Parsons Who Love. Pardue became Bishop of Pittsburgh in 1944. For six years he had been dean of the cathedral in Buffalo, where he made a point of meeting steelworkers and C.I.O. organizers as well as bankers and plant managers.
In his Pittsburgh diocese, Bishop Pardue has started a new training program for ministers that would make many an old-line prelate blink. Next summer, between, their graduation from college and admission to seminary, prospective ministers will work in a steel mill or coal mine. By arrangement with Pardue's good friend and parishioner, Ben Moreell, president of Jones & Laughlin, parsons-to-be will learn their way around the blast furnaces and Bessemers as ordinary laborers. As many as possible will live in the homes of foremen and mill hands.
Seminarians are expected to spend the second summer working in hospitals, prisons and settlement houses. The third summer, they take over an industrial mission. Thus Bishop Pardue hopes to develop the kind of men he needs to fill the 21 to 33 industrial parishes in the diocese which have been chronically vacant.
"Work in areas like these," he says, "is just as exciting and dangerous as it is in the most far-away land. We aren't looking for experts. We're looking for parsons who love the working people."