"Daily I repeat to myself 'I believe,' " the Rev. Daniel Alfred Poling once said. "I could say, 'I doubt, I deny,' but that is negative." The beliefs of Poling—who died last week of a heart attack at the age of 83—could serve as a compendium of what classic American Protestantism used to stand for.
A Christian activist of unflagging energy, he nonetheless believed that it was the business of the church to change the hearts of men, not to change society. Although frequently engaged in politics—he was the Prohibition candidate for Governor of Ohio in 1912 and four decades later ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Philadelphia as a Republican—Poling fought all his life to preserve the separation of church and state. Above all, he had a profound yet simple faith in God, the words of the Bible, and Jesus, whose biography, he said, could be summed up in five words: "He went about doing good."
Much the same could be said of Daniel Poling. The son of an Evangelical minister, he was born in Portland, Ore., accepted his first call as a preacher at a United Evangelical church in Canton, Ohio, in 1905. From then on, his life as a minister of the Gospel and a servant of man were inextricably interwoven. During the '20s, he was probably the nation's most popular radio preacher, and for eight years he was pastor of Manhattan's prestigious Marble Collegiate Church—a post now held by his friend and disciple, Norman Vincent Peale. Poling also served for a time as head of the J. C. Penney Foundation, which supported such charitable institutions as orphanages and homes for the aged. He also traveled widely through the world on behalf of Christian missions and relief services.
Poling had an abiding hatred of war —he was gassed as a Y.M.C.A. volunteer during World War I, and his son Clark was one of the famed "four chaplains" who went to their deaths aboard the U.S.S. Dorchester in 1943 —but he was no pacifist. He urged U.S. entry into World War II, then and later was an ardent, vociferous foe of Communism, which he described as "the supreme threat" to the world.
As editor of the nondenominational Christian Herald from 1927 to 1966, Poling had an ideal forum for his views, and he made the monthly one of the nation's most persuasive organs of Protestant opinion. Even after he retired two years ago, Poling stayed active as head of the Christian Herald Charities, which operates the 83-year-old Bowery Mission. Playwright Robert Sherwood once said of Poling that "the whole United States is his parish." It might better have been said, the whole world.