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New Leadership. Episcopal Layman Charles P. Taft, president of the U.S. Federal Council of Churches and brother of Republican Senator Robert A. Taft, promptly tried to modify the condemnation of capitalism. He proposed inserting the phrase "the wholly self-regulating laissez-faire theory of capitalism" (i.e., pushing the condemnation back to the days of the 19th Century robber barons). The council accepted only the adjective "laissez-faire."
The slightness of the change showed the strength of Amsterdam's realization that the war had turned much of the world leftward and that the churches, if they are to spread their influence, must do more than reaffirm the prewar status quo. The forcefulness of the statement, compared to earlier ecumenical pronounce ments, showed that a new leadership was rising in the new World Council. In the top flight of that leadership is Bishop Oxnam.
G. (for Garfield) Bromley Oxnam is a chunky, solid, strong-voiced prelate of 57. He looks and dresses like a prosperous businessman, but his leftish social views got him listed in Elizabeth Dilling's The Red Network. Among the assets he brings to any enterprise are his organizing and administrative ability. He applies both to his personal life so formidably that there is never a paper left on his desk or a question left unanswered in any committee over which he presides. Says Theologian Niebuhr: "He gets through a meeting faster and better than anyone I know."
The son of a devout Methodist layman and mine executive, Oxnam was born at Sonora, Calif. In his youth, Methodist churches had a monthly custom of calling for declarations at the altar rail after service. One Sunday he told the girl sitting beside him that he felt a call to the ministry but disliked such public displays. Said she: "If you really feel you should be a minister, you ought to have enough nerve to go down there." He went. Among those he met at the altar rail was Ruth Fisher, daughter of a wealthy oilman, pledging herself to the mission field. Soon after he graduated from the University of Southern California, they married; later she inherited a sizable sum from her father.
Church of All Nations. As a fledgling minister in 1917, Oxnam was assigned to a run-down Los Angeles church with few communicants and a $15,000 debt. The square mile of his parish had 60,000 people representing 42 nationalities, and the highest juvenile delinquency rate in the city. Oxnam renamed the parish The Church of All Nations, organized youth clubs, developed a clinic with 28 doctors, let labor groups on strike meet in the church. Eventually, he built it into one of the great parishes of U.S. Methodism.
During his ministry there, he took a lengthy round-the-world trip as secretary to Y.M.C.A. Leader Sherwood Eddy. A frequent globetrotter, his acquaintance among world churchmen is wide and cordial; one of Amsterdam's highlights was the beardy kisses of welcome that Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens gave him in the robing room before the opening service. In 1928, Oxnam became president of DePauw University in Indiana; in 1936, at 44, he was elected bishop—then Methodism's youngest—and assigned to the Omaha area.