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Though Davies' mother had a personal experience of Jesus—who talked to her when she was polishing the brass—Davies at first set out to be a lawyer. He switched to his present vocation only after working his way through the philosophical skepticism of the logical positivists rampant at Cambridge University when he was there. He arrived in the U.S. for good in 1952, and has preached in Chicago for 18 years. As a preacher, he tries to translate the Gospel into the idiom of today, so that "the Bible comes alive and the Christian faith is made believable." One way that Davies makes the Bible come alive during his sermons is by gesturing, mimicking and acting out roles with the skill of a Marcel Marceau. But he finds it "appalling and tragic" that present-day idiom itself sometimes becomes the Gospel, as when "sensitivity training is mistaken for the work of the Holy Spirit." Davies' rich and mostly middle-aged congregation regard him as a star performer and a provocative mind. For his part, he likes to quote Karl Earth, who once described preaching as "an attempt to give God's answers to the questions people raise." Most of those answers are the same for rich and poor alike. ∎