A report from The Literary Digest revealed that only one man out of every nine attended Sunday services with any regularity in 1929. The article quotes one wounded clergymen who predicted doom for the American culture as a whole, and interviewed an assorted number of church-goers of the male variety who offered a number sound reasons to attend weekly services, none of them having anything to do with the Gospels. However 317 out of 320 interviewed all concurred that their participation helps them attain "a sense of the presence of God" in their lives. Click here to read an article from 1900 about why men dislike going to church. When W.W. II started, Americans went back to church... The well-loved Christian author Helen Walker Homan wrote this very charming essay about Saint Peter: "Saint Peter knows that the very fact that he, of all the Apostles, has been the most frequent subject of jokes by mankind, is only an added proof that he has been the most beloved of mankind." This is the very succinct response from the Religion Editor at Theodore Roosevelt's magazine, The Outlook when asked for an article on the modern views of the Genesis and how the Sunday school teachers of 1901 might best address the topic. The article has been reduced to the bare bones for the sake of brevity. "Heresy Hunters are on the war-path again, we are told, their latest attack being directed against Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick...who is charged with rejecting the four great doctrines of Christianity -the virgin birth, the inspiration of scriptures, the atonement of Jesus, and Christ's second coming..."
"Pretty girl's pictures help sell toothpaste, cigarettes and magazines, so why shouldn't they help sell religion? This logic is being applied by churchmen producing the new TV series called, This is the Life."
"After all - it's no sin to be pretty" - quoth Reverend R.C. Wuerffel, Chairman of the Lutheran TV Production Committee.
It was indeed divine inspiration that graced the craniums of these producing-churchmen employed by the Lutheran Hour Ministries - this television program was an absolute success - appearing first in 1952 and wrapping in 1988. Some of the pretty faces they employed along the way belonged to Annette O'Toole, Kathy Garver, Angie Dickinson, Lisa Pelikan, Mala Powers and Lynn Whitfield.
Watch Jack Nicholson in an episode of "This Is The Life". Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878 - 1969) got some attention in the press when he preached that the work of saving of souls had much to do with man's maintenance of a sound and just economic system here on the earth. Dr. Fosdick gained much of this understanding in the slums of New York City, in 1903, where he worked as a Baptist Minister. "In the twentieth century the greatest conflict in the world's life is centered in economics. The most vital questions with which we deal are entangled with economic motives and institutions." Click here to read further about Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick.. | 
