The Rev. Dr. Samuel Moor Shoemaker, 61, is a ruggedly handsome divine
who thrives on Gilbert & Sullivan and finds the preacher's lot a
challengingly happy one. Ever since his unlined face and gentle voice
became a fixture in Pittsburgh's Calvary Episcopal Church three years
ago, religion has been moving out of the Sunday-morning shadows and
into the steel mills and executive suites. The casual young members of
the “Golf Club crowd” have found themselves talking religion at
cocktail parties and even turning out for Bible-study meetings with
“Dr. Sam” at the H-Y-P Club. Steelworkers have
attended prayer meetings right in the factory.This month Dr. Shoemaker and his friends launched a new
movement—the “Pittsburgh Experiment.” It is designed as a saturation
campaign against “nonconductors” in Pittsburgh's business world, to be carried
out through small task forces. Explains Shoemaker: “Today . . . the
small group is both a sign and an instigator of spiritual awakening.''Apart from Dr. Shoemaker, the experiment's prime mover is Admiral Ben
Moreell, board chairman of Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., longtime
seven-day-a-week Christian and one of those responsible for bringing
Dr. Sam from Manhattan's fashionable Calvary Church. Layman Moreell,
who will serve as chairman of the Pittsburgh Experiment's board of
trustees, announced that the campaign will be guided by a full-time
executive director, the Rev. William H. Cohea Jr., graduate of
Princeton Theological Seminary and former pastor of the Daniels Park
Presbyterian Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.Between 60 and 70 “young marrieds” will work in couples,
getting others like themselves started in Christian discussion groups,
or as religious ambassadors to men's and women's groups. Businessmen
will be approached at their places of business; downtown luncheon
sessions have already been set up, and department heads in some
companies are planning brief sessions in their offices during coffee breaks.Sam Shoemaker, once an enthusiastic member of Dr. Frank Buchman's
M.R.A., has high hopes for Pittsburgh's role in changing the U.S. Said
he last week: “I like to envision Pittsburgh as a city under God,
so that God would be the same to Pittsburgh as steel is to Pittsburgh.
The backlog of Christian conviction and belief in this city' means more
to it than all the coal in the hills and all the steel in the mills. If these
forces can be trained and mobilized. Pittsburgh might become a spiritual
pilot plant for America . . .”
