Pastors found it difficult to confide their problems in
denominational leaders because they did not want to jeopardize future calls and promotion,» according to surveys and follow - up interviews by sociologists Dean R. Hoge and Jacqueline E. Wenger.
About one - third in the survey had no choice but to leave — they were forced out by lay or
denominational leaders because of a divorce, allegations of sexual misconduct or unmanageable conflicts.
Of course, nobody told us that we had slipped into this place and I was blissfully unaware until we had offended people within the community just by criticising the book of a
denominational leader and it was made very clear that we weren't supposed to do that
because we were
denominational insiders apparently.
Fox tells the story from beginning to end: childhood in the German - American parsonage; nine grades of school followed by three years in a
denominational «college» that was not yet a college and three year's in Eden Seminary, with graduation at 21; a five - month pastorate due to his father's death; Yale Divinity School, where despite academic probation
because he had no accredited degree, he earned the B.D. and M.A.; the Detroit pastorate (1915 - 1918) in which he encountered industrial America and the race problem; his growing reputation as lecturer and writer (especially for The Christian Century); the teaching career at Union Theological Seminary (1928 - 1960); marriage and family; the landmark books Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Nature and Destiny of Man; the founding of the Fellowship of Socialist Christians and its journal Radical Religion; the gradual move from Socialist to liberal Democratic politics, and from
leader of the Fellowship of Reconciliation to critic of pacifism; the break with Charles Clayton Morrison's Christian Century and the inauguration of Christianity and Crisis; the founding of the Union for Democratic Action, then later of Americans for Democratic Action; participation in the ecumenical movement, especially the Oxford Conference and the Amsterdam Assembly; increasing friendship with government officials and service with George Kennan's policy - planning group in the State Department; the first stroke in 1952 and the subsequent struggles with ill health; retirement from Union in 1960, followed by short appointments at Harvard, at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and at Columbia's Institute of War and Peace Studies; intense suffering from ill health; and death in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1971.