The Organization Man

  At Park Forest, as in other new suburbs, Jews have set up what amounts to a sub-community of their own, for in addition to the synagogue and the Sunday schools there are men’s and women’s social and fund-raising organizations which parallel the organizations of the Protestant majority. For most of Park Forest’s Jews, furthermore, closest friendships seem to be with other Jews. It would be wrong, however, to attribute this to a drive for “separatism.” Despite their heavy involvement in purely Jewish activity, Park Forest’s Jews are also outstandingly active in community-wide affairs as well. Jews from middle-class backgrounds and with upper middle-class aspirations feel a strong pull for activities that cut across ethnic lines, and a great many Park Forest Jews are at an educational and income level considerably higher than that of the community average.

  Were they to compete in North Shore suburbs, their qualifications for leadership might be more offset by the fact of Jewishness, but at Park Forest such an obstacle is minimized. Jews make up less than ten per cent of the population, but out of all proportion to their numbers they staff positions in the community’s civic and cultural organizations (both the current village president and his predecessor are Jews). There is latent antagonism on the part of some Gentiles, but what is noteworthy is how little there really is. When Herbert Gans made his excellent study of the Jewish community in 1949, he did not feel there was any appreciable anti-Semitism, and neither, several years later, did I.*

  Even the well-educated Jews do tend to associate more with one another in their close friendships, but, as Gans noted, this is not due so much to ethnic considerations as to the fact that these Jews are apt to be culturally higher-browed in their tastes than most of their neighbors. “Jews who seek other people with whom they can share these attitudes and interests tend to find other Jews,” Gans said. “This culture—which includes an important proportion of other Park Forest non-Jews—itself is largely devoid of Jewish content, and the Jews who come together in it would seem to do so primarily not because they are Jews but because they share a culture.” Indeed, some non-Jews with upper-brow tastes often mix more easily with Jewish friends than with others.

  As in the Protestant community, there is some soul-searching among Jews about the new synagogues and community centers of suburbia, and somewhat the same question is asked of them as of the United Protestant Church. Are they religious institutions—or social ones? Perhaps, as Nathan Glazer suggests, “One could have reason to believe that the Jewish religious institutions have won such wide support lately precisely and merely because they enable Jews, in the guise of a denomination, to survive as a separate group in America.”

  So far, i have been talking chiefly of park forest, but wherever young organization people are to be found the same urge for a more socially useful church manifests itself. The fact that the current “religious revival” has a strong social basis has been widely observed, of course, but it is significant how much more clearly this social emphasis is discerned when you narrow the focus from people in general to the strata of young organization people. They need to have emphasized what others take for granted. For those who stay put in one place, the church has always been socially useful, and the by-products of church affiliation they take as a matter of course. But the transients cannot. Stability, kinship with others—they want these demonstrated, and in the here and now.

  In one Protestant church in Levittown, Pennsylvania, the young minister was surprised when his congregation began to complain about the cathedral chairs with which the church was furnished. They were excellent chairs and, for a growing church, more practical than fixed pews. They conceded all this but they still complained. “At last I figured it out,” he said. “The chairs moved. All the young people here have come from somewhere else—from up state, Philadelphia, or New Jersey, and even though the distance isn’t great, they have had to break with their old home ties. They are extremely eager for stability and for any signs of it. So I figured out a compromise. We fixed up kneeling stools so that they would hold the chairs firm. I didn’t hear any complaints after that.”

  They seek friendship, and this yen is now becoming so evident that wherever there is a transient population it has been an irresistible temptation for the churches to make friendship their chief appeal. Symptomatically, even within the more conservative denominations recently there has been a good bit of use of advertising appeals frankly based on the how-to-win-friends theme. Here, for example, in an ad in the New York Herald Tribune (May 20, 1955), “spiritual force” is advertised as a means to friendships:

  Lots of acquaintances—not many friends. Is this increasingly true for you? Look at your life. You may find that it lacks those spiritual experiences which bring people together in understanding and friendship.

  Participation in the activities of the neighborhood church supplies the spiritual force to weld lasting friendships. Meet future friends in church next Sunday.

  A cordial welcome awaits you at

  YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD EPISCOPAL CHURCH.

  This is a rather exceptional ad, but the sensitivity to practicality that it illustrates is growing more general. Even though they might themselves feel that spiritual considerations are basic, a considerable number of churchmen now have been persuaded they should ask people in the door by mentioning only the social and practical benefits one will find inside. A bulletin put out by the Protestant Council of New York City, to cite another somewhat exceptional example, gives this advice to speakers on its radio and television programs:

  Subject matter should project love, joy, courage, hope, faith, trust in God, good will. Generally avoid condemnation, criticism, controversy. In a very real sense we are “selling” religion, the good news of the Gospel. Therefore admonitions and training of Christians on cross-bearing, forsaking all else, sacrifices, and service usually cause the average listener to turn the dial. Consoling the bereaved and calling sinners to repentance, by direct indictment of the listeners, is out of place (with designated exceptions). … As apostles, can we not extend an invitation, in effect: “Come and enjoy our privileges, meet good friends, see what God can do for you!”

  If transients are so disinterested in theological and doctrinal matters, many churchmen ask, why have there not been more united churches of the Park Forest variety? It is true enough that there are few; this seems due not so much to strong denominational spirit on the part of younger people, however, as to strong denominational spirit on the part of the church hierarchies. At Levittown, Pennsylvania, for example, there was for a while a fair chance of making the first church there, the Dutch Reformed, a united church deliberately patterned on the Park Forest model. The minister, the Rev. Bert Bonte, was, like Park Forest’s Hugo Leinberger, eager to make the church a vehicle for bringing together people of different faiths in meaningful civic, cultural, and religious activity. For a variety of reasons the effort failed, but the church is, if not in name, in fact something of a united church. Of its 325 members, only a few were raised in the Dutch Reformed Church. The rest are Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists, Congregationalists, and twelve are ex-Catholics. Like Park Forest’s United Protestant Church, it has become the center of community activity. “What fires young people today is the urge to co-operate,” says Bonte. “The old fire of denominationalism is gone. The young people are ready for union now, but the vested interests—the bureaucrats of the church —are against it. They would stand to lose their jobs. But the young people are ready, and I think it significant that the ones who are most eager for the ecumenical movement are the best-educated ones.” (Roughly 50 per cent of Bonte’s congregation is college educated.)

  In near-by Fairless Hills, another united church almost came into being. The Philadelphia Council of Churches sent out a chaplain, and when he discerned the popular movement on the part of the residents for a common church, the denominational authorities were persuaded to set up such a church. It was run by the Methodists, but the understanding was that it would serve all the Prote
stant denominations. So it continued for several years, but in time it became more a Methodist church, and while it numbers many denominations among its members, it cannot be considered a true united church—a fact that other ministers in the neighborhood take pains to emphasize.

  Whether they take the form of a united church or not, However, the desires that produced the Park Forest experiment are well illustrated everywhere. Let me go back a moment to the priorities that Park Foresters indicated in 1950. They listed, in order of importance, the minister, the Sunday school, the location, the denomination, the music. Some churchmen have been shocked at this, but subsequent experience has proved that, whatever one may think of the order, it has proven rather accurate.

  That the minister is of primary importance has been well borne out by the unusually heavy demand among suburbanites for personal counseling. “So many young people around makes counseling my main worry,” says a forty-two-year-old minister in one package suburb. “I simply haven’t time for any more, and I am getting an assistant to help me out. But the thing is, you feel you can do so much in a place like this. My last parish was in a run-down city neighborhood. I had a lot of counseling work there, but so much of it was with people who had no hope—people you knew you couldn’t do very much for. But here it’s different. These young people have all their adjustments to make at once, and you feel you can do so much for them. No case seems hopeless, and you’re tormented by the thought that how you help them will be important for years to come.”

  Because of this demand the age of the ministers has been more of a factor than expected. At first glance, the ideal minister for suburbia would seem to be a man of the same age as the others, and many churches have sent young men on that assumption. The age similarity does not always work out well, however. In a community where most people are the same age, and when that age is one in which they are meeting their first marital conflicts, the couples feel drawn to a man who is somewhat more fatherly than brotherly. Some young ministers have done well, but the failures—there have been very many—have been disproportionately concentrated among the younger men. Elderly ministers have their problems, too, but one of these is the heavy strain put upon them by their popularity as counselors. One elderly minister virtually suffered a breakdown —there were so few others in his age group that he had to bear an unconscionable load, and at length he left, for the burden was too much.

  The second factor, Sunday school, is at times even more important than the minister. Customarily, new suburbanites approach the church through their children, and a lively youth-education program can often offset many other factors in a church’s popularity. In time, the parents may join, but on the average there is a waiting period of about a year before they will themselves become regular parishioners.

  The relationship between location and churchgoing has been similarly demonstrated. At Park Forest, for example, it has been found that traffic flow is a lot more important than sectarian ties in determining churchgoing habits; people tend to go to a church located between them and the center of a community, and a main-road location is so important that placing a church only one or two blocks away will make for considerably decreased attendance. The same seems to be true elsewhere: if you plot the location of the members of a particular congregation, you will find nearness to the church a much larger factor than some ministers would like to believe. Because of the split between the two branches of the Lutheran Church, to take another example, Park Forest has two Lutheran churches, one for each branch. Despite the doctrinal differences, however, the people divide up between the two more because of geography than theology, and to all intents and purposes the two have become regional churches.

  What the transients want most urgently, in short, is a sense of community—and they are coming to care far less than their elders about matters of doctrine that might get in the way. For some people, the result may be far too secular, but before one casts a stone at such as the United Protestant Church, he must first face up to the question its people can posit: What is the alternative? The United Protestant Church, they maintain, is at least taking the initiative in meeting the needs of the new transients as it sees them.

  Are the denominations doing so? Thanks to increased mobility, they have one of the greatest proselytizing opportunities they have ever had. But they are not seizing it. So say Protestant transients, and the more religiously inclined they are, the more harsh their judgment. Neither the mystery nor the fellowship, neither the sacred nor the secular, they complain, are being pushed forward with any real vigor. Says an executive of one of America’s largest apartment-house developments, “In a community like this there isn’t a well-heeled older group to get a church going, so it’s up to the church authorities to step in and take the initiative. But what’s happened here? The churches have missed the boat. We set aside space for the three faiths to have a center. They didn’t show much interest; the Episcopalians did put up a Quonset hut, and the Jews put up a temple. But that’s all so far.”

  The writer feels no competence to enter any judgment on the spiritual issues raised by these questions. I do think, however, that this ferment, from whatever standpoint one views it, is a clear indication that the quest among the transients for a socially useful church is a deeply felt one. They do not seek fellowship simply because they cannot avoid the need. They seek it actively, and they feel that it is ultimately a moral quest.

  * Partly as a result of the Park Forest experiment, Leinberger was also called in to set up a chaplaincy program for Paducah, Kentucky, and for the taconite communities in Minnesota. Recently he had to decline a request from Chicago Heights to become a community chaplain and help out with the 3,000 new homes expected to be built there soon.

  * The quote is from Herbert Gans’s “The Origin and Growth of a Jewish Community in the Suburbs,” to appear in a forthcoming reader of sociological studies of the American Jewish Community, edited by Marshall Sklare, to be published by the Free Press.

  * “Park Forest, Birth of a Jewish Community,” April 1951. As is so often the case with first-rate social reportage, the magazine was Commentary. The main staple of this remarkable journal consists of articles on Jewish topics, but it has consistently published some of the most searching, and hardheaded, comment on U. S. life in general that can be found anywhere.

  CHAPTER 28 The Organization Children

  The organization man’s emphasis on the group, I have been maintaining, is not a temporary phenomenon dictated by external necessity; it is a response to what he feels is a moral imperative, and more and more he is openly articulating it. I have looked at the church in this perspective; now I would like to turn to the schools. Like the churches they had to be built from scratch, and in building them the young parents had to declare themselves. Their children will be transients too, and the pressures of the organization life ahead for them will be, if anything, more intense. What, then, should be emphasized? In helping shape the curriculum, parents are at once giving a guide and revealing themselves.

  The Park Foresters threw themselves into the job of creating a school system with tremendous energy. With few precedents to go on and virtually no industrial tax base, they have developed a system which includes a spankingly attractive high school, six cheerful elementary schools, and several more a-building. Educators all over the country have been lavish in their praise. In 1954 the high school was selected as one of the five winners in the “All-America Schools” contest of the National Municipal League, and other awards for the school have been streaming in.

  They have both profited and suffered from an unusual turnover problem. The leadership of the school boards, for example, is constantly turning over. The first elementary-school superintendent, Robert Anderson, and the young chemist who headed the school board could never be sure from one month to the next just who would be working with them. While they were there, board members worked devotedly. Just about the time one became saturated in the school problems, it seemed, his company would tra
nsfer him, and the break in continuity persists to this day.

  Teachers have also been a worry. There is a high turnover of younger teachers in any community, but Park Forest is at an especial disadvantage in this matter. There aren’t any bachelors around. (Of some 5,000 males in 1954 only one was unmarried, and he has since left.) Several court units have been set aside for unmarried girl teachers, but this kind of sorority life doesn’t jibe with the community, or with the girls, and the rate of departure has been heavy.

  More important, the children move too. The impact is as severe on the teachers as on the children themselves, for the teachers are thereby robbed of a good bit of the feeling of achievement they get from watching the children develop. As Anderson put it: “In any school you have to put a six-months’ investment in a child before the two of you can start functioning right—you have to test them, get the parents involved, get the kids settled down in a group. We do this all right—but then what happens? They move, and you have to start all over again.”

  The children, however, have proved to be highly adaptable material, and the teachers who have had experience in traditional communities are quick to note how much more socially responsive the children of transients are than others. “Social maturity comes faster here for children like this,” explains one teacher. “The adjustment to the group doesn’t seem to involve so many problems for them. I have noticed that they seem to get the feeling that nobody is the boss—there is a feeling of complete co-operation. Partly this comes from early exposure to court play.”

  Like their parents, in short, the children already have a high degree of social skill, and the environment itself will further intensify this in them. This being the case, it could be argued, there is no necessity for the school to duplicate, and thus they are all the more free to concentrate on the other, more inward, aspects. But neither the parents nor the schools feel this way. From the beginning the curriculum has borne down very heavily on the pragmatic and the social, and the concept of adjustment has been dominant.