The path of the true believer has always been rocky, but members of the Worldwide Church of God struggle with remarkable obstacles: an aging, unpredictable patriarch, his rebellious and fun-loving son, and a shadowy adviser who now seems close to total control of the church and its assets.
For every wrestler who enters the ring with pure heart and clean hands, a dozen Foreigners and so-called Intellectuals and Sonsofbitches seek to bring him down with treachery and brute force and outright meanness.
“Anyone can be a bigmouth. It’s hard to be a pastor” So says one of the tough-minded Rochester ministers who have turned their churches into meeting houses for political activism. Allied with Negro leaders and lay community organizers, these militant “new breed" ministers have battled with corporations and public agencies for better jobs and housing, and have shattered traditional expectations of the ministry in the process. Mr. Martin, a Harvard Divinity School graduate and now a doctoral candidate in Harvard’s department of religion and society, is chaplain of the Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts.