Word: mcgaw
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...failure to interact, a few avant-garde theologians are experimenting with new, nonverbal techniques as potential ways of restoring some sense of community in worship. A striking example of this trend took place at the recent assembly of the World Council of Churches in Uppsala, Sweden, where Wilbert H. McGaw Jr. presided over a series of what he calls "touch-and-tell" services that used physical contact as a stimulus to prayer...
...Episcopal layman, McGaw is a staff member of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla, Calif. He also heads an experimental worship program involving 14 Southern California Protestant ministers and two Roman Catholic priests who use touch-and-tell techniques in their own services and gather periodically to compare the results...
...explain what the moment had meant for him. In the next phase, the worshipers one by one stood in the center of the circle, closed their eyes, and let themselves fall backward; they were caught and passed from one member of the group to another. "The purpose," explained McGaw, "is to find out how much they will trust themselves in the hands or arms of others, to be supported in a comfortable, loving way, to be handled gently." Afterward the participants sat down and again gave their impressions of the experience. "A lot of people begin...
...third and last phase of the service, each participant was told by McGaw to rise, gaze into the eyes of his fellow group members, and "reach out and touch them in any way-a handshake, a hand on a shoulder, even an embrace." After 30 seconds they were to tell each neighbor in the circle "what they honestly admire, respect and perhaps even love in him." McGaw described the touch-and-tell, which was interspersed with appropriate Bible readings, as "a different form of sermon...
Throughout the trial, the courtroom was packed with spectators openly sympathetic to Webster. Some of them may have kept busy after hours as well. McGaw received obscene telephone calls at his hotel. "They were so vile," he recalls, "that I couldn't repeat them to a Marine drill sergeant-and my own language is pretty salty." Victory should help him bear up under the insults. But it may be some time before McGaw can collect his $20,000. Last week Webster announced his intention of appealing the decision...