Word: membership
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Many join because their fathers belonged. Some join because membership is good for their business or good for their political careers (this is known scornfully as "button Masonry"). More join because they meet the town's best citizens on eye level. Some, perhaps, join out of mere curiosity over the mysterious rites. The majority join just to be with the gang-and are more or less surprised to experience a quite considerable spiritual uplift after they get in. Said a Rutland, Vt. advertising salesman: "There's something gets under your skin at a lodge meeting which makes...
...Inside the Shrine is still another playground, the Royal Order of Jesters. Membership is by invitation only...
...Vatican had known it would stir up such a storm in hundreds of thousands of minds. "The misguided or illusioned," said a Vatican spokesman, "will be obliged to review their ideas and cut off their [Party] membership...
...estimated 148 million, are enrolled church members. In the 1949 edition of the Yearbook of American Churches, published last week, the Federal Council of Churches calls this the biggest such proportion in U.S. history. But Council Secretary Dr. Samuel Cavert ruefully notes that only 30% of the total membership-i.e., 30% of the 46,000,000 enrolled Protestants, 25,000,000 Catholics, 5,000,000 Jews, 1,000,000 Eastern Orthodox-go to church with any regularity. "On the surface, at least," says he dryly, "the U.S. appears to be a religious country...
...Franklin Roosevelt once called him "America's Spiritual Ambassador of Good Will." Last week, at 64, vigorous, bush-browed Dan Poling slackened the pace just a little. After 24 years in office, he announced his retirement as president of the International (i.e., North American) Society of Christian Endeavor (membership: 2,000,000). But he would still keep his jobs as president of the World's Christian Endeavor Union (4,000,000 members), chaplain of the Chapel of the Four Chaplains in Philadelphia, and editor of the slick-paper layman's monthly Christian Herald (circ...