Our Own Hall of Fame
NORMAN VINCENT PEALE
RELIGION A SCIENCE
Church a Lab, Dr. Peale Says
DAYTON DAILY NEWS, MARCH 6, 1961
BY MARY ELLEN LYNCH
Daily News Staff Writer
The “p.k.” (preacher’s kid) who resented the tag when he was growing up in the Miami Valley has three children of his own today. They’re “p.k.’s” themselves and proud of it—for their father is Norman Vincent Peale, America’s most successful Protestant clergyman.
Through his best-selling books (“The Power of Positive Thinking,” “Stay Alive All Your Life,” etc.), his radio and television programs, lectures, newspaper and magazine columns, Dr. Peale reaches a weekly audience estimated at 30 million.
As pastor of New York’s Marble Collegiate church on Fifth Ave., he shepherds in person one of the country’s largest congregations.
BUT, AS A BOY, this isn’t what he had in mind. He was born, the son of a Methodist minister, in Bowersville, Greene county, in 1898. Four years later the family moved and young “Norm” (also prophetically tagged “Doc”) grew up in Lynchburg and Bellefontaine.
He wanted to be a newspaperman, got a BA degree from Ohio Wesleyan and worked on papers in Findlay and Detroit before he got what he describes as a “sudden” call to the ministry.
Bolstered by $500, he entered the Boston university school of theology (Methodist), was graduated in 1924 and assigned to a sagging Brooklyn church with a membership of 40. Pastor Peale got the names of new residents in the area from a friend who worked for the gas company, built membership up to 900 in three years.
IN 1932 he switched from the Methodist to the Reformed ministry and moved to Marble Collegiate, the oldest chartered church in New York. (1696).
The first Sunday 300 people showed up for services in the 1,500 capacity building. Today the church has a membership of 4,000 and up to 1,000 persons are turned away from every service.
Plump, beaming Norman Vincent Peale believes that religion should make people happy, that Christianity is a very real thing that can produce concrete results. He calls it a science of living, and the church a laboratory.
He early saw a link between religion and psychiatry and in 1937 established a religio-psychiatric clinic adjacent to his church to help people with emotional problems. Today the clinic has its own Park Ave. building, a large staff of psychiatrists and handles a case load close to 2,000 a year.
WHEN HIS BOOK, “The Power of Positive Thinking” came out in 1952 it hit the top of the non-fiction best seller list, sold 2 1/2 million copies in five years, still moves fast.
A small, round whirlwind, Dr. Peale is a controversial figure, criticized by many as a Pollyanna preacher whose outlook is too bland and whose solutions are too quick and painless.
His books are filled with chapters like “How To Get People To Like You” and “How To Break The Worry Habit” and with testimonials, including some from himself.
(“I had the worst inferiority complex of anyone I ever met,” says Dr. Peale. “I’ve got a little of it now, but I feel that I’ve been able to master it.”)
CRISPLY GENIAL, with an almost shattering handshake, Dr. Peale has put portions of his books on LP records, writes Christmas cards for Hallmark, pioneered—with his wife—the first husband and wife religious program in TV.
He receives some 5,000 letters a week (mostly seeking advice), is editor-in-chief of “Guideposts,” a popular inspirational magazine, and once served as a technical adviser on a movie (“One Foot In Heaven” for Warner Brothers.).
During the election campaign last fall he headed a group of Protestant clergymen who expressed doubts that John f. Kennedy could function properly as president due to his Catholicism. In the controversy that followed, Dr. Peale disavowed the group.
Sometimes called “the rich man’s Billy Graham,” Dr. Peale has a preponderance of business men in his congregation, golfs for relaxation, gets away from his busy life at a 20-acre farm in Pawling, N. Y.
His credo, which hangs on the wall of his church study, is this: “Trust God and live a day at a time.”
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