Early on the U.S. religious scene

SIDEBARS: REFLECTIONS BY A MISSIONARY JOURNALIST IN NEW YORK

By Tracy Early Never Again Publishing, 538 pages, $29.95

The most prolific correspondent for Catholic News Service in the late 20th century--and perhaps the only fulltime freelance religion writer in New York at the time--was a Texas-born Southern Baptist minister.

William Tracy Early, known to his friends and readers as Tracy Early, was a powerhouse of religion writing for four decades. His byline appeared in a variety of ecumenical Christian periodicals and secular daffy newspapers from the 1960s until his death in December 2005. His most frequent outlet was CNS, known as the National Catholic News Service when he began writing for it in 1972. He produced 3,250 pieces for the agency over 33 years.

While Mr. Early was engaged in news reporting, he was compiling his reflections on the individuals and organizations he covered in a wide-ranging memoir. His brother, Grady, discovered the manuscript when he was cleaning out 12 file drawers worth of material in Mr. Early's apartment after his death. Grady Early had the book privately published early this year, along with a biography of his brother that he wrote.

The memoir offers a treasure trove of anecdotes about figures on the New York religion scene in the late 20th century as well as the frustrations of having one's work subjected to the vagaries of editors who sometimes made inexplicable changes in the text of an article or refused to publish it because it didn't reflect their views on the issue being covered. One especially remarkable aspect of the book is the extent to which Mr. Early privately disagreed with--or failed to understand--many of the policies of the people and groups he wrote about.

"I have probably spent more time in direct observation of the National Council of Churches (NCC) than any other living journalist," Mr. Early writes. "And I'll be clanged if I can figure it out." He was admittedly perplexed by the council's predilection for issuing policy papers with little or no distinctly Christian references and its frequent criticisms of U.S. domestic and foreign policies unbalanced by similar stances on communist countries. He also found perplexing the black theology, feminist and gay rights movements in the churches. Mr. Early was especially unable to understand how anyone could defend homosexual behavior and wrote that "it seems to me that anyone with a healthy psyche will find some natural sense of revulsion at the thought of homosexual activity."

Such comments might sound on paper like angry rantings, but those of us who knew and worked alongside Mr. Early can imagine him offering his observations in his characteristically droll, low-key tone of voice. Despite his Southern Baptist roots, he was no fan of the religious right and lamented the tendency of conservatives to go overboard in attacking what they considered to be anti-Christian art works and communist infiltrators in the churches. On the latter issue, he writes, "Where a serious debate by responsible people could have been useful, it became virtually impossible because of the atmosphere created by those on the attack."

Mr. Early's chief theological mentor was Karl Barth, the Swiss Reformed scholar and author of the 13-volume Church Dogmatics, which Mr. Early frequently cites as a source for his own reflections on issues. He also favorably cites the works of Reinhold Niebuhr, another influential thinker in the neoorthodox movement of the 20th century.

"Liberal religion really is for the complacent, those who feel they are good enough to make it on their own," Mr. Early wrote. Yet, paradoxically, he was a longtime member the interdenominational Riverside Church, which he described as the most prominent liberal congregation in the country,

Mr. Early's memoir has no material more recent than events of 1999, which reflects what his brother described as the writer's discouragement about finding a publisher. Therefore, it omits Mr. Early's reflections on such 21st century developments as 9/11 and the eruption of the Catholic clergy scandals. However, his presumed take on the latter can be derived from his extensive comments on the sex scandal that led Fr. Bruce Ritter to resign the leadership of Covenant House. Commenting on one aspect of the Covenant House scandal, Mr. Early writes, "I never saw any indication that any church official was really bothered."

For those who covered or were part of the New York religion beat in the late 20th century, Mr. Early's book provides a wealth of material on prominent figures of the time. For readers who were not part of that scene, the book offers a good rundown of issues that affected the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox communities as well as interfaith relations. And it's all laced "with his sometimes idiosyncratic scriptural reflections. Mr. Early's brother, Grady, deserves thanks both for making this memoir available and for contributing a wonderfully detailed index and biography.