Into
the
frying
pan
John Fry, former pastor from Chicago, jumped out of the pulpit
and into the ‘frying pan ', a monthly magazine of ideas, humor
and social advocacy. “We deal in social issues in a real way,"
J
PhrJoby Alan SHvartten
says Fry. “ We don't have to make points with our readers." Fry
and his partner, Mary Alice, say the third year publication is
growing steadily.
Publication deflates religious fire and brimstone
By JOHN CROWLEY
Of the Emerald
Pastor John Fry decided in 1968 that
the most Christian duty he could perform
was to get out of the pulpit.
His church agreed it was a great idea.
Now, with Carol Alice, Fry publishes “fry
ing pan," a magazine of ideas, humour,
and social advocacy. “We handle what
might be called radical ideas, but without
radical bombast," says Fry. “We deal
with social issues in a real way.”
Headquartered in a cozy hillside
home on Mary Lane in Eugene, “frying
pan' appears monthly with 40 pages of
news and comment on topics such as
sexuality, strategic arms, feminism,
taxes, sports, and religion — heavy on
the religion.
Fry, former pastor of Chicago’s First
Presbyterian Church (“It’s a big, hot-dog
church, not a chickenshit little church,"
Fry boasts), feels a special obligation to
puncture the hypocrisy of organized re
ligion. He’s been there.
In June of 1968 Fry was called before
the Senate Investigating Committee to
answer charges of misuse of Anti
poverty Program funds in the community
action program his church administered.
The conservative senators were upset,
Fry says when through the program the
'wrong people' began developing a
political consciousness.
“We were working with lower-and
middle-class black people, people who
are often perceived as criminal, lazy,
welfare cheaters, and so on. Through
our job training program, they were de
veloping a greater sense of self-worth, a
more positive awareness and control of
their own destiny."
Although later vindicated, Fry’s de
Paae 6
fense of his and other community action
programs throughout the country proved
highly charged. He escaped the order,
he remembers, "just barely, without
being cited for contempt.”
He didn’t survive his church’s discom
fort with his political notoriety. “They
dropped me like a hot potato.”
Years later he met Carol Alice at a
social analysis class in Salem. Alice, a
veteran of the underground journalism
movement (she published one in grade
school), had started working for Juvenile
Corrections in Lane County.
The two found they shared many of
the same tastes (and distastes). Since
both were in a position to tackle a new
project, they decided to invent a
magazine. “Frying pan was born.
"Frying pan” rather defies description.
Frying pan correspondent Bill Whipple
summed it up nicely in the November
issue. “Frying pan” is, he asserts, “op
posite of Mary Worthism," that simplistic
mentality built on two-demensional real
ity and priggish platitudes.
“Mary Worth-ism,” he writes, "isn’t the
exclusive property of comic strips and
soap operas. It has ecclesiastical incli
nations. Churches often find it oozing
around the baseboards. Sometimes
they seem to be drenched in it.. “frying
pan" believes that a condescending
moral absolutism doesn't belong in
either the church or the world.”
In a comfortable, wood-heated work
space on a Eugene hillside, Fry and
Alice fight Mary Worth and her like with
the help of high-quality contributions
from their steadily-growing readership.
They now mail out 3,000 copies a month
around the globe.
"We don’t have to make points with
our readers,” Fry says. “Our goal is not
to address readers as consumers of en
tertainment or news, but as actual, intel
ligent, moral agents in their own right.
We feel an obligation to provide them
with interesting, accurate, candid infor
mation. That's our part. What happens
then is up to the reader; it’s unpredicta
ble, but we know it’s going to be good.”
Beside deflating Christian pomposity,
Fry and Alice feel the obligation to do
something to thwart the spreading mad
ness of the strategic arms race. Com
munication, they believe, is the ticket,
There’s got to be a new, neutral lan
guage,” Fry states. "One that everybody
can understand. On the one side there's
the strategic arms discourse; on the
other, the moral discourse, and the two
don't touch. They can’t communicate.
“We’d like to pioneer an intermediate
realm of discourse to discuss strategic
arms so that both elements can com
municate.”
But “frying pan" forays into the whimsi
cal, too. Between its covers the reader is
likely to encounter a piece on speed rac
ing with a rubber raft, a tongue-in-cheek
review of seminary course offerings, and
advice to the lovelorn.
The publication, now in its third year is
growing according to Fry. “We’re still in
our first phase, and thinking very care
fully about changing our page format. It's
very important for us to take it easy, to
have fun.”
“If something we re doing isn’t fun,"
adds Alice, "we stop and examine
what s going on and try to get back on
the track. If we’re not having fun, the
magazine suffers.”
Fry agrees. "No one wants to read
something solemn and stuffy.”
Their readers apparently agree. They
gladly shell out $10 for a year’s subscrip
tion (more if they can afford it, less if they
can’t), and re-subscribe at a rate "that
any magazine in America would envy,"
according to Fry.
Not that the editors are striking it rich.
Unsalaried, they depend oo their com
mercial typesetting operation to pay the
bills. Publishing on ordinary newsprint
keeps costs down, too.
Publishing in Eugene doesn’t hurt
either. “Eugene is the happiest post
mark you can put on a magazine,” Fry
confides. "It's got the best reputation,
deserved or not, in America. People
think it’s the greatest place to live."
When not mailing out good vibrations,
Fry writes books. His fifth and most re
cent, The Great Apostolic Blunder
Machine, has just been published by
Harper & Row In it, Fry agrees with
Kierkegaard’s description of Protestant
ism as "mediocrity laid end to end,” and
explores the refusal of Christianity to
concede the possibility (that) all the
churches in the world could close down
tomorrow and Christianity would still be
alive the next day.”
.He cites as his credentials to deal with
the subject his abject failure to conform
to the orthodox Christian criteria of suc
cess. This, he maintains, provides him
with the critical distance necessary to
credibly state his case ("Critical distance
is my middle name").
Not that Fry has totally abandoned the
traditional church. He preaches occa
sionally as a favor, and cites his church’s
liberal major-medical plan and retire
ment benefits as reasons not to sever
his ties completely.
But in "frying pan," Alice and Fry con
tinue to battle Mary Worth-ism wherever
they find it.