The first bylined story Clark Morphew wrote as a full-time religion writer for this newspaper was his coverage of William Sloane Coffin's speech at a Minneapolis church in 1982. "Rid world of sinful nuclear weapons,'' said the headline on Morphew's story, based on the remarks of the noted peace-activist pastor. This morning, as the memorial service is held for Morphew at Central Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis, the specter of war looms again with Iraq, and perhaps North Korea, over that same threat: weapons of mass destruction. Religion reminds us that only the venues and circumstances are new. The problems of humankind are as perpetual as they are profound. As on that May day 20 years ago, when Morphew began covering the intersection of religion with the world at large, communities of faith still have a lot to say about war, peace, life and death. Morphew himself wasn't a prophet, although he may have written about a few. But he frequently roared with prophetic consequences, both for those who agreed with him and those who didn't. "He was a keen observer of the scene, both religious and social,'' said the Rev. Gordon Braatz, who will preside at Morphew's memorial service at 11 a.m. today. "It was always good to get his insights as to how he was viewing contemporary events. "He had a deep background in the church, but he wrote both about its successes and its foibles. He would not be taken neutrally.'' Morphew, who succumbed to lung cancer on Christmas Eve, left a unique imprint on these pages. He came to the newspaper as a Lutheran pastor, and he was a religion columnist in addition to being a religion reporter. As his successor, I am neither pastor nor columnist, except in the latter case on rare occasions such as this. Rather, I am an editor and reporter. Morphew, on the other hand, was given his own voice from the outset, and he found it quickly. "I called him sort of a curmudgeon, of course,'' said the Rev. George Martin, an Episcopal priest and friend of Morphew. "He didn't hold back on his opinions about the churches that failed to be open. He didn't have a lot of tolerance for the 'stuckness' of religion in general. "He just disliked the church that resisted change.'' A scan of Morphew's stories over the years reveals the fissures and tensions of the faith community in the 1980s and '90s: fundamentalism vs. liberalism, cults, "new'' religions, hierarchy and ordinary folk, homosexuality and politics, the rise and fall of this denomination and that. He frequently sympathized with the powerless and those he felt were oppressed, especially those who suffered at the hands of religious leaders themselves. At the same time, he bristled when people treated the clergy shamefully. "There had to be some clergy out there who felt he was one of the few friends they had,'' Martin said. There was another theme to Morphew's work, exposed by newsroom colleagues at his retirement party in November 2000. It is best captured in a column he wrote in June 1994: "I have lamented before about the small number of churches that are air-conditioned, a lack that has caused me a good deal of discomfort during my life. "I have written about heat so intense that it softens the varnish on the pews, turning it into a kind of glue that can trap the unsuspecting worshipper. I have described churches that are more humid than a cheese cave during a thunderstorm. "I have begged. I have reasoned with you. Alas, nothing seems to convince some people that air-conditioning is as necessary in the summer as a furnace in the winter.'' Humor, too, was part of Morphew's franchise. "He just had that great smile peaking out underneath that mustache,'' said his former Pioneer Press editor, Deborah Howell. "He had a great sense of humor, and he could be very funny about his own beat.'' The newsroom warmed to Morphew, although at first it didn't know what to do with a pastor in its midst. And he became very fond of his colleagues, a sentiment he often expressed in his final weeks. He had officiated at some of their weddings, their children's baptisms, their loved ones' funerals. A colleague and friend, medical writer Tom Majeski, marveled at how well-connected Morphew remained to what went on in the newsroom: "He was the newsroom confessor. I'd ask him how he knew all this stuff, and he would say, 'Everybody tells me stuff.' " For 18 years, Morphew shared what he heard and learned and thought with the rest of us. As he prepared for retirement and I prepared to stumble into his shoes, the only advice he shared with me was this: "You'll meet lots and lots of really, really good people. Just really great people.'' It was to them he wrote the final words of his last column for the Pioneer Press: "Now I am pressed to sign off, but I hope you will remember me in your prayers. Thanks for reading and for memories of the best two decades of my life.''
Stephen Scott
St. Paul Pioneer Press
1-4-03