First some history.

The American Baptist magazine was founded in 1803 by the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. A complete set of the now defunct magazine was lodged in the American Baptist mission center in Valley Forge, Pa., where I worked for 20 years, 17 of them as the magazine's editor.

It has been a long time since I sat down to read the dusty volumes but certain passages have stuck with me.

The magazine's initial focus was on a world divided between good and evil, with Baptists being good and nearly everyone else falling into the second camp. Its editors showed no talent for interfaith dialogue and dismissed most of the world's ancient religions with facile adjectives (e.g., "whoring hindoos.")

For decades, the magazine published letters from foreign missionaries who had been away from home long enough to forget what it was like. Particularly striking in the early 1860s were missives from India that underestimated the effects of the Civil War on American churchfolks and speculated that the war was surely less bloody than the chronic outbreaks of battle between Indian princely states. And perhaps they were right.

Over the years the magazine changed its name from The American Baptist to Missions to Mission and back to The American Baptist. It's most notable editor was William H. Lipphard, who expanded its scope and circulation in the 1930s and 1940s. His successor was John Slemp, who was succeeded in 1969 by Norman R. De Puy, who was succeeded by me in 1974. (I was succeeded in 2002 by the Rev. Martha M. Cruz, but that's another story.)

Lipphard was the first editor of the magazine to address the U.S. dilemma of Civil Rights. In the late 1950s, he was responsible for the most controversial cover in the magazine's history, which was a picture of two mature, smiling, flower-hatted women joining hands in Christian fellowship. According to the memory of those who were there, scores of American Baptists wrote to cancel their subscriptions and bitterly protest the fact that one of the women was a Negro.

Earlier, Lipphard designed a cover that I often looked at when I knew I had made a mistake in editorial judgment. It was in 1934 when the fifth congress of the Baptist World Alliance met in Berlin. The National Socialist Party had recently been elected to power in Germany and, while their anti-semitism was no secret, so little was known about the chancellor and the party that they appeared relatively benign. Lipphard, who covered the congress for Missions, was sufficiently impressed with the Nazis that he adorned the next cover of the magazine with swastikas. That issue was subsequently buried among the volumes of magazines on the shelf and I may be among the last to know it exists. Lipphard had to live with his design decision throughout the rest of his tenure, and so far as I know he never mentioned it. It was soothing to know that if mediocre editors could make great errors, so could great editors.

When Norman De Puy resigned his editorship in 1974 to return to the pastorate, he arbitrarily designated me to be his successor. For years, Norman's popular column, "The Bible Alive," had appeared in the magazine. He volunteered to keep writing it after his departure, and he encouraged me to start writing a monthly editorial.

I was 28 years old. Of course I thought I could do it. I had read A.J. Liebling, Walter Lippmann, James Reston and Chuck Stone, all of whom made it look easy. How hard could it be?

I dubbed the column, "The Little Scroll," a name that jumped out at me from the book of Revelation. The first column I wrote in the fall of 1974 was easy. I had been storing up editorial ideas for years and I plowed most of them into my first effort. The few ideas left over were unveiled in my second column. After that I was out of ideas. Each of the next 216 editorials was a painful struggle between an empty mind and a pressing deadline. Some of the editorials were inspired by events, others by television programs or movies, others by overheard statements or sermons. Many editorials were simply words typed on top of words to satisfy the encroaching deadline. Very early, I learned the truth of the journalist's confession, "I have never missed a deadline but I have written a lot of shit."

The American Baptist ceased publication in 2002. It had become a cult phenomenon, read and admired by a tiny handful of Baptists, many of them frugal enough to pass a dwindling number of tattered copies from hand to hand. I left the Baptists that December, pissed, depressed and burned out. But that's another story, too.

"The Little Scroll" ceased to exist then, and I didn't give it another thought. Not for years.

After the close of my Baptist era, I worked as a political and police reporter for three years. In 1995 I was recruited as a writer by the World Council of Churches' New York office. That was a great gig that came with the fringe benefits of frequent flyer miles and great colleagues. But writing for ecumenical bodies is not a secure job. In 2003, budget problems forced the WCC to declare most of its staff, including the entire New York office, redundant. That means, sacked.

Getting fired is not a pleasant experience, but I was able to turn my energies to domestic engineering (cooking, cleaning, chauffeuring) , to freelance writing, and to teaching myself how to create Web pages.

Early in 2005, I was invited to join the staff of the National Council of Churches as an interim consultant, filling a staff vacancy by writing news releases, statements and editing the content of the Web page (www.councilofchurches.org) . The interim position became permanent in January 2006. It's also a great gig. It's exhilarating to write statements, speeches and op-ed columns for an august ecumenical organization. I've flattered myself that some of my purplest prose and cleverest phrase-turning has been at the behest of the National Council of Churches.

As satisfying as that may be, however, I'd read statements I had written for someone else and ask myself, "Don't I have anything to say on this subject?" Do I have to wrap myself in the cloak of ecumenism to express opinions on the war in Iraq, human sexuality, worldwide poverty, genocide and the poisoning of the atmosphere?

I'm not sure what the answer is. But why not give it a try? "The Little Scroll" is reborn. Will this tentative effort result, again, in a sapping stuggle between an empty mind and an empty screen? Will this become a forum for typing empty words on top of empty words? Will I, once again, write my share of shit?

Time will tell. In the meantime, I'm awkwardly curious to hear what I have to say. Bear with me. Keep in touch.