EUGENE CARSON BLAKE: Prophet With Portfolio

A tedious, bloodless chronicle. Blake has played a major role in the 20th-century Church, especially as an ecumenist, and so a biography of some sort was inevitable. But it didn't have to bury its subject beneath a blizzard of trivia: the ""tastefully designed divided chancel"" which Blake installed in the First Presbyterian Church of Albany, the coordination of preparations for the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Uppsala, etc., etc. Admittedly, Blake was a gifted organizer, and any account of his life would have to describe the way he put his bureaucratic talents to work for various causes--racial justice, ecumenism, peace, and liberal Christianity in general. Then, too, the fact that Blake is still alive obviously limits Brackenridge's freedom. But surely he could have given us a story with more prophet and less portfolio. In any case, the book isn't a total loss: Brackenridge has done some meticulous research which, one hopes, future historians and Blake's next biographer (if he has one) will put to better use.