"Faceless"
In pointing out dangers to our civilization because of patterns we have wrought, from which if one dares to be different he is subversive, the PTA magazine for September, 1956, says of students, because of the social pressure of the world, "They become faceless."
Our "preacher factories" and group pressures have given us a bunch of "faceless" preachers and churches. If any dares to do or say anything different from that which is said by the pressure groups, he is subversive, he's an heretic. I do not need to hear WHAT a man preaches (ordinarily) on the radio to know that he is "a church of Christ preacher." They are so "faceless" that they all have the same tones, the same peculiar pronunciation. So I know what they are just by the way they say certain words. They are so stereotyped that most "church of Christ preachers" have the same studied deliberateness in speaking. One can know what he is at his first sentence. This is not necessarily bad.
But the foregoing is even more characteristic of the preachers and churches as a whole in teaching and practice than in mere mannerisms. "It had been good for that man if he had not be born," if he dares to "line up" with the "wrong" people! and (think) most of the boys are afraid of "the powers that be."
The PTA Magazine says relative to art, or the lack of it today: "We can't have creativity if every man is going to be exactly like his brother, as a clothespin is to a clothespin." And I say that we can't have true conformity to Jesus Christ if every man is going to be exactly like his brother, just be like his brother, and be "one of the boys." Are we following very poor copies of the True Pattern?