“Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry.” Thus spake John Wesley in the slower-paced eighteenth century. If the 788 delegates to the quadrennial General Conference of The Methodist Church, assembled in Denver April 27-May 7, were in too big a hurry to catch Wesley’s “distinction,” they could blame a troublesome racial problem which hungrily consumed time ticketed for other business.
U. S. Protestantism’s largest church (9,815,459 members) desires unity and its leadership favors racial integration. The coupled goals proved beyond the body this year, with efforts toward the latter creating threats to the former. Friction centered on a report of a 70-member commission which after some four years of study recommended retention, for the time being, of the jurisdictional system embraced by three uniting Methodist bodies in 1939: The Methodist Episcopal Church, The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and The Methodist Protestant Church.
Without such a system it is generally agreed the South would not have entered the Union. The new church was thus divided into six jurisdictions—five of them geographical and one racial. This latter, called the Central Jurisdiction, contains all but 26,000 of the church’s 393,000 Negroes and is administered by four Negro bishops.
The 1956 General Conference adopted an amendment which made it easier for Negro churches and “annual conferences” to transfer from the Central Jurisdiction to regional jurisdictions.
The commission’s report suggested implementation of this amendment toward eventual abolition of the Central Jurisdiction. Its immediate elimination, the report claimed, would be “disastrous to Negro Methodists,” leaving many of them “without full fellowship in local churches or annual conferences.” “Drastic legislation will not accomplish the fully inclusive Church we all desire. We must give ourselves to education and experimentation in the creating of a climate—spiritual and psychological—in which an inclusive Methodist Church will be a reality.” “Unfortunately and erroneously, the jurisdictional system as a whole, mainly because of the Central Jurisdiction, has become for some a symbol of segregation.… Actually, the Central Jurisdiction assures racial integration in the highest echelons of our Church—in the Council of Bishops, the Judicial Council and in all boards, commissions and committees of the Church. Thereis no other denomination in America where this degree of racial integration in the governing bodies of the Church has been achieved.”
The jurisdictional system thus assures the Negro Methodist a higher proportion of leadership and representation than that to which he is entitled on a strictly numerical basis. But this, remarked one Negro delegate, is not satisfactory to the majority of Negroes (Central Jurisdiction office-holders excepted) who see here discrimination in reverse. He granted that immediate abolition of the Central Jurisdiction by the 1960 General Conference would result in chaos, but he was likewise convinced that a target date for abolition should be set, perhaps 1968.
This was attempted by none less than Dr. Harold C. Case, president of Boston University. But he was up against the dominant voice of this year’s conference, that of Charles C. Parlin, Wall Street lawyer and chairman of the study commission, who pointed to the commission’s discovery of Southern emotional reaction to such proposals. Case’s amendment failed, as did a later attempt to cut off financial support from seminaries which refuse to admit Negro students (two of the 12 Methodist seminaries retain color bars: Duke University Divinity School, and Candler School of Theology.
Lawyer Parlin did a masterful job in presenting and defending the commission report. His reasoned arguments and courtroom tones seemed to carry the weight of law itself for the delegates, as he debated the report through Northern opposition, then managed, despite Southern protests, to shepherd through its provisions for drawing the various jurisdictions closer to the General Conference and for moves toward increased interracial fellowship. During particularly emotional debate, he cautioned delegates against frothy arguments designed to catch newspaper headlines, and eventually he brought the report through the conference substantially intact.
Los Angeles’ Bishop Gerald H. Kennedy, new president of the Methodist Council of Bishops, hailed the conference for overcoming the temptations toward bitterness in the long and frank debate. “We came through it marvelously.” He reminded them of the road ahead—toward absolute racial equality and freedom—but voiced relief at the chance for a pause before pressing onward.
Methodist bishops sit on the platform and have no vote in conference business. They speak only by request. But their Episcopal Address to the delegates carries considerable weight. This year, consistent with traditional Methodist emphasis on the ethical and practical, the address sounded a trumpet call against beverage alcohol, “a beast tearing at the vitals of society,” and against the “enslaving habit” of tobacco.
Accordingly, the conference condemned “social drinking,” setting forth the standard of total abstinence for all Methodists, though voting down a proposal making this mandatory for all church officials. Also rejected was a committee report which would have dropped the specific ban on tobacco from rules governing ministers.
While Methodist stress on the ethical is well known, the movement has also been characterized by a minimized theological emphasis. This seemed to create a particularly hospitable environment for “old-fashioned modernism,” for which Methodism and her seminaries are famous.
Coupled one evening with an oratorio (“The Invisible Fire”) “expressing John Wesley’s experience of conversion,” was an address by retiring Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, which seemed far from Aldersgate. The topic “Methodism Faces the Future” elicited from Bishop Oxnam restatement of his conviction that this decade’s “most dramatic event will be The Interplanetary Conference on Religious Faith to be attended by the finest minds of all the planets of the universe.” The challenge to the Methodist seminaries is to prepare their students for such conferences. The “delegates who will represent the religious thought of all the religions of all the planets [italics ours—ED.] are counted on to “make known the revelation of God to all. Fundamentalist dogmatism and papal infallibility will have no place among men who love one another.… How did God make himself known to the inhabitants of Mars?… The sessions will be televised and the universe will come to know the universal truth that frees.” After outlining this mode of revelation, the bishop speculated that God may have revealed himself “to the peoples of other planets in a fashion,” compared to Jesus, “even more intimate, holier, and grander, in a love that not only demands all but gives all.”
But happily the Council of Bishops displayed awareness of other challenges of the future, one being a “reclaiming of our theological heritage.” They pointed to the “solid system of doctrine in Wesley’s ‘Sermons’ and ‘Notes’ and the manuals of Watson, Pope, Summers, and others.” They called for renewed theological study which is “biblical and ecumenical.” For the bishops have seen “ominous signs” that Methodism must change from its present course and root its “evangelism in sound doctrine.”
While still the nation’s largest Protestant church, the Methodist shoulder has felt the breath of the gaining Southern Baptists, a far more conservative body (all U. S. Baptists far outnumber U. S. Methodists). Other important statistics:
—For every four members gained in the last quadrennium, Methodists have lost three.
—During the next four years, 8,000 new ministers will be needed and the supply is far from being assured.
Stewardship is another area of self examination, per capita giving in 1959 (58.8 cents) being less than that of 1939 when measured by the dollar’s actual worth. The church’s Negro colleges are in “precarious condition.” Said Bishop Richard Raines: “In 1926, we had approximately 2,600 missionaries in more than 40 countries. Today we have 1,650. In 1926, the Methodist church gave about the same amount of money for missionary effort as we are giving this year, and the dollar then was worth two or three times what it is worth today.”
A Methodist theological graduate student observed: “One reason Wesley did not want the Methodists to leave the Church of England was that he knew they had no body of doctrine to replace that of the mother church. Subsequent events have vindicated his judgment.”
The bishops warned that their church could “become the same sort of church as that which Wesley and his preachers set out to reform and to revive more than two centuries ago.”
Cried Presbyterian George Buttrick, preacher to Harvard University: “My brethren in the Methodist ministry, I plead with you to accept the Cross. ‘Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy Cross I cling.’ ” And Bishop Kennedy’s last words at conference end were Charles Wesley’s: “His blood can make the foulest clean; His blood availed for me.”
As one gazes upon Denver’s setting in the shadow of the enormous plain’s eruption into the majestic Rockies, the mind’s eye envisions a mighty host of Wesleyans moving westward. So great is it that the vanguard begins the ascent, while the rear is not yet visible on the eastern horizon. But there is tragedy. As some leaders scale the heights, others fall back exhausted and unaccountably penetrate to twisted defiles of lower elevation than the plains they have just crossed. And they retain many of their followers.
The New Testament, no less than John Bunyan, speaks of Christian warfare along with Christian pilgrimage. The world has invaded the Church and there are two opposing views of God, of Christ, of man, and of salvation. Both within Methodism and without, these two views, sometimes covertly, are locked in deadly embrace.
Key Conference Actions
These were among actions which resulted from some half-million words of floor debate at the Methodists’ General Conference:
• Retention of the controversial Central (Negro) Jurisdiction for at least another four years.
• Condemnation of “social drinking” and use of tobacco.
• Approval of formation of a new Board of Christian Social Concerns which is a merger of the Boards of Temperance, World Peace, and Social and Economic Relations. Chief debate was over the new board’s locating in Washington, D. C., the question being raised whether this would appear as a political pressure move. Dr. Ralph Sockman’s opposition to a single chief executive was voted down.
• Toward universal disarmament, urging of permanent cessation of all nuclear tests (with inspection controls), establishment of a United Nations agency for cooperative exploration of outer space, reaffirmation of opposition to peacetime universal military training, and recognition of conscientious objectors, regardless of whether they profess religious grounds for their stand.
• Commendation of the Air Force for the “prompt apology” to the National Council of Churches “for the incredible blunder of allowing … slanderous charges … in a training manual.” Called for any group with charges to make against a Methodist to use the church courts, and expression of regrets that any Methodists contribute money or leadership to such organizations as Circuit Riders, Inc. This mention of a specific organization faced considerable opposition in a wild and woolly committee meeting before reaching the floor.
• Commendation for the “crucial” work of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
• Approval of granting permission to Methodist ministers to remarry divorced persons if there are awareness of factors leading to previous failure and preparation for making the proposed marriage “truly Christian.”
• Limitation of a bishop’s term of assignment to the same residence to 12 years.
• Increase of maximum General Conference membership from 900 to 1,400.
• Establishment of a 35-member commission to act as liaison with the National and World Councils of Churches.
Experiment’s End
Though hailed as a unique ecumenical experiment, the University of Chicago’s Federated Theological Faculty has been beset by tensions from the outset. Never has there been general agreement on distribution of administrative-academic responsibilities among the four seminaries—the University of Chicago Divinity School (American Baptist), the Chicago Theological Seminary (Congregational), Disciples Divinity House, and Meadville Theological School (Unitarian)—which pooled their faculties back in 1943. The seminaries retained their separate identities, but were ruled by a cabinet made up of their four chief executives. Articles of federation were rewritten in 1953 in an effort to straighten out differences. By last month it was apparent that these differences could not be resolved: Plans were announced to dissolve the federation as of May 1, 1963; officials hope to substitute a much more loosely-knit, “bilateral” relationship, details of which still must be worked out.
“The Chicago Theological Seminary’s interpretation of the 1953 articles is unacceptable to the other members of the federation,” said Chancellor Lawrence A. Kimpton of the University of Chicago. “Furthermore, it is clear that any interpretation acceptable to the other institutions is unacceptable to the Chicago Theological Seminary.”
Dissolution of the federation was prompted by withdrawal requests from “the other members.” CTS favored keeping alive the federation.
“There was a disagreement on the amount of authority the dean’s office should exercise,” observed Dr. Jerald C. Brauer, 39-year-old dean of the federated faculty. It was obvious, however, that the tensions were much more complex. Dean Walter Harrelson of the University of Chicago Divinity School admitted that the problems of the federation influenced somewhat his decision to resign in favor of a post as professor of Old Testament at Vanderbilt University Divinity School.
Did the dispute have theological overtones? “It’s hard to say yes or no,” remarked Dr. Howard Schomer, CTS president. “Everything we touch is intonated with theology, but the disagreements were not primarily theological.”
Schomer stressed that the three-year transition period should have no effect upon students. CTS has an enrollment of 120, the Divinity School 185, the Disciples Divinity House 25, and Meadville Theological School, 11.
Protestant Panorama
• Three U. S. missionaries were recalled from Cuba last month by their sponsor, Open Bible Standard Churches, Inc. The move, described as tentatively temporary, was made in view of current anti-American feeling, not because of any persecution. The group’s leaders felt that work could progress better under Cuban national Christians.
• The AFL-CIO presented three stained-glass windows to the Washington (Episcopal) Cathedral this month in memory of three noted labor leaders—William Green, a Protestant, Philip Murray, a Roman Catholic, and Samuel Gompers, a Jew.
• A light airplane belonging to the Board of World Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. was badly damaged last month when a charge of dynamite exploded under the engine while the craft was parked at an airstrip in Ometepec, Mexico. The plane is used by missionaries for visits to remote Mexican villages.
• George Beverly Shea and Tedd Smith, musical members of the Billy Graham team who have just completed a 24-concert U. S. tour, now plan a similar series in Canada in the late summer and fall. They also plan to record the concert program, which drew capacity audiences in virtually every city.
• Amish parents near Honey Brook, Pennsylvania, reached an understanding with state authorities this month which will enable them to keep their children out of a newly-opened public high school. Instead of attending the new consolidated school, which the Amish labeled too worldly, the children will be sent to an older school in a neighboring district. However, the parents, nine of whom were jailed for violation of school attendance laws, now must pay tuition for the right to educate children outside their immediate district.
• Newest church in the Congo is a 22,000-member body established by a society of U. S. Mennonites, the Congo Inland Mission. The church will be known as the Evangelical Mennonite Church of the Congo.
• Lutheran professors are setting up a non-profit corporation to publish their books. First volume is due June 1: The Natural Sciences and the Christian Message by Dr. Aldert van der Ziel, engineering professor at the University of Minnesota.
• Bloomfield College and Seminary, United Presbyterian institution in Bloomfield, New Jersey, won accreditation this month from the Middle Atlantic States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.
• Ceremonies were scheduled in Bielefeld, Germany, this month to mark the 250th anniversary of the Canstein Bible Society, oldest in the world. The society was established in 1710 by Hildebrandt Freiherr von Canstein and August Hermann Francke, pietists who sought to print popularly-priced Bibles.
• The Church of the Nazarene topped its goal of $14,000,000 for world missions for the 1956–60 quadrennium by some $650,000.
• Baker Book House plans to issue the U. S. counterpart of the European “Modern Thinkers Series,” a group of monographs which critically analyze contemporary philosophers and theologians.
• Refusal of the Raleigh, North Carolina, City Council to approve a zone change to permit construction of a $750,000 motel and restaurant by the state Methodist conference may jeopardize the conference’s plan for a $600,000 office building in the city. The conference had been counting on revenue from the motel-restaurant to defray the cost of erecting the new headquarters.
• A 21-year-old Quaker student was dismissed from a clerical position in the U. S. Senate this month because the Washington Young Friends group of which he is chairman sent letters to 22,000 area high school students calling their attention to provisions in the draft law for conscientious objectors.
• Tunghai University, Christian school in Taiwan, plans to add a college of engineering.
Pieces of Silver
Police in Haifa, Israel, seized thousands of ancient coins this month from a Druze villager who tried to sell them. Some experts who examined the coins, made of silver, said they were minted at about the time of Christ and that they may even be of the same type as the 30 paid to Judas Iscariot. Police said they believed the villager found the coins near the summit of Mount Carmel.
Meanwhile, noted archeologists sifted evidence to determine whether recent discoveries by Dead Sea divers established the site of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Exit the Cross
Heeding pleas of Jewish religious leaders, Premier David Ben-Gurion of Israel ordered alterations made on a planned postage stamp which was to have showed a cross atop a church steeple in Nazareth. The new stamp will not show a cross.
Triumphal Climax
Some 2,000 professions of faith were reported in a Managua, Nicaragua, crusade which climaxed an “evangelism-indepth” series coordinated by the Latin America Mission. In a parade staged the day before the crusade finale May 8, 7,000 marchers wound their way through the streets of the Nicaraguan capital.
Riot at Church Site
A bloody riot followed attempts by state authorities to remove a cross from a proposed Roman Catholic church site in the Polish steel town of Nowa Huta last month. At least 15 policemen and an undetermined number of demonstrators were reported to have been injured.
Buddhism in Burma
An advisory commission appointed by Prime Minister LI Nu of Burma plans to interview religious leaders throughout the country in connection with a proposal to make Buddhism the state religion. Burma is about 85 per cent Buddhist.
Purpose of contacts with non-Buddhists, says the commission chairman, is to enable them to express any fears regarding establishment of a state religion and to suggest how their rights should be safeguarded.
U Nu says the constitution already protects rights of all religious groups. He has pledged, moreover, that “none of these rights will be infringed by any action we take in order to make Buddhism the state religion.”
Some eight years ago the government established a Ministry of Religion, one of whose chief occupations has been the promotion of Buddhism. Under government sponsorship, the Buddhist hierarchy has been reorganized, and countless shrines and pagodas built or refurbished.
The Latest Gibes
In disclosing to the Supreme Soviet the capture of a LI. S. intelligence pilot, Premier Nikita Khrushchev took the West to task for failing to live up to its Christianity.
“As one reads numerous comments and statements by foreign diplomats and journalists about this incident,” he said, “one cannot help wondering what land of morality these men are guided by. For they count themselves as Christians …”
“If such people really believe in God, they would be afraid of hell, where they inevitably would end because, according to the teachings of Christ, they will have to brail in tar in hell eternally for their foul deeds against peace and mankind.”
The Russian army newspaper Red Star also took a swing at U. S. morals in an article about the plane incident. The article made much of the fact that a book with the picture of a half-nude woman on the cover was found in the plane.
“From its age and dirty condition,” the newspaper said, “one can judge that American officers found the book popular reading.”
Pilot Profile
Francis G. Powers, U-2 pilot who fell into Soviet hands while on an aerial intelligence mission, is a graduate of Milligan College, Disciples of Christ school in Johnson City, Tennessee.
Powers enrolled at Milligan, located some 110 miles from his home in Pound, Virginia, as a premedical student in 1946. His grades were slightly above average, but not high enough to pursue medical studies. Upon graduation in 1950 he joined the Air Force.
During his boyhood, the Powers family attended a Baptist Sunday School and church near Grundy, Virginia. Powers did not list any church membership, however, in his records at Milligan. His parents now attend a Church of Christ in Pound.
Powers was married while in service and the couple joined a Methodist church in Georgia, where the bride lived.
Kennedy’s Victory
An important factor In the impressive West Virginia primary victory of Senator John F. Kennedy was his frank renunciation of the more conservative Catholic views on the separation of church and state, according to Paul Blanshard, author of God and Man in Washington.
“He satisfied thousands of non-Catholics,” said Blanshard, “by rejecting those policies of his church which had caused them the most apprehension.”
Latin Concern
U. S. Roman Catholic bishops disclosed plans this month to establish a Latin American bureau as part of their national secretariat in Washington, D. C.
Projected as a unit of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, the bureau will be directed by the Rev. John J. Considine, Maryknoll missions priest.
A Catholic press release explained that the bureau was established “in response to an invitation of the Holy See for various nations to cooperate in Christian solidarity to aid the church in Latin America.”
“Although its approximately 170,000,000 Catholics represent a third of the Church’s world membership,” the release said, “the Latin American Church has been plagued with difficulties in recent years, including a shortage of priests, religious indifferentism, poor social and economic conditions and the danger of communism.”
Objectives and responsibilities of the bureau were not spelled out, except to say that its activities will be determined by a committee of bishops.
Charles R. Erdman
Dr. Charles R. Erdman, 93, noted biblical scholar and a former Presbyterian moderator, died May 9 in his home at Princeton, New Jersey.
Erdman, a graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, served the seminary as professor of practical theology from 1906 until 1936. He was moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. in 1925, and was president of its Board of Foreign Missions from 1926 until 1940. He wrote many books, mostly New Testament expositions.
Known for his evangelical stand, Erdman was a key figure in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the twenties. Although he disagreed sharply with modernists, he nonetheless sought to avoid church schism.
