Missouri Synod Edges Outward

The conservative Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod edged toward closer ecumenical contacts at its New York City convention last month. A decision on joining the Lutheran World Federation, under discussion since the early 1950s, was again postponed, but supposedly the showdown will come in 1969. At the same time Missouri plans to study possible membership in the World Council of Churches. The 2,816,833-member synod is the largest Lutheran body outside both the LWF and the WCC.

The general interchurch stance of the synod was explained in a document on “Theology of Fellowship,” in preparation for eleven years. The statement called “unionism” and “separatism” equal dangers. The synod’s basic ecumenical strategy continues to be “doctrinal discussions carried on with a view to achieving doctrinal unity.” But the document endorsed cooperation with other Christian groups “to the extent that the Word of God and conscience will allow” in “necessary work on the local, national, or international level.” Executive Secretary Richard Jungkuntz of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations said this means Missouri could join the WCC and the National Council of Churches if they are just “federations,” rather than churchlike groups where affiliation implies pulpit and altar fellowship.

The synod expressed continued willingness to talk theologically with Roman Catholics and appears ready to go beyond the talking stage with The American Lutheran Church. “A basis exists” for sharing the communion table and exchanging preachers, the delegates said, but as with other ecumenical issues, they postponed action till the 1969 Denver convention. Despite agreements reached in discussions with the ALC, the resolution noted that “disturbing diversities still exist, particularly in reference to un-Christian and anti-Christian societies,” apparently meaning ALC tolerance toward Masonic lodges and similar organizations.

Bids for fellowship with the Lutheran Church in America went to the theology commission, since the two denominations have not held doctrinal discussions on the matter. The LCA’s stand is that it is ready for fellowship with any group that accepts the Lutheran confessions, so there is no need for further discussions.

Missouri already has new ties with the LCA as well as the ALC through the Lutheran Council in the U. S. A., whose general secretary, Thomas Spitz, Jr., is a Missouri Synod clergyman. Spitz said the council does not “even within Lutheranism provide for or acknowledge that unity which is our Lord’s prayer for his Church and gift to his Church.” Longings for a stronger united front were also expressed in speeches by ALC President Fredrik Schiotz and LCA President Franklin Clark Fry.

As signs of a more cooperative spirit, the Missouri Synod approved an inter-Lutheran version of Luther’s Small Catechism in time for the 450th anniversary of the Reformation; a previous attempt had been voted down in 1965. And though Missouri insisted on its own campus ministries when the Lutheran Council was formed, it now expresses readiness to have the council head a pan-Lutheran work at colleges and universities. Inter-Lutheran welfare agencies were also encouraged.

Missouri’s moves toward other Lutheran bodies caused the Wisconsin and Evangelical Lutheran Synods to pull out of the Synodical Conference. At this year’s convention, the conference was formally dissolved.

The Missouri Synod, last major denomination to set up a social action agency, became the last to give its agency a full-time director. In resolutions, the delegates overwhelmingly approved a program of “education and action” for open housing, and attacked prejudice in employment. The “action” will include loans and grants from the welfare board to enable victims of discrimination to acquire homes. The synod opposed selective conscientious objection because it “tends to promote chaos and anarchy in time of national emergency.” It said capital punishment is not prohibited by the Bible. Delegates also approved a statement that said nonviolent civil disobedience is a Christian means of protest against laws that are clearly unjust, but should be used only after legal remedies have been exhausted.

A group from the floor that included the Christian Century’s Martin Marty got through a statement on Viet Nam and the Middle East that said, “As a church body, we are not a political influence group,” and urged the synod to provide prayer and “support for the government while at the same time serving as an instrument of God’s grace and healing.”

The delegates rejected a bid to require members to accept literal interpretations of such biblical matters as the six-day creation. But they reaffirmed the synod’s belief that “the Holy Scripture is the inerrant Word of God.” At the previous fiftieth-anniversay convention of the Lutheran Laymen’s League, where inerrancy was also supported, synod President Oliver R. Harms said he spent 60 per cent of his working time answering mail complaints, many of them about tolerance of teachers of “false doctrine.”

In other matters, the delegates:

• Voted to let women serve as advisory members by appointment to national boards, though they are still prohibited from preaching. The all-male delegates ordered a study on whether women should vote in church matters.

• Decided to keep the present geographical name for the denomination rather than change to the “Lutheran Church International.” But a study will be made on whether to move offices from Missouri.

• Endorsed federal aid for private and church schools.

• Favored a fixed Easter date.

• Established a new eleven-member board to review synod publications for conformity to the Bible and confessions.

Missouri Synod has been one of the fastest-growing major denominations over the past fifteen years. But last year’s gain was just over 1 per cent, and leaders warned of possible membership losses and economic woes in future years.

Merger Bug Biting Baptists?

Last month’s assembly of the Baptist Federation of Canada came face to face with the fragmentation confronting the nation’s Baptists, who have shown little growth since World War II.Baptists were 4.2 per cent of the population in 1941 but only 3.3 per cent in 1961. The federation has 150,000 members. Although a motion to unite the three conventions of eastern, central, and western Canada was deferred, it was quite evident that delegates were on the threshold of favoring a fully unified Baptist Union of Canada.

A resolution called for “closer understanding and working relationships with other Baptist bodies now carrying on a ministry in Canada.” Retiring President Edgar J. Bailey applied the idea specifically to the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches and raised the hope that the fellowship and the federation would come into one fold. The fellowship, now one of the fastest-growing evangelical groups in Canada, looks upon the Baptists in the federation as being more or less of liberal persuasion.

Although the federation has not entered any serious negotiations with other denominations, the merger bug may yet bite Baptists. The same resolution that smiled at other Baptists declared that the federation is ready to enter talks with other denominations “in response to the moving spirit toward new dimensions of unity in the larger Christian fellowship.”

But home-missions secretary J. K. Zeman said Baptists ought to have closer identification with the smaller evangelical denominations rather than the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, with their “concepts of infant baptism, mixed church membership [by which he meant committed believers plus nominal members] and … respective forms of government.” Zeman said Baptists were caught in a middle-of-the-road position that hindered an evangelistic outreach. “We have soft-pedaled our convictions to such an extent that in the eyes of the public we have lost identity.”

The 700 delegates at the four-day Ottawa meeting elected farmer J. J. Arthurs of Dauphin, Manitoba, as president and passed resolutions in favor of: Authority for their national council to speak for the federation between the assemblies, which are held every three years; abolition of capital punishment except for treason; and taking no sides on the Viet Nam war, while calling on the Canadian government to work through the United Nations to bring about peace.

J. BERKLEY REYNOLDS

Tragedies For Bishop Pike

Personal tragedy continues to dog the steps of theologically controversial Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike. On July 24 his wife, Esther, won an uncontested divorce decree on grounds of mental cruelty. In the five-minute hearing she testified the bishop had remained away from home many times when she didn’t know where he was.

In an earlier joint statement, the couple, wed in 1942, said they were ending the marriage due to “outside factors beyond the control of either.” Mrs. Pike was given custody of two teen-age children. The Pikes also have a married daughter. James Jr. committed suicide in a New York City hotel last year.

As for the bearing of the divorce on Pike’s church status, Suffragan Bishop Richard Millard said, “This is more a P.R. problem for us than a canonical one.” Pike, 54, who resigned as head of the Diocese of California in May, 1966, to join the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, can remain a bishop at least as long as he does not remarry. Pike was divorced from his first wife, but that separation was sanctioned by the Episcopal Church through an annulment.

In June, Pike’s appointments secretary at the Center, 43-year-old Maren Gergrud, died of an overdose of sleeping pills. She phoned Pike, who lived in the same building, and he went to her apartment and notified police. Investigators questioned the bishop at length about the torn-off missing portion of a suicide note. Pike conjectured she had destroyed it herself.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

A Representative Seminary

Evangelical Covenant Church delegates voted to make their North Park Seminary in Chicago more representative of the denomination. One plan is to appoint a qualified teacher who holds conservative views on the Bible. After two years of study, a committee found no faculty members now believe that “the Bible as originally given is the Word of God, can always be trusted, and is reliable in its statements of fact, history, science, chronology, and in all points of theology and ethics.” Similarly, no one in a recent graduating class held this view either. Seminary President Karl Olsson said the report would produce “a healthier intellectual and spiritual community.”

A report on interchurch relations asked continued study of joining interchurch bodies, merger talks with other denominations, and the possibility of a cooperative federation of churches wherein each body would maintain its own identity.

Pentecostals In Rio

The eighth Pentecostal World Conference last month in Rio was probably the fervent movement’s biggest gathering since it began at the turn of the century. Now with 12 million followers worldwide in a plethora of denominations, Pentecostalism has attracted the attention of several recent book-writers.

Brazil, the conference host, is a startling example of Pentecostal success. Numbers there have doubled to 2.6 million in recent years, which is the largest total among the ninety nations where Pentecostalists are now found.

Congo: No Casualties

No missionary casualties were reported in the eastern Congo, where government troops fought rebels last month. Most missionaries were evacuated to the capital of Kinshasa or to nearby nations.

There was one indirect fatality. Emile Makesi, head of a Protestant secondary school, died with his three children when a commercial truck in which they were riding plunged off a bridge into the Konzi River. Makesi was traveling by truck because the government had grounded all missionary and other private planes during the insurrection. Before the fighting began, night raiders in Kisangani had shot to death 26-year-old British Baptist missionary David Claxton.

Anglican-Methodist Union Stalls

Buried by hundreds of letters and faced with delicate negotiations, the joint commission of the Church of England and Britain’s Methodists will not be able to make its final union proposal next February, as scheduled. The likely date is Easter, too late for Methodists to act at their June, 1968, conference, so decision will be delayed until 1969.

Meanwhile, the Church Union, which speaks for “high church” Anglicans, attacked the proposed “Service of Reconciliation” for uniting the ministers of the two denominations and said no priest or bishop should join in without a “more positive statement” on the priesthood “as traditionally understood in Catholic Christendom.” Also critical is former Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher, an initiator of the union idea.

Defending Homosexuality

Jesus might have been a homosexual, suggests the vicar of Cambridge University’s main church. Canon Hugh Montefiore told a Modern Churchmen’s Conference at Oxford that Jesus need not have been hindered from marriage by lack of money or possible mates. “Women were his friends, but it is men he is said to have loved,” the vicar added. He apparently didn’t mention that under rabbinical law a known homosexual would have been stoned to death, whereas Jesus was tried on other charges. The Archbishop of Canterbury said Montefiore’s ideas have no historical basis.

Meanwhile, publishers of homosexual-pitched publications were acquitted in Minneapolis after defense testimony from Methodist minister R. Theodore McIlvenna. Until recently McIlvenna headed the National Young Adult Project in Nashville, and before that he was chairman of San Francisco’s Council on Religion and the Homosexual.

McIlvenna said he wouldn’t hesitate to let his young children view pictures of nude males sold by the defendants, and expressed amazement at the charges since “there is so much material available that goes beyond this.” McIlvenna said social attitudes against homosexuality are liberalizing. But Maryland Roman Catholic priest John F. Harvey, who has counseled homosexuals for twelve years, testified that the material definitely was obscene.

In another bizarre case, a Roman Catholic priest in Rotterdam, Holland, admits he permitted a Mass for two homosexuals although he suspected that they considered the event a church “marriage.” During the service the two men exchanged rings and their families were present. Many considered the “wedding” a publicity stunt for the men’s night club.

Rome, Istanbul, Moscow

Pope Paul, who is getting as much of a reputation for traveling as his first-century namesake, made his fifth trip abroad last month, to visit 81-year-old Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in Istanbul. The patriarch’s status as “first among equals” of the Orthodox hierarchy pales before Paul’s exalted claims, the chief obstacle to Catholic-Orthodox unity.

Symbolizing this gap as well as repression of Orthodoxy in Turkey, the Pope journeyed from the splendid Vatican palace in Istanbul to the Orthodox citadel, a small, rundown cathedral in a rundown part of town.

Athenagoras is not without honor, except in his own country. The Turkish government’s announcement of the pontiff’s visit made no mention of the meeting with Athenagoras, which was the major purpose. Turkey’s struggles with the Greeks led by Orthodox Archbishop Makarios on Cyprus have been one reason for the bad feeling. Government pressure has made it difficult for Athenagoras to travel. But after the Pope’s visit, he announced that this fall he plans to visit Orthodox prelates in the Soviet Union, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia—and perhaps the Archbishop of Canterbury and leaders of the World Council of Churches—and then to pay a return call on Paul in Rome.

Besides discussing relations with Catholicism, Athenagoras has another project to promote. Taking a leaf from Pope John XXIII, onetime papal delegate to Turkey, Athenagoras plans a Pan-Orthodox Council to discuss renewal of Orthodoxy and Christian unity. The Paris Catholic daily La Croix speculates this month that the Pope might now visit Moscow’s Patriarch Alexei at Athenagoras’s suggestion, since Alexei is pivotal in any more for Roman-Orthodox unity.

By one account, the council would be the first gathering of leaders from all Orthodox communions in 1,200 years. When the Pope first met Athenagoras in the Jordanian section of Jerusalem in 1964, the meeting was the first between Orthodox and Roman leaders in 500 years. And when the Pope joined Athenagoras in prayer in Istanbul, it was believed to be the first time a reigning Pope had prayed in an Orthodox church.

An impromptu prayer by the Pope caused a flurry after he had left the country. He had bowed for a brief silent prayer in Hagia Sophia, remarkable shrine built in the sixth century when Christians were still united, and turned into a mosque in 1453 by Muslim invaders. A papal bull of excommunication posted there in 1054 completed the Orthodox-Roman schism. Today the building is a museum and worship is prohibited, so Paul’s praying was illegal.

Besides meeting Athenagoras, the Pope conferred with Turkish President Cevdet Sunay, the Grand Mufti, the Chief Rabbi, and Armenian Patriarch Shnork Kaloustian, whose 120,000 believers are not in communion with either Rome or Orthodoxy because they refuse to accept the Council of Chalcedon and subsequent councils.

The Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431) declared Mary to be Mother of God, and Paul traveled to that ruined city in honor of Jesus’ mother. In Catholic tradition, the city is also the site of Mary’s assumption into heaven. Marian veneration continues as a major motif of Paul’s pontificate.

Paul had said he and Athenagoras would discuss “the best means of promoting theological and canonical studies with the end of laying a road towards the establishment of a perfect communion between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church,” and the fate of holy places in Israel. No dramatic announcements were made on either topic.

Athenagoras, unlike some other Orthodox leaders, is willing to grant that the pope of Rome is “first in honor among us.” Even some Anglican and Protestant voices are echoing this view (see June 23 issue, page 36). Joining in last month was Disciples theologian W. Barnett Blakemore, new president of the Church Federation of Greater Chicago. He suggests that “eventually the shape of primacy for a united church would be a council together with the pope whose powers will be constitutionally defined,” something like the U. S. President and Congress.

Stanford theologian Robert McAfee Brown, a Presbyterian, wrote in Commonweal that “the primary possibility of allegiance which non-Roman Catholics can now offer to the bishop of Rome centers on the relationship of the church to the world.”

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