The Shrine circus left Seattle just before the Episcopal convention (main report, page 40) opened complete with a popular side-show attraction of its own: Resigned Bishop James A. Pike. The nation’s press, in fact, was inclined to treat him as the main feature, much to his delight and the privately voiced dismay of many delegates.
Pike caused ecclesiastical jitters with his on-again-off-again demands for public “judicial proceedings” over charges his fellow bishops lodged against him last fall at Wheeling, West Virginia. The flare-up in the convention’s second week was settled in an after-hours, behind-the-scenes compromise move. Pike agreed to drop his demands in exchange for the convention’s passing a canon (law) that tightens procedures governing official heresy accusations. The House of Bishops also agreed to include special provisions for “due process” in any future action of censure. Both measures were overwhelmingly approved.
Pike had been denied a formal hearing last year. The House of Bishops’ 1,200-word censure described his unorthodox public statements as “irresponsible” and “cheap vulgarizations.” The infuriated prelate called for open investigation of the charges, thus initiating the same process as in a heresy trial.
Concerned about the embarrassment of such a trial, Presiding Bishop John E. Hines in January appointed an advisory committee on “theological freedom,” and Pike said he would not press for trial if the committee’s report was “adequate” and ratified by the bishops.
The resulting document presented to the bishops in Seattle suggested that the term “heresy” be declared obsolete and asked that censure be levied only for “acts” and not for “opinion or teaching.” The bishops affirmed it and referred it to church agencies for study. They also asked that an ad hoc committee be appointed to prepare canons to implement it.
All seemed well until Bishop J. Stuart Wetmore of New York asked whether the action had revoked last year’s censure. Hines replied it had not. Pike began scribbling feverishly, later arose and read a letter in which he renewed his call for a trial. Missouri Bishop George L. Cadigan moved to “erase” the previous censure, but a frantic motion for adjournment took precedence and carried.
Hines called a huddle of advisors, including Bishops Stark, Craine, Myers, and De Witt. At De Witt’s hotel room they hammered out the plan to enact the canon (suggested by the original report) and to add the “due process” clause. Pike agreed behind closed doors early the next morning.
The “due process” provision is the key to Pike’s change of mind. Although it does not erase last year’s censure, it casts a shadow of irresponsibility on it (Bishop George Barrett of Rochester, among others, admits there was “real lack of due process at Wheeling”). The entire incident left some observers wondering aloud whether Pike has somehow censured the House of Bishops.
At the convention’s outset, Pike was granted—84 to 30—a seat, seniority, and a voice in the House of Bishops, but not a vote.
White House Wedding
Which clergyman would marry Lynda Baines Johnson and Marine Captain Charles S. Robb in the White House December 9 was still unknown late last month. The two most likely candidates denied they had been asked. The Rev. Charles A. Sumners of St. David’s Episcopal Church, Austin, Texas, who baptized Lynda as a child, and Captain L. M. Lindquist, Protestant chaplain of the Marine Corps Commandant, both said they had “no information.” Another possibility, former Rector William Baxter of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Washington, D. C., said he hadn’t been asked but knew who had. The military wedding, with fourteen members and about 700 guests, will use the Episcopal service.
His voice was much in evidence both inside the House and outside. Inside he defended COCU’s all-inclusive stance on baptism from attack by Bishop William Brady of Wisconsin, by endorsing “adult believers’ baptism” as the authentic early practice of the Church. On therapeutic abortion he said: “Killing is not always wrong.… It is a case of balancing out relative merit.” He debated his chief antagonist, Florida Bishop Henry Louttit, on TV; scolded the bishops for not dealing with theological reforms; and dismissed as “nonsense” the Archbishop of Canterbury’s criticisms of his writings.
Most startling was Pike’s revelation in Seattle that he believes he communicated last month with his dead son through a medium, onetime Disciples of Christ minister Arthur Ford, 71, of Philadelphia. The seance, set up by Toronto Star religion editor Allen Spraggett and TV producer Charles Templeton, a former evangelist, was taped for coast-to-coast telecast in Canada. Ford says the audience heard his contact, a deceased Canadian named “Fletcher,” repeat words from some acquaintances of Pike, among them the late Bishop Karl Bloch of California.
Ford said Pike’s son was more confident he would win his fight in the House of Bishops than Pike himself was. Some of the discussion relating to the son’s suicide last year was so personal that it was cut from the actual broadcast, Spraggett said.
Pike, who wrote the forward for Spraggett’s new book entitled The Unexplained, began looking into spiritualism after his son’s death. Reportedly, he asked the opinion of a psychoanalyst friend who said his psychic experiences could not be attributed to his grief reaction.
When fundamentalist gadfly Carl McIntire strode into Seattle and called a press conference, Pike dropped in to say hello. When Pike was picketed by two Bible Presbyterian ministers he chatted with them, picked some flowers nearby (an illegal act), handed them to the pair, and said “may the peace of the Lord be with you.”
Pike’s most vehement critics, however, are fellow Episcopalians. They are distressed that his much-publicized views are mistaken by many to be the teachings of the Episcopal Church. Bishop Richard S. M. Emrich of Michigan, for example, thinks that if less is said about and by Pike, the church will fare better. This issue was aired in the Committee on the State of the Church. One Florida rector said he could spend more time trying to increase membership if he did not have to spend so much time reassuring his own members that the Episcopal Church still believes the historic doctrines. Another Florida pastor declared, “I’m so damned sick of hearing about Pike I could throw up.”
But some in the charismatic wing of the church have a different viewpoint. They feel Pike is embarked on a desperate spiritual quest for reality. They say they are praying for his “conversion.”
SVETLANA’S RELIGIOUS ROOTS
Svetlana Alliluyeva’s eagerly awaited book traces the origins and motivations of her search for religious faith. In Twenty Letters to a Friend, Stalin’s daughter tells of the influence of a Protestant grandmother on her mother’s side. The grandmother, Olga, whose mother had come from a family of German settlers, was brought up in a Protestant church.
“She was always religious,” Svetlana recalls, “and the revolutionary life she and Grandfather led only cleansed her religious faith of any narrowness or dogmatism. She could see no difference between the Protestant, Gregorian, or Armenian, and Orthodox churches and considered such distinctions a waste of time.”
Despite this syncretism, Olga apparently held her religious ground. Svetlana says the children would make fun of her and ask, “Where is God?,” or, “If man has a soul, where is it?” The questions angered Olga, Svetlana says, and she would reply: “Wait till you grow up and you’ll see where. Now stop it! You’re not going to change my mind.”
Svetlana notes that “she was right. By the time I was thirty-five I realized that Grandmother was wiser than any of us.”
BEATLES OFF BEAT
Attention of the Beatles is currently focused on a squat, jovial, mystic of the Kashmir who proclaims a transcendental message of the offbeat (for a fee) and has shaggy locks only slightly longer than those of the mop-headed singers. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the rage of London’s young intellectuals, expounds a spiritualist meditation, insists his mission is not mass conversion à la Billy Graham but more custom-made salvation for the intellectually chosen few. The Yogi’s philosophy is less lucid than his explanation for charging admission to hear the Word: “I need the money.”
Despite his medium of exchange, the Beatles four shower His Holiness with higher praise than LSD.
BOO HOO’S BOO BOO
The 25-year-old Chief Boo Hoo (high priest) of the Washington, D. C., chapter of the Neo-American Church took a trip—to the district police station. Mrs. Judith Kuch, spiritual adviser for fellow “church members” who use LSD as a sacrament, was charged with possession of LSD, marijuana, hashish, peyote, and obscene photos, including nude pictures of herself.
And in Toronto, Canada, the Anglican bishop confirmed that one of his priests is the leader of a cult that attempts to exorcise the devil from people through bizarre practices bordering on witchcraft. Katherine Globe, 18, died a “screaming death” last June in the rectory of Canon Moore Smith during a “prayer meeting” while members of the cult sought to “pray the hell out of her.” An inquest was ordered last month.
MEMORABLE SERMON AT WHEATON
On September 22, V. Raymond Edman set out for his first chapel sermon of the new school year to the students of Wheaton College. Upon arrival at Edman Chapel—built for the Illinois evangelical college’s centennial and named for him—two students carried the 67-year-old educator onto the platform in a chair. Doctors had told him not to climb stairs after his heart attack last December, and this was his first public speech since then.
When he was in his twenties and a missionary in Ecuador, Edman credited widespread prayer back home with bringing him a miraculous healing. After he returned from the field, he earned a Ph.D. in history from Clark University and served as a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor. He then joined the Wheaton faculty and four years later became the college’s fourth president.
His twenty-five years as president were marked by considerable growth, even in physical plant, though he was an outspoken foe of federal aid. When he retired two years ago and was named college chancellor, he became editor of the Alliance Witness, succeeding the late A. W. Tozer. He had written nineteen books and in 1947 even found time to visit Ethiopia to survey its educational system and offer advice.
It was this trip that provided his illustration for his chapel sermon this day. After painstakingly making his way to the pulpit, he began in measured tones and low voice to describe the awesome feeling he had had when he was ushered in to Emperor Haile Selassie to make his report. Yet every day in Edman Chapel, he told the students, they come into the presence of God the King to worship.
At 10:53 A.M., as he reached the climax of his sermon on the purpose of worship, Edman suddenly raised a hand to his chest, then slowly fell to the platform. He was dead of an apparent massive coronary attack even before he hit the floor. While nurses attempted artificial respiration, his successor as president, Hudson Armerding, dismissed the stone-silent student body in prayer.
Two days later the college’s best-known alumnus, Billy Graham, spoke at a memorial service. The family held a private funeral the day after that.
TWO FOR PHILADELPHIA
Well-known evangelical churchmen have been named to lead two of Philadelphia’s seven Protestant seminaries. Stuart Barton Babbage assumed the presidency of Conwell School of Theology last month, and J. Lester Harnish will take the helm of Eastern Baptist College and Seminary on January 1.
Jonah (Ho Ho)
Is the biblical book of Jonah a comedy? No, but T. J. Spencer of Catholic University has attempted to make it so in his new play Jonah, which opened off Broadway last month. Spencer, a speech and drama professor at the Washington, D. C., school, thinks the entertaining qualities of comedy can best convey the message of God’s love for all mankind.
The unfortunate finished product is a series of long, blustering dialogues between ship captain Jonah, numerous shipmates, and Ulysses of ancient Greece. Spencer put Ulysses in the belly of the fish so he could enlighten us on the difference between Hellenistic and Hebraic thought, but he succeeds only in introducing a confusing tangent in a play that would be forced and illogical without it.
Spencer’s Jonah is not good drama; it is not even fair drama. The professor means well. He throws in a miraculous conversion on board ship (only to explain it away later in the play) and tries to tell us of God’s love, but all this is lost in the midst of contrived non-humor. In addition to the faults of the script, this New York performance had all the professionalism of a rural high-school play, with actors bumbling through lines and missing cues. The play was directed by Hal Thompson, a United Presbyterian elder long involved in the drama world.
A Catholic nun who saw the play said this script and production could not be “put over” on any theater audience, let alone the sophisticated New York drama crowd. It can only be hoped that those in the sparse audience at Jonah will read the original version—if only to find out whether the book could possibly be as bad as the play.
JOHN EVENSON
The choice of Harnish means that Eastern, largest seminary aligned only with the American Baptist Convention, will continue its conservative stance. In fact, Eastern had also approached Harold Fickett of Van Nuys, California, whose mammoth church is dually aligned with the ABC and the Conservative Baptist Association. More than Fickett, Eastern alumnus Harnish has been active in the ABC and was its president two years ago. He was once pastor of Philadelphia’s Belmont Avenue church and has also held pulpits in Detroit and Los Angeles. His present pastorate is in Portland, Oregon.
Babbage becomes the first president of Conwell, a struggling interdenominational school formed after the demise of Temple University’s seminary in 1960. But Babbage has big plans. He envisions a new campus—perhaps downtown, next to Temple—a faculty of “top rank evangelical scholars,” and an eventual student body of 500. “We want to plan boldly,” he explains.
Babbage’s background for building is impressive. An Australian Anglican, he was appointed dean of the Sydney cathedral at thirty years of age and established its first clinic for marriage guidance and pastoral counseling. Later, as dean of the Melbourne cathedral, he started “Deano’s Crypt,” a much publicized pioneer coffeehouse. He also served as head of Ridley College and the College of Divinity in Melbourne.
Babbage holds the Ph.D. from the University of London as well as a Th.D. In 1961 he won a Fulbright scholarship to America and remained to teach at Columbia Theological Seminary (Presbyterian Church in the U. S.). For nine years he was associate editor of the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Review, and he was a leader in the Australia Council of Churches and the national Faith and Order Commission. He is the author of several books and a contributing editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
Conwell Dean Aaron Gast, who recently took the pulpit of First Presbyterian Church in Germantown, was considered conservative, and the choice of Babbage undoubtedly fixes this orientation for the future. The Philadelphia area already has three conservative seminaries, none accredited: Westminster, Reformed Episcopal, and Faith (affiliated with Carl Mclntire’s American Council of Christian Churches). Also in the city are the Episcopalians’ Philadelphia Divinity School and the Lutheran Church in America Seminary at Mount Airy.
GRAHAM CONTRADICTS PRESIDENT
Billy Graham was in the audience when his sometime host Lyndon B. Johnson told the International Association of Chiefs of Police that America is morally strong. The next day evangelist Graham told a Kansas City crusade audience that the President is wrong—the nation is riding a “moral toboggan sled.”
On its last two days, Graham’s Kansas City crusade broke Municipal Stadium attendance records with 50,000 persons, then 53,000, making the ten-day total 364,000. More than 11,000 inquirers were reported. At the end of the series Graham revealed he had been so sick four nights he wasn’t sure he could preach. One night he spoke even though he had a temperature of 101.
