“We are not here just to promote programs and to push professional interests. We hope to reproduce here the basic experience at Pentecost out of which the New Testament Church arose when they were all together in one place with one accord.” So spoke Dr. Robert W. Burns, president of the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ), on opening night of the annual assembly held last month in Miami Beach. There was indeed the distant sound of a rushing mighty wind, yet it came not from heaven but out of Cuba. Her name was Flora, and she served only to keep attendance down to 6,500.
But Disciples who came to Miami Beach were seeking means to hurl back a tide which seemed to be running against them. Founded on the nineteenth-century American frontier with a view toward unifying Christians everywhere, their body now seemed fractured, racked by uncertainty now on its founding principles, its early momentum slowed to a walk. After a year of travel to the borders of the “brotherhood” (Disciples historically have resisted the fact that they have become a denomination, though they now more readily admit it), President Burns was deeply concerned and talked in terms of sickness and pitiful failure. He cited a 1 per cent gain in world membership during the past decade as compared to 19 per cent for Protestantism as a whole. Spot checks of the 1963 reports indicate a membership drop larger than last year’s net loss of 14,500. “Our evangelism has not lagged for lack of adequate plans,” he said, “but because too many of us lack a deep concern for the salvation of our neighbors’ souls.” And pointing to his audience, he asked: “How long since you were the means through which God added a soul to the church? How long since you even tried?”
Dr. Burns spoke also of division among Disciples: this was later underscored theologically by Glenn Routt, theologian of Texas Christian University, who spoke as a member of a panel of scholars authorized seven years ago to re-examine Disciple “beliefs and doctrines in the light of modern scholarship.” The study has resulted in three volumes entitled: Reformation of Tradition, Reconstruction of Theology, and Revival of the Churches.
Dr. Routt reviewed the early formulation of Disciple tradition, the liberal reformulation of it, and the consequent dislocation as both confronted the modern Protestant theological renaissance. The early Disciples who followed Thomas and Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone emphasized the restoration of the New Testament order as the constitution of the Church. Today many Disciple scholars repudiate the idea that the New Testament is a constitution for the Church.
Originally church unity was to come locally through dissolution of denominational loyalties; today the emphasis is on ecumenical conferences composed of denominational delegates. In the beginning creeds were repudiated and theology devalued; now that theology has become a major Christian preoccupation, growing though still small numbers of Disciples see the desirability of affirmations of faith. Baptism by immersion was once a major emphasis; today it represents an “ecumenical stumblingblock,” and Disciples are described as “confused and apologetic” on the subject.
“Disciples’ thought,” said Routt, “seems to be moving toward a ‘kind of synthesis’ of the best perspectives of the Disciple fathers and those of classical Protestant Christianity” along lines of “the new biblical theology, one that avoids both biblical literalism and rationalism.” Not all Disciples are prepared for this journey from the teachings of their fathers. The existence of the conservative and rigidly congregational Churches of Christ is well known. They divided from the Disciples early in this century, partly over Disciple introduction of instrumental music in church services, and now number some two million. Less well known is a serious and widening breach among the 1,800,000 Disciples in the United States and Canada. A host of theologically conservative Disciples, adhering to the original Disciple distinctives, participate in their own separate North American Christian Convention. Having become virtually another denomination, this convention showed its virility last spring when with the National Christian Education Convention it attracted nearly 10,000 conventioneers to Long Beach, California.
Many of the churches represented there no longer report facts and figures to the International Convention, citing theological liberalism in the older body as a prime factor. Several strong race resolutions passed at this year’s Miami Beach assembly have given rise to predictions of further defections in the South to the more conservative convention.
But a more important factor for further transfers of convention loyalties was established by last month’s assembly. It voted for the decisive step on the road to restructure of the International Convention, a process representing a movement in the opposite direction from the Disciples’ traditional policy of congregational autonomy. This confessedly would allow more freedom in the Disciples’ “whole-hearted participation in the ecumenical movement,” and pave the way for possibility of merger with the United Church of Christ or with the other five denominations participating in the Consultation on Church Union originally proposed by Presbyterian Eugene Carson Blake. For ironically enough, the original ecumenical plea of the early Disciples proves more of a hindrance than a help in the current ecumenical move toward church mergers, and Disciple leaders declare that it proved a failure in respect to attaining its goal of church unity. They speak in private of a willingness to sacrifice the churches which will leave the convention over the issue of restructure. This is seen as the necessary price for the greater aim of unhampered participation in future merger talks. They expect restructure to take some seven years.
Elected convention president for the coming year was Dr. W. A. Welsh, pastor of East Dallas Christian Church in Dallas, Texas. At forty-six one of the youngest of convention presidents, he preached his first sermon at the age of eleven. He is a member of the commission on restructure and of the Unity Commission of the Council on Christian Unity. In his latter capacity he participates in the Consultation on Church Union and in conversations with the United Church of Christ.
Dr. A. Dale Fiers of Indianapolis, Indiana, president of the Disciples’ United Christian Missionary Society, was named to a six-year term as the convention’s executive secretary, its highest elective office. He succeeds Dr. Gaines M. Cook, who retires next June after seventeen years in the office. Honored at a special reception, Dr. Cook looked at the “unfinished task of evangelism” and said: “We must sustain each other. This is no time for negative criticisms. Year Book statistics provide a fairly accurate picture of where we stand in evangelism. We have all written these statistics. Let’s face them. Discouragement is least worthy of our response.”
Restructuring The Ncc
A sweeping reorganization of the thirteen-year-old National Council of Churches moved another step toward completion last month at a special meeting of the council’s policy-making General Board in New York City.
Last June the board recommended adoption of a revised constitution for consideration by the NCC General Assembly, to convene in Philadelphia next month. Inasmuch as it is the proposed constitution which empowers the board to “adopt and amend the Council’s bylaws,” the board this time could only approve the “substance and basis” of new bylaws and the proposed new council structure, which it did with relatively little debate. The assembly is then to review the new bylaws and structure, leaving the final wording and completed reorganization plan to be submitted to the board for adoption at a meeting the following June.
The new constitution and bylaws clarify responsibilities of member communions for council policy and work, and re-align the council’s major operating units. A new division of ecumenical development has been added, and provision made for establishment of temporary emergency program units such as the present Commission on Religion and Race.
Centralization of authority over the various NCC agencies is projected. Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen, the former president of Union Seminary, had previously objected to an “intense preoccupation with authority” and spoke of a “hierarchical strait-jacket.” Neither he nor several other leading board members were at this special meeting, attendance being below normal. Council leaders respond that the aim of reorganization is to “simplify” the NCC, though one official indicated that the aim was to get more board members on the various agencies, thus to get them more involved and financially responsible.
The nation’s racial problem was a major concern on the General Board’s agenda. Members listened to a report of the board’s emergency Commission on Religion and Race which somberly declared that little progress had been recorded in public accommodations, voting rights, or housing. It called for “the wisest Christian counsel and most generous churchly resources for the healing of our social ills.” “We have been long on the pronouncement of moral ideals and very short on experimentation and risk.”
The report warned: “In certain parts of the country fanatical white supremacists have stepped up their hard-core resistance to Negro civil rights. The parallels between this situation and conditions which prevailed in Germany when the Nazis took over are frightening in the extreme. There exists now clear evidence that these ‘master race’ believers control state governments and employ both a gestapo and extra-legal mob action to enforce their will. What is more shocking, in some cities they are able to compel churches and ministers to preach an heretical doctrine of man, which condones segregation and distorts the Christian faith. Both Negroes and whites who do not submit to this view are subject to harrassment and threats to their lives.”
The General Board was plainly displeased with Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s strategy of accepting a weakening of a House subcommittee’s civil rights bill for the purpose of getting Congressional approval for it. The board overwhelmingly voted full support of a bill which would include all the elements set forth in the testimony of NCC representatives on Capitol Hill, “a bill covering all the areas specified in the bill as it was reported out of the House committee.”
In other action, the board:
• Elected as NCC associate general secretary the Rev. Dr. David R. Hunter, who since 1952 has been director of the Department of Christian Education of the Protestant Episcopal Church’s National Council.
• Took first steps toward establishing a department of the arts designed to “foster and strengthen relationships” between the Christian faith and “all areas” of the fine arts.
A week earlier the National Council had created a new department of “the church and public school relations” to meet a growing need for “some recognizable and unified establishment in the [NCC] to deal as a unit with our increasing relationships and involvements with public schools.”
FRANK FARRELL
