Church of the Brethren. The largest of the Brethren denominations in North America said no to the Consultation on Church Union last month. By a decisive vote of 881 to 220, delegates to the annual conference of the Church of the Brethren adopted a study committee’s recommendation against full COCU participation. The denomination now maintains an observer-consultant relationship, and that will continue.
COCU leaders reportedly had held out a big hope that the 200,000-member Brethren body would be the next to join. There are already eight denominations participating in the COCU talks, representing a prospective new superdenomination of some 24,000,000 members.
The Brethren committee expressed doubts about such a “vast” church organization. Their report called on the constituency “to be even more creatively and responsibly involved” in the ecumenical movement but indicated anxiety over the effect of a merger on pacifist Brethren convictions.
Such a merger, the report added, might also endanger the denomination’s conversations with other churches. Exploratory talks on unity have been held during the past year between the Church of the Brethren and four other denominations: the American Baptist Convention; the Churches of God in North America, with headquarters in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; the Brethren Church, with headquarters in Ashland, Ohio; and the Evangelical Covenant Church.
The committee noted that COCU, in its negotiations looking toward a united Protestant church, regards only baptism and communion as sacraments. This, it said, “diminishes the recognition of the presence of God in other acts of the church such as feet-washing, anointing, marriage, and ordination.”
In addition, the committee said, “the forms and office of the ministry in the merging united Church, based upon the acceptance of the historic episcopacy, seem to perpetuate the sharp cleavage between clergy and laity, and give insufficient recognition of the growing creativity of the ministry of all believers.”
Lutheran Church in America. The question most Protestants are asking of the Lutheran Church in America never got an answer during the 3,260,000-member denomination’s third biennial convention in Kansas City.
Why has the LCA, largest and most ecumenically minded of the Lutheran denominations, steered clear of the Consultation on Church Union? Both the LCA and the 2,600,000-member American Lutheran Church have rejected even observer status. Much to their surprise, the more conservative Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod listened in officially at the May meeting of COCU.
Franklin Clark Fry, the articulate LCA president who was re-elected, says Lutherans have “no doctrinal basis” for unity talks with COCU. Lutherans, he declared, feel that common doctrine is the only basis for unity, whereas leaders of Reformed bodies see unity gained through organic union, followed by the working out of doctrinal problems as the union matures.
“We would be willing to sit down right now and discuss doctrinal statements,” Fry said. “We emphasized there was no antipathy toward the discussions, and our rejection was received in good faith.”
What happens now? Even though Fry is a strong ecumenist (he heads the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches), he is obviously not advocating a rushing into Lutheran-Reformed talks. The LCA and the ALC are still working out the problems of the mergers that brought them into existence four years ago, and they don’t want to jeopardize hopes of a merger with Missouri’s 2,780,000 members.1The LCA, however, has implicity declined for the time being overtures from the other two churches for pulpit and altar fellowship. Such a union would represent 90 per cent of the nine million U. S. Lutherans.
As expected, last month’s LCA convention voted unanimously to become part of the Lutheran Council in the U. S. A., seen by some as another big step toward more Lutheran unity. This cooperative agency will replace the present National Lutheran Council, which has served the LCA and the ALC and their predecessors since 1918. Conventions of the ALC, Missouri, and the smaller (20,000 members) Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches have already approved participation in LCUSA. A parallel body is to be formed in Canada.
The new agency will engage in theological studies, public relations, military personnel and educational services, and welfare and mission activities. The Rev. Dr. C. Thomas Spitz, a Missouri Synod pastor long active in broadcasting, is to be selected general secretary, a position in which he has been working unofficially for several months. An organizational meeting is scheduled for November, and the new offices will open in New York in January.
In a statement on church-state relations, the convention chose a middle ground. Said one of the framers, Philadelphia seminary dean William H. Lazareth, “A political position which advocates separation between church and state presupposes separation between Creator and Redeemer. Since God is One, this would mean schizophrenia in the Godhead.”
“The state is God’s agent for his non-redemptive work,” Lazareth said. “This is not an endorsement of the principle of state aid to private education” or other institutions, he added, nor does it mean the Church feels it is “morally mandatory” for the state to offer financial aid.
The statement said, “The position rejects both the absolute separation of church and state and the domination of either one by the other, while seeking a mutually beneficial relationship in which each institution contributes to the common good by remaining true to its own nature and task.”
In the first step of a “master plan” toward realignment of seminaries, the convention voted to merge a small seminary at Fremont, Nebraska, with the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. In other action, delegates overrode a Fry recommendation and voted a study of the role of women in the ministry. (Fry felt the study is “unwise” at this time, explaining that Missouri now limits its ordination to men and that in view of current talks, he hopes to narrow, rather than widen, the gap between Lutheran bodies.)
The delegates also: passed a sixteen-point “manifesto,” designed as a checklist for local congregations, which reaffirms the theological position of the church and invites congregations to work with churches and secular groups “in activities that promote justice, relieve misery and reconcile the estranged”; spoke strongly for abolition of the death penalty, noting that capital punishment falls disproportionately upon those least able to defend themselves; heard Fry report that the church was forced to dip into reserves for more than $300,000 to complete its work last year because of lack of revenue; and expressed cautious approval of U. S. involvement in Viet Nam, commending men serving in the war but recognizing the right of those who feel they cannot participate in the war to hold this position.
The convention turned down an amendment offered by a Milwaukee industrialist to a statement dealing with programs to counteract deprivation. The amendment of Carl T. Swenson, a lay delegate, sought to shift the emphasis to non-governmental programs as a means of eliminating injustice and want. Swenson said that talent should be enlisted from industry to help carry out programs planned in a Christian framework.
A variable-income pension approved by delegates will give program participants the option of sharing directly in the value of common stocks. The pension plan provides payments for life, but they will increase or decrease according to fluctuations in dividend income and market value of stocks in which members’ contributions are invested.
Evangelical Free Church of America. Joining the swelling ranks of U. S. Protestants who need money for their schools and yet desire to keep church and state separate were delegates to the eighty-second annual conference of the Evangelical Free Church of America. A dean of the denomination’s college called for “judicious use” of federal aid, but a committee report turned thumbs down on the idea. The whole question was tabled pending further study.
Immediate effect of the action was a loss of $183,000 in a grant said to have been offered the church’s Trinity College by the federal government for a new science building.
National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. A banquet address by Mormon George Romney, governor of Michigan, was heard by some 1,000 persons during the annual meeting of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. Romney told them that churches should help provide the moral character needed for responsible citizenship in all areas of life. The association is the largest of the Congregational church groups opposing the merger that created the United Church of Christ.
Evangelical Covenant Church of America. Two official Sunday School curricula have been adopted by the Evangelical Covenant Church of America. One is the Covenant Life curriculum, a cooperative venture with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern) and four other denominations. The other is that of Gospel Light Publications.
At the church’s 81st annual General Conference, held in Chicago, delegates adopted a resolution supporting President Johnson’s “willingness to negotiate unconditionally to achieve peace in Viet Nam.” They did not pass specific judgment, however, on the American military action there.
A committee on interchurch relations was instructed to continue explorations regarding merger with other denominations. Such talks have taken place during the year past with the Moravian Church in America, the Evangelical Free Church, the Church of the Lutheran Brethren, the Church of the Brethren, and others.
The Rev. Milton B. Engebretson, 45, was elected president of the 66,000-member church to succeed the retiring Dr. Clarence A. Nelson next year.
Toward A Consecrated Rebellion
Among the largest of American religious conventions is one where no laws are enacted, no resolutions passed, and no politics allowed. It is the annual North American Christian Convention, unofficial focal point of the conservative element of the Disciples of Christ. The only activities are naming of officers (president for 1966–67: L. Palmer Young, a minister from South Louisville, Kentucky), formal speeches, discussions, and fellowship.
This year’s convention in Louisville, which drew a staggering total of 25,000 registrants, included an incisive address by Donald H. Sharp, minister of Woodland Heights Christian Church in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Here are excerpts:
“Jesus rebelled against religious legalism, social injustice, and personal hypocrisy.
“Since Jesus there have been a parade of rebels. Among them there have been charlatans and fools. There have been egocentrics looking for some scrap of notoriety. There have been kooks rebelling for kicks. And yet every great leap forward seems to have come through the inspiration of some deeply consecrated rebel who, as Frank Meade has said, ‘objected not so much to men or institutions as to the abuses of men within those institutions.’ …
“We must remember that the separation of the rebel fools and the rebel greats is clearly defined in what man becomes indignant about. To wildly rebel against the establishment for the sake of rebelling is to play the part of the fool. Rebellion must have purpose beyond itself. To rebel against hypocrisy, social injustice, and religious bigotry is rebellion with a purpose and is to become at least in one sense God-like.
“Our brotherhood does not send delegates to conventions to pass resolutions and to impose decrees upon the brethren, and this is as it should be. However, our brotherhood does have positive responsibilities in convention, one of which is surely to instill into every hearer the will to be a God-like rebel.
“I’m tired of Christendom winking at hypocrisy, condoning social injustice, and upholding religious bigotry in the name of conservatism. I believe in conserving the faith once and for all delivered unto the saints, but I rebel against man-made traditions that draw little circles to shut men out. I believe in the separation of church and state but I rebel against this profane silence that we have fostered because we are afraid of being identified with the liberals.…
“Faith in Christ answers man’s need to rebel and be a rebel. We can rebel against the hypocrisy of our own lives.… We can rebel against social injustice beginning first with ourselves, for when we have removed the logs of injustice from our own eyes we shall be much better prepared to see how to correct the injustice fostered by others. We can rebel against religious Pharisaism by placing our pet opinions under the light of God’s Word and then quit imposing our opinions upon others as God’s law. Much of our brotherhood’s division is not on what the Bible has said but rather on what the Bible has not said.”
American Baptist Association. “Baptists have been slow to change,” said President Vernon E. Lierly of the American Baptist Association, “but many times their resistance has been based on tradition rather than truth.”
Lierly declared at the ABA’s national messenger meeting in Houston that “nothing is wrong because it is new, neither is anything right just because it is old.… Be sure your resistance to change is based on the Word and not on tradition and prejudice.” He added that “we should seek to make truth appealing to men of all ages and from every walk of life. It is wrong to present the truth in an offensive way when truth itself would not offend.”
The ABA is a fellowship of some 3,220 congregations with a total membership of some 726,000. Administrative offices and a publications business are located at Texarkana, Texas.
General Association of Regular Baptist Churches. Resolutions against neo-evangelicalism and against antidefamation bills now said to be under consideration in several state legislatures were adopted at the 35th annual conference of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches held in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The most vehement denunciations, however, were aimed at death-of-God theologians Thomas J. J. Altizer, Paul M. Van Buren, and William Hamilton. The GARBC said all three should be discharged from their teaching posts.
Baptist General Conference. A 536–124 vote to bring the Baptist General Conference into the National Association of Evangelicals highlighted the denomination’s 87th annual meeting, held in San Jose, California. Delegates also reaffirmed affiliation with the Baptist World Alliance, but called for more study on whether to seek membership in the BWA’s newly-organized North American affiliate. The Baptist General Conference is composed of some 90,000 members in 633 churches.
Dr. Clifford E. Larson was elected moderator. Larson recently resigned as dean of Bethel College to become a professor of education at Bethel Seminary.
Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Final approval of the reunification of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church with its Negro branch was voted by the church’s 136th General Assembly at Memphis. The Negro group, known as the Second Cumberland denomination, must still ratify the merger with a three-fourths vote of its presbyteries. If they do, the General Assemblies of both bodies will meet jointly at Paducah, Kentucky, next June for the official reunion ceremony.
The white Cumberland church has about 85,000 members in 900 congregations. The Negro group has some 20,000 members in 125 local churches.
