The Methodist Church is inching its way toward a racially integrated ecclesiastical framework, but it will probably be the last of the principal U. S. denominations to get there.
This means many Methodist clergymen who are Negroes will continue to get lower salaries and pensions than their white colleagues and fewer opportunities for career advancement. It now appears unlikely that the inequities will be resolved for another six years or more—until all conferences of Negro churches now under a separate hierarchy are absorbed into integrated jurisdictions. Full desegregation at local church level seems even more remote.
Actions of a number of Methodist conferences in the South last month indicated that they are moving toward integration, but very slowly. Generally speaking, Southern Methodist whites refuse to fix deadlines as demanded by Negroes. On June 27 negotiators from three jurisdictions met in Atlanta in an effort to map a new approach toward racially inclusive church government, but as a spokesman put it, “talked to a draw again.”
“In addition to other problems,” he said, “economic factors were frequently cited as blocks to progress in integration. Most troublesome are pensions and minimum salaries for pastors, since there is a wide gap between the white and Negro levels. Fear was expressed over the ability to provide funds to raise all to the same level when conferences are merged.”
The obstacles have their roots in an agreement reached in 1939 whereby the Methodist Church was formed out of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a northern body; the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; and the Methodist Protestant Church. In the interests of merger and over vigorous protests, segregationists got constitutional guarantees in return for their support for an administratively united church. Thus today any denomination-wide decree against segregation could be construed as a betrayal of the conditions set forth in the 1939 merger. It might also prompt a rash of court fights.
Nevertheless, a number of the more militant Methodists have been pressing for a basic constitutional change that would wipe out segregated ecclesiastical patterns with one sweep of the pen. Up to now, the quadrennial General Conference, top legislative body of American-oriented Methodism, has turned aside such suggestions in favor of step-by-step voluntary desegregation. The next General Conference will be a special session this fall to vote on a merger of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church. A group called Methodists for Church Renewal headed by theology professor J. Robert Nelson of Boston University calls for defeat of the merger plan unless it contains “explicit provisions for the total elimination of racial segregation.”
Many who have worked hard for desegregation in Methodism are losing hope in the voluntary approach. At the last General Conference voluntarists predicted that segregation would be eliminated by 1968. The prediction failed to take into account the reluctance of whites to alter traditional patterns and the unwillingness of Negroes to yield their combined influence as a segregated bloc. The ever present threat of schism is still another of the factors that have and will continue to threaten the 10,300,000-member church, second largest Protestant denomination in North America.
Delays in Methodist desegregation are especially embarrassing to those clergymen and church leaders who have been in the forefront of the battle for federal civil rights legislation in the United States. They pressured the government to impose integration, even as the church was showing an unwillingness to do it among its own constituency.
Protestant Panorama
A special session of the Kentucky Baptist Convention turned down a recommendation of its executive board which would have allowed its colleges to accept government financial assistance. One bloc had sought to reduce drastically the convention’s involvement in higher education, contending that its four colleges cannot compete in either quality or quantity with state schools. One pastor complained that “Baptists are too tight and ornery to give God a tithe.”
The American Lutheran Church is granting autonomy to its 330 congregations and 80,000 members in Canada. The constituting convention for a separate body is to be held in Regina in November.
The Pacific Theological College at Suva, capital city of the Fiji Islands, was dedicated recently in a ceremony climaxing six years of planning. The school is sponsored by Anglican, Congregational, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches. It offers a diploma course emphasizing Bible study as well as a degree program in more specialized training such as development of liturgy and biblical languages.
Personalia
David Edward Ward, 30, was ordained a deacon in the Anglican Church of Canada and commissioned for work with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. The appointment was believed to be the first ever made by the church for evangelistic work with an independent organization. Ward, a graduate of McGill University, will serve as an evangelist in the Montreal area.
The Rev. Ian Paisley, 40, was due to appear in a Belfast court this week charged with unlawful assembly. Widely advertised as moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, a body largely of his own creation, Paisley has been demonstrating largely on a platform of anti-Roman Catholicism. One national paper headlined him as “the man who could start an Irish war.”
The Rev. Walter Lang will resign from a Lutheran pastorate in Caldwell, Idaho, to become executive director of the Bible-Science Association. He will edit the association’s newsletter, develop its radio program, and lecture throughout the country.
Kenneth H. Wood, 48, was named editor-in-chief of the weekly Review and Herald of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Wood has been an associate editor for the 116-year-old publication for the past eleven years.
Dr. M. Guy West was elected moderator-designate of the Church of the Brethren. West, pastor of the First Church of the Brethren of York, Pennsylvania, has served for ten years on the church’s top governing board. In the moderator’s post he will succeed Dr. Raymond R. Peters of North Manchester, Indiana.
The Rev. Sanko King Rembert was consecrated a bishop in the Reformed Episcopal Church, the first Negro ever to hold the office. Rembert, a native of South Carolina, received the B. D. and S. T. M. degrees from New York Theological Seminary.
Dr. Everett S. Graffam, since 1962 the executive director of the Evangelical Foundation, was appointed vice president of development at Malone College, a Quaker liberal arts school in Canton, Ohio.
Dr. Wilfred Scopes, veteran missionary figure and until recently an associate minister of New York’s Broadway United Church of Christ, was named first president of the new United Theological College of the West Indies. The school, expected to open in 1967, combines three theological schools—St. Peter’s College (Anglican), Calabar College (Baptist), and Union Theological Seminary of Jamaica. The campus is located in a suburb of Kingston.
Professor D. Elton Trueblood retired from the faculty of the Earlham School of Religion last month. He may return to teach on a part-time basis, however, following a year of scholarly research in England.
Miscellany
Leaders of the World Fellowship of Buddhists seek to renounce involvement in political activity. They acted at a meeting in Bangkok in the wake of an appeal by the Unified Buddhist Church of South Viet Nam for assistance in the Vietnamese Buddhists’ attempt to overthrow their country’s military government. A proposed amendment to the world fellowship’s constitution holds that participation of monks in politics is against the tenets and teachings of Buddha.
Yugoslavia and Vatican City signed an agreement last month re-establishing diplomatic relations after a lapse of fourteen years. Discussions were under way, meanwhile, for a similar resumption between the Holy See and Cuba.
Reform Jewish rabbis are calling for the immediate establishment of chairs of Jewish studies on college and university campuses. They also indicate they want to overhaul religious school curricula to upgrade subject matter for teen-agers especially.
A new building for the International Protestant Church in Vientiane, Laos, was dedicated last month. It was erected with the support of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, through whose missionary effort the Evangelical Church of Laos has developed.
Fourteen ousted faculty members of St. John’s University were reported to have appealed to the ecclesiastical court of the Brooklyn, New York, Roman Catholic diocese for a redress of their grievances against the school. St. John’s has declined to give specific reasons for the ousters, except to say that they were based generally on “unprofessional conduct.”
Three pastors of the state church were appointed by Denmark’s Ministry of Defense to the first full-time military chaplaincies. Previously clergymen have served military personnel on a voluntary basis.
The Churches of God in North America faced the loss of twenty-two of their congregations in Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Representativees of the separating churches said they were withdrawing in protest over what they regarded as liberal trends in the denomination.
Plans were announced in Kansas City for a new inner-city chapel to be built and operated jointly by Roman Catholics and three Protestant communions—Presbyterian, Episcopal, and United Church of Christ. It is believed to be the first such cooperative venture ever undertaken on the local parish level.
Dr. Juan Carlos Vittone, who headed the World Council of Churches’ refugee service in Argentina, was shot to death at his office in downtown Buenos Aires. Charged with the crime was Hwang Hiler, 35, a refugee from Communist China and a naturalized Argentine.
Deaths
B. D. ZONDERVAN 55, co-owner with a brother of the Zondervan publishing House; in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
ROY LAURIN, 67, noted author of a series of Bible study books; in Eagle Rock, California.
ALBERT BERECZKY, 73, former head of the Hungarian Reformed Church and active supporter of the Communist “peace” movement; in Budapest.
Fire destroyed the two-year-old sanctuary of the Newell Baptist Church near Charlotte, North Carolina. It was valued at $250,000. Pastor Dan Silver said the building debt was covered by insurance but the remainder of the loss was not.
