The Consultation on Church Union got its tenth participant last month, the all-Negro Christian Methodist Episcopal Church with its 466,718 members. In May, CME representatives will meet those from other denominations to discuss the pending giant Protestant merger.
Whatever happens at that session in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the major U.S. ecumenical question of 1967 is whether the Episcopal Church as a whole will love COCU in September as its delegates did in May.
The Episcopal ecumenical commission recently announced its plans for the September General Convention in Seattle. It proposes that the church authorize its delegates to negotiate a specific merger plan. The delegates from COCU’s two biggest members, the Episcopal and Methodist Churches, lack this authority, although several other denominations have approved such escalation. The ecumenical commission also wants the U.S. church to “commend” COCU to the worldwide Lambeth Conference next year. The General Convention won’t meet again until 1970, and the next Lambeth Conference is in 1978, so both proposals are important in the COCU timetable.
Virginia’s Bishop Robert F. Gibson, Jr.—ecumenical commission chairman and former chairman of COCU itself—said COCU executives who met last month thought the merger timetable “has clearly slowed up over what we thought possible” at the last COCU meeting in Dallas, where “Principles of Church Union” were approved.
Gibson is confident the Episcopal Church will vote to continue with COCU, but is less certain it will approve entry into specific negotiation. His panel’s proposal could be amended to freeze talks at the present ambiguous level.
Although many Episcopalians think COCU is inevitable, its most conspicuous opponent, Canon Albert J. duBois, is “much more hopeful” COCU can be stalled than he was when he began a two-month series of two-night stands across the country. DuBois, 60, is the veteran executive director of the American Church Union, an organization of 11,000 Anglo-Catholic or “high” churchmen.
He finds many Episcopalians who had no previous interest in ACU and disagree with its liturgical slant are backing its drive against COCU. He also reports a significant increase in financial aid from bishops.
Also on tour against COCU is ACU President Chandler W. Sterling, the bishop of Montana, whose mailing address in Helena—Last Chance Gulch—may be prophetic.
The ACU case is presented in the current issue of its monthly American Church News. Essentially, the argument is that COCU is a move toward Protestantism at the expense of closer relations with Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. (Bishop Gibson’s commission asserts it is trying to move in both directions.) The ACU’s objection to COCU agreements on the ministry, bishops, and apostolic succession seems to be that the COCU church will not be the Episcopal Church. From the non-Episcopalian’s point of view, the Episcopal negotiators have won more concessions within COCU than any other denominational team.
The Episcopal delegation includes such high churchmen as Peter Day, the denomination’s ecumenical officer, and Bishop Stephen F. Bayne, Jr., who directs liaison with the world Anglican Communion. Another delegate is Chicago’s Bishop Gerald Francis Burrill, one of nineteen bishops who belong to the ACU. Last month, he opened the year’s discussion of COCU in the Episcopalian by saying the denomination must decide “either to obey our Lord’s command to be one and to enter willingly into the difficult, often painful, negotiations with all other Christian bodies” or to “be satisfied to be a sect, isolated from the rest of Christendom.”
Asked to comment on the ACU criticisms, Burrill said they are “not valid, on the whole,” but he agrees with its concern about the “position and impact” of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, traditional doctrinal standards of the Episcopal Church now questioned by Bishop James A. Pike and some other liberals.
The American Church Union points out that the COCU “Principles” consider the creeds as corporate, historic “symbols,” but “it is not stated, however, that anyone has any obligation to believe” them. The Apostles’ Creed, it fears, may become “an interesting historical relic,” rarely used. The status of Nicene is even more vague.
The ACU, which also dislikes the National Council of Churches, fears that the COCU church will be another NCC, run by the same people but carrying more authority, since it will be the Church rather than a voluntary council. “The sorry record of the National Council of Churches gives us a very dependable indication of what the leadership in the new COCU Church will do.… We will be bound by its heretical publications and the many distressing resolutions it chooses to set forth.” And ACU envisions an administratively muscle-bound, undemocratic church full of bureaucratic parasites.
The ACU questions whether the united church would be “truly evangelical.” “In the absence of a definite standard of beliefs for teaching, it is not likely that the new COCU Church would have much Evangelistic force in its effort to reach out for conversions.”
Although a denominational official said the ACU is an “extreme” minority, duBois claims to be more in tune with the grass roots than the COCU delegates. Many active laymen are conservative (most of ACU’s membership is lay), and he points out that a majority of Episcopal clergy are converts from other denominations, and thus many are unenthusiastic about losing Episcopal distinctives. He is convinced that if the denomination votes to join COCU, some members will form a continuing Episcopal church.
To duBois, “the ecumenical movement is forcing us to a decision on our very nature.” The Episcopalians have traditionally straddled the Protestant-Catholic fence. DuBois says many Episcopalians want to do nothing to cut off channels to Rome, and “are willing to accept the pope as a visible head of the church—a chairman of the board—but not as a monarch.”
Bishop Gibson thinks the ACU is “over-interpreting” what the COCU “Principles” are: “They are asking for more definition than anybody else has.” He calls the ACU statement “a misinterpretation of what Dallas did do and what it tried to do.”
Most of the Episcopalians who will vote on COCU this fall will be chosen in diocesan conventions this spring. The COCU resolution must pass with a simple majority in both the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies (priests and laymen). The bishops’ approval is considered automatic, so the real action will occur in the other house, where each diocese has one vote. If the lay and clergy delegates within a diocese disagree, their votes cancel each other out. Any eventual merger proposal would need to pass two General Conventions in a row, with a two-thirds majority in each house.
Evangelistic One-Upmanship
About forty evangelism specialists of the American Baptist Convention braved Chicago snowdrifts last month to plan strategy for the next two years, but the biggest evangelistic controversy in the ABC got little attention.
Just before the meeting of state evangelism executives with national evangelism director Jitsuo Morikawa and his staff, the ABC General Council had repeated and re-explained its previous decision to boycott a hemispherewide, pan-Baptist Crusade of the Americas in 1969. The ABC plans instead to boost its own “Faith and Work” curriculum and handle evangelism on its own terms with ABC-aligned churches in Latin America.
The vote showed the gap between the ABC and the much larger and more conservative Southern Baptist Convention, prime mover of the 1969 crusade. But the ABC stereotype of the SBC must have taken a jolt when Wayne Dehoney, former SBC president and chief planner of the forthcoming crusade, proposed that Roman Catholics join with Baptists in the campaign. “We are hopeful, and happy that a spirit of evangelism and outreach based on the proclamation of the Gospel and New Testament faith is breaking loose in the Catholic Church.” He said Methodists and Southern Presbyterians also are interested.
Several of the state and local ABC units represented at the Chicago meeting plan to cooperate with the crusade on their own, which is fully permissible under Baptist autonomy.
The Chicago conferees mainly discussed internal efforts from headquarters such as “Action-Reflection” visitation and more efficient follow-up when ABC members move to a new community. A leading ABC figure said the lack of a pro-crusade drive in Chicago probably means the issue will be raised at the national convention in May.
Southern Baptists are still smarting from comments by Morikawa at the November meeting where the ABC first shunned the crusade. He belittled the old-style evangelism of Southerners and Pentecostalists and criticized the preeminent crusade role of the SBC, which he said has not faced up to its racial responsibilities. ABC President Carl Tiller, in his February report, said many members are losing confidence in the General Council and the “convention superstructure.” He said that many also believe the ABC evangelism program “does not meet the needs,” and that “restlessness” exists on interchurch strategy. Tiller, whose congregation belongs to both ABC and SBC, hopes for better relations across the Mason-Dixon line. To help things, Tiller has agreed to serve, as an individual, on the laymen’s committee for the 1969 crusade. His term as ABC president runs out this spring.
Confession Of 1967
The controversial Confession of 1967 appeared headed toward adoption last month. Religious News Service reported February 16 that out of ninety-one presbyteries known to have voted on the document, seventy-six had approved it. Favorable action by two-thirds or 126 of the 188 presbyteries is required for passage.
After Hash, A Barbecue
Should Christians send their children to Sunday school? Resigned Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike provided both the question and an answer when the National Council of Churches staged its annual Division of Christian Education meeting in Dallas last month. Generally it added up to a “no.” He said the “no” for the benefit of some 1,000 professional Christian education workers. Then he qualified it a bit: children should not be sent to “most” church schools, he explained. He would recommend only the kind that does not teach anything that has to be “unlearned” later, and that means that the supernatural would not be taught, and nothing about heaven and hell, and certainly nothing about a once-for-all conversion. Just the natural—“if true”—not the supernatural, said the bishop. Let the children stay home and read the funny papers (unless they are the blood-and-thunder sadistic kind), he counseled.
Pike addressed only one of sixteen sections meeting simultaneously, with other groups scattered across downtown Dallas.
Another Episcopalian almost stole the headlines from the former bishop of California. He was Malcolm Boyd, principal speaker at the meeting of adult workers, which specialized this year in approaches to young adults. Boyd chose the occasion to announce existence of the “underground church,” made up of those who are impatient with the existing practices of organized churches.
Defining members of the underground church, Boyd said, “These people are refusing to worship God merely along denominational lines. They ignore official structures and hierarchy. They regard Protestant-Catholic reunion as having already taken place. Their fellowship includes priests, pastors, laymen, nuns and even many Jews.” He said they celebrate the Lord’s Supper together at mealtimes, as the early Christians did.
He explained that the builders of this nameless revolution have decided simply not to worry about ecclesiastical and doctrinal differences, which bore them and seem futile. They are for Pope John and against Cardinal Spellman. The martyred Dietrich Bonhoeffer—along with a few secular figures such as Albert Camus—is a saint in their canon. But by and large they try to avoid too much celebrity worship.
The priest and sometime night-club performer said some of the underground church members go to church and some do not. He found an immediate reaction in the audience of adult workers, and somebody decided to call him phony, even though he had earlier said that all members of the underground church reject everything that is phony.
The adult workers, in seeking better understanding of young adults, spent some time one evening visiting bars, “gay” hangouts, and other habitats of unchurched young men and women.
Youth workers heard from another controversial minister, Howard Moody of Judson Memorial Church in New York City. He spoke of the need to move from “the apathy of the fifties to the action of the sixties.” He suggested that leadership of young people has moved from the academy and temple to the streets, and urged the development of “mobile ministries.” He asked youth workers to help the church find a new morality and get over its pietism.
Workers in week-day religious education had among their speakers Rabbi Arthur Gilbert, who stressed a need for objective teaching of religion in schools but rejected any devotional use of religion in schools and Bible study as such. He thought the teaching of religion in history would be more acceptable to the entire community than teaching the history of religion.
The sixteen sections all met independently, and the only time that all 1,800 registrants were together was at a concluding barbecue and fellowship luncheon.
ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS
Second Thoughts On Structure
Last fall the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren General Conferences voted to unite into what is to be known as the United Methodist Church. Now some top executives of the two denominations want to change the terms of the pending merger.
“We believe that there is a need for redesigning the structure of the new United Methodist Church,” said a resolution adopted at a joint meeting of the Methodist Council of Secretaries and the EUB Council of Executives.
The Joint Commission on Union was asked to “set up a committee on redesigning the structure of the church, to develop succinct statements on mission (purpose) and to draft a plan of restructure.”
The commission met the next week and voted to set up fourteen committees, one of which was assigned the job of studying the restructure request.
The Methodist-EUB executives want the restructure action taken in 1968. That’s when the merger question will be up for ratification. A plan of organization and administration for the United Methodist Church has been drawn up but will not be voted upon until then.
Schism Out Of Ecumenism?
Six emissaries of the Evangelical United Brethren hierarchy plan to hold peace talks next month with fellow churchmen in the Pacific Northwest who want no part of a merger with Methodists.
Last fall’s EUB General Conference, which voted to unite the denomination with The Methodist Church, also recognized formidable resistance from congregations in Washington, Oregon, and Montana, and authorized the General Council of Administration to appoint a special negotiating team. The group is expected to visit the area in mid-April and try to persuade as many churches as possible to recognize the expected merger. If schism cannot be avoided, the negotiating team is understood to be planning concessions to avoid court fights over church property rights.
The resistance is primarily among theologically conservative churches that do not want to be dissolved into the more liberal Methodist machine. Some authorities estimate that as much as 85 per cent of the EUB constituency in the Pacific Northwest may refuse the merger. The eighty-two EUB churches in Washington and Oregon have a total membership of about 11,600. There are twenty-two churches in Montana.
At least six churches have already taken a congregational vote against participation in the merger. Virtually all the large churches oppose union.
A leading EUB minister has declared that anti-merger members “are not a belligerent people. We are a strong holiness movement abiding by the discipline of our church, rather than departing from it.”
There is already considerable talk of forming a new regional fellowship of the non-merger churches. A number of previously independent churches are also reported to be interested in such a move. Together they will be in a good position to court association with an existing national body. Four national holiness denominations have already made approaches to EUB churches in the Pacific Northwest.
Presbyterian Rules Retained
When the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U. S., meets this June in Bristol, Tennessee, it will follow the same procedural rules it used in 1966.
To Southern Presbyterians, that’s news.
Last October the denomination’s Permanent Committee on Assembly Operation caused a furor by announcing it would make sweeping changes in the rules. The agency, which makes the arrangements for the annual assembly, has now reconsidered and withdrawn the changes.
The committee claimed authority to amend the procedures from a motion passed at the end of the 1966 assembly. It was approved after several commissioners complained of the haste with which some business (notably the decision to become a full participant in the Consultation on Church Union) was handled. But differences of opinion later arose as to whether the minutes had recorded the motion accurately.
After objections to the proposed rules began to come in, the committee reviewed the whole matter. Tapes of the concluding minutes of the 1966 assembly were heard, and makers of two procedural motions were interviewed. When it was all over, committeemen said there was a reasonable doubt about how much authority had been given them and about the intent of the motions.
The proposed rules, which resembled some used at United Presbyterian assemblies, would have assigned only half of the commissioners to standing committees. (All Presbyterian U. S. commissioners have been serving on committees.) Another unpopular change provided that the retiring moderator, the stated clerk, and the chairman of the assembly operation committee (instead of the moderator alone) would appoint the chairmen of standing committees. Another was aimed at cutting down on lobbying.
Instead of going into effect at the 1967 assembly, the rules (with several important revisions) will now be submitted as recommendations for adoption and implementation at the 1968 assembly.
If the committee’s decision on the rules settled one hassle, another of its decisions might start a new one. It voted to hold the 1969 General Assembly in Mobile, Alabama. Officials of the United Presbyterian Church had been expecting the Southern church to join it and the Cumberland Presbyterians in San Antonio for simultaneous assemblies that year. Presbyterian U. S. proponents of closer relations with the other two denominations might seek to reverse the committee’s action and push for a family reunion.
ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS
