The first returns from the biggest sociological poll ever made of U.S. Protestant clergymen show considerable disagreement on traditional beliefs, the National Council of Churches reported last month. Its results lead Western Reserve University sociologist Jeffrey Hadden to conclude that ecumenism has little to do with doctrine but concerns rather “a common understanding of the church’s place in contemporary society.”
The extensive questionnaires from the 7,441 out of 10,000 clergymen1There are 240,000 active Protestant clergyman in the United States. who answered the poll indicate to Hadden that “the ecumenical movement proceeds not from any doctrinal unity but in spite of it.”
He also finds that “all denominations except the Lutherans have a substantial body of clergymen who reject dogmatic literalist theology. It seems appropriate to speculate that this more liberal group is leading efforts toward ecumenical cooperation. Having rejected a literalist theology, these liberal ministers may stand ready to cooperate with others of different theological traditions in pursuit of common goals.”
Appropriately, the Hadden study, first published in Trans-action, is entitled “A Protestant Paradox—Divided They Merge.”
Hadden surveyed clergymen from only six denominations, which he categorizes as follows: “liberal,” Episcopal and Methodist; “moderate,” United Presbyterian; “conservative,” American Baptist and American Lutheran; and “fundamentalist,” Missouri Synod Lutheran.
Hadden’s thesis that theological liberals are taking the ecumenical lead is supported by the fact that of poll’s six denominations, the three most conservative theologically have decided to remain outside the Consultation on Church Union, which is attempting to effect a mass merger of U. S. Protestants. In fact, the two most conservative bodies polled, Missouri Synod and the American Lutherans, have even stayed outside the National Council of Churches itself.
In contrast to the theological disarray (see chart), there is considerable agreement among the six denominational groups on the Church’s social responsibility. For instance, ten percentage points or less separate the six in Hadden’s questions on the Church’s role in civil rights and urban problems. This lack of difference on what Hadden calls “social sources of ecumenism” seems to discredit the sociologist’s conclusion. Only three of the six denominations are wholeheartedly in the ecumenical and merger movement. In fact, the Missouri Synod Lutherans, whose social attitudes in the report vary little from those in the more liberal groups, have even boycotted the Lutheran World Federation.
But Hadden says the complete poll indicates that beyond the general questions on social responsibility, which show widespread agreement, there is much disagreement on specifics. Liberals are interested mainly in humanitarianism, while conservatives tend to see social concern as a means of saving souls.
With answers to more than 500 questions, the 31-year-old sociologist has data for books and articles for years to come. Several volumes are already in the works. Hadden’s Ph.D. project at Wisconsin was in urban sociology. He says he came by the immense religious project, financed by a private foundation, “by accident” while at Purdue.
Hadden, raised a Quaker, joined a “pretty fundamentalist” American Baptist church in Kansas in his teens. He recalls that at the time he “didn’t see any difference” between his home pastor’s ideas and those of his neo-orthodox clergyman at the University of Kansas. But he was startled to hear a discussion between historian Robert Torbet and a member of the Christian atheist school. He could find “no apparent conflict” between the two Baptist speakers, he said, and this led him to realize that common goals exist among churchmen of widely different theologies.
In his study he had the help of eight full-time assistants for the mailing and processing of questionnaires in the first half of 1965. Several theologians helped prepare the questions. Forms went to every fourth name on the parish clergy lists of the six denominations. An extensive program of as many as six follow-ups produced the high return rate, which Hadden believes makes his study unique in religious sociology. The only previous wide-scale study of Protestant clergymen, done long ago at Yale, had only a 5 per cent return rate, which makes it scientifically worthless.
The six denominations for the study were chosen partly “by chance.” No answer came from his initial contact with the Southern Baptist Convention. The United Church of Christ was cool to the idea because it had its own study (still unreported) under way. The Unitarians weren’t very interested, either.
Despite omission of the giant SBC, Hadden says the South is fairly well represented in the poll. The bias in the returns, he said, is that the big city churches with hard-pressed senior pastors and the rural, lower-educated churches are under-represented.
MISCELLANY
The Jesuit weekly America says that in its judgment the Roman Catholic Church should recognize “the compatibility—and even necessity—of some use of contraception” in Catholic families.
A new conservative national Catholic weekly newspaper is slated to publish its first edition November 1. Twin Circle will be edited in Denver by Frank Morriss, former news editor of the National Register, with Dale Francis, former executive editor of Our Sunday Visitor, as editor-at-large. The new paper, published by a subsidiary of Eversharp, Inc., will refute “modernism in certain Catholic circles,” an apparent reference to the liberal National Catholic Reporter.
The Wheaton (Illinois) College board decided to let students and faculty attend movies and the theater. The school’s famous “pledge” still prohibits drinking, smoking, gambling, dancing, and secret societies.
Toronto’s evangelical Richmond College, (see Sept. 1 issue, page 42) opened last month with sixty-one of its one hundred hoped-for students. Five part-time professors are teaching night classes. Financial support is lagging.
Bexley Hall, an Episcopal seminary in Ohio, is talking about moving to Rochester and merging with Colgate Rochester Divinity School (American Baptist) and St. Bernard’s Seminary (Roman Catholic), into a Center for Theological Studies.
Three Soviet Baptists last month flew from Moscow to London for training at Spurgeon Baptist College. Two previous groups enrolled there seven years ago, Religious News Service said.
PERSONALIA
The Rev. B. Davie Napier, dean of the Stanford University Chapel and officiant at the wedding of Margaret Rusk, daughter of the Secretary of State, and Guy Smith, called the union a “significant event in the hard, rocky road of race relations.” The United Church of Christ minister is an outspoken foe of U. S. policy in Viet Nam. He said he counseled the couple at length about the added difficulties of inter-racial marriage.
With Senate confirmation September 21, Walter E. Washington became “commissioner” (mayor) of Washington, D. C., and the first Negro to head a major U. S. city. The former housing administrator served four years on the board of the area council of churches and belongs to the city’s Third Baptist Church, where his late father-in-law was pastor.
Kenneth L. Wilson, executive editor of Christian Herald since 1960, assumed editorship of the interdenominational monthly October 1, succeeding Ford Stewart, editor for the past two years and an official for thirty.
Dave Simmons, a 6’4”, 245-pound hardhitting linebacker for the New Orleans Saints in the National Football League, was ordained at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where he is a candidate for the master of theology degree.
The Rev. Charles S. Spivey, Jr., will become executive secretary of the National Council of Churches’ activist Department of Social Justice November 1. A member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Spivey has been dean of Ohio’s Payne Theological Seminary.
Dr. O. P. Kretzmann, president of Lutheran-related (Missouri Synod) Valparaiso University, Indiana, has resigned, effective next June, after twenty-seven years at the institution.
Heinrich Albertz, 52, a former Reformed clergyman, quit as mayor of West Berlin after less than a year in office. His Socialist Party refused to back his choices for city jobs.
PROTESTANT PANORAMA
Seattle’s Hillcrest Presbyterian Church is believed to be the first to seek withdrawal from the United Presbyterian Church because of the Confession of 1967. The session claims to operate as an independent congregation. A surprised General Assembly spokesman said the move violates Presbyterian polity and no local church holds title to property.
Hitler and Mussolini are among fifty figures shown falling into hell in a new stained-glass window at Trinity Episcopal Church in Tulsa. The controversial, contemporary scene is part of a series of fourteen panels illustrating the Apostles’ Creed.
The “conservative” lay group Concerned Presbyterians and the “liberal” clergymen’s Fellowship of Concern, both within the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), agreed to get together for the first time for a discussion.
Dallas Methodists will build a million-dollar apartment complex near the airport in an attempt to learn how to interest apartment-dwellers in religion.
The Christian and Missionary Alliance announced purchase of a new thirty-eight-acre headquarters site overlooking the Hudson River at Nyack, New York. The present headquarters building in the heart of Manhattan’s theatrical district will be sold.
After the state Baptist convention turned down permission for a $5 million fund drive, trustees of Maryland Baptist College asked to sever convention ties and go it alone as a private evangelical school.
The California Southern Baptist says on Viet Nam: “Let Congress make a decision, let Thieu and Ky take the Vietnamese case to the U. N., and let the President tell the people exactly what is happening and where we are. Otherwise, let’s get out of Viet Nam, now.”
Protestant groups in Burma, cut off from outside missionary support, have formed a negotiating committee to work toward a united national church.
Officials of two Presbyterian groups and the Methodists of Korea signed a pact with Japan’s United Church of Christ (Kyodan) to cooperate in mission from a “wide ecumenical point of view,” the World Council of Churches reports.
Half of Australia’s 600 Baptist churches joined a national crusade that resulted in more than 2,500 commitments to Christ. The nation’s Baptist Union named former U. S. Southern Baptist Jack Hymer as evangelism director.
Protestant mission stations in the Portuguese colony of Angola have dropped from 250 to 65 since 1961, when the government blamed Protestants for a nationalist insurrection. New missionaries have been barred since 1964, and veteran missionaries cannot return if they leave the country, the New York Times reports.
Deaths
T. CHRISTIE INNES, 58, named research associate of CHRISTIANITY TODAY this year to complete a study of Calvin begun by the late J. Marcellus Kik; native of Scotland who held Presbyterian pulpits in Toronto, San Francisco, Toledo, and Pittsburgh; in Philadelphia, after a brain tumor operation.
JOHN ROBBINS HART, 78, former chaplain of the University of Pennsylvania and rector of Washington Memorial Chapel (Episcopal), Valley Forge, Pennsylvania; in Philadelphia.
J. B. GREEN, 96, former moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. and theology professor at Columbia Theological Seminary; in Atlanta.
