Plan of Union: The Nose on COCU’s Face

Even an Irishman can’t hit a nose that isn’t there, quipped United Methodist bishop James K. Mathews at the opening press conference of the Consultation on Church Union in St. Louis this month. But now, said the COCU chairman, for the first time the consultation had a nose in front of it, after sixty-one arduous days of work by the Plan of Union Commission. The result of their effort was a 156-page proposal that could unite nine denominations into one church by the end of the decade.¹

Dr. William A. Benfield, Jr., a Southern Presbyterian pastor from Charleston, West Virginia, with a genial personality and a well-defined nose, pointed to that feature and shot back at Mathews: “Now I know why they chose me to be chairman of the drafting commission.” Later, the 250 delegates, observers, and guests at COCU’s ninth plenary session gave Benfield a standing ovation after he presented the plan of union. The “hitting” started later.

But criticisms and revisions of the plan, which must now be voted on by the participating churches, were relatively mild and minor; preliminary approval of the document proceeded chapter by chapter with few surprises. This could be a testimony to the smooth groundwork laid by COCU planners. Some said it showed apathy for a super denomination that would be obsolete before it was born.

Of the ninety voting delegates (ten from each denomination), sixty-eight were either clergy or full-time church workers. Eight were women, and about half a dozen were youths. Cynics said the older, clerical orientation showed.

By mid-session, at least, there had been no demonstrations or microphone seizures. Even radical renewalist Stephen Rose looked subdued and chastened in a dark suit—a contrast to his volatile appearance at the Detroit assembly of the National Council of Churches last December. Ubiquitous Carl McIntire of fundamentalist fame was in town, as usual, to denounce COCU as “a miscarriage,” and, as usual, to broaden his attack: “We’re fighting Rome, Geneva, the NCC, and the new evangelicals.”

Speaking of anticipated COCU progress, Benfield said the next several years could be “the most effective and creative in the history of the American Protestant church.” A unique parish plan (see April 11, 1969, issue, page 47) and a strong stand against racism are considered to be outstanding features of the plan of union.

Some stumbling blocks showed up at St. Louis, however. Bishops and their place and power in the united church continued to perplex Episcopalians and United Methodists, and especially members of the three black Methodist churches. One Christian Methodist Episcopal pastor said that if the black churches don’t go into the union, it will be because they fear the weakening of their bishops’ powers in the new church.

Negro delegates also feared “black presence” may be swallowed up in the united church of some 20 million whites and only 4 million blacks. The Negro delegates pressed for assurance that racial balance would be achieved throughout. The consultation changed an earlier requirement that the first presiding bishop of the church be black, making that office alternate between bishops of different racial backgrounds. The consultation also voted that a constitutional provision “insure full participation of minority groups at every level of ministry, proportionate at the very least to the membership of such groups in the uniting church.”

Dr. Albert C. Outler, spritely professor of theology at southern Methodist University (a United Methodist delegate), found fault with the wording of the union draft. It shows “little understanding of the real meaning of radical theology and secularization,” he said. “It’s going to sound old hat unless it can be recast into theological language of the seventies.”

In group discussions, others agreed the plan was a cumbersome package badly in need of simplification. The plan fails to describe how the structures of uniting churches will be combined, a knotty problem.

United Methodist bishop Paul Washburn of Minnesota wanted the plan to emphasize more “personal religion”; a few words to “personalize” it were added. Several evangelicals remarked that the draft doesn’t call on man to love God for his own sake: love for God is chiefly expressed in terms of reconciliation ministry. The document makes little mention of sin (though it refers to the sin of disunity).

Church of South India bishop Lesslie Newbigin of Madras, who was the daily Bible lecturer, commented that COCU’s “present theological statements emphasize too much the activist, programmatic aspects of the life of the Church … and imbalance.” Earlier, he asserted: “We have protected our churches against the charge that we might be interested in evangelism.”

A United Presbyterian delegate expressed hope that COCU participants will take seriously the plan of union’s creedal affirmations and its relatively high Christology.

Each morning the Reverend George B. Thomas, a black professor of theology at Interdenominational Seminary in Atlanta, led the consultation in singing a hymn in Swahili. It was a nice touch. By the end of the week, most delegates were learning the words and their meaning. But it doubtless will be years before the impact of the voluminous plan of union will be fully understood by those in the pulpits and the pews of the proposed Church of Christ Uniting.

RUSSELL CHANDLER

Ecumenical Journalism

The Christian Century, traditional voice of liberal theological thought in the United States, will absorb a five-year-old British paper with similar inclinations June 1.

The New Christian will cease separate publication thereafter and its name will appear on the cover and masthead of the 86-year-old Century. The editor of the British publication, Trevor Beeson, will become the Century’s full-time European editor.

A Century spokesman was quoted in the New York Times as saying that a major supporter of the New Christian had said he could no longer continue substantial financial backing.

The Century is said to have a current circulation of about 38,000, the New Christian about 9,500.

Pioneering In Portugal

Portuguese officials considered the event a “theatrical spectacle” and barred minors from attending. Evangelist John Haggai and his colleagues from Evangelism International in Atlanta called the effort a spiritual victory. The Americans had gone to Portugal in February for a three-part evangelistic crusade.

First came two weeks of preliminary services and prayer meetings led by a team of American ministers and laymen. Close behind came Haggai for a week-long crusade in Oporto, Portugal’s second city, home of port wine. A century earlier, missionary James Cassells, one of the “Cambridge Seven” converted under the ministry of D. L. Moody, was stoned in Oporto. On the site of his predecessor’s persecution, Haggai preached to overflow crowds.

The third stage took Haggai and his staff to Lisbon. There 3,000 people attended the first meeting at the capital’s largest indoor arena. Each night for two weeks attendance increased until the 5,000-seat Sports Pavilion was crammed with more than 7,000 people for the final meeting on March 8.

Good-By Gantry

Elmer Gantry almost came back to haunt clergymen. Sinclair Lewis’s portrayal of an incorrigible prophet for profit was a pamphleteering novel in the late twenties that became a popular movie in the late fifties. This month the cavalier evangelist swung onto the New York stage.

Gantry’s stage life was short. Poor casting (a classically trained Englishman played the earthy Midwesterner), among other problems, made a bad play that was killed by bad reviews after four performances.

Rainbow Over Abilene

There were as many variegated theological hues as ever at the Abilene Christian College Lectures this year (February 21–26), but a growing willingness to keep the colors in the same spectrum was also apparent.

While having no decision-making function, the lectures in Abilene, Texas, are annually the largest single gathering for the approximately 18,500 independent Churches of Christ, right-wing heirs of the nineteenth-century “Restoration” led by Thomas and Alexander Campbell. This year, an estimated 9,000 visitors attended. These Christians are distinguished from the Church of Christ and Christian Church members that attend the North American Christian Convention by their opposition to the use of musical instruments in worship. Both groups were once related to the congregations composing the ecumenically minded and centrally organized Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Conservative Reuel Lemmons of Austin, Texas, editor of the Firm Foundation, one of the most popular religious journals among the churches, said, “We’ve got great extremes of points of view that are poles apart. But the spirit of the crowd here as a whole is tolerant, informal, and fraternal.”

Much of this atmosphere is credited to Dr. John C. Stevens, 51, who was inaugurated February 21 as the eighth president of the liberal-arts college. Stevens, who moved up from assistant president, is himself a complex blend of conservative religious views and modern times. He is in wide demand as a civic and after-dinner speaker, and his down-homey talks never quite lose the flavor of the pulpit, which he has frequently filled. But they are laced with up-to-date applications of anecdotes from his academic field of history—and he flies himself to many of his engagements in his own single-engine plane.

ACC is technically not a “church school,” since it accepts no contributions from churches but depends on individual and governmental funds. Stevens and Dr. William J. Humble, new academic dean, were instrumental in adding the “committed college” category to the Danforth report on church-related colleges.

Conservative preachers in the churches are of course alarmed at such openness. Representatives of the “anticooperation” faction passed out literature at the lectures, reasserting their stand against churches’ contributing to central funds for mission and benevolent work. Another group circulated statements protesting the work of brethren who have rebuked a sister school, Harding College in Searcy, Arkansas, for its conservative political alignment.

At the other end of the spectrum, effervescent Carl W. Ketcherside of St. Louis attended to press for greater fellowship among all Churches of Christ and Christian Churches regardless of their views on musical instruments. And, while lecture space was allowed for hard-liners who left the impression that heaven is closed to those of differing views, the biggest crowds went to hear younger men score the churches themselves for that kind of thinking.

Two basic issues promise to keep such tensions alive—the churches’ refusal to subscribe to a written creed, and their understanding of baptism.

The lack of a creed has long attracted both (1) those who give equal weight to every verse of Scripture and hence divide from those who differ at any point, and (2) those who view the lack of a doctrinal statement to be a liberating influence calling for a greater tolerance of fellowship.

The insistence on the immersion of professing believers “for the remission of sins” and into the “church of Christ” (small c) continues to make the churches’ relationship with other believers problematic. A growing minority of leaders, both in and out of the churches’ pulpits, seem willing to admit that unsettled questions in their own ranks prevent a simple and exclusive identification of themselves with the New Testament church. They freely air such issues in a new journal, Mission, edited by Roy Bowen Ward, a Harvard Ph.D.

However, while protesting that they judge no one’s condition before God, those in the mainstream in the churches continue to respond to the more conservative leadership of men such as Lemmons, whose journal is enjoying its highest circulation in history.

Many believe that whether or not the churches hang together depends on the flexibility of men like Stevens at ACC, who said, “I figure if we [the college] can keep the conservatives and the liberals both just a little bit disappointed in us that we may be down the broad middle.”

RON DURHAM

Jews Legislate Their Identity

Israel’s Knesset (parliament) enacted a new law this month that defines a Jew as either one born of a Jewish mother, or a convert. The legislation in effect overturns a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court allowing registration of Jews in Israel by nationality without regard for religious affiliation.

A stormy debate preceded the vote, which was fifty-one to fourteen with nine abstentions. Even though the definition is similar to the interpretation of Jewish law by Orthodox rabbis, some of them complained that it recognized conversions by Reform rabbis.

One Orthodox rabbi whipped out a Reform prayer book, spat on it, and threw it on the floor. He later apologized. His ire had been aroused, he said, because the Reform prayer book had eliminated references to the return of Zion, the coming of the personal Messiah, the rebuilding of the Temple, as well as the resurrection of the dead.

The incident was doubly embarrassing for Israel because at the time the rabbis of the Reform movement in America were holding their convention in Jerusalem.