Join World Council of Churches, Russian Prelate Urges

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Christianity in the World Today

“I will report to the Soviet churches, recommending that they join the World Council.”

The speaker, according to Religious News Service, was Metropolitan Nikolai, second-ranking leader of the Moscow Patriarchate, who had just met for two days with top WCC officials at Utrecht, The Netherlands.

The metropolitan’s declaration represented the most significant development thus far toward possible Russian Orthodox Church membership in the WCC.

“We cannot express a firm decision on joining the World Council of Churches,” Metropolitan Nikolai was quoted as saying. “We can only say the next stage will be one of consultation with Soviet church leaders.”

A joint statement issued after the meeting said the Russian delegation would report to the Moscow patriarch and synod that it was in “a spirit of full sympathy with the fundamental principles of the ecumenical movement.”

The Soviet delegates, the statement added, will also report favorably on the conference to other autonomous Eastern European Orthodox churches which, like the Russian body, refused to join the WCC when it was formed at Amsterdam in 1948.

The Utrecht conference was the first official meeting between leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church and the WCC, which was represented by General Secretary W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, Central Committee Chairman Franklin Clark Fry, and Greek Orthodox Metropolitan James of Melita, a member of the Central Committee.

Metropolitan Nikolai said the conference provided “undoubtedly a good basis for future contacts” between the Russian Orthodox Church and WCC leaders. He was accompanied to the meeting by Archbishop Michael of Smolensk and Mr. Alexis Buevsky, a layman.

The statement said that WCC leaders were similarly in favor of further contacts with the Russian Orthodox Church. The WCC representatives were also reported as having expressed intentions to recommend at the Central Committee’s August 21–29 meeting at Nyborgstrand, Denmark, that Russian Orthodox observers be invited to sit in, if this is agreeable to the Soviet church.

Although the August 7–9 conference at Utrecht had been arranged rather hurriedly, both sides had been expressing interest in such a meeting for some time.

Ten Years Ago

Why did the Russian Orthodox Church choose to remain out of the World Council of Churches when the ecumenical body was formally constituted in August, 1948?

The Russian Orthodox Church surely had its chance. An invitation to join was received in good time prior to the WCC’s first assembly at Amsterdam, a milestone which the Central Committee commemorated last month with a service in the Cathedral of Odense, Denmark.

Eight Orthodox bodies seriously considered a “charter member” move at a Pan-Orthodox Conference in Moscow in July, 1948. Stalinist pressure undoubtedly influenced their decision.

The conference voted against affiliating with the World Council. No representatives appeared at the Amsterdam assembly. From Moscow the word came that the WCC was “mainly political and anti-democratic and does not follow ecclesiastical aims.”

Music For America

The attraction at Denver’s boulder-rimmed Red Rocks Theater was one of the finer types of Gospel music presentations, with many top artists on hand.

People from five or more states came to hear the sacred notes of 300 musicians resound in the near-perfect acoustics of the awe-inspiring outdoor amphitheater.

The festival was more than a pleasant August evening’s entertainment. It was a big trial step for an enterprise seeking (1) to bring to the American public large-scale concert productions with an evangelical flavor, and (2) to provide a continuing outlet for Gospel artists.

The medium is Music for America, an organization which for the past two years has been presenting sacred concerts in Pasadena, California. Cy Jackson, Pasadena advertising promoter, is its creator and producer.

Denver was the first outward thrust of Music for America. Using a group of evangelical church leaders as local sponsors, the program was billed around such personalities as orchestral leader Ralph Carmichael and his songstress wife, basso Bill Carle, singer-composer Stuart Hamblen, tenor John Gustafson, organist Les Barnett, violinist John Cuneo, pianist Charles Magnuson, and choral coordinator Jack Coleman. In addition, the concert featured the quartet which gained fame with the Old Fashioned Revival Hour, along with soprano Beth Farnam and pianist Rudy Atwood, both of whom also are known to listeners of the Charles E. Fuller radio program. The soloists were supported by a choir of 250 and 48 Denver Symphony Orchestra members.

Music for America sponsors had good reason to be encouraged by the result. The advance ticket sale was the largest in Red Rocks Theater history. The attendance of 10,500 was the theater’s second largest of the season (first: Van Cliburn). Some persons came from Kansas, Iowa, Wyoming, Nebraska, and far-removed parts of Colorado only to stand throughout the concert or sit on the cold crimson boulders which rise 600 feet above the seating galleries.

The audience seemed well repaid for any inconvenience. The two-and-a-half-hour program won widespread acclaim. The Rocky Mountain News called the concert “a memorable occasion.” Best loved were Carle’s inspiring “How Great Thou Art,” Hamblen’s “It Is No Secret,” and the ensemble’s rendition of Newbury’s “Psalm 150.” Miss Farnam sang “The Holy City” with a “sweet interpretation clearly and delicately given,” according to the News. The program also premiered Carmichael compositions.

A Lag Develops

Church membership gains failed to keep up with America’s population growth last year, according to the Yearbook of American Churches for 1959.

Nevertheless, church membership in the United States reached a new high of 104,189,678 in 1957, a gain of 964,724 over the previous year, the book reports.

For the first time since World War II, the membership percentage increase was lower than that estimated for the population as a whole. Last year church membership rose by 0.9 per cent, while the population rise was estimated at 1.7 per cent. In 1956, when 62 out of every 100 Americans were reported to have church affiliation, the membership increase was 3 per cent, nearly twice that of the reported population rise. This year’s 61 per cent figure is the second highest on record.

The figures were compiled by the National Council of Churches, which publishes the yearbook.

Of the grand total with religious affiliation, 59,823,777 are Protestants, 35,846,477 Roman Catholics, 5,500,000 Jews, 2,540,446 Eastern Orthodox, and 273,692 Old Catholics and Polish National Catholics.

(The Roman Catholic church considers all persons who are baptized, including infants, to be church members. Most Protestant church bodies count only those young people and adults who have attained full membership.)

In major Protestant “family” groupings, Baptists lead with nearly 20 million members in 27 different church bodies. Next are Methodists with more than 12 million in 22 bodies. Lutherans have some 71/2 million in 19 bodies, while Presbyterians have 4 million in 10 bodies.

Top 10 Protestant groups: Methodist Church, 9,543,245; Southern Baptist Convention, 8,956,756; National Baptist Convention, U. S. A., Inc., 4,557,416; United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., 3,032,977; Protestant Episcopal Church, 2,965,137; National Baptist Convention of America, 2,668,799; United Lutheran Church in America, 2,305,455; Congregational Christian—Evangelical and Reformed merged church, 2,192,674; Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, 2,150,230; Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), 1,943,599.

‘Art’ And Morality

Have Las Vegas morals dipped to a new low in a rash of nudity shows?

Increased business was not to be interpreted as “the voice of the people,” the pastor of one of Nevada’s largest Methodist churches warned operators of Las Vegas hotels featuring chorus girls nude from the waist up.

“How many of these people are tourists in town for a good time?” asked Dr. Donald O’Connor, pastor of the First Methodist Church in Las Vegas.

Whatever the full moral ramifications, Las Vegas ministers saw the situation as an opportunity for a referendum call on the whole question of legal gambling.

“If the gambling fraternity is not able to police itself against such situations as are current,” said the Rev. Walter Bishop of the First Baptist Church, “the citizens of the state will do it for them.”

Abel Greene, editor of the show business trade journal Variety, predicted that sponsors of the nudity shows will “back down” rather than risk gambling rights.

Night club acts featuring naked show girls are not new, but “come in cycles,” he said. Statutes in various communities, however, govern the circumstances. In New York City, for example, nude tableaux are permitted as a form of art. Legal control is hampered by lack of a clear distinction as to what constitutes art and what panders to lust.

Clergy reaction to Las Vegas nudity shows was led by a condemnation from Roman Catholic Bishop Robert J. Dwyer, and Variety reported an ironic note relative to his criticism. The night before the bishop issued his statement, St. Bridget’s Catholic Church Altar Society sponsored a bingo party. First prize, Variety reported, was dinner for two at the Stardust Hotel, which was featuring the “bare bosom” Lido de Paris show.

Sunday Firing

Was the Air Force justified to schedule its first moon rocket launching on a Sunday? Might the U. S. government have followed a more honorable course, in deference to the country’s Christian roots, by specifying a weekday for its initial lunar shot?

The decision to fire a moon rocket on Sunday morning, August 17, was “out of line,” said the Rev. Melvin M. Forney, general secretary of the Lord’s Day Alliance of the United States.

“Every important adventure in American history has had divine blessing,” Forney added. “To desecrate the Lord’s Day by firing a moon rocket may give those who are more spiritually-minded real cause for concern.”

Forney suggested the moon shot’s failure may have been “divine chastisement.”

“It would do us well to stop and consider whether the failure was purely human,” he said.

It was generally reported that the Sunday firing date had been agreed upon weeks in advance. Air Force officials had also indicated the following Monday and Tuesday to be acceptable alternates, should a temporary delay have arisen.

Forney said it would have been more in keeping with Christian principles to launch the rocket on a weekday, even if the date chosen offered less than optimum physical conditions as compared with Sunday.

Liberal Ties

Members of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America will vote in February on whether the two bodies should merge.

Poll plans were announced at the five-day sixteenth congress of the International Association for Liberal Christianity in Chicago. Both groups were hosts to the congress, attended by representatives of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

If the Unitarian-Universalist merger is approved, a plan of union will be presented to the assemblies of each body next fall. Final membership vote on the union, if endorsed by both assemblies, is not expected to take place until 1960.

The proposed body would unite some 105,000 Unitarians and 75,000 Universalists. The United Liberal Church has been suggested as its new name.

A 12-member special commission has been negotiating the union since 1955. It conceives the merger to mean establishment of one corporation to perform for the Universalists and Unitarian churches, and possibly others, all the functions now performed by the Universalist Church of America, the American Unitarian Association and the Council of Liberal Churches. The council was formed in 1953 to federate work of various departments of the two bodies. It has been acting as an intermediary.

Among 1,000 delegates from more than 20 countries attending the congress was Bishop Miroslav Novak of the Czechoslovak Church. He said his church, largest Protestant body in the country, has some 1,000,000 members and functions without hindrance from the Communist government.

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