COCU in 50 Years?

The Consultation on Church Union, intent on real consultation, released the proposed “Outline Plan of Union” to encourage discussion a month ahead of its meeting May 2–5 in Dallas. Despite the tentative nature of the document, this proposed approach to uniting seven denominations with 23 million membersIn order of size: The Methodist Church, the Protestant Episcopal Church, the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., the United Church of Christ, the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ), the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Evangelical United Brethren Church. is breathtaking.

If all seven eventually go along, the COCU united church will encompass nearly one-third of U. S. Protestantism. But it will take time. Episcopal Bishop Robert F. Gibson, Jr., chairman of the COCU executive committee, estimates that the job might take five decades.

The COCU document describes six stages toward union, with Stage 2 ending when the current outline or an amended version of it is accepted as a “basis for future work.” Preparation of a specific plan, Stage 3, is tagged at four to ten years, but the document stresses the “danger of an interminable period of debate.” The fourth stage, preparation for union, is estimated at one to three years.

COCU planners see this as the end of the basic task. The final two stages—preparation and ratification of a constitution, and final processes—might take “a generation or more.”

The 105-page outline plan generally repeats previous work completed on biblical authority, worship, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the ministry.

The letter to member churches preceding the actual union proposal echoes the basic paradox in wide-ranging unity: “We know that we need a more soldierly discipline, but also a greater freedom within that discipline. We know we need deeper cohesion, but also a more enriching diversity.”

The e pluribus unum idea, applied to baptism, means member congregations will practice both infant and believer’s baptism. Thus one paragraph permits infant baptism as an ancient form that “manifests truly our helplessness and God’s grace on our behalf, and is also a witness to the corporateness of the Christian life.” But the next paragraph insists in contrast that “baptism requires the conscious dedication and commitment of awakened faith. By God’s gracious acts the individual is led to make a responsive decision that involves faithful obedience to the call of God in Jesus Christ.”

On the proposed church’s second “sacrament,” the “Lord’s Supper,” the document repeats agreements reached in the 1964 Princeton meeting.

The COCU plan states that “the final test of any statement of Christian belief must be its faithfulness to the Scriptures and the living Lord to whom the Scriptures bear witness.” The Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds are accepted as doctrinal bases, and the united church will also have a “responsibility” to produce “new formulations as relevant as possible to new times and situations.”

The most significant new material is that which concerns church structure, and the document stresses that it is merely “a hypothetical scheme … a framework for conversation.…”

As expected, the plan calls for “historic continuity with the episcopate of the undivided Church” as a “symbol and means of the Church’s unity.” Among the duties of the bishops are “the transmitting of the Biblical faith and Christian Tradition through teaching and preaching. Collectively, the bishops safeguard the faith; they are the principal teachers of the faith both within the Church and to the world.” The “order of presbyters (elders)” includes both professionally trained, full-time ministers—as, for example, the parish clergyman—and such non-professionals as the Presbyterians’ ruling elder and the Disciples’ lay elder. Both form a “single priesthood” (since all believers are priests), both are ordained, and the presbyterate reflects “the new forms of the ministry which may well lie ahead.” Deacons will be treated not as fledgling presbyters but as persons of a “distinctive vocation” with special responsibility for representing the Church in helping “the sick and the outcast, the hungry and the helpless, the dishonored and the disadvantaged, whether or not those in need are members of the Church.”

A major innovation is the proposal of two types of local units: “parish-congregations, organized on the basis of the residence of their members,” and “task groups for mission, education, and service.”

“Districts” of 40 to 120 of these local units will be governed by a bishop and a representative council. The nation will be divided into “regions,” each led by a council and a “presiding bishop” chosen from among bishops in the district.

On the national level, a full convention will be held every four years, made up of representatives from each regional council and all the bishops. The bishops will also meet yearly, and a “general council” chosen by the convention will meet twice a year.

The “chief executive officer” of the united church will be a “presiding bishop” chosen for a term of five to ten years, depending on his retirement age.

As the document says, many questions are unanswered, such as: “Should parish-congregations be responsible for the election of their own pastors and lay representatives, should district units be responsible for approving the installation of pastors, should the pastors themselves be responsible for what they preach, should bishops be responsible for the appointment of ministers in parish congregations and of directors and staff to the specialized ministries?”

The whole question of discipline will be of great significance in a body attempting to unite episcopal, presbyterian, and free church forms. Under the plan, bishops have “the right to speak collectively for and to their whole constituency.” And while “taxation” as such is ruled out for support of the national united church, “appropriate penalties may be determined against any who fail to support programs representatively agreed-upon and established.”

The COCU designers assert their ecumenical pre-eminence by stating that after the constitution is written, “we will still be a uniting church” and “we could confidently ask other companies of Christian people to join us in losing their separate identities in this wider, visible unity.”

It is interesting to speculate on the effect of such a united church on the National Council of Churches, since this one church would suddenly become half the organization. Such membership is approved, provided conciliar ties do not compromise “the new unity itself.” There is potential for either overlap or rivalry in the task of the church that the document calls “confession in mission,” which includes “speaking to the contemporary issues of public life.”

Protestant Panorama

The Church of the Nazarene doubled the acreage of its international headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri, by purchasing a fifty-seven-acre estate for $1.4 million. The land had been sought for a city campus by the Metropolitan Junior College of Kansas City. The sale apparently ends a decade-long struggle between the two groups to obtain the land.

The Washington City Presbytery is backing one of its clergymen, Dr. Robert P. Johnson, to succeed Dr. Eugene Carson Blake as stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church. Johnson is believed to be the first Negro candidate proposed to the nine-man nominating committee.

A Richmond, Virginia, chancery court used a legal technicality to dismiss a suit challenging admission of two Nigerian students to First Baptist Church.

Eighty young people stepped forward to volunteer for missionary service at an experimental Southern Baptist missionary rally in First Baptist Church, Columbia, South Carolina, that may be the prototype for annual rallies in each state.

New York City post office officials refused to mail medicine and relief supplies to the Red Cross and schools in North Viet Nam from a group of seventy-five Quakers.

Personalia

The Rev. Nemesio Garcia, former president of the Baptist Convention of Western Cuba, has been released from prison by the Castro government. The fate of thirty-four other Baptists imprisoned with him a year ago, including two American missionaries, is unknown.

Dr. Arthur E. Steele, who left as president of New Jersey’s Shelton College last summer in a dispute with board chairman Dr. Carl McIntire, plans to head a new institution, Clearwater (Florida) Christian College, which opens this September. Dr. Nathan Willits, former Shelton dean, will manage academic affairs.

A “Christian Hall of Fame” opened on Easter in the Canton (Ohio) Baptist Temple. The initial group of forty-three honorees are all men and mostly fundamentalists. The only living member is evangelist Bob Jones, Sr.

The new North American Fellowship of the Baptist World Alliance chose the Rev. V. Carney Hargroves, an American Baptist of Philadelphia, as chairman. Vice-chairman is U.S. Senator Jennings Randolph (D-W.Va.), a Seventh Day Baptist.

The Rev. Kenneth E. McDowell, assistant treasurer of the Church of the Brethren, becomes director of the denomination’s material-aid services, which serve the needy in sixty countries.

The Rev. Warren P. McPherson, of Parsons, Kansas, is new public relations supervisor for the Assemblies of God.

Airwaves

Italian television carried back-to-back ecumenical assessments, filmed separately, from Pope Paul, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, and World Council of Churches leader W. A. Visser ’t Hooft.

The Independent Television Network in Britain produced a controversial documentary on “The Vatican’s Millions,” which studied property not only in Rome but also in London and the United States. The program, seen only in the northern half of the country, called the church “the richest nongovernment institution in the world.”

The All-Africa Conference of Churches on May 11 opens a comprehensive training course in radio techniques for African churchmen in Nairobi, Kenya. The first class of sixteen comes from twelve nations and eight denominations, and includes one Roman Catholic.

The Congo Protestant Council has begun operating radio station ECCO, which broadcasts in French and several Congolese languages. The Rev. and Mrs. Daniel Ericson, Evangelical Covenant Church missionaries, are in charge.

The Methodist Television, Radio, and Film Commission plans to move offices from Nashville to New York City before 1968.

On Campus

Eight students were dismissed from Boston’s strict St. John’s Seminary after demonstrating against school policies while Cardinal Cushing held a pastors’ meeting. Then Catholic laymen joined seminarians in picketing, fasting, and other protests.

Harvard Divinity School marks its 150th anniversary April 20 and 21 with a series of lectures, discussions, and a commemorative concert.

San Francisco Theological Seminary has recruited two new teachers: Dr. Dieter Georgi from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and Dr. E. David Willis from Princeton Theological Seminary.

Baylor University this fall becomes the first Baptist institution to offer a Ph.D. in religion. Three new teachers will be added to the Department of Religion as part of the program.

Asbury Theological Seminary has established a “Church in Society” department to “interpret the biblical message of salvation in terms of the needs and understanding of people in diverse cultures and social classes.”

A Farewell To Brunner

At ten minutes before two the great bell of Zürich’s Fraumünster began to toll. The fifteenth-century cathedral was bathed in sunlight the Tuesday after Easter at the funeral of Emil H. Brunner, eminent Swiss theologian who died April 6.

On the hour, the bell ceased and the strains of Bach’s Fantasy in C signaled the beginning of the service for the capacity congregation.

Although he was honored throughout the world as a leading exponent of “crisis theology” (see editorial, page 28), Brunner’s local reputation was that of a popular preacher whose monthly sermons were known for their simplicity. The Swiss said that when he spoke, Fraumünster was a place you could send your housemaid.

Dr. Arthur Rich, Brunner’s successor at the University of Zürich, said he was “a theologian through and through, but he always took seriously his responsibilities toward all men and the world.” The cathedral pastor, Peter Vogelsanger, lauded Brunner as an inquirer, saying “the strength of Christian man lies not in doctrine, influence, or intellect, nor in the strength of the institution he represents, but in the spirit of Christian liberty.”

The inscriptions on floral arrangements surrounding Gothic portals at the eastern end of the nave testified to the extent of Brunner’s impact, but the congregation was mostly elderly, part of the 77-year-old professor’s generation, and no reference was made to younger theologians. The organ closed the two-hour service with the “Halleluia Chorus.”

JAMES BOICE

Miscellany

Grape-pickers in California won recognition of their labor union this month from Schenley Industries and the Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic order that operates a profitable winery. The breakthrough followed eight months of agitation by the farm workers, who received significant aid from Protestant and Catholic clergymen.

The Food and Drug Administration has asked college executives to try to prevent students from using the hallucinogen LSD. New York officials also expressed concern during a one-day conference on how to curtail usage. In that state, police link the drug to a homicide case, and fear permanent personality damage in a girl who ate an LSD-soaked sugar cube of her uncle’s by mistake.

The Gallup Poll reports widespread support for sterilization under special conditions: if a woman has more children than she can care for and asks to be sterilized (64 per cent approve); if parents have mental or physical afflictions and ask to be sterilized (76 per cent); if a mother’s health would be endangered by her having more children (78 per cent).

Canada’s House of Commons voted 143 to 112 to retain the nation’s penalty of death by hanging for treason and premeditated murder, despite strong support for change from some churchmen.

Chairman Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani said the Pope’s new birth-control study commission may make its final report before summer. Leading Canadian theologian Gregory Baum asserted this month that since churchmen are divided on the issue, Catholic families may obey their own conscience on contraception.

On Easter Eve, thousands of jeering teen-agers milled and shouted “God is dead” as Patriarch Alexei, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, led a ceremonial procession at Yalokhovsky Cathedral in Moscow.

Permanent, official liaison has been set up between the Roman Catholic Bishops’ Commission for Ecumenical Affairs and the National Council of Churches. A thirty-six-member “Working Group” will meet regularly, chaired by Catholic Bishop John H. Carberry and Dr. John Coventry Smith (United Presbyterian).

Deaths

WILLIAM B. EERDMANS, SR., 83, founder (fifty-six years ago) and owner of the firm that bears his name, the most influential evangelical publishing house of his generation; also collector of rare books on Calvinism; in Grand Rapids, Michigan, of a heart ailment.

RAY LEE, 21, student body president at Free Will Baptist Bible College, Nashville, Tennessee; of a cerebral hemorrhage during an intramural basketball game on campus.

DR. BOB INGERSOLL, 80, Baptist minister and former superintendent of Chicago’s Pacific Garden Mission; in Grayling, Michigan.

COLONEL IRA A. PALM, 53, member of the National Council of the Officers’ Christian Union; in Walter Reed Army Hospital, of Hodgkin’s disease.

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