The Archbishop of Canterbury last month dropped his first hint that this summer’s meeting of the world’s 500 bishops will be a major turning point for the Anglican Communion. Some have suggested that the 1968 Lambeth Conference will be the last, and Archbishop A. Michael Ramsey said, “It is impossible now to prejudge what decisions may be made about the future role of Lambeth Conferences,” which have been held every ten years for the past century.

Ramsey also said the 1968 meeting will make decisions about the future organization of the Anglican Communion and “its relation to the wider ecumenical movement.” In many nations, Anglican bodies are involved in merger talks, though suspicions lurk that when the moment of decision comes, some of them may get cold feet. The parent Church of England is supposedly nearing merger with the Methodists. The Anglican Church of Canada is talking officially about 1974 merger with the United Church and gets a report this June on possibilities for intercommunion before that. But some pro-union Anglicans fear the whole thing is bogging down. In the United States, the Episcopal Church is a pivotal factor in the nine-way Consultation on Church Union, which meets again the last week of this month.

A delegate to closed-door talks between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion revealed last month that a report not yet released by Pope Paul and Archbishop Ramsey will recommend practical measures for the growing together of the two communions. This plotting of a course in the direction of unity, said Professor Eugene Fairweather of Toronto, was settled at the third joint meeting, which closed January 3.

Along with discussions of unity, signs of Anglican slackness abound. The U. S. church is relatively healthy, but some alarms went up at last fall’s convention. In the Church of England, ordinations last year dropped to a ten-year low of 496, with even lower figures forecast for the next two years.

Enrollment in Canadian Anglican seminaries this year dipped to 174—less than the figure for 1956.

All this is the background for a report issued last month by the Church of England Missionary and Ecumenical Council, which sets the stage for Lambeth. Religious News Service calls it “one of the bluntest reports” published in London in years.

It says the English church faces a real danger of “using its wealth and influence in a paternalistic or dominating way” toward other Anglican denominations. “Outside England, Anglicans wonder whether the Church of England cares any longer about the Anglican Communion now that it can no longer control it.” The document says the “provinces” are ahead of the mother church in their thought and flexibility on church union, government, liturgy, and supplemental ministries.

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The report says that “newly united churches” should not be cut off from fellowship or otherwise penalized but that the “time is not ripe” for the Anglican Communion and other world confessional bodies to die out. The report ruled out—for now—church merger talks among the confessional groups, such as the Lutheran World Federation, or with the Roman Catholic Church.

The Lambeth Conference convenes July 25, five days after the World Council of Churches assembly closes in Sweden. Its theme is “renewal” in faith, ministry, and unity. Of the world’s 47 million baptized Anglicans, 27.6 million belong to the Church of England, which also predominates in overall wealth, manpower, and missionaries. However, the U. S. Episcopal Church is the main financial contributor.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA

Methodist Publishing House workers in Nashville voted a second time against joining the bookbinders’ union, but the union is contesting the second election, as it did the first, thrown out by the NLRB. In New York, the Methodist missions board withdrew its $10 million investment portfolio from First National City Bank to protest a credit pact with South Africa.

The three major U. S. Lutheran bodies are discussing cooperative “planning and development” of church curriculums; and a meeting of their theological education staffs proposed shared plans on “the number, location, and task of Lutheran seminaries.”

St. Olaf College (American Lutheran) says it urges “equal opportunity” employment but refuses to join the Minnesota Project Equality because it does not agree with “economic pressure” on businesses.

The Free Will Baptists cut ties with the American Bible Society because of growing Roman Catholic involvement and questions on the bibliology of translators.

The Baptist community in Rwanda, Africa, has grown from 500 to 4,200 since 1962. To supply badly needed pastors, a new school with eight teachers has opened, aided by books from the World Council of Churches.

PERSONALIA

The Iowa Presbyterian Synod set March 15 for an appeal by University of Iowa English Professor Joseph Baker, tried and suspended for “disrupting the peace and unity” of his Iowa City church in opposing its decision to raze its 112-year-old building. Next step for Baker would be the denomination’s national assembly.

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Canadian Catholic theologian Gregory Baum, writing in an English Jesuit journal, says that “the Church’s mission among Jews is not to proselytise, to persuade Jews to leave their religion and join another.” Baum, born of agnostic German Jewish parents, converted in 1947.

Professor Norman Lamm of Yeshiva University criticized efforts by Christians “to legitimize homosexuality as ‘morally neutral’ ” and asserted Judaism can never agree with this view.

Former Congressman Brooks Hays will head an institute for study of the ecumenical movement at Wake Forest University (Southern Baptist Convention), starting this month. New Orleans pastor J. D. Grey, like Hays a former SBC president, was named president of the city crime commission.

Robert Garcia, a Roman Catholic priest who used to head New Mexico’s antipoverty office, was fired from the agency, then said he would marry a divorcee. The rector of Maryknoll Seminary in New York, Father George Weber, has resigned and asked for lay status and freedom from the celibacy vow.

A county judge sentenced activist priest James Groppi to a $500 fine and two years’ probation for resisting arrest during a civil-rights march in Milwaukee.

Ottawa’s Roman Catholic Archbishop Aurele Plourde revealed his own salary—$300 a month—and promised to open diocesan books to the laity.

Episcopal Bishop Coadjutor Robert Appleyard of Pittsburgh was consecrated in a service in the Roman Catholic cathedral.

German Catholic Bishop Joseph Hoffner gave “conditional” ordination to former U. S. Episcopal priest John Jay Hughes in a private ceremony, apparently recognizing validity of Anglican orders.

Burmese Baptist layman U Kyaw Than was named general secretary of the East Asia Christian Conference, replacing Dr. D. T. Niles. The EACC approved four new denominations, bringing its membership to ninety-one groups in sixteen countries.

J. Robertson McQuilkin, 40, son of the founder, was named president of Columbia (South Carolina) Bible College. He is a missionary in Japan.

MISCELLANY

The U. S. welfare department will make offers of birth-control information mandatory for health and welfare recipients, instead of waiting for them to ask.

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The Churches of God in North America want Maryland’s Court of Appeals to overthrow a county-court ruling permitting two congregations to leave the denomination and keep their church buildings. The denomination says the ruling violates church-state separation.

Catholic University law teacher John J. McGrath contends in a new book that church charities and schools “are now owned by the sponsoring body.… If anyone owns the assets, … it is the general public.”

The war on poverty gave $810,748 to maintain fifty-six schools for migrant workers run by the New Mexico Council of Churches.

Pope Paul enthusiastically praised the 1929 Lateran Pact for bringing “religious peace in the life of the Italian people.”

Wycliffe Bible Translators has published the New Testament for Mexico’s Huichol Indians. Wycliffe started work with the tribe in 1941 and now counts at least 400 believers among the group.

Fifty-four Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose troubles have been described recently in the cult’s publications, were refused admittance to Zambia and ordered back to Malawi, where several have reportedly been slain.

Orissa State in India passed a law with penalties of $1,000 fine or a year in prison for missionaries who convert minors, women, or untouchables. Penalties will be doubled if evangelism entails “force, fraud, or exploitation of property.” The Church of South India Synod protested that the bill “ignores the right of every citizen freely to hold any views and convictions.” In Bombay, Salvation Army General Frederick Coutts asked India to continue to allow foreign workers to minister there.

Deaths

EDWARD J. YOUNG, 60, Old Testament teacher for thirty-one years at Westminster Theological Seminary; of a heart attack.

ELIEZER SILVER, 86, leading Orthodox rabbi who helped rescue 500,000 Jews from the Nazis; in Cincinnati.

STEWART DOSS, 52, religion writer for the Dallas Times-Herald; of a heart attack.

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