''Scandal, Disgrace"

The Protestant church is not only split by sectarianism, but suffers the further weakness of conflict between the sects. Many Protestant preachers realize this but avoid the subject as unpleasant. Many others are busy adding to the confusion. Not so Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, curly-headed, fat-cheeked, dynamic pastor of Manhattan's Park Avenue Baptist Church. Last week he made one of the direct, unequivocal remarks which distinguish him from so many divines, which make the overflow of his congregations willing to listen to him by radio in the basement of his church in order to earn admission to regular upstairs pews on the following Sunday (TIME, Oct. 29).

Speaking to the summer faculty and students of Columbia University he was, as usual, prevailingly optimistic. Said he: ''There will be more revolutionary changes in our forms of ecclesiastical organization than we now can easily imagine. . . . Religion itself will always rise unconquered . . . for the complicated life forced on us by our mechanized civilization only emphasizes the difficulty and evokes the need of spiritual superiority in the individual."

But from this sanguine look ahead, he turned to the present and solemnly, outspokenly startled his audience. ''Our Protestant denominationalism," he said, "with over 150 sects in the U. S., has become utterly obsolete, so far as modern significance is concerned, and is now a public scandal and disgrace!"