Presbyterians

Graduations. Two front-rank Presbyterian divinity schools conducted their graduation exercises last week. Princeton

Theological Seminary, important because it is a prime school of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. as well as the denomination's oldest, held its 118th exercises. Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, important because it is the doctrinal incubator for those dissident Fundamentalists who broke away from Princeton last year (TIME, Aug. 5), held its first exercises.

Westminster's trustees took the occasion to choose a school president. They chose Dr. Frank Herbert Stevenson, 47, able tract-writing minister of Cincinnati's Church of the Covenant. Twenty-one years ago he was missionary to the Indians on the Fort Peck Reservation at La Plata, Mont. Before that he was working for telephone and electric light concerns on the Pacific Coast. He was ordained in 1911. In seminary, work he is president of the board of trustees of Lane Theological at Cincinnati, and was, before the Princeton schism, a member of Princeton Theological's directorate. He is not to be confused with that much more experienced school man, Dr. Joseph Ross Stevenson, 64, president of Princeton Theological since 1914, onetime (1915) moderator of his Church.

Women. For a decade Presbyterian women have sought admission to their theocracy. At the Presbyterian General Assembly in St. Paul last year their protagonists succeeded in getting referred to the presbyteries the overtures that 1) women be ordained as ministers; 2) women serve as ruling elders; 3) women serve as local evangelists. Last week the decision on two points was conclusive: the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. will not permit ordination of women as ministers, but will permit their election as ruling elders, permission which makes possible a woman as moderator. Votes on the other point were not completed last week.

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