At Denver (Concl.)

Rudyard Kipling's God of Things as They are might have beamed kindly approval last week as the Protestant Episcopal Church wound up its 50th triennial General Convention in Denver, Col. (TIME, Sept. 28, Oct. 5). Of the controversial subjects discussed, almost all had been settled by compromise between Liberal and Conservative groups. Exception : present-day politics and economics, which the Bishops denounced vigorously in a pastoral letter addressed to all the Church. It asked that the U. S. reduce its armaments, confer and cooperate with other nations, especially through "existing international agencies" for world peace. Said the letter: "An acquisitive society, as the modern age has been aptly called, stands bewildered in the presence of a crisis precipitated ... by the competitive, profit-seeking principles upon which, it has hitherto been assumed, general prosperity is based. . . .

"We call upon . . . employers ... to labor for the adoption of a plan or plans which shall co-ordinate production and consumption, insure continuity of employment . . . security of income. . . . The profit-seeking motive must give way to that of service."

Previously, the Convention had adopted the report of the Commission on Industrial Dislocation, Lawlessness & World Peace (TIME, Oct. 5). In addition to on equivocal appraisal of Prohibition, it said. "Side by side with . . . misery and idleness, there are warehouses bursting with goods . . . ; breadlines; . . . jobless men; money in abundance. . . . The conception of society as made up of autonomous independent individuals ... is as faulty from the point of view of economic realism as it is from the standpoint of Christian idealism. Our traditional philosophy of rugged individualism must be modified. . . ."

Deputy George Woodward Wickersham took strong exception to this conclusion. He called it Soviet. He said: "I think it would be a sad day when the American people abandon the principles on which they have grown to greatness. This is perhaps one of the most important pronouncements that the Church has ever been called upon to make, and I object to being bound by it."

Deputy Rev. John Howard Melish of Brooklyn who helped write the report pointed out that many of its recommendations were quoted from or based on statements of Gerard Swope, Owen D. Young and Supreme Court Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis. Nevertheless, upon Deputy Wickersham's complaint the House of Deputies deleted the House of Bishops' recommendation ("representing the mind of the Church"), said merely that the report was "given careful consideration."

Divorce. Also compromised was the question of remarriage of divorced persons. As drawn up by a joint committee of both houses, the new Canon No. 43 (to take effect next Jan. 1) provides that only the innocent party in a divorce for adultery may be remarried with the full sanction of the Church. All divorced persons may now (in the discretion of the bishop) become church communicants. A handy word, "nullity." provides that divorced persons may apply to the bishop of the diocese or a properly constituted ecclesiastical court to have any previous marriage annulled. Grounds are: consanguinity; lack of free consent; mistaken identity; mental deficiency; insanity; failure of either party to have reached the age of puberty before marriage; impotence; venereal disease; bigamy. Testimony may be advanced which did not appear in the civil divorce suit, and the case may be judged without calling to court the former spouse. Once annulled, a marriage is regarded as having never existed; but the legitimacy of offspring is not affected.

Church opinion was that the new canon is much more liberal than was to be expected. Rev. Guy Emery Shipler, editor of The Churchman pointed out that "a liberal bishop will act liberally in its application; a conservative will act conservatively. Liberals are amazed, however, that the present advance has been made."

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