Return of a Bishop

An atmosphere of penurious righteousness last week permeated Manhattan's old Church of St. Mark's in-the-Bouwerie. There was no more dancing, for the Bishop was returning and soon there would be confirmations and visitations.

When Dr. William Norman Guthrie came to St. Mark's in-the-Bouwerie in 1910, he found it a quiet old place, preached many a Sunday sermon to a congregation of some 25 people, most of them old ladies. He soon changed that by inviting Parsees, Chinese, Persians to conduct their rituals in St. Mark's in-the-Bouwerie. The Protestant Episcopal Diocese of New York began to twitter. In 1923 there was a famed dance service, celebrating the feast of St. Nicholas, which was erroneously reported in the Press as a "bare-leg, bare-hip affair." Actually it was performed by a troupe of respectable, well-clad Barnard girls. But Bishop William Thomas Manning refused to countenance Dr. Guthrie's practices, forbade any further goings-on. Dr. Guthrie stood his ground, went on giving ritual dances. In 1924 Bishop Manning ceased his episcopal visitations to St. Mark's in-the-Bouwerie. There were no confirmations; the children of St. Mark's had to go elsewhere or do without.

Last December, St. Mark's in-the-Bouwerie went into involuntary orthodoxy. The church rents and investments had gone down in the Depression, leaving no more money for pageantry. This, by a curious bit of ecclesiastical weaseling. healed the breach last week between Bishop Manning and Dr. Guthrie.

Partly through the efforts of St. Mark's vestrymen, Bishop Manning agreed to resume episcopal visitations next March. He wrote Dr. Guthrie that the abandonment of dances was hardly "willing compliance with any official and canonical requests." hoped that there would be no further "disturbed relations." Dr. Guthrie addressed a formal reply to "The Bishop's Palace," assured his bishop "a most cordial welcome."

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