Methodists Left

The Hearst Press is currently engaged in one of its periodic Red-hunts, this time against schoolteachers and college professors. Other Red-fearers up & down the land are urging passage of a Federal antisedition bill, a bill to bar Communist publications from the mails, a bill to re-establish an anti-Red secret service section of the Department of Justice.

Last week in Manhattan a group of gentlemen denounced Mr. Hearst's "campaign of terrorism" as a "particularly vicious and insidious form of propaganda."* As to the anti-Red bills, said these gentlemen, if anything is needed it is repeal of existing statutes rather than enactment of new ones.

No news is it when the American Civil Liberties Union or the editors of New Masses take the offensive against Tories. But the Manhattan group who flayed Mr. Hearst were no professional radicals. They were 50 churchmen from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut -- members of the New York Methodist "area" headed by Bishop Francis John McConnell.

"You can't be a Methodist," says big, imposing Bishop McConnell, 63, "without putting things strongly." A bishop since 1912, he has been transferred from area to area and never put things more strongly than when he was Bishop of Pittsburgh. There, in 1920, he fought the steelmasters, kept them from unseating him when he urged an 8-hour day, a 6-day week. As chairman of an investigating committee during the great steel strike, Bishop McConnell turned in a report which was a forerunner of the Steel Report made by the Federal Council of Churches in 1923.

Bishop of New York since 1931, this frankly socialistic churchman is only slightly more radical than his local colleagues. The last two conferences of the New York area voted notably Leftist resolutions, even after some of the socialistic utterances had been laundered out of them. Last year it took a close vote for the New York Methodists to refrain from going on record for socialization of banking, basic industries, communications, transportation, natural resources, "economic processes and professional services."

It is nearly 200 years since John Wesley in 1738 felt his heart strangely warmed by Jesus Christ. That experience was the beginning of Methodism. Wesley's Church ever since has been theologically roomy. Likewise it has been on the side of poor people against the rich. In the U. S., decades ago, Methodists began preaching Prohibition, that great reform which was to save people from the brewers and saloonkeepers. Methodists also espoused labor's causes -- collective bargaining, shorter hours, unemployment insurance-- when to do so seemed downright radical. Today in the perceptible leftward swing of U. S. religion, Methodism as a whole has gone farther than any other single sect. Some recent examples:

P: Last year the ministers of Newark (N. J.) Methodist conference voted 2-to-1 to request their bishop to refrain henceforth from appointing any of their number as Army or Navy chaplains.

P: Last autumn a conference of Wisconsin Methodists vexed and alarmed laymen by calling capitalism "unChristian, unethical and anti-social," plumping for "social ownership and democratic management of the principal means of production and distribution."

P: Last month 50 Pennsylvania and Maryland Methodists put themselves on record as disavowing any obligation to their nation in wartime.

P: The Methodist Federation for Social Service, a privately-supported semi-official organization in the Church, last year adopted a new slogan: ". . . To abolish the profit system in order to develop a classless society based upon the obligation of mutual service." Vigilantly antiFascist, the Federation gets out a monthly bulletin on "Social Questions" which is widely circulated in Methodist areas. Last month's bulletin contained a survey of the New Deal by Dr. Harry F. Ward, theology professor at Union Theological Seminary. He charged that President Roosevelt's program "tends to lower the American standard of living, creates an artificial scarcity, and works top-heavily in favor of big businessmen and bankers." Declaring that the New Deal aims at "Recovery for the profit system," Professor Ward said it represents "the exact opposite of what liberals, including leaders in the social movement in the churches, have envisaged. . . ."

*By that curious journalistic ethic which forbids a newspaper to mention a competitor if it can possibly be avoided, no New York daily except Mr. Hearst's American reported the protest.

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