Battle of Columbus (Concl.)

Unlike Catholics and Episcopalians, Methodists do not believe in that "Apostolic Succession" by which bishops derive their spiritual powers from an unbroken line of bishops dating back to the time of Christ. Methodists feel a Methodist bishop is just a plain man in an ordi- nary business suit who puts "Bishop" rather than "Rt. Rev." or "Most Rev." before his name. He is not attached for life to any one diocese but may be transferred from one Methodist "area" to an-other by the conference which elects him. Last week in Columbus, Ohio the 3 2nd quadrennial General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church elected by a two-thirds majority of the 600 conference delegates five new bishops who were consecrated by a simple laying-on of hands at a Sunday service with hymns, prayers and scriptural readings.

Rev. John McKendree Springer, for 35 years a missionary in Africa, was consecrated a missionary bishop, sent back to his field in the Congo. Another outlander simultaneously consecrated was Rev. Roberto Elphick, elected bishop some months ago by the Methodists of Chile and Peru.

Rev. Alexander Preston Shaw, 57, of New Orleans, is editor of the Southwestern Christian Advocate. Most Methodist bishops look alike, with their white faces, firm jaws, thin lips. Bishop Shaw is physically unique in that he is a Negro. He is to succeed retiring Negro Bishop Matthew Wesley Clair of Covington, Ky.

Dr. Wilbur Emery Hammaker, 60, pastor for 21 years of Trinity M. E. Church in Youngstown, Ohio, and Dr. Charles Wesley Flint, 57, Chancellor of Syracuse University, were both rightly regarded by the conference as conservative Methodists. Students at Syracuse, of which Dr. Flint has been head since 1922, professed to believe he had wished to retire because antics of some of its young men, it is still typical of how a good-sized ministerial training school operates. The fact that Union matriculates Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, exposes them to the religious views of Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ and then returns them to their original denominations makes little difference. Few young Protestants today are bothered by sectarian divisions. Those that are go elsewhere than Union-Presbyterian Fundamentalists to Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, Anglo-Catholics to Nashotah House near Milwaukee, Lutherans to Concordia in St. Louis.

All matriculants at Union must possess an A. B. degree from an accredited college. About 23 years old, each is prepared to spend three years winning the seminary's lowest degree, Bachelor of Divinity. Other degrees a student may strive for are Master of Sacred Theology, Doctor of Theology and, jointly from Union and Columbia University, Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy. (The degree which enables many a clergyman to call himself "Dr." is an honorary one of Doctor of Divinity.)

Required courses for Union students come in three divisions: Historical (the Old and New Testaments, Biblical criticism, church history) ; Philosophical (theology, Christian ethics, denominational doctrines); Practical (pedagogy, psychology and Christian leadership which includes preaching, church administration and finance, religious welfare work). During the first year, Union students get their first taste of practical field work as settlement-house teachers, Sunday-school leaders, Y. M. C. A. workers, assistant pastors in Manhattan churches. To help students pay their expenses, Union offers scholarships to the lower classmen.

Union's faculty, all but one of whom are ordained ministers, represent eight faiths. Students learn about preaching and praying from Presbyterian Coffin, Presbyterian Hugh Black, Baptist Fosdick. Specialty of Congregationalist Erdman Harris is expounding the technique by which he has worked successfully among students and young people. Methodist Harry Ward and Reformed Churchman Reinhold Niebuhr devote themselves to the church's social gospel. The United Free Church of Scotland's James Moffatt, famed for his translation of the Bible into modern English, specializes in church history. Congregationalist Robert Ernest Hume teaches comparative religions which he keeps up to date by such studies as the one he lately made of Harlem's Father Divine (TIME, March 16). Of Roman Catholicism students may learn by attending lectures by priests outside-a concession which avoids raising the question of whether 'the priests could expound their church's views on Union's "unhallowed" ground.

Not until their last year do Union men get around to specializing in a particular denomination. Then they spend an hour a week learning about it from a specialist in whatever "church polity" interests them. By examination time in the spring a Union Methodist should be well grounded in all that any Methodist should know; an Episcopalian should be able to answer the hard questions he will be asked before ordination to the diaconate; a Presbyterian can tell the difference between the Westminster and Auburn Confessions. The average member of Union's graduating class will be temporarily content with a B. D. degree, expect to present himself to a church and be ordained within a year, accept a modest job which his field work has probably already lined up for him.

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