San Francisco Marriage

Full of zeal and optimism, in San Francisco ten years ago Methodists of four of the city's biggest churches--Central, California Street, Wesley, Howard Street--sold their properties, pooled $800,000 to form a superchurch which they called Temple Methodist. Their optimism the Methodists expressed by building a 27-story hotel, highest on the Pacific Coast, at Leavenworth & McAllister streets in downtown San Francisco. The William Taylor Hotel, with a cathedral-like, 1,300-seat church concealed in its second, third and fourth floors, would support Temple Church, everyone felt, retire its $1,550,000 in first mortgage bonds at maturity. But more funds were needed and before the hotel was completed in 1930 the Methodists floated a $150,000 second mortgage issue, borrowed $100,000 privately, obtained $534,000 more through mortgages sold to the Methodist home missions board.

Installed in its fine quarters. Temple Church prospered spiritually, but William Taylor Hotel moved into the red, remained there. For a time the Methodists paid interest charges totaling, $135.000 from their own pockets, then let a $500,000 debt accumulate. A bondholders' protective committee foreclosed, bought in the property last November for $750,000. The Methodists, their investment lost for good, were invited to move out of the hotel, their quarters to be used for more lucrative operations, including a garage. Temple Church was as homeless and penniless as any evicted tenement family, but it had kind neighbors. Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco's largest synagog, offered the use of its building on Sundays. A small Methodist church offered the Templers a place to worship in between regular services. And San Francisco's most vigorous Congregational church made what Temple's pastor called an offer of "marriage." Temple accepted. Last Sunday for the first time Methodists mingled with Congregationalists in First Church (2,500 seats), downtown near the swank St. Francis Hotel.

Good friends are Methodist Dr. Edgar Allan Lowther, who went to Temple in 1931 from a pastorate in Oakland, Calif., and Congregationalist Dr. Jason Noble Pierce, who used to be Calvin Coolidge's pastor in Washington, and was brought to San Francisco in 1933 by a potent Californian, onetime Secretary of the Navy Curtis Dwight Wilbur. Methodist Lowther is tall, hawk-faced, spare, a liberal and a pacifist. Congregationalist Pierce is plump, jolly, a Wartime chaplain (see col. 2), American Legionary and 100% Republican. While Dr. Lowther was struggling to make a go of his hotel-church. Dr. Pierce, who said he "never liked a church without a problem," was engaged in increasing attendance at First Congregational Church, which had slipped during Depression despite the fact that it has San Francisco's oldest tradition: it was organized in 1849 by the official town chaplain and first Protestant missionary, T. Dwight Hunt. What Preachers Lowther and Pierce have most in common is an interest in church unity, heretofore actively expressed by them on the San Francisco Council of Jews and Christians.

The marriage of the two churches--last week officially named the Uniting Downtown Churches, First Congregational and Temple Methodist--involves losing their denominational entities except in the latter's relation with its parent bodies. Their Sunday schools, clubs and the like will be completely merged. Both congregations have left it to the co-pastors to decide how they will share services. Drs. Lowther and Pierce are eager to try joint preaching in the form of a Socratic dialog.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.