Ecumenical Council

In the massive Cathedral of the Reformed Church in Utrecht, The Netherlands last week, Dr. John Raleigh Mott, large and serene, mounted the pulpit. To the churchmen of all nations gathered before him he spoke in English. He urged the world's churches to compose their differences, drew a gloomy picture of the world's troubles; but he said: "We come not as pessimists." Dr. Mott and 78 other churchmen, representing 130 denominations with 350,000,000 members in 21 nations, had gone to Utrecht to lay plans for a world council of churches. Such an ecumenical council would continue the labors of the world conferences on Life & Work and Faith & Order which heartened the non-Roman religious world with their meetings in Oxford and Edinburgh last summer (TIME, July 26).

Under the chairmanship of the Arch bishop of York, who loomed as the council's most likely first president, the delegates speedily adopted a constitution. This they proposed to submit, along with an invitation to join, to all churches "which accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior." The constitution provided for an assembly of 450 members, an active central committee of 90, in which U. S. and Canadian churches would have 18 members. To obtain the approval of the great Protestant, Orthodox and other Catholic churches, and to organize the council, will probably take two years.

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