Presbyterians and Unity

Like a business merger, a church merger requires the tactful employment of special techniques. Last week in Philadelphia, at its 150th annual General Assembly, the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A heartened hopers for church unity by its mastery of both tact and tactics. Ever since the Civil War this church has remained separated from the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (South). Last week, winding up their General Assembly in Meridian. Miss., Southern Presbyterians approved the work of their committee which is negotiating a reunion with the Northern church. And in Philadelphia. for the first time in nearly 50 years, the Northern Presbyterians elected a Moderator from the South. (Although there are no Southern churches in the North, there are 100,000 Northern Presbyterians in the South.)

Rev. Dr. Charles Whitefield Welch of Louisville, Ky., the Southerner who will head the Northern Presbyterians for the next year, is slight, sandy-haired, 60, and probably the only man who ever combined the two jobs of Presbyterian Moderator and railway brakeman. Once a bobbin boy in a Kentucky mill, he earned money for his education by working on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, still keeps his union card by making two runs a year, in uniform, from Louisville to Bowling Green. Theologically a moderate, Moderator Welch has been pastor of Louisville's Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church since 1917.

Welcoming the issue which his election underlined. Moderator Welch said: "The Kingdom of God would be greatly advanced by the union not only of Presbyterianism but of all evangelical bodies in this country. It should take place at once." A candidate for union which is both evangelical and Catholic is the Episcopal Church. Last autumn the Episcopal General Convention invited Presbyterians to join in accepting a broad statement of faith in Jesus Christ, the Bible, the sacraments of baptism and Communion (see p. 54). Last week the Presbyterian Assembly, almost unanimously, voted acceptance. Commissions of both churches have already begun exploring tactics.

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