Social-Minded Bishop

U.S. Bishops who are aggressively outspoken friends of labor can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Outstanding are Chicago's Roman Catholic Auxiliary Bish op Bernard James Sheil, San Francisco's retired Episcopal Bishop Edward Lambe Parsons, Boston's Methodist Bishop G. (for Garfield) Bromley Oxnam.

Fortnight ago labor-loving Dr. Oxnam became Bishop of Methodism's most important area--New York.

Against Injustice. Biggest of U.S. Protestant churches, Methodism (membership : 8,000,000) has long been the most active and vocal in advocating social and economic reform. Since 1907 the Methodist Federation for Social Service has worked against all forms of social injustice. More & more Bishop Oxnam, 52, has become the voice of the Federation. He also takes a part in editing Methodism's Social Creed (updated every four years at the Church's General Conference).

Bishop Oxnam has repeatedly cautioned Methodists against the dangers of developing "an anti-labor attitude in the minds of our soldiers and sailors, since our very future lies in the ability of management and labor to work together." He has told groups of businessmen that "business tomorrow will not be as usual," has urged them "to remove the contradiction that lies in our ability to produce and our inability to distribute in a moral or rationally adequate way [and] to remove the barriers that economic nationalism places between us and an unimpeded world market."

More recently the Bishop has fought against Boston's rampant anti-Semitism (TIME, Nov. 1), calling it "not only a threat to Jewish liberty, but to Protestant liberty, and Catholic liberty, too." He even persuaded the late William Cardinal O'Connell to join with him in condemning antiSemitism. It was the first time the 84-year-old Boston Cardinal ever signed such a statement with a Protestant.

30,000 Miles a Year. California-born Bishop Oxnam got his A.B. (and Phi Beta Kappa) at the University of Southern California, later studied at Boston University, Harvard, M.I.T., in Japan, China, India. After eleven years of pastoral work in California, he went back to his alma mater as professor of social ethics, then to Boston University, from which he was elected President of Indiana's DePauw University. He was popular with students (because he permitted dancing), unpopular with the American Legion (because he abolished the R.O.T.C.). At 44 he was elected Bishop -- Methodism's youngest.

Very friendly, very businesslike, he speaks in the pulpit with machine-gun rapidity, pounds his palm with his clenched fist to stress his points. His preaching and lecturing have taken him as much as 30,000 miles a year, most of which he covered by plane.

Bishop Oxnam has made three trips to the Soviet Union. His admiration for Russia earned him a page and a half in Elizabeth Dilling's The Red Network. In 1936, when Dr. Oxnam was made Bishop of the Omaha Area, Mrs. Billing got out a special anti-Oxnam pamphlet which messengers distributed at Omaha's eight Methodist churches.

His New England flock sometimes complained that 'the Bishop's popularity as a speaker took him away too much. But he did what no predecessor ever did: he visited every one of the 1,032 churches in his area.

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