The Vineyard

IN BOSTON, delegates to the Methodist Quadrennial Conference (TIME, May 10) temperately responded to Bishop Oxnam's ringing call for Christian unity by establishing a "Commission on Church Union" to consider specific proposals. They also adopted a resolution which 1) denounced war as unChristian, 2) urged an attempt at understanding with Russia, and 3) disapproved universal military training. Other decisions: against admitting women preachers to equal standing with men; to raise the church's Public Information budget for the next four years (from $106,000 to $300,000); to spend up to $240,000 on an efficiency survey of the church; to establish a committee which will work for prohibition as well as temperance.

IN FRANKFURT, German Pastor Martin Niemoller elaborated on his recent stand against denazification laws (TIME, Feb. 16). Only the churches could do such a job, he said: "A deep ideological change can come about only through the Gospel and the grace of the Holy Spirit. You cannot change an ideology by laws." In the hands of the courts, he said, the whole process has become a legalistic mechanism which promotes self-righteousness and "prevents the teachings of the Gospel on guilt and forgiveness from sinking into the minds of the Germans."

IN Moscow, the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate announced that a new church was about to join the Eastern Orthodox Communion: the Syrian Church of India. Claiming some 600,000 souls with 350 places of worship, the church is said to have been founded by St. Thomas the Apostle.

IN PHILADELPHIA, Clarence E. Pickett and the American Friends Service Committee laid plans for spending the Quakers' $20,000 share of the Nobel Peace Prize (TIME, Nov. 10) to improve relations between Russia and the U.S.--probably by methods suggested by a recent series of Quaker-sponsored newspaper ads: immediate peace talks, strengthening of the U.N., and "a new effort to arrange the exchange of students, writers, religious leaders and industrial workers."

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