Church of the Future?

Church unity, in practice, means Protestant unity. Rome's unbudging stand is still what it always has been: the Roman Catholic Church will welcome the submission of its erring brethren to the authority of its one true faith. That demand for unconditional surrender means that Christianity will remain divided.

But of late years, the uniting of all Protestant churches has seemed increasingly possible. Mergers or alliances have already been achieved, e.g., United Church of Canada, Church of South India. Last week a blueprint for Protestant union appeared in the undenominational Christian Century. Its author: Dr. Charles Clayton Morrison, longtime (1908-47) editor in chief, now contributing editor.

Dr. Morrison's union of churches would "recognize one another's ministries and sacraments" and would be organized on four levels. In the local church, no visible major changes would be necessary. "Each local church would determine its own mode of worship and administer baptism and the Lord's Supper according to its own tradition . . ."

The second level of association, which Morrison calls the "presbytery," would comprise the churches within each community. The presbytery would ordain ministers recommended by local churches and would appoint delegates to one of twelve or 15 "regional synods."

At the top would be the National Council of the United Church. Its responsibilities probably would include: 1) missionary and evangelistic work, 2) Christian education, 3) training of ministers, 4) ministerial pensions, 5) public relations, and 6) relations with other Christian churches.

One of the chief values of his plan for a United Church, Dr. Morrison says, is "that it begins right where the denominations are whose possible participation is envisaged ... It involves no doctrinal problems . . . Instead, it assumes that we are now sufficiently of one heart and one mind to live together in the fellowship of one church, if only we are willing to let the already well-breached walls of our sectarian churchism utterly crumble away."

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