El Paso Whingding

The Rev. William Wright, 48, rector of St. Clement's Protestant Episcopal Church in El Paso, lives in an area where Christian belief is strong and fundamental. Wright himself prefers a more intellectual approach toward religion, and says so. Recently, in a speech to the El Paso Bar Association, he declared that reason is as good a guide to religion as faith is. He denounced fundamentalist camp meetings, popular in West Texas, as "emotional whingdings that provide a vacation from thinking." Added Episcopalian Wright, attacking belief in Biblical accounts such as that of Jonah and the whale: "Who does believe those stories that has any mind at all?"

Fundamentalists replied quickly and in anger. Said the Rev. Harold W. Morris, preaching to his First Church of the Nazarene congregation: "We believe all that he makes fun of." Pastor David Calhoun of Immanuel Baptist Church warningly quoted St. Paul (I. Timothy 4:1): "Some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits." Wrote an angry letter writer to the El Paso Times, in a flood of protest mail: "I may not have as many college . . . degrees to my name as [Wright], but I have one degree, a God-conferred degree of B.A. (Born Again), which man did not give."

Rancher Joe Evans, a Baptist layman who has organized some of the Southwest's most successful camp meetings (TIME, July 30, 1951), was especially shocked. Camp meetings, said he, represent "real, undented religion." He added: "If the Episcopal Church endorses the things Wright said in his address to the lawyers, I think they are fundamentally unsound in their belief and doctrine."

This week, while El Paso's fundamentalists still fumed, the Most Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, announced Pastor Wright's appointment as director of the home department of the church's National Council. Wright's new job: developing Episcopal missions in the U.S.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.