Pastor v. Presbytery

When St. Paul told the Christians of Corinth that "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life,"* he was using inspiring language. But, as his successors soon found out, without the letter of Christianity, which includes church doctrine as well as Holy Writ, the spirit would have a hard time getting itself heard and handed down. It is a fact, however, that letter and spirit, despite the best intentions, often get in each other's way. So they did last week in Chapel Hill, N.C.

For the last twelve years, the Rev. Charles Miles Jones, 46, has been pastor of the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church. He is one of the most popular pastors the church has ever had. His short, conversational sermons on basic ethical problems attract such large crowds that an extra service has had to be added to the church's Sunday schedule. He has even built up a following among University of North Carolina undergraduates.

As a man whose friends call him "the finest Christian in the community," Pastor Jones has strong views about race segregation. He likes Negroes to come to his church, and this policy, even in "liberal" Chapel Hill (pop. 9,177), has raised many Southern eyebrows. One night in 1948, after he had given shelter to some Negroes who were in trouble, his house was stoned.

Only the Bulletin Board. As churchmen, Pastor Jones's fellow Southern Presbyterians cannot quarrel with his views against race segregation, for the church has abolished its last segregated Negro synod--fulfilling the letter as well as the spirit of the law. But a few members of the congregation protested that Pastor Jones was too intent on social reform and racial brotherhood to tell them much about the doctrines of salvation. Complained one former church officer: "Except for the sign on the bulletin board in front, you'd never know it was a Presbyterian church."

Last April, 20 of the 220-member congregation asked the Orange County Presbytery, to set up a second Presbyterian church in Chapel Hill. Pastor Jones calmly agreed. "I fully realize," he said, "that my preaching isn't along the needs of many persons here." A ten-man board, set up by the alarmed presbytery, began to investigate the Chapel Hill church, with the power to remove both pastor and officers if necessary. Pastor Jones took a year's leave--doing social work in Tennessee with a philanthropic foundation. But he comes back to Chapel Hill to preach every other Sunday.

One Unitarian. In November the commissioners turned in their report. Pastor Jones, they found, was a force for good in the community. But he had evidently strayed far from the church's doctrines. Furthermore, his church officers, many of them university faculty members, were "generally uninformed" about Presbyterianism. At least one of them "evidently did not believe in a personal God"; another was a declared Unitarian. The philosophy of Pastor Jones's church, as they saw it: "That doctrine is of less importance than whether an individual shall be free to worship God as he pleases."

When the commission called for the church officers to resign, the congregation gave the officers a vote of confidence. Said Journalism Professor Phillips Russell: "The report gives the impression (and this is said with due reverence) that if Jesus Christ were found occupying the pulpit here. He might be ousted on the ground that, although a Christian, He could not be called a Presbyterian."

Last week the presbytery commissioners demanded that Charles Jones resign or be removed. Pastor Jones, quiet but adamant ("The fundamentals of Christianity are not complicated"), indicated that he would do no such thing.

* II Corinthians 3:6.

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