Without Matrimonial Plans

In a driving rain, which they called Baptist weather (because it immersed instead of sprinkling them), the Southern Baptists gathered last week in Houston. It was the biggest convention ever for the big (7,373,498 members) U.S. denomination; 30,000 "messengers" (voting delegates) and nonvoting visitors packed into the Sam Houston Coliseum for seven days of fast-moving business and budgeting.

True to the good Baptist tradition of unpredictability, they elected a dark-horse candidate as president of the convention for 1954. Dr. James Wilson Storer, 67, onetime Oregon cowboy, author of five books, and pastor of the First Baptist Church of Tulsa since 1931, was as flabbergasted at his election as were many of the messengers. "I didn't know a thing about it," he said. "I couldn't have been more surprised, and all I can say is that I'll do the very best I can."

A few family wrangles kept things warm in the Coliseum, but one issue found the assembled Southerners practically unanimous: they clapped, rumbled their approval and cried an occasional "Amen" as this year's President James D. Grey of New Orleans made a metaphorical speech ridiculing the idea that the Southern Baptists might affiliate with the National Council of Churches.

"Southern Baptists have a job to do for the Lord," said President Grey. "They can best do it in their own way ... We are like a healthy, wealthy, attractive young lady, and these Lotharios are making eyes at us. But we have not, cannot, and will not even drop our handkerchief to invite or encourage their attention.

"However, a few neighborhood gossips are whispering over their back fences that the wedding date has already been set. But those who know the least always talk the most. One would-be suitor* has made bold to announce that a chair is being reserved for us ... No doubt this suitor means well in thinking of that chair as a love seat. But this young lady realizes that for her it would become a 'hot seat' .. . virtually an electric chair.

"Personally, I think the young lady is correct. For the moment she sits down in that chair, she signs her own death warrant and sets the date of her execution.

This young lady doesn't object to being friendly with her ambitious suitors, but she has no matrimonial intentions."

*Methodist Bishop William Martin, president of the National Council of Churches, recently repeated the council's standing proposal to the Southern Baptists.

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