Words & Works

P: After a three-day meeting in Columbus, Ohio, 30 leaders from the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church announced that the two denominations would join June 25, 1957. Name of the new church: the United Church of Christ. With a membership of more than 2,000,000 (1,283,000 Congregationalists, 761,000 E. & R.), the United Church will become the sixth largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. (after the Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Episcopalians).

P: The radical proposal that women be ordained as rabbis vexed the 66th annual convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform), meeting in Asbury Park, N.J. The idea was broached by Conference President Dr. Barnett R. Brickner of Cleveland, who cited women's "special spiritual and emotional fitness to be rabbis." But after prolonged debate, the Reform group decided not to follow the Northern Presbyterians (TIME, June 6) in putting women in the pulpit, and voted to defer the issue for at least a year. It would widen the gap between the Reform and the Conservative and Orthodox branches of Judaism, and, said Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof of Pittsburgh, would be "too great and too needless a break with tradition."

P: Church building in 1955 will increase 25% over last year, will set an all time record of $750 million worth of construction, the Departments of Commerce and Labor announced.

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