Divorce & Segregation

Delegates of the 850,000 Southern Presbyterians who call themselves the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. wrangled over two controversial issues at their 98th General Assembly last week in Charlotte, N.C. They took a new position on divorce, clung stubbornly to their stand against segregation.

By an overwhelming voice vote they approved a proposal to liberalize the denomination's rule on remarriage of the divorced. The present rule permits remarriage only of the innocent party to a divorce granted for desertion or adultery. The new recommendation sanctions divorce when "a marriage dies at the heart and the union becomes intolerable," and permits remarriage of any divorced person in whom "sufficient penitence for sin and failure is evident, and a firm purpose of, and endeavor after, Christian marriage is manifested." The new proposal is not yet church law; it must first be approved by three-fourths of the 83 presbyteries, then by next year's General Assembly.

Led by their newly elected Moderator, 55-year-old Insuranceman Philip F. Howerton of Charlotte, N.C., the delegates defeated a scheme to use churches as schools to get around the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling against segregation in the public schools. They voted 288 to 124 against a well-organized minority drive to abolish the denomination's anti-segregation-minded Council on Christian Relations, then read into the record a ringing statement on race:

"The Christian conscience cannot rest content with any legal or compulsive arrangement that brands any people as inferior; which denies them the full right of citizenship on the ground of race, color or social status; or which prevents them from developing to the fullest possible extent the potentialities with which they, as individuals, have been endowed by the Creator."

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