Ecumenical Vibrations

Overwhelmingly, the United Presbyterian General Assembly last week voted to support Stated Clerk Eugene Carson Blake's proposal for uniting with the Episcopalians. Methodists and the United Church of Christ (TIME cover, May 26). The ecumenical vibrations thus set in motion stirred a quick reaction in two denominations.

EPISCOPALIANS: The Episcopal Unity Commission announced that it would submit to the church's Detroit convention in September a resolution agreeing to the Presbyterian call for discussions toward the four-way merger. But the Episcopal Diocese of Maine frowned at the whole idea, asked further study on the ground that there is "much confusion and anxiety" on the subject. If Episcopalians were going to do any uniting, the Maine diocese went on in a formal resolution, the Christians they ought to be doing it with are those in the Eastern Orthodox Church, who, like the Episcopalians, are "catholic" rather than reformed.

BAPTISTS: Twelve thousand "messengers" gathered in St. Louis' Kiel Auditorium to represent the 32,000 churches and 9,500.,00 members of the 104th Southern Baptist Convention and roundly denounced the very principles of unity. The proposals for church merger that are engaging the attention of many of the Southern Baptists' Protestant brethren, said the outgoing president, the Rev. Ramsey Pollard of Memphis, are "an indication of weakness rather than strength. Lack of conviction led to these denominations' decline, and the decline will continue because such mergers are based on expediency and convenience. Whenever you sacrifice conviction for expediency, you lose the thrust that is necessary for growth. The cause of Christianity will be hurt." Dr. Duke K. McCall, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville, Ky., had even stronger words. The loosening of denominational loyalty, he said last week in a commencement speech, "is fed by Biblical illiteracy. These men have more in common than they have to divide them--they have their ignorance in common."

Nor was the ecumenical movement all that the Baptists were against. The U.S. Catholic hierarchy came in for a resolution taking them to task for waging "an aggressive campaign" to force federal aid to parochial schools. The resolution opposed grants, loans, tax support or any other direct Government assistance to private education. Yet one of the heroes of the convention was the Catholic politician whom last year's convention had officially opposed for U.S. President. The messengers voted unanimously to send a telegram to President Kennedy expressing appreciation of his stand against aid to parochial schools and for the separation of church and state. Wisecrack of the day: "Jack Kennedy is making a pretty good Baptist President."

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