An Ecclesiastical Lightning Rod

After the celebration of Holy Communion, the 180 bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church last week closed the doors of St. Louis' Christ Church Cathedral for a solemn secret ballot to elect one of their number as Presiding Bishop. They took less than an hour to make the choice: the ;Rt. Rev. John Elbridge Hines, 54, fourth bishop of the Diocese of Texas, with headquarters in Houston. Mines succeeds Bishop Arthur Lichtenberger, 64, now so wasted by Parkinson's disease that his farewell address, a stirring summons to renewal, had to be read for him.

Ecumenism & Civil Rights. Missouri's Bishop Lichtenberger was a forceful advocate of church engagement in ecumenism and civil rights. His views are shared by witty, athletic Bishop Hines, a native of South Carolina who was elevated to his see in 1955 after ten years as its coadjutor. The new chief spokesman for the nation's 3,500,000 Episcopalians is known to Texans as a "layman's bishop." Although his diocese is largely conservative in both politics and theology, Hines outspokenly supported racial integration in public schools; he has also angered many laymen by denouncing the John Birch Society and other groups on "the radical right." In 1961, after defending the right of California's maverick Bishop James A. Pike to describe the virgin birth as a myth, Hines withstood criticism with his usual equanimity. "A bishop," he shrugs, "is the lightning rod of the ecclesiastical heavens and sometimes must be prepared for shocks."

Until Hines's election, the major order of business at the Episcopalians' triennial general convention, most of the excitement in St. Louis had been generated by Bishop Pike. A onetime lawyer with a well-tested flair for infuriating conventional Episcopalians with his unconventional views, Pike declared in a sermon in St. Louis that to accept "historically conditioned" doctrines as eternal truths is nothing but "well-intentioned idolatry." One such doctrine is the Trinity, said Pike, since the meaning of the terms used to express it--three persons in one nature--has changed so much over the centuries that Christians now seem to be defending tritheism instead of the one God proclaimed by the Bible. The apostles had no doctrine of the Trinity, he reasoned, so why should it be necessary for the modern church? Urged Pike: "Let us attribute to God all that has heretofore been attributed to the three persons."

A Martyr's Trial? Put that way, Pike's proposal made a measure of sense--although the sermon probably confirmed the belief of his critics that Pike is a secret Unitarian. Snapped Bishop Edward Welles of West Missouri: "When Bishop Pike presumes unilaterally to declare the dogma of the Trinity to be nonessential, one wonders if he is not surrendering to a deep-rooted psychological compulsion to become a martyr. Perhaps he yearns to be tried for heresy?"

The chances of so formal a rebuke were small; the Episcopalians have not held a heresy trial since 1925. Nonetheless, some bishops felt that Pike should be urged to keep his controversial theological views to himself. Meanwhile, the convention delegates were occupied with the crowded agenda of their meeting. Among other first-week resolutions, they:

>Condemned anti-Semitism as "a direct contradiction of Christian doctrine."

> Rejected a conservative move to withdraw the church from membership in the National Council of Churches.

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