The Crusaders of Cape May

Even when judged by the sedate standards of the resort town of Cape May, on the southern tip of New Jersey, the 3,000 conventioners were an extraordinary crew. The delegates to the Seventh World Congress of the fundamentalist International Council of Christian Churches did not drink, nor did they smoke; they spent most of their time browsing through Scriptures and savoring the special satisfactions of zealous dissent.

The I.C.C.C. was conceived by Carl Mclntire, 61, a tireless Protestant crusader against Romanism, ecumenism, the World Council of Churches and atheistic Communism. To Mclntire, all such activities and organizations are part of a sinister plot to strip man of his individual responsibility before God and cast doubt on the literal interpretation of the Bible. Although his influence does not extend far beyond his own organization, he nips doggedly at the heels of the World Council by showing up at its meetings to issue rival press releases.

Mclntire began his crusade in 1936, when he broke with his denomination, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., charging that its foreign mission board was "discriminating against conservative missionaries" who preached the virgin birth and other fundamentalist doctrines. That same year Mclntire founded a splinter congregation, the Bible Presbyterian Church, headquartered in Collingswood, N.J. In 1948 he organized the I.C.C.C. as a counterthrust to the newly founded World Council, which he branded "apostate" and an "ecumenical monster."

Sober Guests. The I.C.C.C. has proved as durable as its founder. Its membership now includes some 140 denominations in 73 countries and colonies from Bolivia to Lebanon. All are relatively small, fundamentalist groups that have also broken with mainstream Protestant churches on the issue of membership in the World Council. The biggest U.S. member is the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, which has 1,300 congregations and 180,000 worshipers. Mclntire spreads his gospel through a weekly paper, the Christian Beacon (circ. 120,000), and a Monday-Friday radio program broadcast over 635 stations. Mclntire and his co-crusaders also run a four-year liberal arts college in Cape May and a seminary in Elkins Park, Pa. The cause is financed by contributions, totaling $3,000,000 last year, from Mclntire's radio audience.

Money has rolled in so steadily that since 1963 Mclntire's movement has been buying Cape May real estate, including the two largest hotels and a complex of beachside houses and cottages. It now owns property there assessed at $1,500,000. The hotels are operated on a nonprofit basis. Hotelier Mclntire keeps his room rates modest (as low as $11 a day single) and his guests sober (neither hotel has a bar). His takeover in Cape May has provided a permanent headquarters for his religious movement, which he calls the Twentieth Century Reformation. A jowly six-footer with a shock of wavy hair greying at the temples and an impressive Roman nose, Mclntire oozes the polished grace of a successful businessman. On the stump, he is the consummate piney woods evangelist, his voice resonant with Southern overtones even though he was born in Ypsilanti, Mich.

At the I.C.C.C. convention in the former Admiral Hotel (rechristened by Mclntire the Christian Admiral), Mclntire's performance was that of an evangelical Ed Sullivan. "O.K., now, how many are from Great Britain?" he called, to the delegates. "Now how about Africa? Where's Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania, the Congo, the Chad? Hong Kong? Here comes Hong Kong! The Philippines! Look at the Philippines!" Mclntire was at his best inveighing against his several enemies, and last week he even unveiled a new one: revolution-minded Christianity. In his address to the session, Mclntire accused new-thinking theological seminaries of "turning out Judases by the thousands. Christ is no longer virgin-born, no longer the Son of God, no longer a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice. Christ has become Antichrist. He has become a leader of revolution, the protagonist of the proletariat."

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