At Lausanne

The present era will be remarkable to future historians for its manifold expressions of an urge to unify human activities on a world-wide scale. This urge had taken clear form in men's minds by the opening of the 20th Century. Dreamers dreamed world Utopias. Statesmen fashioned a league and a court for the world's nations. In Germany and Russia, political reformations of the world were attempted. Scientists planned to blanket the earth with radio power waves from common world generators. Men flew around the world, proposed a world language, spun world-wide business networks.

In the past few weeks, the Christians of the world have been holding their first major conference in some 500 years for the specific purpose of seeing what can be done about unifying Christianity as the sum of its world-wide parts.

Preparation. Today the parts (denominations) number 200-odd, all of them organized as distinct entities. The practical necessity of relating so many parts, of discovering identity among so many entities, was established by the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910. The logical necessity was established later the same year, at a convention of the Episcopal Church in Cincinnati. The man who then proposed a world conference on Faith & Order lived to see such a conference actually held, after 17 years of preparation, and to preside over it as chairman, at Lausanne, Switzerland, the past three weeks.

Chairman Brent. This man was Bishop Charles Henry Brent of the Episcopal diocese of Western New York. Canadian-born and educated, naturalized in the U. S., an obscure worker in the awkward robes of the Cowley Fathers among the poor of Boston, later (under Bishop Phillips Brooks) an Episcopal rector who was made a missionary bishop and sent to the Philippines because of his earnest simplicity, rugged strength and adaptability among people of other races, it was Bishop Brent who confirmed General Pershing in the Philippines and subsequently became Chaplain-in-Chief of the A. E. F.

First in war, first in peace, Bishop Brent had had experience in handling international conferences, as president of opium parleys at Shanghai (1909) and The Hague (1911). He declined the bishoprics of Washington, D. C., and New Jersey, to preserve for his world ministry the freedom of action he enjoys at Buffalo, N. Y. When his world ministry reached its peak this month, he was not content merely to preside over the hundreds of churchmen he had brought together, but went with them into their councils; explained, directed, adjusted and dictated daily despatches on their progress to the New York Herald Tribune.

Delegates. Some 500 church dignitaries faced the pulpit of Lausanne's 11th Century cathedral-- comfortable British bishops; intense Scandinavians; placid Chinamen; square-fingered Germans; bearded, broad-browed, wise-eyed patriarchs from Russia, Greece, Palestine; neat Americans--representatives of some 90 sects in 49 nations. There was one notable absentee; the Roman Catholic Church had declined to be represented, regarding itself as already the united church, infallible. A German and an Austrian prelate, however, sat by to "observe" for the Vatican.

Aim. Speaking in English, Bishop Brent delivered a sermon which all could follow in the assembly's four-language program. He sounded "the Call to Unity . . . from God to man." He said Christianity was challenged "to get its house in order before it further infects the Eastern world with sectarianism." He said the world was "lost," that Jesus Christ alone could save it.

He emphasized the aim of the Conference--to discover theological differences, not dispute them; to survey the grounds common to all the branches of Christianity, and then draw up the charter of a United Church in the form of reports which the delegates would take back to their churches for ratification.

Procedure. The delegates held their plenary sessions in the Palais de Rumine, a university auditorium. Prepared speeches were read on topics planned in advance: 1) the necessity for unity, 2) the message of Christianity, 3) the nature of a united church, 4) the common faith, 5) the ministry, 6) the sacraments. After speakers had explained varying views of these essential features, the delegates attended whatever of six smaller discussion groups they chose, where points at issue were thrashed out and six committees framed six reports setting forth propositions on which all denominations might, or might not agree."

Viewpoints. To decide what the united Christian Church is or should be, it was necessary to reconcile varying interpretations of the word "church." On one hand was the Eastern Orthodox view that the Church, established and immutably fixed at seven ecumenical councils during the first eight centuries, is an objectively divine institution. An opposite view, held by Congregationalists, Methodists and other democratic communions, is that the Church originated and consists essentially in living people banded together for worship, upon whom tradition can lay no imperative bonds and from whom church organization draws its significance and changes in form. Between these views, static and dynamic, embracing them both, is the Anglican view that the Church is an institution and a congregation taken together, a living organism.

These three theological viewpoints obtained throughout all the discussions, necessitating much generalizing and a return to first principles in the reports.

Reports. Thus, the report on the ministry said, "The ministry is a gift of God through Christ to His Church, and is essential to the being and well-being of His Church." Christ is its authority; preaching Christ, its purpose; governing the Church, its trust: the ministry is "commissioned through an act of ordination, by prayer and the laying on of hands." Nothing could be said about the authority in this commissioning, whether it is primarily by virtue of apostolic suc- cession or by virtue of election by the pastor's contemporaries. The committee on the ministry could only suggest that each sect recognize the authority and appropriateness of the ministers of all other sects.

Similarly, the committee on sacraments simply recommended "unity with diversity" for the universal Church. "We can unite in worship, we cannot unite in definition. . . . Each worshiper will receive the sacrament with the meaning that he himself attaches to it."

Unity. A comprehensive topic of the whole conference was discussed in plenary session "The Unity of Christendom." The Most Rev. Nathan Soderblom, Archbishop of Upsala, Sweden, himself the organizer of a Universal Conference on Life & Work (TIME, Aug. 24, 1925, et seq.) paralleling Bishop Brent's assembly on Faith & Order, reiterated the idea that all sects should be able to regard themselves and each other as chapters of a single Church.

Final Reports. Bishop Brent, President J. Ross Stevenson of Princeton Theological Seminary (Presbyterian), Professor William Adams Brown of Union Theological Seminary (Presbyterian) and Bishop James Cannon Jr., of Washington (Methodist Episcopal) were appointed, with nine Europeans, to a committee instructed to redraft the reports of the six agreement-finding committees for approval by the conference as a whole.

Dissent. Before these final reports were ready, the Most Rev. Germanos Troianos, Metropolitan of Sardis, arose to announce, gravely, politely, that he and his fellow representatives of Eastern Orthodoxy would be unable to accept the plan for unity. It was based on compromises, he said. It arrived only at "an external agreement, in letter alone."

Bishop Brent thanked Metropolitan Troianos for his frankness, reminding the delegates that they had come to find out how far they could agree, not to suppress their consciences.

Frederic C. Morehouse of Milwaukee, editor of the Living Church, led an Episcopalian reaction against the report on church unity, objecting that to outline a definite plan for a reunion of sects was beyond the conference's agreed function. Five other final reports --on the gospel, the nature of the church, the ministry, creeds and sacraments--were adopted. The sixth, on actual unity, was returned to the continuation committee for further study.

Result. What concrete things the conference accomplished cannot be known until many sects in many lands have received and acted upon the new definitions of what the Christian Church is and how it functions. Bishop Brent was re-elected chairman of the continuation committee, was presented with a gold clock.

Women. There were only seven women present. One of these, Lucy Gardiner, in honor of her sex, was appointed official timekeeper of the assembly.

During the conference, the women delegates talked among themselves about sex equality in the church. On one of the last days they-presented a petition setting forth the obvious fact that, whereas far more women than men go to church and do church work, the conduct of churches is almost entirely in the hands of men on trustee and vestry boards.