Mouthpiece Muffled?

If U. S. Protestantism has a mouthpiece it is the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, founded 24 years ago to give its constituent worshippers voice on moral (not theological) questions. With altering lay attitudes on social questions the Federal Council has tried to keep pace. Whether it has outrun the minds of its constituency will be apparent this week, when some 400 clergymen and laymen representing 26 denominations gather in Indianapolis for the Sixth Quadrennial Meeting of the Federal Council. Ready for the delegates' perusal are voluminous reports by many a committee, on such innocuous matters as goodwill, race relations, broadcasting, finance, education, etc. etc. But large questions loom. Has the Federal Council been too liberal in its talk, as in the guarded Birth Control pronouncement which caused the Southern Presbyterians to withdraw, the Northern Presbyterians, Northern Baptists and United Lutherans to threaten withdrawal (TIME, June 15, 1931 et seq.)? Should the Protestant Mouthpiece be muffled, be supervised more closely by the individual denominations? This week there would doubtless be hot debate in Indianapolis, but out of it would most likely come a conservative conclusion, focussed in the election of a new president and the adoption of a plan to reorganize the whole structure of the Federal Council.

President Dr. John R. Mott, Dr. Robert Elliott Speer and Dr. Daniel Alfred Poling were each mentioned as possible next president of the Federal Council. But most people were sure last week that another man had already been slated for the job--Dr. Albert William Beaven, 50. president of Colgate-Rochester Divinity School in Rochester, onetime (1930-31) president of the Northern Baptist Convention.

Four years ago when Methodist Bishop Francis John McConnell was made president there were murmurings concerning his modernist liberality. The election of Dr. Beaven would cause no such quiverings U. S. Churchmen know him well as an evangelical leader, on the safe side despite his joining with other Federal Council committee members in approving the use of contraceptives. Born in Idaho, son of a British circuit rider. Baptist Beaven went to Shurtleff College (Alton, Ill.), studied for the ministry on the Pacific Coast while earning a living chopping wood and scraping barnacles from boats in Puget Sound. He studied at Rochester Theological Seminary on a scholarship was graduated in 1909 to become pastor of Rochester's Lake Avenue Baptist Church. This congregation he built up to 2,500 during his 20-year stay.

When Dr. Beaven preached his farewell sermon, there was weeping in Lake Avenue Baptist Church. Under its new president Colgate-Rochester (product of a merger in 1928) has grown in stature. This autumn was dedicated its new $2,000,000 Gothic plant, largely the gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr. Fond of bowling as well as of chopping wood. Dr. Beaven saw to it that bowling alleys were built at the Divinity School. He is tall, well set up, grey-haired, father of three (a fourth child died). On his way to Indianapolis last week Dr. Beaven stopped off in Chicago to speak at the important Sunday Evening Club. Function 8 Structure. "How can the representative character of the Federal Council be more fully safeguarded?" is a question posed, and answered, in the report of the Committee on

Function & Structure. After four years of study the Committee has found that viewpoints range from the extreme left--let the Council be prophetic, free in utterance and action--to the extreme right--let the Council hold its peace save when called upon to utter something already decided upon by the denominations. The Report of Function & Structure, which will probably be adopted this week, provides a method of limiting the Federal Council's activities by limiting its personnel, making them more responsible to their own denominational headquarters.

At present the Federal Council includes a Council, Executive Committee, Administrative Committee, five Commissions, one Department of Research & Education and nine Committees. Total, exclusive of commissions and committees: 460 members. The Federal Council meets quadrennially, not often enough to keep the members keenly interested. Under the new plan the Council would meet twice as often. The Council would be reorganized as follows:

There would be a Council of 287 and an Executive Committee of 80, elected by the denominations, the number of members (as at present) in proportion to the size of the church body. The innumerable committees and commissions would be reorganized into eight major departments. Denominations would appoint their representatives in any way they wish.

Chief difficulty with the plan to reorganize the Federal Council and keep it from getting out of hand is its financial basis. Of the present annual budget of $300,000, only $40,000 is furnished by the participating denominations. The remainder comes from private sources, many of them individuals with liberal views. Should the Federal Council tie itself to ecclesiastical apron-strings, such donors might cease giving.

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