Mission Money

Carrying God's word to the far corners of the earth depends no more upon the zeal of individual missionaries than it does upon continuous money-giving by pious folk at home. In the past few years money-giving among U. S. Protestant sects has suffered an ungodly decline. Last week the problem of missions and money made news throughout two groups, one strongly conservative, one strongly liberal. P:The Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions was founded so that Fundamentalists could give money to send out Fundamentalist missionaries. Last month the Presbyterian General Assembly voted to discipline the upstart Board (TIME, June 11). Last week the Board declined to be disciplined. Instead of disbanding as ordered, it elected two new members and appointed its third and newest missionary. Calling the General Assembly's action unconstitutional and "a foolish gesture," a Manhattan Board member named James E. Bennet declared: "We have a perfect right as Presbyterians to give money to the Y. M. C. A., to the American Tract Society, the American Bible Society, the China Inland Mission and any other missionary cause, but the General Assembly decrees we have no right to give our money, if we choose, to the Independent Board. . . ." P:Though it has been much discussed in the past 18 months, the report of the Laymen's Foreign Missions Inquiry has yet to produce any of the theological and administrative changes advocated in Re-Thinking Missions (TIME, Nov. 28, 1932). To keep alive the ideas born of that inquiry 100-odd laymen and ministers are currently laboring under the name of the "Modern Missions Movement." Most active worker is Dr. Orville Anderson Petty, 60, Congregationalist minister, one-time president of Arnold College in New Haven, onetime Army chaplain (with citations and decorations), onetime president of the New Haven Council of Churches. Dr. Petty did spadework for the Laymen's Inquiry as a "FactFinder" in India. Says he: "An increasing number of world-minded Christians desire to support work abroad on the basis of merit and promise, regardless of religious affiliations." Last week Dr. Petty was busy preparing lists of "Commendations" from which such Christians may pick and choose the ablest and worthiest foreign projects as direct beneficiaries.

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