Machen & Machine

"Several of them," said newshawks to one another, "are broke. They would like nothing better than a chance to bring a libel suit against someone."

The reporters were talking about Fundamentalists--chief subject of conversation in Cincinnati last week as 1,000 commissioners (ministers and elders) gathered for the 147th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. But beyond stressing the obvious point that it would not do to call a Fundamentalist a scoundrel, such libel talk only exaggerated the simple fact that the "Bible-believing" minority of the Presbyterian Church was restless, irritable, unhappy. Well it might be, for it knew that the 147th General Assembly was ready to belabor it and vote it down at every turn.

No commissioner to the Assembly was the bellwether of the Fundamentalists, Dr. J. Gresham Machen of Philadelphia, tried, convicted and suspended for disturbing the peace within his church (TIME, April 8 et ante). But he was in Cincinnati, leading the fight from the sidelines and in the newspapers with all the zeal of a man who has given his name to a movement. ("The issue," said onetime Moderator John McDowell, "is Presbyterianism v. Machenism.") Plump-faced, scholarly Dr. Machen last week saw Machenism trounced on the following fronts:

"Tactics of Tyranny" Up the first day of the Assembly jumped a Philadelphia commissioner to challenge the seating of three Machenite commissioners, all members of the rebel Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. Retiring Moderator William Chalmers Covert referred the matter to the Committee on Polity, which after four days of solemn deliberation set off a churchly furor by voting 21-to-1 to unseat the challenged three for their refusal to obey the 1934 Assembly's orders, resign from the Independent Board. Furiously cried one of them, Philadelphia's Rev. H. McAllister Griffiths: "The machine may find out that its high-handed tactics have at last awakened the Church to Modernist tyranny."

Though Fundamentalists repeatedly talk of a Presbyterian "machine," few speak up in meeting to give it a name and address. Last month the Presbyterian Banner, anti-Fundamentalist weekly, made bold to list some able machine men: Dr. Covert, Dr. McDowell, Stated Clerk Lewis Seymour Mudge, Dr. Robert Elliott Speer, Dr. Charles Rosenbury Erdman, President Joseph Ross Stevenson of Princeton Theological Seminary, Dr. Hugh Thomson Kerr, Dr. Mark Allison Matthews--onetime Moderators all. If these Presbyterians represent a machine, it is because they stick together, see to it that Assemblies run smoothly, unite in a conservative distaste for extreme Fundamentalism. Last week when the Cincinnati Assembly quickly and without acrimony elected a new Moderator, only the Machenites seemed to attribute it to the sinister activities of a machine.

Gavel. William C. Dean, 14-year-old Cincinnati schoolboy, went to work last March to make a Moderator's gavel from a piece of metal from a mission church bell and eleven scraps of historic wood, including a piece from the walking stick of African Missionary A. C. Good. Last week on the second ballot Schoolboy Dean's gavel went to Rev. Dr. Joseph Anderson Vance, 70, president of the Presbyterian National Missions Board, pastor of First Church in Detroit. The Fundamentalist candidate for Moderator, Rev. Stewart M. Robinson of Elizabeth, N.J., got 126 out of 891 votes cast.

Moderator Vance, tall, lean, large-boned, has held four big-city pastorates in his 47 years of preaching, has been Moderator of the Maryland, Chicago and Detroit Presbyteries. He still has a crooked finger, injured years ago when he was baseball pitcher at King College in Tennessee. An able preacher with a cool style--he once studied law--Dr. Vance is an expert on comparative religions, a middle-of-the-roader theologically. Modest as new Moderators always are, he said that, though his wife had prayed for it, he did not wish the job; it would take five years off his life. To newshawks he said crisply: "I am a constitutional Presbyter. I believe in using constitutional methods instead of irresponsible attacks in meeting weaknesses in the church structure. And I shall so deal with the doctrinal disturbances in the church today."

Purge? Getting down to business, Moderator Vance briskly ruled out of order a Fundamentalist who moved that General Assembly headquarters be censured for "circularizing the Church with partisan literature." Under his firm gavel, the commissioners decisively voted down a proposal to halt various disciplinary measures started against members of Dr. Machen's Independent Board (TIME, June 4, 1934)

But, taking a good long view, Dr Machen announced he would be able to appeal his cause to the 1936 General Assembly. The defeat he expects, he said, will probably lead to a schism in the Church. "I hope so," declared militant Dr. Machen. "I want to see the Church purged of unbelief. I want the elimination of those untrue to the constitution. They are in control of the Church at present."

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