Methodists & Missions

Most members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and the Methodist Protestant Church, were pleased last week to learn that by next summer they will probably belong to a new church, a plain Methodist Church. With 8,000,000 communicants, 20,000,000 constituents and 29,000 ministers, the new church will be the nation's largest Protestant body. Ratification of the merger of the three churches, proposed three summers ago (TIME, Aug. 26, 1935), requires assent of three-quarters of the conferences of each Methodist branch. Northern Methodists and the Methodist Protestants had ratified, and by last week in 30 of 42 Southern Methodist conferences, 90% of those voting favored the merger. Formal ratification must wait, however, on action by the Southern Church's annual conference next May.

But if the Methodist churches seem to be finding a new unity in the U. S., in foreign lands they face new problems. In Chicago last week met the Board of Foreign Missions of the Northern Methodist Church. Chief question before the Methodists, as it has lately been before other missionizing churches, was: What to do about the Sino-Japanese War? U. S. Protestant churches spend nearly $4,000,000 a year for their Chinese missions, have many more millions invested in their 252 hospitals, their 21 colleges and universities. Of the missionaries who run such institutions, fully 95% have declined to leave China, because those in the interior have lived for years with the natives; because many are doing hospital work in war areas. This is true also of Methodists who have 500 missionaries in China and spend some $500,000 a year on missions.

Mindful that pacifists have pointed warningly to the great stake of the U. S. churches in China, to the possibility that churches may be inclined to put pressure on the Government to look out for their interests, Executive Secretaries Dr. Ralph Eugene ("Diff") Diffendorfer and Dr. William Edward Shaw of the Methodist Board of Foreign Missions told the Chicago meeting that Methodist missionaries "have agreed that no personal or property damage that may be incurred by their presence in China is to be made a cause for war threat or indemnity demand."

But diplomacy is quite as big a prob-lem as neutrality to churchmen. Secretaries Diffendorfer and Shaw were cautious indeed about condemning Japanese aggression in China. In the sight of God, Japanese souls are quite as good as Chinese souls, and the autonomous Japanese Methodist Episcopal Church has its own Japanese bishop and 20,000 faithful. Said the secretaries: "It must be remembered that the open sympathy of America for China and the statements and resolutions from this country arouse antagonism in the minds of many Japanese, and, as a matter of course, the position of American missionaries is made more delicate and difficult."

Lest Americans become aroused because of Japanese cruelty to Chinese, Missionary Professor Fred D. Gealy of Tokyo assured the meeting that the Japanese are at least kind to animals. Said he: "The Japanese people are commonly a mild-mannered people. . . . From ancient times, mendicant priests have carried a shakujo, or staff, to the top of which are affixed clanging metal rings. By striking it on the ground they would frighten away worms and insects that might be in their path to prevent trampling upon them. And even modern universities hold memorial services for animals dissected in the study of anatomy in the medical schools."

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