Methodist Merger

Kneeling in a little chapel in Aldersgate Street, London, a moody Anglican clergyman felt his heart "strangely warmed" by a feeling that through Jesus Christ he had been saved. The warming of John Wesley, two centuries ago, gave Methodism to the Church of England, which was not impressed. Wesley remained an Anglican, but his movement grew outside the Church, flowered in America, where the first Methodist bishop was consecrated in 1784, and where Methodist circuit riders followed the frontiers as they spread westward.

Homely is the Methodists' ritual, firm is their belief in salvation by faith alone, practical is their application of faith to their personal lives. Most of the world's 12,000,000 Methodists live in the U. S. Last week was a big week for them. By reuniting three branches of Methodism, separated for nearly a century, U. S. Methodists set up the largest Protestant church in the nation. Name: the Methodist Church. Membership: nearly 8,000,000.

To the Uniting Conference in Kansas City's big, blue-seated Municipal Auditorium went 900 delegates: 400 ministers and laymen from the Methodist Episcopal Church; 400 from the M. E. Church South, which had seceded over slavery in 1844; 10DEG from the Methodist Protestant Church, which had split off in 1828. In the last three years the three churches successively ratified a plan of union. The Uniting Conference met to proclaim and exult in the merger, the biggest in Protestant history, and to deal with the many and various problems of overlapping administration. The three merging churches have between them 65 bishops, some 25,000 ministers, about 43,000 churches, 2,900 schools and colleges, many a hospital and social-service agency, several rich publishing houses, a combined budget of $80,000,000 a year, a total investment in the U. S. of well over a billion dollars.

To the Uniting Conference, President Roosevelt sent an approving message: "To a world distracted by malice, envy and ill will . . . a harbinger of better things. . . . The Methodists have pointed the way. . . . May God prosper the work . . . combat the forces of strife that threaten our heritage of religion."

Alfred Mossman Landon, a delegate to the Conference paralleled the President's words in a preConference speech. Said he: "Mutual good will . . . profound effect . . . hope to encourage other movements of this kind."

Opened with simple readings and invocations by such diverse characters as radical Bishop Francis John McConnell of the late Northern church, reactionary Bishop James Cannon of the late Southern church, the Conference got under way when its co-chairmen--suave Bishop Edwin Holt Hughes (North), slight Bishop John Monroe Moore (South), Dr. James H. Straughn (Methodist Protestant)--said simultaneously: "This we do reverently in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." The unison would have been perfect except that Bishop Moore said "Holy Ghost."

Methodist Protestants elected Dr. Straughn and Dr. John Calvin Broomfield, onetime president of their church, as the first bishops in Methodist Protestant his tory. They, and the other active bishops* of the churches, will be assigned to juris dictions by a Conference committee.

-Absent from the Conference were nine ailing bishops, including two Southern die-hards:-Bishops Collins Denny and Warren A. (Coca-Cola family) Candler. A Southern movement to spike the merger with a last-minute court action failed to materialize.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.