Circles Around Love

Three days before Christmas the unhappy pastor of the Grosse Pointe Unitarian Church, outside Detroit, sent a letter to the Detroit Council of Churches. Wrote tall, reddish-haired, 32-year-old Merrill O. Bates: "I deeply regret that you have worded your entrance requirements so as to make membership in the Council impossible for the following churches: Latter-Day Saints [Mormon], Christian Science and Unitarian. Our sons, our fathers, our brothers are dying on land and sea that justice and freedom--yea, even the Christian Religion might live, while we at home draw circles around our love." Mr. Bates probably referred to Edwin Markham's lines:

"He drew a circle that shut me out!

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in!"

Crux of the matter was one word: evangelical. Since its founding 23 years ago the Council's bylaws have limited membership to evangelical churches.*A year ago the Rev. Warren Wheeler Pickett, pastor of the First Congregational Church, thought it time that the Council followed the Detroit Pastors' Union, which had dropped the restrictive word. He and a committee appointed to revise the bylaws deleted the word. But the Council's directors, led by Dr. Joseph A. Vance, 78-year-old pastor-emeritus of the First Presbyterian Church and first president of the Council, promptly restored it.

It was not entirely a matter of theology.

There was also expediency. Of the city's 23 Lutheran churches (evangelical), only one now belongs to the Council. The others are being coaxed to join. Since the city's nine Christian Science and nine Mormon churches (nonevangelical) have not shown much interest in the Council, the whole matter might seem to resolve itself into one simple question: Does the Council want 22 new Lutheran members or two Unitarian?

Next week the Council's members will consider the matter at their annual meeting. Mr. Bates is certain that the word evangelical will stay in, the Unitarians will have to stay out.

*Those which hold that the essence of the Gospel consists mainly in its doctrines of man's sinful condition and need of salvation, the revelation of God's grace in Christ, the necessity of spiritual renovation, and participation in the experience of redemption through faith.

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