Challenge in Kunming

Eight bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church gathered together last week for the sacred act of laying on of hands. The place: All-Saints-by-the-Sea in Santa Barbara, Calif. The occasion: the first consecration in the U.S. of an Oriental bishop. Episcopal bishops are usually consecrated in cathedrals, but China-born Rt. Rev. Quentin K. Y. Huang, who studied for the ministry in the U.S., had deliberately chosen the tiny (300 communicants) church at Santa Barbara. Reason: for several years it had been the only guaranteed source of financial support for relief work he directed in China.

For slender, 44-year-old Bishop Huang, who had arrived from China wearing a discarded G.I. uniform, the colorful service of consecration was both an end and a beginning. It was a reward for Christian work during the misery of war. Somehow he survived 265 bombings unscratched while he helped refugees, conducted services, directed an ambulance corps. He found time also to work among American soldiers, became known to thousands of G.I.s as the "Bishop of the Burma Road."

Quentin Huang, who before the war had been rector of a parish in Nanchang for about ten years, will be Bishop of Kunming, a diocese covering the two southeast provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow. Almost one and a half times as large as California (158,297 sq. mi.), it has an estimated population of 24,000,000; 20% of its people are tribal, all are poor. Only a handful are Christian. Said Bishop Huang after his consecration: "Our opportunities are many, our challenges are great--and our needs in personnel and funds are enormous."

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