The Bishop's Challenge

The world's largest Protestant church looked hopefully last week toward Christian unity.

It was the first Quadrennial General Conference the Methodists had held in Boston for 96 years. On hand were 60-odd bishops and 7,000 lesser clergymen and laymen from some 50 countries. They represented 21 million Christians who call themselves Methodists.

The keynote of Christian unity was struck, and ringingly struck, by New York's Bishop Garfield Bromley Oxnam, in the Episcopal Address. The Episcopal Address, prepared and delivered by one bishop, but edited and initialed by all of them, is a kind of party platform. It indicates the position of the Church's leaders and the direction of the Church's thought. As Bishop Oxnam's address showed, that position is advanced, the direction forward.

The speech took Bishop Oxnam, standing short and solid on the stage of huge, dismal Mechanics Building, two hours to read. He reviewed Methodist gains since the General Conference of 1944 ($27,011,243 raised for world relief and reconstruction; a record one-year gain of 1,063,734 new members). He restated the traditional Methodist stand against "the liquor traffic" and its "advertisements that seek to associate whiskey with success rather than with the gutter." He deplored the growing tendency of Methodist-founded universities and other institutions to break away from their church affiliation. Then he came to the main point.

Take the Lead. He called for "the churches . . . [to] become the Church" --here & now, with no more procrastinating "exploration of the possibilities of union." Since the Roman Catholic Church would consider reunion only on its own terms--a repentant Protestantism asking to be taken back into the fold--"first steps toward union must be taken by the Protestant communions . . . Let each communion in its own way discuss the fundamental question: Is union so desirable that we are resolved to win it? If the answer is affirmative, then bodies can appoint . . . representatives . . . qualified, above all, by a life of Christian spirit.

"When six or eight or ten such communions have taken such action, let the representatives meet and remain together long enough to know one another, long enough for another Pentecost. Let them draft a Plan of Union . . . Let the representatives be charged solemnly to keep their eyes upon the Christ rather than on the practices of a particular communion . .. Agreement is possible . . . Let the Methodists take the lead in a great affirmative decision, stating that we desire union."

Kneel Before Sitting. Bishop Oxnam turned next to the menace of Communism. A "holy war" against the Communists is no answer, he said; the evil must be fought where it grows--in poverty and economic injustice. Nor can Christians "defeat totalitarianism by allying ourselves with totalitarianism, whether it be ecclesiastical or political." Ideas cannot be shattered by atomic bombs, but only by better ideas. "Justice and brotherhood within the conditions of freedom are like bells. They sound the death knell of Communism ...

"Preparedness is not alone a matter of adequate military force to repel aggression and to preserve our liberty. It is a matter of removing the injustices suffered in North and South alike by the American Negro to whom the Communist is whispering so insistently; it is a matter of eradicating the prejudice that stalks arrogantly in anti-Semitism ... There is need today for men who sit at conference tables to kneel first at the table of the Lord."

Heart & Society. Lastly, Bishop Oxnam proposed a new kind of Methodist ministry. All too few churchmen, said he, see in labor "a worldwide movement that means a new social order as truly as the coming of the machine meant the passing of feudalism. This the Church must understand."

Methodists, said the bishop, should hand-pick 50 young people a year for special training as combination labor leaders and industrial workers. On graduation they would get a job in industry and work for labor leadership on their own merits. "If 50 such persons go into the labor movement each year for 20 years, out of this 1,000 will come a leadership of great power. It must be pointed out that this is no plan to tone down the demands for social justice." The Church's purpose would be merely "to contribute in terms of character the finest young people we possess, to the end that the ideals that will be regnant in the conduct of labor for the years to come will be Christian ideals." This is not the "social Gospel," said Bishop Oxnam. "Methodism must not divide itself into those who speak of the individual Gospel and the social Gospel . . . There is the Gospel; and the Gospel calls for the changed heart and the changed society."

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