What Is Unity?

For several years a group of 15 private schools near the most fashionable part of Manhattan's Park Avenue has held an annual series of nondenominational vesper services. At the first of this year's services, held in the Episcopal St. James' Church, the Rev. Laurance I. Neale of the Unitarian Church of All Souls was one of the officiating clergymen. To one Protestant prelate this was carrying Protestant unity a little too far. Last week, retired Episcopal Bishop William T. Manning, 82, took sharp note of it in a letter to two New York newspapers:

"The Unitarians honestly disbelieve and deny the facts and truths about the Lord Jesus Christ declared in the Christian Creed. At every service in an Episcopal Church that creed is solemnly recited before the altar by the clergy and the people together. Is it consistent for one who represents definite denial of that creed to be asked to take official part in a service which is based wholly upon belief in it? Would it be consistent to ask an earnest and convinced Marxian Communist to take official part in a meeting held to pay honor to the Constitution of the United States? . . . The suggestion which such action obviously conveys to the young people who attend the service is that it makes no difference whether they believe the Christian Creed or not."

Replied Unitarian Neale: "In a world which needs so much to find unity in diversity, it is a pity to insist on conformity and equally a pity to introduce dogma about Jesus, when what is needed is adherence to His spirit."

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