Baptists at Work

"It's hard to find Baptists who agree on anything, except that the Devil ought to be trimmed down a little bit." So cracked a Baptist last week at the 43rd annual meeting of the Northern Baptist Convention in San Francisco. But the 2,727 delegates and 2,292 visitors who met for four days in the city's huge, dusty-looking Civic Auditorium surprised themselves by their harmony.

The only major source of discord among Baptists is something which began back in 1845. In that year, after a missionary society decision to employ no missionaries who owned slaves, the Baptists from the South walked out and formed their own denomination--the Southern Baptist Convention. In 1907 the Baptists north of the Mason-Dixon line united and called themselves the Northern Baptist Convention. Since then, all attempts at uniting the two have failed. At the Southern Baptist Convention's meeting in Oklahoma City last month, some delegates expressed alarm at reports of a forthcoming merger between the Northern Baptists (1,500,000 members) and the 1,700,000-member Disciples of Christ, which has many churches in the Southern states.

The Southern Baptists (membership: 6,000,000) pointedly challenged the North by voting to hold their next convention in Chicago.

Don't Crowd Romance. Last week in San Francisco, the Northerners voted to consider the question of changing the denomination's name to the less regional-sounding "American Baptist Convention." To counter any Southern suspicion that this was a new act of aggression, the Northerners also voted to invite their big Southern sister to unite with them in establishing the "American Baptist Convention." But there was scant hope that the Dixie Baptists would accept this extended hand.

Far more hopeful was the promise of union with the Disciples of Christ. The Rev. Donald M. West, a Disciples pastor and a guest of the convention, likened the proposed merger to a "romance between our peoples . . . We should not be interested in crowding the situation too much." Willing to give the romance plenty of time, leaders of both Baptists and Disciples are not bringing the subject up for a vote until 1955.

Three Enemies. Gathered together beneath a banner bearing the silver-spangled motto, YOUR REASONABLE SERVICE,* 5,000-odd Northern Baptists wandered in the corridors outside the hall among a variety of exhibits (on everything from the merits of missions to the evils of alcohol), chatted warmly in the wicker-furnished "Friendship Patio," looked in on the nursery where convening parents parked their offspring.

At the opening worship service they heard Dr. Warner Cole of Detroit deliver the annual sermon on "Conquest Through Conflict," in which he named three "foes, strong, deeply entrenched, that array themselves against the church of the 20th Century." First, he cited "the enemy of humanistic materialism"; second, the "dread menace of Communism"; third, "the aggressive advance of the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical empire," which is "seeking not only spiritual and religious domination but political power . . ."

To lead them for the next year they elected their third woman president--middle-aged, middle-height Mrs. Howard G. Colwell of Loveland, Colo., a widow with an agreeable manner and a keen head for business (she sits on the board of directors of Loveland's First National Bank).

The busy Baptists also put themselves on record by resolving, among other things, that they were: P: Opposed to "the present national policy of preparation for atomic war"; P: Reserving judgment on the Atlantic pact; P: In favor of admitting 400,000 displaced persons to the U.S. over a four-year period; P: Against all liquor advertising.

* From Romans 12:1, "I beseech you . . . that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."

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