Baptists' Business

Some 8,600 delegates and observers met in Buffalo last week for the 44th annual meeting of the American (Northern) Baptist Convention. Like most U.S. Protestant denominations, the American Baptists (membership: 1,578,000) ranked the question of church reunion high on their agenda; they voted to meet next year in Chicago at the same time as the Disciples of Christ (membership: 1,716,000). Business meetings of the two conventions will be separate, but some spiritual and social activities will be carried out jointly. "I do not foresee any immediate merger," said the Baptists' secretary, Dr. Reuben E. Nelson of New York, "but the Baptists and Disciples are more alike than any two other Protestant groups ... We are going to get to know each other better. You can't tell what better acquaintanceship will bring."

As convention president for the coming year, the American Baptists elected Yale's professor of missions and oriental history, Dr. Kenneth S. Latourette. Author of a definitive history of Christian missions, the seven-volume History of the Expansion of Christianity, Dr. Latourette has long been active in Baptist mission affairs, is past president and a member of the board of managers of. the American Baptist Foreign Missions Society.

From a prominent Baptist layman came a message likening the Baptist struggles for religious liberty under Roger Williams to the modern battle against Communism. "Today," wrote Harry Truman, "we face a counterrevolution, a black reaction as menacing and dreadful in its repression of human freedoms as any in history . . .We must be steadfast in the face of the trials ahead, as steadfast as were our forefathers."

Then the delegates put their church on record with a series of Baptist-style resolutions :

P: To petition the President and Congress to promote a world conference on disarmament.

P: To continue opposition to universal military training in peacetime.

P: To oppose the sale of alcoholic beverages at military installations.

P: To condemn the "socalled 'innocent' forms of gambling, such as legalized race-track wagers . . . lotteries, bingo and all activities which encourage the false belief that life consists of getting something for nothing."

P: To call upon state and federal authorities for a crackdown on narcotics peddlers.

P: To oppose "all religious oppression anywhere, either by state or church."

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