Blueprint for Unity

Church union is a little like Heaven; not everybody who talks about it is necessarily going there. But many people, not content with pious hopes and careful phrases, are working for real, organic unity among Protestant churches--in which a minister or member of one church is minister or member of all.

Among the hardest-working proponents of unity in the U.S. is a body of clergy and laymen from nine denominations called the Conference on Church Union.

Anchor man of the conference is Missouri's Methodist Bishop Ivan Lee Holt, 69, head of a commission that has been working for more than five years on a plan for organic unity of the nine conference denominations. Last week Bishop Holt gave the press an "unofficial" look at the plan.

The main problem, Dr. Holt explained, is to bring into one body* three types of churches--congregational, presbyterian and episcopal--which already recognize one another's ministries and sacraments but are accustomed to operate under somewhat different forms of organization. Highlights of the conference plan:

Under the general name "United Church of Christ," each member church would have complete local autonomy to conduct its own affairs, decide on its form of worship and method of administering the sacraments. If a local church owns property, it may retain it. If held in trust, the property could be transferred to the United Church of Christ.

P: Ministers would be ordained into "the Church Universal," and called or assigned to churches in their own category.

P: Ten or more local churches would form a "presbytery;" three or more presbyteries would make a "conference," headed by a Bishop. A supreme body, the "General Conference," consisting of about 1,000 ministerial and lay delegates, would meet biennially.

Bishop Holt's current job is to get the plan into the hands of influential members of the participating denominations with hope of a "convocation" to consider it one year from now. But greying Methodist Holt, who has been "plugging and praying" for organic unity since 1910, is far from overoptimistic about the chances of early success. "Union is bound to come," he said last week. "It is tragic that so many fail to see it."

* The United Church of Canada was formed in 1925, merging the Methodists, Congregationalists and some Presbyterians.

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