New Denomination

The rain lashed down, splashing on the slick Pittsburgh streets, making lakes and torrents in the gutters. It streamed from the hats and coats and faces of the marchers, drenched their banners, soaked their shoes, as they trudged--850 of them in one group, 350 in another--to meet at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Bigelow Boulevard. There the two leaders clasped wet hands, and all raised their voices in a spontaneous doxology: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow . . ." Four abreast, 1,200 strong, they marched through the rain together to celebrate the first Communion of a new church.

So last week began the 3,000,000-member United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.--a merger of the 2,800,000-member Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (Northern) with the 300,000-member United Presbyterian Church of North America. The new body, the fourth major merger of this ecumenical century,* is the fourth largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.--after the Methodists, Southern Baptists, and the Negro denomination titled National Baptists, U.S.A. The merger was originally intended to include the Southern Presbyterians, but they withdrew from negotiations three years ago under pressure from the ultraconservative churches of the Deep South.

Tough Criticism. After mopping up with paper towels at Pittsburgh's Syria Mosque, the commissioners (delegates) celebrated the Lord's Supper and sang hymns together in a jubilance of union that moved many of them to tears. Then they buckled down to business, unanimously elected their first Moderator: Ohio-born Dr. Theophilus Mills Taylor, 48, a teacher and architect for four years before studying for the United Presbyterian ministry, now professor of New Testament literature and exegesis at Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary.

Resolution No. 1, passed by an overwhelming voice vote, was a 2,500-word document, disarmingly titled "In Unity--for Mission," that contained some remarkably tough criticism of Presbyterians Eisenhower and Dulles. The resolution, which is slated to become a message to the 9,462 congregations of the new denomination, attacked what it called "the contemporary myth of the free world." The U.S., it declared, "counts among its allies some nations which are in no sense free. By our actions we proclaim to the world that lands where human freedom is utterly dead can qualify for membership in the free world simply by supplying military bases 01 strategic commodities.

"This kind of international hypocrisy should be abhorrent to Christians, and in its presence the Church dare not keep silent . . . We Americans are in danger of rejecting the heritage which made us what we are. With penitence let us confess that as a people we are becoming less interested in righteousness than in national security and international superiority."

Face to Face. The resolution made no direct reference to a summit meeting with Russia, but the implication was clear in the words: There can be "no substitute for personal encounter in the pursuit of human understanding . . . When men who profess the Christian religion make no adequate provision for a face-to-face encounter with their enemies, they betray the religion which they profess."

Just as coexistence between Moslems and Christians, and later between Protestants and Catholics, has supplanted earlier ideas of irreconcilability, said the Presbyterians, "so, also, still striving for the freedom of all men, we today must co-exist with Communist nations. In this nuclear age, the only alternative to coexistence is co-extinction."

* The others: three Lutheran bodies in 1918; three branches of Methodism in 1939; the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church, which merged last year to form the United Church of Christ.

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