New Presiding Bishop

Behind crucifers and candle bearers, vergers, marshals and a blaze of flags, six processions filed into Washington's Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul one day last week. In the last procession, robed in white, red and black, walked a slight, silver-haired grocer's son from Oshkosh, Wis. to be installed as the 21st Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.

The Right Rev. Arthur Carl Lichtenberger. 59. sat in a carved oak throne 22 ft. high to hear the formal words of induction pronounced by his predecessor. Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill: "I, Henry Knox, do induct and install you, Right Reverend Father in God, Arthur, into the office of President Bishop, with all its rights, dignities, honors and privileges: in which may our Lord Jesus Christ preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth forevermore. Amen."

Honors & Privileges. The rights, dignities, honors and privileges of the Presiding Bishop do not carry with them the hierarchical authority of a Roman Catholic archbishop (a nonexistent title in the Episcopal Church). Bishop Lichtenberger will serve as chief spokesman for 3,274,867 Episcopalians in the U.S. and abroad, will have jurisdiction over U.S. Episcopal churches in Europe and any vacant missionary districts, will preside over the House of Bishops, and will serve as president of his church's National Council.

Well-read, friendly Arthur Lichtenberger graduated from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio and went on to the Episcopal Theological Seminary, Cambridge, Mass., for a degree of bachelor of sacred theology. After postgraduate work at Manhattan's General Theological Seminary, he was ordained in China in 1926, began his ministry as missionary professor of New Testament at St. Paul's Divinity School in Wuchang. In 1928 he returned to the U.S. to be rector of Grace Church in Cincinnati, Ohio for five years, then rector of St. Paul's Church in Brookline, Mass, for eight years.

After serving as dean of Trinity Cathedral in Newark. N.J., he went back to teaching, as professor of pastoral theology at General Theological Seminary. He has been Bishop of Missouri since 1951. In 1956 he assumed the chairmanship of an Episcopal delegation studying the problems of the Church of South India.

Mission & Unity. The most important problem facing the church today. Bishop Lichtenberger feels, is a renewal of the sense of mission and of unity. In his inaugural address last week, he spoke on both of them. On mission: "The church comes to man not in his extremity, at the point where all else fails. The church stands not on the outskirts but in the center of the town." On unity: "I believe we are finding our way, by God's grace, into a deeper unity within our own communion. We are coming to understand more clearly what it means to belong to a church which is both Catholic and Reformed. This is not an uneasy compromise . . . the two parts of our heritage are not incompatible and opposed elements, but are essential aspects of God's truth."

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