In the Van

The United Presbyterians have a knack for breaking race barriers without catering to either politics or sentimentalism. Last week, at their 176th General Assembly in Oklahoma City, the Presbyterians elected a qualified and articulate church statesman as moderator of the 3,291,998-member church for a one-year term. He is the Rev. Edler Hawkins, 55, a Negro.

The Presbyterian moderator's tasks are largely ceremonial, but Edler Hawkins (his life is an endless battle against people who spell his name "Elder") nonetheless becomes chief spokesman for a church that is 95% white in membership. A 1938 graduate of Union Theological Seminary, Hawkins has held only one ministry in his pastoral career, at St. Augustine's Church in a somewhat slum-ridden section of the lower Bronx in New York City. He started the church from scratch, with a congregation of nine; today it numbers 1,000, about one-third of them Puerto Ricans.

Hawkins has also served for two one year terms as head of the New York Presbytery, governing body of the city's 119 churches.

Hawkins will undertake the customary "moderator's tour" of the nation's Presbyterian churches. But he also plans to visit Africa, the Middle East and Europe this summer, including, possibly, an important stop in Italy. "I can see the necessity of going on to Rome to visit the Pope," he said. "Pope Paul has opened up channels of communication on the road to a new unity of Christendom."

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