Tidings

> Among U.S. Southern Presbyterians, a minor defection has exploded into a full-scale schism. At a meeting last week in Atlanta of representatives from 261 congregations, the delegates voted 349 to 16 to form a new denomination called the Continuing Presbyterian Church. The dissident congregations encompass some 70,000 of the 950,000 members in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. All 70,000 may not make the break, since local congregations must still approve the move, but feelings are strong among the seceders against what they see as liberal trends in the church.

The Rev. William E. Hill of Hopewell, Va., charged that the parent denomination is "filled with saboteurs and led by corrupt men who are perverting the Gospel." Oddly, the conservative rebels who depart will do so at a time when conservatives are winning important concessions in the church on the very issues that provoked the split. The Consultation on Church Union, whose interdenominational merger plan conservatives opposed, has been seriously weakened. A vote on an intra-Presbyterian merger with the Northern United Presbyterians has been postponed, and so has another critical vote on adopting a more liberal new confession of faith.

> Even though Switzerland has a reputation as a bastion of democracy, it seemed not entirely surprising that the country should have laws restricting Jesuits. After all, Geneva was once the home of Protestant Reformer John Calvin's stern theocracy, and the Jesuits (TIME, April 23) became a sort of spiritual Marine Corps to spearhead the Roman Catholic Counter Reformation.

The laws, dating back to a Swiss religious civil war of 1847, were Articles 51 and 52 of the Swiss constitution. One banned Jesuits from work in schools or churches; the other forbade them (and other orders) to open any new religious houses or reopen ones closed by the government. Last week in a national referendum the two articles were finally repealed--and only by a slim majority of voters, most of them Catholics, who only recently have edged out Protestants as the country's largest religious group. Before the referendum, anti-Jesuit campaigners marched through Zurich streets calling Jesuits "lackeys of fascism." Others voiced an outdated fear that Jesuits would seek to make Switzerland a Catholic state. Actually, the Jesuits have been working quietly in Switzerland for years with tacit government approval. The repeal of the old laws will mainly mean an opportunity to operate their own parishes, to teach in universities or perhaps open an experimental religious community.

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