The Perils of Uniting

The nation's two major Presbyterian bodies were separated last week by only six blocks--and more than a century of history. As in other denominations, Northern and Southern Presbyterians split on the slavery issue in 1861. Efforts to heal the rift brought the churches' two general assemblies to tandem meetings in Louisville last week, with a joint session for the formal unveiling of a plan for reunion. But the encounter was still as tentative as the mating dance of sand crabs.

Issues quite apart from race now divide the two denominations. The Northern church, the 2.8-million-member United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., is three times the size of the Southern denomination, the 900,000member Presbyterian Church in the U.S. Many Southerners feel that in a merger they could be swallowed up by the Northerners, who are both less conservative in doctrine and more committed to social action. The reunion plan reflects this liberalism. At their ordination, for example, Southern Presbyterian ministers would no longer be required to accept the Bible as "the infallible rule of faith and practice" but only, as the

Northern ministers now do, as "the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ." The plan also calls for a "fair" representation of women and a 15% minimum quota for ethnic minorities in church administration above the local level.

Northerners have already accepted as part of their creed a modern statement of doctrine known as the Confession of 1967. The liberal majority in the Southern church is still trying to develop such a contemporary formulation, but fierce opposition from the denomination's vocal conservative wing may well prevent any new creed from winning the required support: 75% of the church's presbyteries. Some conservatives, however, are quitting the battle. Last year more than 55,000 of them, mostly in the Deep South, established their own National Presbyterian Church. As many as 200,000 more might break away if the plan of reunion goes through.

The Northern church, meantime, has suffered its own attrition. Membership dropped by 100,000 last year. Worse, inflation and lagging church receipts, coupled with heavy expenses, have virtually exhausted the church's once hefty capital reserves. Merging the two denominations now, allowed outgoing United Presbyterian Moderator Clinton M. Marsh, would be like "putting together a crutch and a walking stick."

By midweek, though, Northerners had elected a new moderator known to hanker strongly for union: the Rev. Robert C. Lamar, 52, a pastor from Albany, N.Y., who has co-chaired the Joint Committee on Presbyterian Union since 1969. As for the Southerners, they elected Dr. Lawrence W. Bottoms, 66, the first black man ever to become moderator of the once segregated denomination. At his investiture, Bottoms got one of the week's few laughs. As his predecessor put the chain with the traditional cross of office over his head, the new moderator remarked: "Any time any white person puts anything around my neck, it makes me nervous."

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