Religion: In the Churches

• Share

In the following places the following churchmen made news last week:

¶ In Manhattan, the North Presbyterian Church installed as its pastor Rev. Dr. Merle Hampton Anderson, since 1924 pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor, Mich. North Church had resolved to call no minister over 50. It gladly changed its mind last summer when Dr. Anderson, 60, preached three stirring guest sermons.

¶ In London, a brisk controversy sprang up between the rectors of All Hallows-on-the-Wall and St. Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, two of the 47 churches in the City. Rector Sanders of All Hallows-on-the-Wall urged that all but four or five City churches be closed on Sunday. "On a recent Sunday," he exclaimed, "my congregation consisted of half a dozen adults and a small party of Girl Guides!" But Rector Sankey of St. Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe disagreed, said that all City churches should be "red hot missionary centres for the conversion of London."

¶ In Manhattan arrived Rev. Lorenzo M. Spirale, treasurer of the Catholic Augustinian Order, sent by Benito Mussolini to preach good citizenship to young U. S.-Italians.

¶ In Detroit, Jews were irate because, at a Catholic conference on Industrial Problems, President George Hermann Derry of Detroit's Marygrove College (Catholic) had said: "A few international Jews hold a stranglehold on the world supply of gold that enables them to decide the destiny of nations, to make and unmake cabinets, and to rule the fate of mankind."

¶ In Manhattan met the Presbyterian League of Faith, militant Fundamentalist organization to which some 1,200 of the 10,000 U. S. Presbyterian ministers belong. Unabashed by the trouncing administered them at the last Presbyterian General Assembly (TIME, June 5), the Fundamentalists proclaimed they are holding their line, unanimously nominated as their candidate for moderator at next Assembly Rev. Dr. Harold S. Laird, 42, pastor of First & Central Presbyterian Church, Wilmington, Del.