Religion: Strong Words for Methodists

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Born with a bigger circulation than any other Protestant journal, the first weekly issue of The Christian Advocate rolled off the presses last week. Official organ of the Methodist Church, it boasts a hefty initial subscription of over 275,000, was formed by combining seven Methodist papers following the 1939 merger of three Methodist sects into America's biggest (8,000,000 members) Protestant denomination.

Editor of a magazine which should become one of Christendom's most influential is resourceful, go-getting Dr. Roy Lemon Smith, long the successful pastor of Los Angeles' big First Methodist Church, whose "Sentence Sermons" are syndicated in more than 100 newspapers. No pussyfooting puller of punches, Editor Smith's first issue addressed Methodist youth under the heading "Toasting Marshmallows While the World Burns." It suggested that "many church services are being defeated by dig-nity," denounced church boards that are more temporal than spiritual, asked whether Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka had forgotten his debt to Methodism, publicized a slump of $481,000 in Methodist world-service benevolences in the united church's first six months.

In a signed editorial, "We Salute You," hard-hitting Dr. Smith summed up The Christian Advocate's aims: "To edit a paper for eight millions of Christians in such a day as this is a staggering responsibility. ... It must be entirely free from partisan bias, economic prejudice, and sectional pride. ... It is the glory of Methodism that we have always made room within our fellowship for differences of opinion, and our board of contributing editors represents those differences in an unusual degree. By the action of the General Conference and of the Board of Publication, the Editor of The Christian Advocate has been left absolutely free to express his own convictions. No religious editor has ever set out upon his task with the assurance of greater freedom. . . . Inasmuch as Methodism now has but one 'official' paper, it must be broad enough to make room for diversity, and we herewith enter into a solemn covenant with the Church that this will be so."