Religion: Divisive Doctrine

Presbyterian theologians "don't believe in the Genesis story any more. They claim that the virgin birth of Christ is a myth, also the bodily resurrection of Christ. The Church, as a result, has lost its punch."

So preached young (29) Presbyterian Minister Perry F. Rockwood in sermon after angry sermon in his little fieldstone church in Truro, Nova Scotia. "Hell," he told his flock, "is a place just as much as Truro is a place. It is not a condition Hell is a place of terrible pain, anguish and suffering. . . . Those who die in their sins must burn and burn and burn forevermore."

Three years of persistent Pastor Rockwood's fundamentalism was too much for the 173,152-member Presbyterian Church in Canada. Last week a presbytery court convicted him of "following a divisive course."

Presumably hoping that Pastor Rockwood would change his tune, the court postponed sentence (admonition, suspension or excommunication) until next May. But militant Minister Rockwood promptly resigned. He said that he would "go out on the streets and from house to house like the apostles of old. . . ." At week's end, he was looking for a hall in which to start a church of his own.