Religion: Bishop on the Move

The Bishop of Fulham has to be a special kind of bishop. His diocese covers some 800,000 square miles of northern Europe, from Biarritz to Iceland. His flock consists mainly of Englishmen-on-holiday, diplomatic service staffs, finishing-school girls, other British transients and trippers. His duties involve constant travel, and an interminable round of social occasions that would deepen the rings under the eyes of a gossip columnist. But the new Bishop of Fulham who was consecrated at St. Paul's this week could hardly wait to start his peripatetic job.

Tall, stooping Rt. Rev. William Marshall Selwyn is only worried about one thing: carfare. To visit the 80 chaplains in his far-flung see will take him at least two years of diligent travel. His Church of England stipend of $5,000 a year does not allow for much travel after living expenses have been paid. Even though he has a small private income, Bishop Selwyn hopes his episcopal gaiters will help him hitch many a plane or car ride. He plans to take his wife "only when I can afford it."

"Unfortunate Custom." The bishopric of Fulham began in the days of Charles I, when a lonely chaplain in charge of the small English community at Ghent asked the Bishop of London to lighten his solitude and brighten his prestige by sending a bishop out for an occasional visit. The Bishop of London responded by creating the first Bishop of Fulham. Technically, the bishop has no diocese, but acts as administrator for North and Central Europe, which is still a suffragan bishopric of London.

For the past 21 years Fulham's bishop has been big, hearty Rt. Rev. Basil Batty, who found the job "hard work, but very pleasant." Lately, however, the going has been tough. In a plane from Moscow recently he found the stratosphere too much for his 74 years and resigned in favor of 67-year-old Youngster Selwyn, an ex-chaplain.

Chief postwar problem of the diocese, says Bishop Batty mildly, is the tendency of chaplains to become unpopular in countries favoring Communism. But he emphasized that the duties of the English clergyman abroad are confined to the spiritual welfare of Britons, do not entail spreading the gospel. Batty's more poignant memories of Russia include the Russian clergy's "unfortunate custom of kissing each other when meeting. . . . This is all very well for the Russian clergymen, all of whom are well-equipped with long and spiky beards, but it can be most uncomfortable for a clean-shaven English bishop." He recalls how a Russian priest once solemnly kissed his rather short chaplain on the forehead and turned away with the chaplain's spectacles entangled in his beard.

A Very Nice Job. Easy-mannered Bishop Selwyn was well-prepared for his job by serving as chaplain to the British Embassy Church in Paris from 1921-29. Says he reminiscently: "Paris is a wonderful place, and if you've got anything in you as a chaplain it's still a wonderful place. There you really come up against the forces of the devil!"