Religion: A Minister's Freedom

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"I believe Christianity must seek a deliberate reconciliation with Communism . . . We come dangerously near to hypocrisy if we say our system of capitalism is compatible with Christianity and Communism is not." Thus spoke the Rev. William Howard Melish in a nationwide broadcast.

For years, blond, spectacled Episcopalian Melish, 37, has been suiting his actions to his far-leftish words. He is chairman of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship and has beaten the drum for many another Communist-line cause. As associate rector of Brooklyn's Church of the Holy Trinity, he has had a sympathetic boss—his father, the Rev. John Howard Melish, 73, rector for 44 years.

But Holy Trinity's vestrymen have viewed young William's activities with a less approving eye. Last week they seemed to be trying to get rid of him. An informal poll of 306 of the 780-member congregation showed the parish about equally divided on the subject.

Rector Melish stoutly defended his son for "doing the work which the rector himself would have done, had he been 20 years younger." He added: "A free pulpit that utters things that everyone accepts is an absurdity." Father & son issued a joint statement pointing out that an Episcopal minister "is not the employee of the vestry or of a board of trustees. Nor does he speak for the people of his parish in the sense that he must conform to the sentiments of the majority ... To say that he may speak his mind fully in the pulpit, but to deny him the right to apply his conscientious beliefs to concrete situations and issues ... is to restrict and abridge any real freedom."