Religion: The Business of the Church

To help "make the Christian Gospel more effective in society," U.S. Congregationalists in 1934 created a Council for Social Action. Council members, drawn from the ranks of church liberals, thereupon set out to sell fellow Congregationalists and all other Americans on some forward-looking ideas. During the '30s, the council gave its blessing to the consumer cooperative movement, demanded a national referendum before a declaration of war, attacked student military training and conducted critical studies of the private-enterprise system.

Since World War II, the council has lobbied in Washington for compulsory health insurance, federal aid to education, Point Four and FEPC. Council members concede that they do not speak officially for the church membership (1,204,789), but Congressmen often miss this fine distinction.

Many Congregationalists, especially those who do not share the council's views on politics and economics, object to its active lobbying. Some churches have specified that their contributions to central Congregational boards shall not be used to support the council (which gets about $90,000 a year of church funds).

Last week in Minneapolis, 16 prominent Congregationalist laymen (including Congressman Walter H. Judd, Scientist Robert A. Millikan) formed a committee to "oppose Congregational political action." The council, charged Committeeman Frank A. Bean, a Minneapolis executive, "violates the principles of Congregationalism and the concepts of the Constitution of the United States. We believe its approach to social, economic and political problems is basically materialistic and immoral."

Answered the council's chairman, Dean Liston Pope of the Yale Divinity School: "The council is vigorously anti-Communist and anti-Marxist." This seemed true, though the council's outlook has run considerably leftward of the average Congregationalist. But it was only a glancing rebuttal. What roused the laymen's committee most was the fear that the Council for Social Action is subjecting Congregationalists to a centralized program of policymaking that contradicts the historic individualism of their church.

"We do not believe it is the business of the church to tell the state what to do," said Congressman Judd. "It is the business of the church to discover what is righteous, what is the will of God. and inculcate those ideas in the individual."