Episcopalians: Giving the Rib a Ribbing

God created the world in six days.

Eve was made out of Adam's rib. Literal acceptance of such Biblical statements is the hallmark of fundamentalism, and south Georgia is a stronghold of it. Last week twelve Episcopal bishops from as far away as Montana launched a "Bishops' Crusade for Christ" in south Georgia, attacking "anthropoid religion," as H. L. Mencken used to call it.

In what the Rt. Rev. Albert Rhett Stuart, Episcopal Bishop of Georgia, said was only the beginning of a year long evangelizing drive, each of the bishops preached in one of twelve towns of the diocese of Georgia, which covers the southern part of the state. "We are trying to present a rational, meaningful exposition of the New Testament faith," said Archdeacon Alfred Mead. Montana's Episcopal Bishop Chandler Sterling, 54, a hearty churchman sporting a silver cowboy buckle on his robes, agreed: "It's time to sweep away old stories and make the Gospels intelligible against the background of today."

The problem of fundamentalism is that it cannot withstand critical Biblical scholarship and scientific facts. "No person with any knowledge of history or archaeology could possibly buy this fundamentalist stuff," says Mead. And the moment small-town boys go to college, "they take a course in biology, and their faith is gone. Our great sin is never having offered them a real alternative."