Religion: The Challenge of Change

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In Manhattan's Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church last week, delegates to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) met to hear reports on the state of the church, plot its course for another year, and elect a new Moderator to guide it. It was the 150th anniversary year of Presbyterian national missions, and as Moderator, the delegates, without a dissenting vote, chose the churchman who knows most about the church's mission work: the Rev. Hermann N. Morse, 64, of New York.

Unrepentant Liberal. A desk man rather than a pulpit man, Hermann Morse has spent almost 40 years in the work of the National Missions Board, for the last four has been its general secretary. Modest Moderator Morse, taken a bit by surprise at being an unopposed candidate, insisted that his election was strictly a tribute to the Missions Board. Said he: "If you ever see a turtle sitting on top of a stump, you can know he didn't get there by himself." Nonetheless, it was also a personal tribute to a minister who has never had a permanent church of his own, but has done a lot for his church. His work has involved such things as the patient study of population shifts, the need for new churches and missions. As Morse sees it, the job has been to help the Presbyterians meet "the challenge of change."

Theologically, Morse is "an unrepentant liberal" ("I still believe in the improvability of human nature"). Thirty-nine years ago, a youngster on the staff of the church's national headquarters, he lost his post because the General Assembly thought his department's rural church work was "too progressive," but the following year he was back.

Unlike many theological liberals of his generation, he was not trapped in the pellmell rush to turn the Bible into a social-service worker's handbook. Says he: "The church is not primarily an agency for social action—the church is primarily a religious agency." Because Morse and other Presbyterians believed in keeping all church social-action agencies subject to official church control, the Presbyterians did not run afoul of some of the embarrassing situations that occurred in other denominations, e.g., the left-wing crusading of the unofficial Methodist Federation for Social Action (TIME. May 5).

Pushing Out. Two years ago, Morse presided so ably over the planning board of the new National Council of Churches that U.S. churchmen call him ''the architect of the National Council." As moderator of the northern Presbyterians (membership: 2,500,000). he will put his prestige to the support of the world ecumenical movement, as well as to plans for a union of the three major Presbyterian bodies in the U.S. Missionary Morse wants more Presbyterians to realize the challenge of change. "It's easy." he said, "for congregations to have the sense of being an 'in' group. We need to have a sense of pushing out."