Religion: Lutheran Self-Examination

In Harrisburg. Pa., the United Lutheran Church in America, the U.S.'s largest (2,270,000 members) Lutheran body, concluded one of its most important conferences in years. After seven days of talk, some 700 delegates to the 20th biennial convention last week:

¶Abolished the group's long-standing restriction on remarriage of the guilty party in divorce, decided to permit Lutheran pastors to remarry any divorced person who shows repentance. Marriage is a "lifelong, indissoluble union." declared the delegates, but "God in His love does accept the sinner."

¶Called upon 16 branches of U.S. Lutheranism to unite in one denomination that would number some 7,250,000 members, authorized a special commission to meet with representatives of other groups to initiate steps toward union.

¶ Endorsed birth control for the first time in the church's history. Parents have a duty to plan their children "in accordance with their ability to provide for their children and carefully nurture them in the fullness of Christian faith and life."

¶Urged members to set an example of interracial brotherhood in their daily lives, but declined, by a vote of 340 to 159, to endorse a proposal hailing the Supreme Court's ban on segregation in the public schools as being "in harmony with Christian convictions," because the church had no right to "differ with or support" the court, which acts, they maintained, purely on legal principles. By this decision, which President Franklin Clark Fry formally opposed, the group becomes the first major U.S. religious body so far to withhold its blessing from the court's ruling.