Religion: Machen on Trial

Twice during the past three weeks, Trenton, N. J.'s old, spired First Presbyterian Church became an ecclesiastical courtroom. Pious partisans for prosecution and defense filled its pews. The Moderator of the Presbytery sat as judge on the bench, gaveled lustily when spectators laughed. Counsel bickered, wrangled, thumbed through the Presbyterian Book of Discipline to decide niggling points of procedure. And in the church sat a man accused, indicted and liable to be rebuked, suspended or excommunicated.

The defendant was Philadelphia's Rev. Dr. John Gresham Machen, who for months had been volubly telling how Presbyterian Modernists were persecuting him and other Presbyterian "Bible-believers"...