Religion: Unity or Surrender?

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The Living Church this week blazed with indignation. The cause: proposed union of the Protestant Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Since 1943, an Episcopal Joint Commission on Approaches to Unity had labored on a merger plan. It brought forth not one document, but two. The majority report set up a basis for the proposed merger. The minority report deplored the proposal: ". . . We cannot believe that it is right in the sight of God and in loyalty to His Church to ask the Church to study . . . what we are profoundly convinced is repugnant to the mind of Christ." One member, the Rt. Rev. G. Ashton Oldham, bishop of Albany, N.Y., signed neither report.

The Living Church fervently seconded the minority report in an editorial titled "Not Unity but Surrender." But the hottest blast came in an article by tall, bespectacled Dr. Frederic S. Fleming, rector of Wall Street's rich old landmark, Trinity Church. Cried he: "This is the great betrayal! How much more honest it would be for those who are ready to renounce the Church ... to find their place in the Presbyterian Church without trying to 'scuttle the ship' for those who would re-mam true to their ordination vows!"