Religion: Handing Over

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In Africa, India and Southeast Asia, nationalism has forced the Christian churches to speed up the process of turning control over to native churchmen. Just back from a two-month tour of African missions, Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy of Los Angeles said last week that the whole future of Christianity in that part of the world depends on the speed and success of the handover. "We have failed in that we have tried to keep too much control by running 'white missions,' " said Kennedy. "We need to train more natives so that the missions can become more of the people. The Christian church must be an indigenous thing, or it will be rejected as a foreign faith."

From far-off mission fields came news of two clear-cut instances of what Bishop Kennedy was talking about:

¶ In Beirut, Lebanon, the oldest U.S. Protestant mission still in continuous existence handed over its property and work to the indigenous church it had fostered—the 10,000-member National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon. Founded in 1823, the Syria-Lebanon mission has been mainly the responsibility of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (Northern) and the Congregationalists. But now the 57 missionaries who remain will be "fraternal workers" under the authority of the new church, and about $1,000,000 worth of schools, colleges, hospitals and other properties will pass to Arab Christian ownership.

¶ In Asmara, Eritrea, Ethiopia, a conference of 83 delegates from 32 church bodies met to consider relations with Islam and give forth a message "to all our brothers in Christ." Excerpts: "We call upon all the Christian churches in the Middle East to play a full part in national self-fulfillment . . . We urge the churches of the Middle East and individual Christians to recognize the points of involvement between Islamic and Christian doctrine . . . With penitence and humility we confess our need for a new spirit of respect and friendship for Moslems, through which the barriers of suspicion and fear will disappear."