Methodists: The Challenge of Fortune

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There are people in the pews, dollars in the collection plates, and 65 million Americans who claim to be Protestants. But the outwardly prosperous Christian churches are beset with inner anxiety. Ministers fear that their congregations are no more committed to the church than to the country club. Denominational leaders despair at the widespread lay unwillingness to recognize the race question as a moral issue. In the current national controversy over school prayer, and in the rising challenges to church tax exemptions, theologians detect a trend toward secularism that will soon call for a revolution in church attitudes and institutions. Changes in manners and morals summon Protestantism to find a new mode of relevance in a "post-Christian" world.

It is a crisis that faces every faith —but none more so than the Methodist Church, which last week opened its quadrennial General Conference in Pittsburgh's Civic Arena. With 10,234,986 members, Methodism is the second largest Protestant communion in the U.S.*After the Roman Catholic Church, it is also the wealthiest and the one that, because of its history and geographical distribution, has the best claim to be the only truly national Protestant denomination. This year many of the 858 Methodist delegates arrived at their conference with the deep conviction that their church had reached a turning point in history—and with a scarcely concealed fear that the vitality that once burned in Methodism was lost when fiery evangelism gave way to today's organized, institutional church.

The Better Way. Fear there may be, but not to the exclusion of hope. Methodism would not be itself without a large measure of Christian optimism, and the conference's sense of expectation was expressed by Bishop Gerald Kennedy of Los Angeles in the episcopal address that opened the meeting. The Christian task, he told the delegates and more than 8,000 visitors from Methodist churches around the world, is "to pursue our ancient course of attacking our own imperfections, keeping our life open to God, and perfecting our society. We are not trying to sell a system, but to demonstrate a Way which is incomparably better than all others, and shines with the promise of a more abundant life for all men."

Kennedy's episcopal address was a kind of spiritual state-of-the-union message, and he had been selected by his church's 81 bishops to write and present it in their name. The right man, in this case, was in the right pulpit, for the Bishop of Los Angeles has assumed the mantle worn by the late G. Bromley Ox-nam as unofficial spokesman for Methodism to the rest of the U.S. Nobody gave Kennedy the job, and nobody could. Democratic Methodism has neither Pope nor primate; the presidency of the Council of Bishops—an office held by Kennedy in 1960 and currently by New York's Lloyd Wicke—passes yearly from man to man, and involves only the function of chairing the semiannual meetings of the Methodist hierarchy. The church speaks with a united voice only once every four years, at the General Conference. Between times, Methodists everywhere in search of guidance listen with special care whenever Gerald Kennedy takes a stand.