Religion: Black Pope

When the World Council of Churches chooses a new General Secretary in Irving Wallace's current novel The Word, it is a contest of political skulduggery between two fiercely ambitious churchmen. When the election is held in real life—as it was last week at the W.C.C.'s Central Committee meeting in Utrecht—it is a much more orderly process, with the maneuvering smoothed over by ecumenical diplomacy. But in other respects the man who won the World Council's chief executive post last week outdid both of Wallace's fictional contenders. He is Philip Alford Potter, 51, a Methodist from the West Indian island of Dominica....