Religion: Talking to the Universe

Methodist theological seminaries had better get cracking with a program to train future ministers in talking religion to creatures in outer space, said Washington's Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam in Pittsburgh last week. Speaking at a meeting in Mt. Lebanon Methodist Church to commemorate the 175th anniversary of the organization of U.S. Methodism, Bishop Oxnam said:

"Before another 175 years have passed, we will have conquered space and come to know the thinking, the culture, the dreams, the problems, the limitations of the people who populate the great planets of the universe . . .

"Are the theological seminaries of the Methodist Church preparing men and women for the conversations and the conferences that are necessary as we seek to share the riches that are ours, and to receive from others the riches that are theirs, to the end that we may come to know the father of us all? Is the message that we are to speak to the universe a neat little set of dogmatic propositions which we in our limitations have worked out . . . ? Are there answers that we have never heard? Are we ready to hear them, and to act upon them if they appeal to the minds God has given to us?"