Letters, Apr. 16, 1951

The Church & the Churches

Sir:

I am grateful to you for your very excellent March 26 article on Bishop Sherrill . . . You have done a service not only to our Protestantism, but to all America.

WESLEY H. BRANSFORD

First Methodist Church Anderson, Ind.

Sir:

. . . [It] is one of the finest and most intelligent delineations for what’s ahead in finding the answer to “Where Is the Church ?” Many of us believe that out of the present Christian chaos will come the greatest creative period of Christendom. With men of the mold and mind of Bishop Sherrill, the churches can become The Church—”little by little” . . .

ARTHUR B. CARLTON

Minister

Bonifay Methodist Church Bonifay, Fla.

Sir:

Is TIME going apocalyptic? What is the “new, anti-Christian faith” and the “incontrovertible evidence” that it “is moving against the very basis of Christianity,” and that the crisis will come soon—perhaps in the next 10 or 15 years?

This is a most intriguing statement. I think Christians should be told all about it. JOSEPH T. MALONEBrooklyn, N.Y.

¶Communism. For the evidence, let Lawyer Malone look at Communism’s statements and record.—ED.

Sir:

. . . The period in Europe’s history when there was only one church is still called the Dark Ages . . .

FRED I. DREXLER

Mill Valley, Calif.

Sir:

Your chart of religious ramifications, captioned “Christian Chaos (Simplified),” was most interesting as well as informative. But I looked in vain for the two of distinctly American origin—the Church of the Latter-Day Saints (Joseph Smith, founder) and the Church of Christ, Scientist (Mary Baker Eddy, founder) . . .

HARRY F. PORTER Glastonbury, Conn. ¶In a brave try for clarity, TIME simplified these admired examples of the American spirit (and other churches) right off the chart.—ED.

Sir:

. . . You omitted the Unitarians . . . The Unitarians, though a minority . . . represent the only true religion, in that we admit that we are heretics, which means choosing for one’s self.

I know that we are considered heathen or non-Christian by the believers in the Trinity, a doctrine which no sensible man can accept … If you will look into the record of the Unitarian Service Committee, you will find that instead of getting hot and bothered about theology, which, after all, is merely man’s opinion, we put into practice the teachings of Jesus . . .

E. I. PHILLIPS Abington, Pa.

Sir:

. ..Actually, the Christian Church was established in Great Britain many centuries before the Roman Church, in 597 A.D., sent Augustine with missionaries to England . . .

In the conference at Whitby in 664 the Roman party gained the ascendancy . . . The Anglican Church, however, never lost its identity as the English Church . . . The term “The Church of England” is used in the first clause of the Magna Charta, drawn up in 1215. As national feeling grew in Great Britain, the clergy and people began to chafe under the yoke of papal supremacy . . .

The revolt began to take form in 1532 when Parliament, under the direction of Henry VIII, enacted laws formally renouncing papal supremacy. The movement extended over the three subsequent reigns of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth. There was no formal schism until the Pope finally realized that Elizabeth was determined in her refusal to acknowledge his supremacy. He excommunicated her and absolved her subjects from allegiance to her. The papal adherents began to separate themselves into a distinct community around the year 1570.

Thus, Rome withdrew from the Church of England, leaving it essentially the same as it had been originally; and not at any time was the Anglican Church descended from the Roman Church.

MARGARET H. HAVENSTEIN Kingstree, S.C.

Sir:

. . . The National Council of Churches has disastrously weakened its specifically “religious” potential by almost endless compromises in those fields which are the very heart of religion—Theology and Ethics.

RICHARD A. MIETZELFELD Ridgewood, N.J.

Sir:

. . . Two comments:

1) In its outstanding efforts to promote Christian reunion, the Episcopal Church has over & over again officially insisted, and still does, that a united church, in order to be faithful to the past and competent for Christ today, must subscribe in statement of belief to the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, which indicates that those Creeds are of requirement for its own people. If there be any Episcopal ministers who “are embarrassed by most of the Apostles’ Creed,” they obviously do not belong in that Communion, and nobody who is informed thinks they represent that Communion in what they write or say.

2) You seem to imply that it is characteristic of Protestants that they reject the faith of the ages as summed up in the Apostles’ Creed, and that to reach them in its bridge-desires the Episcopal Church must, at least in part, appear “embarrassed” by that Creed. This oversimplification of Protestantism is so ill-informed as to appear almost deliberately insulting. There are two kinds of Protestantism. One variety believes in the Apostles’ Creed as really as does Roman Catholicism . . . The other variety rejects the ancient faith, does not accept Jesus as God-made-man or as Redeemer. Denominations which hold to this new and fundamentally different Christianity are to be respected, but they are far removed from orthodox Protestants, which is most Protestants.

The Episcopal Church prays and works toward eventual reunion between Roman Catholics who believe the Faith and Protestants who believe the Faith, but it does not seek such union between those who believe Jesus to be God and Savior and those who do not believe it. Mix oil and water and the product is not good to look upon.

BERNARD IDDINGS BELL Chicago

Sir:

Your [reference to] Bishop Brent’s movement sent me back to church for the first time in ten or more years.

I am glad to support a group which believes that religious intolerance among religious sects is intolerable.

KARL ROBE Los Angeles

Sir:There are a good many questionable (and that is putting it mildly) statements made in your article . . . When you say there are some of our clergymen who are “embarrassed by the Apostles’ Creed” I must, as a member of the Church . . . raise a strong protest. I must ask you—who are they? Where are they? I must ask [TIME] to read our Book of Common Prayer. Many times you will find therein the Church referred to as the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church … If there are any clergy such as described by you, they should be brought before an ecclesiastical court . . .

D. J. CLAUSER Catasauqua, Pa.

¶A notable example is Anglican Bishop Barnes of Birmingham, England, whose book, The Rise of Christianity, refers to the Virgin Birth as “a crude, semipagan story …” TIME has encountered similar opinions among the Anglicans’ Episcopal cousins.—ED.

SIR:

PROTEST VIGOROUSLY DISTORTION OF FACTS . . . YOUR CHART “CHRISTIAN CHAOS” COMPLETELY IGNORES FACTS OF CHURCH HISTORY.

BISHOP CHARLES P. ANDERSON, LATE PRESIDING BISHOP OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH, MOST CLEARLY SET FORTH OFFICIAL POSITION OF THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION AND EPISCOPAL CHURCH AND THAT HELD BY FIVE-SIXTHS OF ITS CLERGY AND ITS INFORMED MEMBERS:

“THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH, HISTORICALLY, STRUCTURALLY, THEOLOGICALLY, BELONGS TO THE CATHOLIC GROUP. WHEN THE CHURCH OF

ENGLAND HAD A FAMILY QUARREL WITH THE BISHOP OF ROME AND RIGHTFULLY (AS WE THINK) DECLINED TO RECOGNIZE HIS JURISDICTION . . . SHE NEVER BROKE OFF COMMUNION WITH ROMAN OR ORIENTAL CHURCHES. SHE REMAINED CATHOLIC. HER DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH IS THE DOCTRINE OF THE CATHOLIC CREEDS . . .”

REV. ALBERT J. DUBOIS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR THE AMERICAN CHURCH UNION NEW YORK CITY

Sir:

As a priest in the Anglican Church, I feel it a duty to correct several false impressions that arise from your article . . . The Most Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill is not “the No. 1 Protestant churchman in the U.S.” He is an Archbishop in the Holy Catholic Church . . .

FATHER ROBERT LESSING

Rector

St. James Church Coquille, Ore.

Sir:

Thank you for your clear, comprehensive article. As a Roman Catholic, I have become rather bored by all the prattle on the part of Protestants for a United Christian Church, but it has also been discomforting to realize that so many Christians are in such desperate confusion. We Catholics all too often have been inclined to smirk at this serious problem, rather than to sympathize with it, and this has worked to the detriment of our own hope—that all men be united in the Mystical Body of Christ.

We are in a position to say “They got themselves into the mess, let them get themselves out.” But certainly we are more to blame for the situation than they are, for it is we Catholics who by our excesses and dishonesty have scattered these sheep from the flock and driven them out and away from what is just as much theirs as it is ours . . .

JOHN L. DOOLEY Somerville, Mass.

Sir:

. . . Protestants received the Bible from the Catholic Church, who had preserved it for 15 centuries and who had set the canon of the New Testament at the end of the 4th Century. If Protestants accept the authority of the Catholic Church in this matter, why do they reject it in others ? . . .

EDWARD CONNOR

New York City

Sir:

Americans love statistics . . .

We live in a tortured society, and it is not only Russia which presents an unChristian and immoral society. There are beams in our eyes also . . . Though the seeds of redemption are undoubtedly somewhere in the Christian fellowship, they are not in any active state of germination, despite the statistics . . .

JOHN E. BATES Minister

Middletown Baptist Church Middletown, NJ.

Sir:

… If anyone takes satisfaction in church statistics, they are certainly entitled to it. When we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that basically our philosophy is pagan. We have just enough of the Christian leaven to make us respectable.

CLYDE D. FOSTER Evanston, 111.

¶On the evidence of these letters, TIME feels justified in having said that Christendom in general—and the Episcopal Church in particular—is in an interesting condition.—ED.