Religion: Brothers in Christ

The Christian Church, often mentioned, is never seen. It exists as the possibly common Idea behind the many wrangling Words. Of the two great divisions of Christendom, Catholic and Protestant, neither is ready to merge with the other. The Catholics are willing to receive stray sheep; the Protestants are trying to federate the flocks.*

Between the Protestants and Catholics is the Anglican Church (Protestant Episcopal in the U. S.), comparatively small (membership, some 1,250,000), comparatively poor, but with extraordinary social prestige and in an extraordinarily strategic political position. High-church Episcopalians pull toward Rome; low-church Episcopalians pull toward the other Protestant sects. An Episcopalian episode of last week showed clearly the sort of obstacle confronting the union of all brethren in Christ.

Manning’s Command. A non-sectarian Protestant organization calling itself the Christian Unity League (president, Baltimore’s Dr. Peter Ainslie, Disciple of Christ) planned a conference in Manhattan for last week. Dr. Karl Reiland, Liberal Episcopal preacher, a member of the league, invited the conference to meet at his church, St. George’s. A feature of the three-day meeting was to be a communion service conducted by the Presbyterian Liberal Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin, president of Manhattan’s Union Theological Seminary. When newspapers announced the service, those who knew Bishop William Thomas Manning’s legalistic views wondered whether he would allow such a service to be held in one of his Episcopal churches.* Said the bishop: “I have nothing to say—yet.”

Never to be caught out on a point of church law, Bishop Manning consulted 77-year-old lawyer George Zabriskie, for 25 years Chancellor of the Diocese. Then he wrote Dr. Reiland a letter forbidding the service. The letter referred to the book of common prayer, last court of appeal in Episcopalian disputes, which says: “… No man shall be … suffered to execute any of the said functions [of the ministry] . . . except … he hath had Episcopal consecration or ordination.” Said the bishop’s letter: “I must earnestly beg you, and I do hereby officially admonish you, not to carry out your plans for the above-mentioned communion service at St. George’s Church.” Furthermore, the bishop characterized the policy of the Christian Unity League as “a strangely mistaken and a clearly disruptive one. The members of the Christian Unity League will not aid the cause of unity by seeking to force their views on others, and certainly not by trying to override and break down the laws of churches to which they do not belong.”

“These Carnal Things.” Bishop Manning’s letter, printed in Manhattan newspapers, elicited a reply from Dr. Coffin, who declared: “The ministry of the church in which I serve has as unbroken a tradition, reaching back to the earliest age, as any ministry in Christendom—if one cares to boast of these carnal things.† I would not willingly expose this ministry to such disparagement as appears to be put upon it by Bishop Manning.”

Dr. Reiland, “greatly disappointed,” did not despair. For he too had legal counsel: Lawyers Robert Fulton Cutting, civic-minded Manhattan millionaire (TIME, Feb. 14, 1927) and George Woodward Wickersham, onetime (1909-13) U. S. Attorney-General, now chairman of President Hoover’s law-enforcement commission. They had assured him that the prayer book’s prohibition refers to “church” in the sense of “congregation” and would not apply to the loan of a building. Though he tactfully yielded to the bishop’s “official admonition,” Dr. Reiland felt his legal position was as good as his bishop’s; his moral position better. The communion service was shifted to the chapel of Union Theological Seminary; the other sessions of the league were held at St. George’s.

Bishop Flayed. Other replies were made to Bishop Manning. Said Dr. Ainslie: “Your policy, my dear bishop, is that of force and the letter; the league’s policy is that of fellowship in the bonds of love.” Thirteen Episcopal members of the league (two of them clergymen of Bishop Manning’s diocese and subject to his ecclesiastical authority) signed a round-robin letter, protesting against the bishop’s “usurpation of authority under the guise of interpreting the canon law,” attacking his indulgence of high-church canon-law-breakers.*

Harmony at Harvard. While the brethren in Manhattan were quarreling over legalities, some 400 Jews, Roman Catholics and Protestants met in Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum to discuss their differences. The seminar was held under the auspices of the Calvert Round Table, an organization founded “to remove religious prejudice, and to foster among all our people respect for each other’s sincere convictions, mutual confidence and good will.” Speakers were President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University, Rabbi Harry Levi of Boston’s Temple Israel, Rev. Father Michael J. Ahern, S. J., of Weston College. Among conclusions reached by the seminar were: “That . . . sincere differences are matters of conscience between the individual soul and its creator, and, therefore, are entitled to universal respect. “That such agreement to disagree as to the fundamentals of their respective faiths in no way interferes with their active cooperation in all undertakings making for the welfare of the community.”

*Some years ago the Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Methodists of Canada joined to form the United Church of Canada. Last month the Established Church (Auld Kirk) merged with the United Free Church to form the Church of Scotland. Last month the U. S. Congregationalists and the so-called Christian Church joined.

*Four years ago Bishop Manning engaged the Manhattan firm of Tamblyn & Brown, money raisers extraordinary, to collect a $15,000,000 fund for the completion of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. A campaign slogan, “A house of prayer for all people,” helped extract gifts from Jews, Catholics, Protestants alike.

†The Presbyterian Church, like the Episcopalian and the Roman Catholic, claims unbroken succession of consecrated ministers going back to apostolic times.

*St. George’s Church has intransigent traditions. One of Dr. Reiland’s predecessors, Dr. William Stephen Rainsford (rector 1882-1906), had many a difference over church affairs with his senior warden John Pierpont Morgan (father of the present J. P.) and was finally forced to resign because of his too-liberal beliefs. After Dr. Rainsford’s resignation, Financier Morgan presented him with a house in the country, near Ridgefield, Conn., where he still lives, snowy-haired, patriarchal, surrounded with trophies of his big-game hunts.