Religion: Methodists Meet

Birthplace of Methodism in the U. S. was Savannah, Ga., where John Wesley preached and Charles Wesley sang hymns in their first U. S. meeting (1736). To see relics and memorials of the Brothers Wesley this week will go 550 delegates to the Sixth Ecumenical Conference of Methodism, which opened its meetings last week in Atlanta. Held every ten years, it was the second ecumenical conference to meet in the U. S., the first to meet in the South.

Chief feature of the opening night was the appearance of Bishop James Cannon Jr., indicted that day by the Washington Grand Jury for violation of the Federal Corrupt Practices Act (see p. 15). Last month Bishop Cannon was snubbed by Bishop Edwin DuBose Mouzon who, presiding over a church conference at Roanoke, Va., did not invite Bishop Cannon to sit on the platform. Bishop Cannon complained, left the room unapplauded. In marked contrast last week, 2,000 people in Atlanta’s Wesley Memorial Church applauded vigorously as Bishop Cannon, still suffering from arthritis (“aggravated,” said he, “by the thrusts of Wet interests seeking to crush me”) crutched his way down the ‘aisle to take a seat on the platform. Night before, speaking in Atlanta Auditorium on “Prohibition Repeal Unthinkable—Shall the Officials Enforce the Law?,” he had told his hearers, Heflin-wise: “I am almost sure to be indicted, because of the Roman Catholic district attorney at Washington.”

Delegates to the conference heard Secretary Frederick Luke Wiseman of the Home Mission Department, Wesleyan Methodist Church report on increased Methodist membership in Great Britain and Ireland. “Communists,” he said, “have been converted and are now preachingthe gospel they sought to destroy, which is a further indication of Methodist progress.” He pointed also to progress in the movement for union of all the branches of Methodism in England. Delegates applauded loudly when Bishop John Monroe Moore of Dallas, Tex., said that the Northern and Southern branches in the U. S. “cannot be kept apart much longer. . . . The causes of unification are not dead, they are only sleeping.”