Religion: Episcopalians in Cincinnati

Rt. Rev. Henry Wise Hobson, 46, tall, affable Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Southern Ohio, bustled about Nippert Stadium of the University of Cincinnati one day last week, greeted 140 fellow-bishops, as they arrived by the dozen, with “You’re on the home team, Bishop.” and “You’re on the visiting team today.” For the procession of 1,000 bishops, clergy and laymen which was to open the 52nd triennial General Convention of the Church, bishops were to robe themselves in home and visiting team dressing rooms according to whether they had held office for ten years, or longer.

Bishop Hobson donned his heavy black satin chimere, white puff-sleeved rochet, stole and academic hood in a private room along with the Church’s Presiding Bishop James De Wolf Perry, Bishop Philip Cook of Delaware, Bishop Joseph Marshall Francis of Indiana, Bishop Edward Lambe Parsons of California. All the bishops looked and felt hot, for the day was unseasonably muggy. In Nippert Stadium to watch the procession to the great altar were but 10,000 people, half the number for whom host Bishop Hobson’s committee had provided transportation.

The two greatest movements which the Christian Church has to face, cried the opening preacher, liberal Bishop Parsons (and a persistent stadium echo which parroted him, always a phrase behind), are the Totalitarian State, “a transient affair,” and the rise of the underprivileged classes, “born of the gospel of Christ.” That the latter has often gone astray. said the Bishop, should not blind Christians to the fact of the Kingdom of God “… a free fellowship of the children of God … in [which] every child of God has worth which transcends any economic order. He is not a mere cog in a great industrial machine, his labor a mere commodity. In the vision of God, riches and power count nothing as against family life of the brothers of Christ.”

In preparing to deal with the affairs of the Kingdom of God, the General Convention, whose deliberations were to last a fortnight, took its time getting down to business. Bishops and their wives dressed up in their considerable best to dine formally at the Netherland Plaza. Members of the General Convention’s lower legislative house, clerical and lay deputies, gazed appreciatively at such convention exhibits as the handsome trailer which is host Bishop Hobson’s Cathedral (TIME, April 19), the posters and photographs of the zealous, two-year-old Church Society for College Work, the “barracks” of the hardworking, uniformed Church Army which resembles the Salvation Army.

Rev. William Benjamin (“Bill”) Spofford of the Church League for Industrial Democracy, happy to see small Mayfair Theatre crowded with 500 or more listeners to liberal and radical speeches, had nothing but goodwill for New York’s Bishop William Thomas Manning who had protested mentioning the C. L. I. D. on the official convention program. Never before had the group attracted more than 100 or so Episcopalians to its meetings. But since Episcopalians are prone to be tolerant and easygoing, they presumably were not affected by what Norman Thomas and others told them. The C. L. I. D.’s Executive Secretary Spofford told reporters that the General Convention had stalled a Cincinnati drugstore strike: “The picket line was effective until this convention arrived, but the girls tell me the church people go right through, particularly the clergy. Lay people see a bishop or a clergyman go in, think it’s all right and follow.”

This week, its bishops and deputies meeting respectively in MasonicTemple and Taft Auditorium, the convention was to tackle some of the problems which have been on its docket not only since the last convention three years ago, but for two or three years before that. Among them:

Name. The Missionary District of the Philippines has urged the General Convention that the word “Protestant” be deleted from the Church’s name, a proposal perennially made by high churchmen as a means toward unity with Catholic sects.

Presiding Bishop. A commission appointed by the last conventionrecommends that the Church’s presiding bishop be elected permanently (to retire at 70) instead of every six years, be relieved of any diocesan jurisdiction and be made president of the Church’s National Council, its business and missionary body. To call the presiding bishop an archbishop as was suggested in 1934, is neither recommended nor disapproved in the commission’s report. Presiding Bishop Perry’s term is up, and last week he was thought agreeable to being reelected. Other likely candidates: Bishop Cook, Bishop Hobson, Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill of Boston, Bishop George Ashton Oldham of Albany, Bishop George Craig Stewart of Chicago.

Marriage & Divorce. A commission headed by Bishop Herman Page of Michigan voted last month, 10-to-1, to recommend that the convention liberalize the Church’s canon on marriage and divorce, which at present provides that only the innocent party in a divorce for adultery may be remarried in the church. The commission would allow bishops, a year after a divorce, to approve remarriage where it seems justifiable. However, a minority report was offered by Dr. Howard Chandler Robbins of Manhattan’s General Theological Seminary. One of the Church’s outstanding liberals, who left the deanship of Manhattan’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine after a tiff with Bishop Manning. Dr. Robbins stands with conservatives in this case, believing that any change would weaken the Christian ideal of marriage. Furthermore, under the leadership of Dr. Bernard Iddings Bell of Providence, 1,300 clergy or 25% of the Church’s priesthood signed a petition against liberalization, and last week few bishops or deputies were optimistic of change in the canon.