Religion: Episcopal Archbishop?

Unlike its sister churches in the Anglican Communion, the Protestant Episcopal Church of the U. S. has never had an archbishop. But last week it took a step to get itself within three years the next thing to an archbishop. Hitherto U. S. Episcopalians have merely chosen a Presiding Bishop, expected him simultaneously to run his own diocese and head the church at large. The present Presiding Bishop, the Right Rev. Henry St. George Tucker of Virginia, has a nationwide job but ecclesiastical authority only in Virginia. Most often he is in Manhattan, where he must get leave from Bishop William Thomas Manning to officiate in the chapel of the Church Missions House.

Last week the Episcopalians’ 53rd triennial General Convention, at Kansas City, did not quite get around to creating an archbishopric but it voted to make the National Cathedral at Washington the official seat of the Presiding Bishop, thus giving him a national pulpit for his pronouncements. Eventually the change may mean that the diocese of Washington will become a primatial see for the U. S. such as Canterbury is for England.

Not likely to be the first U. S. Episcopal archbishop is lean, spiritual Bishop Tucker, who as a good Virginia Low Churchman would dislike the trappings of the office. He will reach the retirement age for Presiding Bishops (68) at the next General Convention in 1943, when by a pleasant coincidence Bishop James Edward Freeman of Washington will reach the newly set retirement age for other bishops (72). With the two offices falling vacant at once, Episcopalians will then have a good excuse for merging them.

Precedent-breaking was many another move by the General Convention in its second and final week’s sessions in Kansas City’s bright new Municipal Auditorium. In crowded sessions it:

» Made Episcopalians’ professions of interfaith unity effective by voting to take full membership in the Federal Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches.

» Postponed the concordat proposed in 1937 to unite the Episcopalian and Presbyterian Churches. Nevertheless, for the first time at a General Convention, the Episcopalians held a joint mass meeting with Presbyterians. Cried the Presbyterians’ Moderator, Dr. William Lindsay Young (a fraternal delegate at the convention): “My earnest prayer tonight is that I may live to stand before you some time and address, not your church, not my church, but our church.”

» Postponed to 1943 final consideration of a liberalized marriage & divorce canon (TIME, Sept. 16).

» For the first time in history voted financial assistance to the mother Church of England. Sent by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Right Rev. Noel Baring Hudson asked aid for Britain’s war-crippled missions, called World War II “a hell-sent opportunity for more effective Christian work in all nations.” A well-chosen emissary was slight, vigorous Bishop Hudson, secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which nurtured Anglicanism in this country all through the colonial period. In part payment for that spiritual debt, General Convention promptly upped an appropriation for help to British missions from a tentative $117,500 to $300,000.

» Adopted the first official Episcopal flag, designed by 78-year-old William M. Baldwin of Manhattan. The flag: a red cross on a white ground, with a pale blue field in the upper left hand corner bearing nine white Jerusalem crosses arranged in the form of a St. Andrew’s cross.

» Defeated a proposal, backed by some Southern bishops, opposed by others, to create a separate Negro missionary district in the South. Cried Bishop Middleton S. Barnwell of Savannah: “The choice under present circumstances in the South is only in making the best of segregation. I can’t have in Georgia a diocesan conference where a meal is served. I can’t find a hotel where Negroes are permitted to meet with whites in such a conference.” Said the only Negro member of the House of Bishops, the Right Rev. Edward T.

Demby: “This racial episcopate would be the most terrific setback to the Negroes in the church program. It would be a step toward a Negro Episcopal Church.”

» Approved a new hymnal (first since 1916), though some oldsters were scandalized at the omission of 181 hymns (to make way for others) from the old one, including such favorites as Golden Harps are Sounding, Brightly Gleams Our Banner, There’s a Friend for Little Children, Sunset and Evening Star, Savior, Teach Me Day by Day, Asleep in Jesus. Included for the first time was a Negro spiritual, Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?