Religion: Reformation Church

In Honolulu last week, 1,300 bishops, priests and laymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church met under Presiding Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill for their 58th triennial general convention—the first held outside the U.S. continent. The site was the result of controversy: Houston, originally chosen, had been rejected for its racial segregation. But controversy continued to break out at the convention itself.

“Latin peoples are religiously undernourished,” said Bishop Egmont M. Krischke of Southwestern Brazil backed up by Bishop Isabelo de los Reyes of the Philippine Independent Church and the Right Rev. Louis C. Melcher, Bishop of Central Brazil. Roman Catholic Latin Americans in rural areas, said Bishop Krisschke, have “their illiteracy and credulity exploited in a most sordid way ” and in the cities better educated Catholics “are giving up what they suppose to be the Christian faith, but which is actually only a medieval version of it.”

The Most Rev. John J. Scanlan, Auxiliary Bishop of Honolulu’s Roman Catholic Diocese, promptly protested. “It certainly seems in bad taste that the delegates should choose this occasion to offend the largest religious group in these islands [and] to attack the motives and teachings of that Church which is the Mother of Christian civilization.”

Another convention issue: the old question of dropping the word “Protestant” from the name of the denomination to point up its view that the Episcopal church is truly catholic. The proposal was voted down 89¾ to 55. Said Lawyer Charles P. Taft, brother of the late Senator and lay delegate from Ohio: “The word Protestant is very important. Our church is a Reformation church in fact “