Episcopalians: How to Carry Out a Conviction

As much as any other U.S. denomination, the Episcopal Church has made clear its belief that racism and inequality are among the great social evils of the age. Precisely how to implement that conviction proved to be a major issue at the opening sessions of the church’s triennial General Convention in Seattle last week. In his opening state-of-the-church address, Presiding Bishop John E. Hines declared that the racial crisis “can be as fatal to the well-being of this nation as anything short of a nuclear holocaust” and proposed that the church spend $3 million a year in poverty programs for urban ghettos. Hines also invited other faiths to join Episcopalians in a “fullscale mobilization of our resources.”

Hines’s proposal gained immediate support from the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity, a militantly antisegregationist pressure group that includes 55 bishops among its members. Episcopalians saw some possible pitfalls in their bishop’s poverty campaign. “This money is to be given with no strings attached, and that’s a big order for some to swallow,” said California’s progressive Bishop C. Kilmer Myers, who supports the proposal but thinks it will have trouble being approved. The Rev. James Brice Clark of Nebraska asked: “Why should the church put money into poverty projects when there are federal projects covering the same ground?” There were also questions about whether the church is capable of such extravagant altruism, since 1967 national receipts are running $500,000 below expectations.

Apart from the poverty question, delegates to the convention seemed ready and willing to innovate. In other actions last week they: ->Adopted a proposed constitutional amendment paving the way for acceptance of women delegates in the House of Deputies by 1973. — >Allowed the Right Rev. James A. Pike to speak in sessions of the House of Bishops, a privilege not accorded to a resigned bishop. Pike, who is expected to have a few things to say when the House takes up the question of heresy trials (TIME, Aug. 25), was undisturbed by the fact that he will not be allowed to vote. “I don’t care about that,” he said airily, “because we don’t decide many things around here by a ingle vote.” >Tried out, before a massive congregation of 6,000 Episcopalians, an experimental, simplified new rite of Holy Communion that closely approximates the worship services of early Christian imes.