Religion: Tidings

>The Rt. Rev. John E. Mines, Presiding Bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church, is a genial, soft-spoken man with a self-deprecating sense of humor. Hines recently startled a meeting of San Francisco priests when he called himself “the worst administrator of any Episcopal Presiding Bishop in history.” Last fortnight his fellow Episcopal bishops got a greater shock in the mail: a letter from Hines outlining his plan to retire as Presiding Bishop in the spring of 1974, after the triennial general convention next fall can elect a successor. Hines is the first Presiding Bishop in the church’s history to quit early for reasons other than illness, but he may have good cause to step down. His years in office have been marked by factional dissension, especially over a “‘Special Program” which he proposed in 1967. Adopted in a euphoria of enthusiasm for church involvement in social action, the program has since paid out some $6.5 million in grants for “minority group empowerment.” Some of the money went to groups that were non-Christian or were too radical for local Episcopalians. In some cases, congregations retaliated by cutting off contributions to the national church. Church financial receipts have since rebounded, but statistics of the Hines years reveal attrition in other areas. Membership has dropped from 3,616,000 in 1965 to 3,445,000 in 1971; church school enrollment is down 24%, confirmations are down 26%, infant baptisms 21%, adult baptisms 44%. Doubtless the statistics reflect the religious uncertainty of the times more than the administration of Bishop Hines. Nevertheless, explained Hines, he feels that the church would be “better served by a younger and more vigorous person.”

>For several years now, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Southern Presbyterians) has been rumbling with rumors and threats of schism. The mildly liberal majority of the 960,000-member denomination favor a merger with the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (Northern Presbyterians), which would heal a breach reaching back to the Civil War. Conservatives among the Southern Presbyterians are not only opposed to the merger but also to the liberals’ emphasis on social action at the expense of evangelism and to a proposed new confession of faith that they consider doctrinally vague. Up to now, the right-wing Southerners have been moving cautiously, but one group among them plans to take a bold step. This month as many as seven conservative congregations from the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. will join five independent Presbyterian congregations to organize a new “Vanguard Presbytery.” The hottest issue of the schism is likely to be property. Any group of believers can take a walk any time they want to, but they have had to leave their church property with the denomination. But courts in Georgia have recently allowed congregations to take their property with them, and now six of the seven defecting Southern Presbyterian congregations (scattered from Virginia to Alabama), are trying to do just that by simply renouncing their ties with the national church. The 843-member West End Church of Hopewell, Va., however, is going through channels and has petitioned its district presbytery “to dismiss us with our property.”