Religion: Dollars for Work

¶ Last year the 20 major Protestant denominations of the U. S. collected $15,000,000 more than the year before. So last week reported the United Stewardship Council, representing 23 U. S. and Canadian churches. The council’s report bore out the familiar U. S. dogma that country folk are more religious than city people; churches with rural constituents showed the greatest increase in giving. Highest per cent gains were in the Church of the Brethren, 16%, and the Church of the Nazarene, 13%. The Southern Baptists gave $2,300.120 more than the year before, an 8% increase. Next biggest dollar gain was in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.—$2,158,208, a 5% rise.

¶ Presbyterians run 53 colleges in the U. S., maintain Presbyterian centres in 52 more. Outstanding Presbyterian colleges: Centre, Davidson, Hamilton, Lafayette, Washington & Jefferson.* Celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Presbyterian Church (North), its Board of Christian Education intends to spend the next three years raising $10,000,000 for the endowment and running expenses of these 105 colleges and Presbyterian centres. Last week the Presbyterians announced that the first gift to their Sesquicentennial Fund came from an Episcopalian. Rt. Rev. Robert Lewis Paddock, retired bishop of Oregon, donated $100.

¶ U. S. churches have establishments in China worth millions of dollars. Caught unawares by the current war, mission boards have been operating on an emergency basis, have been unable to formulate long-term policies. In general: 1) their missionaries are remaining at their posts or moving to areas where they may be especially useful; 2) their chief problems involve transportation and maintaining medical relief stations: 3) tHeir future problem is the incalculable one of restoring wrecked establishments. For their emergency needs, at least half-a-dozen of the principal U. S. churches have launched money-raising campaigns.

The United Lutheran Church, whose hospital in Tsingtao, Shantung has been carrying a heavy load during the war, appealed for relief funds in January, but has not increased its annual budget of some $25,000. Since last autumn the Methodist board of foreign missions has collected $61,000 above its budget, about one third of what it needs. Lately missionaries of the University of Nanking (in which Methodists and four other denominations cooperate) made a remarkable 1,000-mile trek to West China Union University in Chengtu, a three-week trip by boat past Hankow and through the Yangtze gorges. This move was partly financed by the Associated Board of Christian Colleges in China, which is currently appealing for $300,000 in the U. S. (TIME, Jan. 17).

Similarly, a drive for $25,000 to be raised on U. S. campuses was begun last fortnight by the International Student Service, founded in 1919 to aid starving students in Europe. There are now 30,000 such in China. Apart from what U. S. mission boards are doing, China hopes to keep its higher learning aglow by establishing four university centres inland, away from war zones, which most students may attend for nothing. Two such centres have already been started, at Changsha in Hunan Province, and Sian in Shensi.

U. S. Roman Catholic bodies, notably the Maryknoll Fathers, spent $600,000 in China last year, and some U. S. dioceses have begun campaigns to keep the work going. In the Yangtze valley, Catholic property worth millions of dollars, which formerly financed much missionary activity, has been destroyed. Bankrupt is the Catholic hospital in Shanghai, which cares for 400 insane people, and the halls of the Catholic University in Shanghai have been turned into hospital wards. For U. S. Catholics last week, saddest news from China was that Rev. Gerard A. Donovan, Maryknoll Father working in Manchukuo. had been kidnapped from the sacristy of his chapel by Chinese bandits, held for $50.000 Mex. ransom and, after four months, strangled to death.

* Of other U. S. colleges which still have a measure of Protestant control, some of the best-known are: Amherst, Dartmouth, Mt. Holyoke, Berea, Oberlin (all Congregational): Brown, Bucknell, Colgate, Baylor (all Baptist); Duke, Boston University and various Wesleyans (all Methodist): Kenyon, Hobart, Trinity (Episcopal); Alfred (Seventh Day Baptist); Butler, Texas Christian (Disciples); Muhlenberg (Lutheran).