Religion: It’s An Ill Wind …

Until the Japs bombed Hawaii, the most any realist hoped for from last week’s Conference on the Cooperation of Interdenominational Agencies was the adoption of alternative Plan A, a pious proposal that the eight great agencies of U.S. Protestantism should work together more closely. After the bombing, the 200 delegates at Atlantic City put through proposal C with a whoop calling for unification of all the agencies into a new “Council of the Churches of Christ in North America.”

The whoop at Atlantic City will take perhaps three years to ratify, for it must now be referred back to each of the eight agencies, each of which in turn must get the approval of each separate participating denomination.

But if last week’s spirit of unity survives three years, the year 1945 will see a final merger of the Federal Council of Churches, the International Council of Religious Education, the Home Missions Council, the Foreign Missions Conference, the Council of Church Boards of Education, the National Council of Church Women, the United Stewardship Council and the Missionary Education Movement.