Religion: Women in the Church

In Boston, delegates to the 57th triennial convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church found the early days of their two-week session dominated by a delicate problem: Should women be allowed to sit as delegates in the church’s House of Deputies? A commission assigned to study the matter said yes. Among other things, the commission noted that the Church of England has admitted women as lay delegates for many years. But the motion ran into trouble.

Most clerical delegates favored admitting the women, but most lay delegates were stoutly against it. Said one layman: “There is a physical and psychological difference between men & women. Men can fight things out in perfectly dispassionate fashion. You can say to a man ‘I thoroughly disagree with your judgment.’ But you disagree with a woman’s judgment and you disagree with the woman.” To the dis-tress of the women and their clerical allies, the objectors won. Commented the Rev. Leland Stark of Washington, B.C.: “Every argument used against this resolution was urged against suffrage.” Said Mrs.

Theodore Wedel, wife of the new president of the House of Deputies: “We Episcopalians will grow up eventually.” At other meetings throughout the week, the delegates: Heard an opening sermon in Boston’s Old North Church by the world’s No. 1 Anglican, Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury. Warned Dr. Fisher, making a rare appearance on television:*”The essentially Christian virtues of moderation and toleration are assailed by extremisms and fanaticism all over the world, by doctrines of ‘apartheid,’ by demands that ‘what we want is therefore our right, and we must have it … without regard to the interests of others.’ ” ¶ Voted for an intensive missionary campaign in the “vital strategic area” of the missionary district of Alaska, “in the belief that Christianity forms the first line of defense.”

¶ Heard a report that the total number of Episcopal clergy had increased by 600 since 1949—”the first notable increase in many years.”

* Before his departure for England, the Archbishop had a few words to say about TV. “The world,” he noted, “would have been a happier place if television had never been discovered . . . Television is part of the uneasiness of life … a mass-produced form of education which is potentially one of the greatest dangers in the world.” He admitted, however, that Mrs. Fisher has become a baseball fan by watching ball games on television.