Methodists

In the third week of their Quadrennial General Conference at Kansas City, the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church passed judgment upon Anton Bast, Bishop of Copenhagen, who was accused of unministerial, imprudent conduct. He was charged with having made personal use of funds given to him for supposedly charitable purposes. For it, he had been convicted abroad and sentenced to three months in jail by a civil court.

Despite the pleas of Bishop Bast's associates and friends, Bishop Edgar Blake of Paris and John L. Nuelsen of Zurich, the jury of 17 ministers upheld the charges, deprived him of his office. Also they agreed that a less severely penalized but more disgraceful accusation had been justified--namely, that Bishop Bast had gone on too many yachting trips with Mrs. Ellen Vedel, the wife of a Danish Government official. When informed of the verdict, which required only the expiation of an apology and which would permit him to continue as a member and minister of his church, Dr. Bast seemed grateful and penitent. He would, he assured his judges, go back to a small parish and live a simple, holy, humble life, not concerned with yachts or embezzlements.

In addition to condemning Anton Bast, the Methodists condemned wet newspapers, wet politicians and all others who audibly oppose prohibition.

They also voted to give Methodists in foreign lands the power to elect their own bishops, thus settling a long vexed question in the church. No sooner was the overwhelming vote recorded than cheers and joyful shouts, mingled with hymn-singing reverberated inside Convention Hall. When the tumult subsided, Bishop Fred B. Fisher, of Calcutta, India, said: "Never have I witnessed a more wonderful session. . . . Methodism faces a new day."

Methodist support of church unity, which was so forcibly demonstrated last week (TIME, May 21), was again emphasized when the bishops gave their approval to moves for merging the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church South in Korea. With pleasure, they received messages from Congregationalist State Conventions which endorsed the proposed union of Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregationalist Churches. They learned, too, that in New York State the Congregationalists and the Disciples of Christ were planning a local merger which they hope later to make national.