Presbyterians

Fifteen people had ready a hot potato to drop into the hand of Mother Presbyterian Church last week. They were the special Commission on Marriage, Remarriage and Divorce; the hot potato was the section of their report, published last April (TIME, May 4), which recommended that Mother Church approve Birth Control for her children (see p. 32). In Pittsburgh last week were convening more than 900 Commissioners to the 143rd annual General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. To a hotel three miles from that part of Pittsburgh where delegates were registering the 15 hurried, there voted to delete their recommendation. Mother Church, alarmed by many a protest since the report was issued, had made them quickly drop the hot potato. Moderator elected that afternoon was Dr. Lewis Seymour Mudge of Philadelphia. Princeton graduate (1889), pastor for 26 years in churches in Beverly and Trenton, N. J., Lancaster and Harrisburg. Pa., since 1921 he has been Stated Clerk of the Assembly--the Church's second most important position. He succeeds Dr. Hugh Thompson Kerr, famed radio preacher. Because many felt that the incumbent should not be both Stated Clerk and Moderator, a surprise candidate was nominated, Dr. David de Forest Burrell of Williamsport, Pa., who by getting 379 votes prevented Dr. Mudge's anticipated election by acclamation.

While delegates balloted, the Commission of 15, their minds changed again, busied themselves with putting back into their report a paragraph mentioning Birth Control but not recommending it. Also, their new version recognized, as did the original, that willful desertion is justifiable grounds for divorce, but added that it is not "historically justified."

Next day the Assembly girded itself for further action on Birth Control: in a session devoted to finance it eliminated its appropriation of $18,000 for the Federal Council of Churches which last March issued a report guardedly approving Birth Control (TIME, March 30). Meanwhile, the Commission of 15 once more changed its mind, sent off to be printed a new report from which all reference to Birth Control was deleted.

C. Presbyterian Church in the U. S. S., Southern branch of the Church, held its general Assembly last week in Montreal, N. C., elected its first lay moderator since 1914: R. A. Dunn, president of Commercial National Bank in Charlotte, N._ C. The Presbyteries disapproved the Birth Control attitude of the Federal Council of Churches, and voted 5 to 2 for withdrawal from the Council.

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