"Radio of Power"

When the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America last counted its pennies (for the year 1931-32) it had been given nearly $8,000,000 less than the year before. As in other churches salaries have been reduced, with unemployed brothers and hungry parishioners to care for. One thoroughgoing economy was lately proposed--to omit the annual General Assembly next May. To save $25,000 in delegates' expenses the Assembly will be held in Columbus, Ohio instead of Fort Worth, Tex. But beyond that the Presbyterians will not go. Indeed, last week, fighting for their Assembly aroused some of them to higher fervor than they have displayed in many a day.

Such presbyteries as New York, Chicago, Baltimore and Westchester are considering reducing their quota of delegates by half. This excited valiant Dr. Mark Allison Matthews, pastor of the world's largest Presbyterian church (Seattle's First), whom his fellows call "The Tall Pine of the Sierras." An expert on church law, Dr. Matthews thundered: "No presbytery has a right to elect less than its full quota. . . . If there is not enough money for expenses, let them walk. If they cannot walk, then something is the matter with their feet as well as their heads. This is the time . . . when the Presbyterian Church should function at its radio of power, the reason being that the nation has gone crazy."

No less vehement was Rev. Dr. Clarence Edward Noble Macartney of Pittsburgh, leading Presbyterian conservative. To suggestions (mostly by liberals) that Assembly money could better be spent on good works at home, he replied with fine Scotch logic that the only legal way to omit the Assembly would be to have it meet in full special session, decide that it should not be held. Added he: "What a year for the Assembly! Think of the witness we can make! There is the pagan Laymen's Missionary Report, and our own board's answer to it, with no ringing word of righteous indignation. And there is 'Buchmanism' alias the 'Oxford Group Movement' (shades of Pusey, Keble and Newman!*), alias 'First Century Christian Fellowship!' . . . summed up in 'For Sinners Only,' a book in which one searches in vain for grand distinctive doctrines. . . . If the General Assembly shall speak out . . . it will be one of the most useful and most memorable since the first meeting . . . in 1789."

One dissident last week was Dr. William Hiram Foulkes, 55, pastor of Newark's Old First Church. He--a member of Presbyterian boards and committees, a sonorous orator and middle-of-the-road theologian--declined to attend the Assembly or allow himself to be considered a candidate for Moderator, on the grounds that "acrimony" or "controversy" might result. A possible source for acrimony is that Dr. Foulkes is a member of the potent Presbyterian General Council, which has been accused of running things high-handedly.

*Founders of the original Oxford Movement (Rome-ward), which many a higher-churchman than Dr. Macartney furiously resents confusing --especially since its centenary is to be celebrated next summer--with Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman's stylish evangelistics.

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