"Cafeteria"

Sectarianism is a lasso to trip up and hobble high church and low church Episcopalians. In 1929 Bishop William Thomas Manning stoutly refused to permit a Christian Unity League service in St. George's Church, Manhattan, because Presbyterian Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin was to have helped officiate. Bishop Manning and other strict Episcopalians hold tightly to Apostolic Succession, refusing to accept sacraments administered by other sectarians. Year ago in St. Louis Cathedral was held another Christian Unity League service. Genial Bishop Frederick Foote Johnson (called "Shorty" because he is towering tall) and his Liberal Bishop Coadjutor William Scarlett were assisted in the sanctuary by Baptists and Methodists. Episcopalians have never since stopped talking about it, arguing it, quoting canon law and rubric. Last week the talk was for the first time public, at an annual Church Congress in Evanston. Ill.--an unofficial, argumentative gathering which lays down no laws but permits high, low and broad churchmen to air their views. Bishop Scarlett defended his intercommunion service, pointing out that Jesus Christ was no sectarian. Leader of the opposing side was another Episcopal Johnson--Colorado's popular, high-church Bishop Irving Peake Johnson, called ''The Tame Lion." Bishop Johnson growled about jellyfish and other spineless creatures who make compromises, start conflicts. Let the Church keep the bars up and avoid trouble. Intercommunion would ''make the Episcopal household of faith a cafeteria." Said he: "If such practices are persisted in, I should feel it my duty as a bishop to banish and drive away from the church such practices as erroneous and contrary to God's word and destructive to the faith as this church has received the same." Newshawks hastily headlined that a split was looming in the Episcopal Church. But churchmen thought not--not in the urbane organization which Cardinal Newman called the Via Media, the Middle Way. The Evanston discussions went placidly on. Bishops Scarlett and Johnson left the floor arm-in-arm. Dr. Howard Chandler Robbins of Manhattan called for the hymn, "The Church's One Foundation Is Jesus Christ Her Lord."

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