Methodists v. Viceroy

How to decide between the things that are Caesar's and the things that are God's has perplexed churchmen ever since Christ made the distinction. In 1919, after World War I, the British Empire decided to end their perplexity. It required a pledge from each foreign missionary who wished to labor in the ever sunlit Empire vineyard that he would "do nothing contrary to, or in diminution of, the authority of the lawfully constituted Government in the country to which I am appointed." U. S. Methodists signed this oath with no twinge of conscience. In British India they have a large stake: 334 missionaries, 256 churches, 106,237 members, a 1939 budget of $857,479. Last autumn, when Britain entered World War II, it declared that India went with it. To some militantly pacifist missionaries, this declaration ran smack athwart the Methodist social creed: "We stand for the repudiation of war. . . . The Methodist Church as an institution cannot endorse war nor support or participate in it." Last December four of these U. S. missionaries--Jay Holmes Smith of Lucknow, Paul K. Keene of Mussoorie, Mr. & Mrs. Ralph T. Templin of Muttra--sent a manifesto to the Viceroy, the Marquess of Linlithgow. Wrote they: "During the earlier phases of the missionary movement, it was natural to think compartmentally, religion in one compartment, science in another, politics in a third. Sir John Bowring, as a devout churchman, could write the familiar hymn, 'In the Cross of Christ I glory,' and, as the representative of empire, sign, perhaps with the same pen, the treaties forcing the nefarious opium trade upon China. . . . The old smug compartmentalism is gone, never to return. . . .

This India of ours is being dragooned into war against the will of the vast majority of her citizens. Failure to protest against this coercion would brand us as false prophets." This manifesto obviously broke the four missionaries' pledges. Mindful of their church's stake, India's U. S. Methodist bishops straightway got their Board of Foreign Missions in Manhattan to authorize the homecoming of Missionaries < Smith and Keene--who obediently went home.

More stubborn, the Templins refused to budge, last week were still in India.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.