Example in Unity

It was "the most significant event in ecclesiastical history since the Reformation." So said Presbyterian Patriarch Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin.

At 8 o'clock on a steaming hot morning in Madras, India, the bell of St. George's Cathedral began to ring. Into the crowded cathedral filed a crucifer and 14 men in white cotton robes. There, beneath the whirring, white blades of 30 electric fans, most of South India's several sects of Protestants united to form a new church.

The simple ceremony, launching the United Church of South India last fortnight, marks the first organic union between episcopal and "free-church" Protestant churches--the greatest stride so far in the 20th Century's growing ecumenical movement. Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Reformed have united in a common church, common canons and a common clergy.

South India's new church of 1,000,000-odd members sounded to many in the sect-divided U.S. almost like Utopia attained. The U.S. Federal Council of Churches has been struggling all year to hold a conference of its 25 denominations merely to discuss the possibility of doing something about unity.

The Will of God. The fact that Christians in India are a tiny religious minority has always tended to blur denominational differences. Even so, the road to union has been an uphill climb. In 1919, at the village of Tranquebar, south of Madras, where India's first Protestant missionaries had landed, 50 ministers of evangelical churches met to discuss union. Some of them--Anglicans and members of the South India United Church*--signed a manifesto proposing union.

In 1926, the Methodists entered into the negotiations and proved to be an invaluable bridge between the Anglicans and the others.

The Negotiations. One of the knottiest ecclesiastical problems to be ironed out: the Anglican belief that the ministry must be in the line of "apostolic succession," as against the Congregationalist concept of the "ministry of all believers." This problem was eventually solved by the creation of a 30-year period, during which the Anglicans will recognize the existing ministries, of the other denominations (and agree to such un-Anglican nomenclature as moderator, presbyter and elder), with the understanding that no minister ordained before the union can be shifted to any church without the consent of the congregation. When the 30 years are up, it is expected that the clergy of the united church will have become uniform.

Also difficult to get around was the Anglican unwillingness to allow laymen to administer Holy Communion. The compromise: only presbyters may administer Communion, but others, appointed by the church, may assist in its administration.

Not all of South India's Protestants will be members of the new church. Still outside are about 100,000 Baptists (they insist on adult baptism only), 200,000 Lutherans (they demand acceptance of the Augsburg Confession), a small number of U.S. Methodists, and 200,000 members of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church. But the 1,000,000-odd members of the South India Church are a leaven of unity that is already causing ecumenical stirrings in North India, and beyond. Many clergymen hopefully expect that it will eventually spread to England, Europe and the U.S.

"Deepest Interest." What about the relations between the Anglican members of the Church of South India and their parent Church of England? Because all the clergymen in the new church have not been ordained according to Episcopal principles and procedure, the Anglicans in the Church of South India are considered to have "gone forth" from the Anglican Communion--at least until the 30-year period of mixed ministry is over. The Most Rev. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, has made the Church of England's official position clear. But the Archbishop has also tempered his ecclesiastical decree with sympathetic and prayerful words:

"Those who are uniting to form the South India Church are embarking upon a venture which must engage our deepest interest and concern. The scheme has come to fruition not from any mere opportunism but by the profound exercise of the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. ... As in all human undertakings, so in this scheme, there is evidence of imperfection. But the framers of this scheme look not to themselves but to Christ for the unity . . . which they desire. Our prayer to God for the South India Church must be: 'Where it is in error, direct it; where in anything it is amiss, reform it; where it is right, establish it; where it is in want, provide for it; for the sake of Him who died and rose again and ever liveth to make intercession for us.'"

*Organized in 1908 to unite Scottish and U.S. Presbyterians, Congregationalists and a few smaller sects such as Dutch Reformed.

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