Union

The flame of hope for an organically united U.S. Protestant Church flickers sometimes, but never quite goes out. Last week it burned a bit brighter with an announcement by Methodist Bishop Ivan Lee Holt of St. Louis that the Conference on Church Union, created last year at a meeting of representatives from seven church groups, had drawn up a detailed plan for interdenominational union.

Bishops will have a place in the new plan, said Conference Chairman Holt, presbyteries will have certain constitutional responsibilities, and congregations will govern themselves. The plan will be formally presented to representatives of the currently participating Protestant groups* at a two-day convocation in Cincinnati in January. Then the plan is expected to go to commissions of each denomination for study and action.

Said Bishop Holt: "It is hoped that this may become a movement of all the American churches."

* Congregational Christian Churches, Disciples of Christ, Evangelical and Reformed, the Methodist Church, the African M.E. Zion Church, the Colored Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., the International Council of Community Churches, the Association for a United Church in America, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.

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