Aim: Unity

The Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S., as Presiding Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill has remarked, is "the roomiest church in the world." But despite the doctrinal roominess, there remains a sharp-edged division between its High and Low Church members--between those who regard their church as basically (Anglo) Catholic and those who emphasize its Protestantism. Last week U.S. Episcopalians got a new publication dedicated to smoothing the sharp edges of division, and giving the church a national news magazine into the bargain. The unity which Episcopal Churchnews seeks to promote is expressed on its logotype: "Catholic for every Truth of God--Protestant against every error of man."

Episcopal Churchnews inherited its motto, some of its staff and a scrawny 3,000 circulation from the Southern Churchman, a venerable--and traditionally Low Church--weekly published in Richmond, Va. since 1835. For the past twelve months, Publisher Maurice Bennett Jr. has been getting advice and funds for the new magazine from Episcopalians all over the country. Sixty-two of the church's diocesan bishops promised their support.

Editing by Phone. The result, Episcopal Churchnews, is a glossy, well-illustrated news magazine, still uncertain of its style, but aimed well beyond the limited coverage and readership of most church periodicals. The first press run was for 15,000 copies. Publisher Bennett is confident he can raise circulation to a steady 20,000. Any profits, by agreement of the board of trustees, will go into a fund to aid Episcopal Church seminaries.

The magazine is put together in Richmond by a staff of ten laymen. They get most of their news from ten special correspondents and from contributors in every diocese. The editors, who hold their weekly staff conference over long-distance telephone, are three clergymen: W. Leigh Ribble, a Richmond rector and former editor of the Southern Churchman, Chad Walsh, associate professor of English at Wisconsin's Beloit College, Theodore Wedel, warden of Washington Cathedral's College of Preachers.

Fair but Not Middling. To point their aim at unity within the church, the editors led their first issue with an account of the consecrations of two new bishops, John B. Walthour, a Low Churchman, Bishop of Atlanta, and Donald H. V. Hallock, a High Churchman, Bishop-Coadjutor of Milwaukee. Their second story was an impartial review of the stalemate between Long Island's Bishop James P. DeWolfe (High) and the Rev. William Howard Melish (Low and Leftish--see above), whose disputed rectorship is still one of the church's hot potatoes.

Despite its unifying aim, Episcopal Churchnews does not intend to be a perennial neutral in church disputes. Said Publisher Bennett: "We're going to be fair, but not just 'middle of the road.' The car in the middle of the road is the one that always causes accidents."

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