The Healing Wound

The Civil War split the Presbyterians* right along the Mason-Dixon Line. Last week the old Presbyterian wound showed new and unexpected signs of healing.

In little (pop. 260) Montreal, in North Carolina's thickly wooded Blue Ridge Mountains, 450 commissioners (delegates) of the 757,701-member Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Southern) met for their annual general assembly. No. 1 item on the agenda: a plan for merger with the Northern Presbyterians (2,500,000 members) and the United Presbyterians (300,000 members). The proposal had been discussed since 1938 and opposition to the idea was strong; in 1948 the General Assembly had postponed consideration of it for five years.

The pro-union partisans got an edge in the beginning with the election of longtime China Missionary Frank W. Price, a staunch union supporter, as moderator for the coming year. Then some of the guests departed from the traditionally platitudinous greetings to say a word for union. Declared the Rev. Theophilus M. Taylor, fraternal delegate from the United Presbyterians: "The present state of disunity is an indulgence of our human frailties."

At last came time for the report of the standing committee on inter-church relations, the climax of the session. Committee Chairman R. McFerran Crowe of Atlanta surprised the delegates by seating all 39 members of his committee on the auditorium stage. Then he called on two members, one for union and one against, to testify. The vote, they told the astonished commissioners, had been unanimous in favor of submitting the union plan to the presbyteries.

Explained anti-union L. Nelson Bell of Montreat: "Most of us went into the meeting armed with sawed-off shotguns and brass knucks. But after meeting in three harmonious sessions for 11 1/2 hours, we came to a unanimous decision. All 39 members were on their knees praying for 25 minutes . . . We feel that God's Holy Spirit led us." The assembly, moved to a man, sang the Doxology and unanimously accepted the committee's report.

Merger of the three bodies is still quite a way off, with many a hurdle left to take. The denomination's fourscore presbyteries have from now until November to study the plan; if three-fourths of them report favorably on it, the church's permanent committee will confer with their Northern and United brethren from November 1953 to May 1954. Then the revised plan will go through nearly the whole process all over again, with merger--if all goes well--in the spring of 1956. By the same time, the union plan accepted last month by the Northern Presbyterians (TIME, June 8) will be ready for action. The year 1956 will be a good one for a merger; it will be the 250th anniversary of the founding in Philadelphia of the first presbytery in the U.S.

Last week the United Presbyterians made it unanimous. Meeting in Carlisle, Pa. they voted to accept for similar treatment a merger plan identical with that adopted by the Southerners.

* As it did the Methodists and Baptists. Northern and Southern Methodists merged with the Methodist Protestant Church in 1939 to become the Methodist Church (present membership: 9,065,727). U.S. Baptists are still talking about unity, but have not yet achieved it.

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