The Stated Clerk's View

Some congressional inquiries have revealed a distinct tendency to become inquisitions . . . Treason and dissent are being confused . . . Un-American attitudes toward ideas and books are becoming current . . . Let us always be ready to meet around a conference table with the rulers of Communist countries . . . In human conflicts, there can be no substitute for negotiation.

When these words and about 2,300 others like them appeared in a letter sent last month by the 26-member General Council of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (Northern) to its 8,000' congregations, many a shocked Presbyterian--and many a non-Presbyterian--took pen in hand to write his protest. Last week, at a conference of Protestant home mission leaders at Buck Hill Falls, Pa., the Rev. Dr. Eugene C. Blake, the Northern Presbyterians' stated clerk (i.e., No. 2 official), stood up to defend the letter and add a few words of his own on related subjects.

"At least one quarter to be watched by Protestants,'' said Dr. Blake, "is the plans and programs of the Roman Catholic hierarchy . . . Certainly the Protestant churches have much more important things to do than to resist Roman Catholicism . . . But surely Protestant leaders do have the responsibility to cast the spotlight upon all Roman Catholic hierarchy efforts to subvert American freedom . . .

"The Roman Church has been and still is industriously spreading the false propaganda that the only safe church, fully anti-Communistic, is the Roman Church. The General Council letter does strike back at this Roman propaganda line, which has been extraordinarily successful even among Protestants in the face of the obvious facts that where the Roman Church is dominant, you regularly find Communism stronger than where the free churches are dominant. Furthermore, this idea that only Roman Catholics can be trusted to be anti-Communist is having, on the authority of the Christian Science Monitor, some very dangerous results in the loyalty investigations in Washington . . .

"There is an anti-intellectualism widespread in America which tends to blur all distinctions except that of white and black . . . There is an attack, financially well supported, against our churches . . . The only source of this I will identify by name is that of the American Council of Christian Churches (see below), which can no longer be ignored when its lies and calumnies are picked up and used by Government agencies and others in this attack.

"Although I will not charge any others with actively attacking our churches. I do call to your attention the forces in our society which stand to benefit by the weakening of the Protestant free churches. First, the secular forces of totalitarianism, Communist and fascist, which hate the church which holds God, not man, is sovereign. Second, the religious forces, superfundamentalist and anti-Protestant, which believe that they alone have full truth."

In Hollywood, the Rev. Carl Mclntire, founder of the fundamentalist American Council of Christian Churches denounced by Dr. Blake, repeated his conviction that the main denominations in the National Council of Churches--Methodists, Northern Baptists, Presbyterians. Episcopalians, Congregationalists--are being eaten away by Marxist and social-gospel teachings. His recommendation: "Christian people must immediately cease giving their money to support [these] denominations."

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