Conventional Christianity

Churchmen, like businessmen and bees, tend to swarm in the late spring. Last week the denominational convention season was well under way, and elections, budgets and resolutions filled the air.

P:In Miami, 11,584 "messengers," as Southern Baptist voting delegates are called, met to represent 8,169,491 members of 29,899 churches in 30 states. They passed a record budget of $10 million for 1956 (up $800,000 over 1955) and elected the Rev. Dr. Caspar C. Warren of the First Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C. as convention president. Under the eyes of a delegation of nine Baptists from the U.S.S.R., the convention passed a resolution to congratulate President Eisenhower for his "patient diplomatic conduct," urged a "more determined effort" at armament reduction and elimination of atomic, weapons.

P:In Atlantic City, some 10,000 delegates assembled for the 48th annual American Baptist Convention, fourth largest of the 26 Baptist groups in the U.S., with 6,000 churches and 1,600,000 members. They noted a building boom of Baptist churches unequaled since pioneer days, with at least half of their present churches carrying on building expansion programs, and $6,500,000 of their $8,000,000 building fund already raised. Unanimously the A.B.C. accepted the proposal of Southern Baptist Convention President Warren to participate with his group, together with the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A. (Negro) and the National Baptist Convention of America (Negro), in a five-year evangelistic crusade, starting in 1959, to "win America for Christ."

P:In Los Angeles, 905 voting "commissioners" of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (northern) turned out for its 167th General Assembly, representing 2,658,903 members and 256 presbyteries. Without a dissenting voice, the delegates approved a statement of the church's Permanent Commission deploring the Roman Catholic "trend to exalt the figure of the Virgin Mother to the office of associate partner in the work of redemption." This development, said the statement, "has widened the breach between the Roman Catholic Church and all other Christian communions . . ."

P:In Boston. 583 voting delegates to the 130th annual meeting of the American Unitarian Association heard a report of a committee appointed last year to study the thorny question of whether Unitarians have any business making resolutions on non-church matters. "To abandon the practice now," the report decided, "could be interpreted as a move of caution or expediency ... in the present climate of opinion adverse to free speech, heretical views and diversity of opinion. " One of the "hazards" of being a Unitarian, according to the report, is that Unitarians believe in "work for the kingdom of God." and that kingdom includes "public affairs."

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