Spurning the '60s

When Eugene Carson Blake left the helm of the United Presbyterian Church in 1966 to become head of the World Council of Churches, he and his church were in the middle of the principal movements of the decade. His proposal to unite Protestants into a big new church had attracted ten denominations with 25 million members, his prospering Presbyterians had just fashioned an up-to-date creed, and their ample, well-financed bureaucracy was in the forefront of the social crusades of the '60s.

Since then, in a pattern evident in other denominations as well, the liberal designs of U.P.C. officials have run afoul of a growing conservatism among the membership. "Some of the daring pursuits of national church bodies led to rancor in the ranks," wrote Dennis Shoemaker, editor of a U.P.C.

education magazine, in the Christian Century. Last year the U.P.C. rejected the church union plan, which it had helped to write, and the merger has been postponed indefinitely. A theologically conservative student movement is surfacing at prestigious Princeton Seminary. Last week Blake's successor as Stated Clerk (chief executive), Kansas Lawyer William P.

Thompson, grimly told the denomination's General Assembly in Omaha that membership has fallen to 2,917,000 --about where it was 18 years ago.

Staff Cuts. The most telling sign of the times is the budget. Presbyterians are giving more money than ever to their local churches, but they sent only $22.6 million to the national program last year, compared with $31.2 million in 1967. Some analysts figure that grassroots revulsion over just one action by the national staff, a $10,000 church grant to Angela Davis' defense fund, cost millions in revenue.

The financial crunch is hitting hard at headquarters. The church is selling off its eleven-story Witherspoon Building in Philadelphia and consolidating its offices in New York City as part of a top-to-bottom reorganization. The national staff, half as big as it was under Blake, is now being slashed in half again. It is the worst of the cutbacks suffered by various liberal Protestant agencies in recent years.

Church bureaucrats have been thrown into a savage game of musical chairs over the jobs that will be left. By year's end, around 200 mid-career professionals and a large number of clerical employees will be on the street. The Rev. Arvo Vaurio, whose own personnel job has been axed, is now doing "outplacement" for his colleagues. The glut of middle-aged clergymen on the market could not have come at a worse time, since slots are scarce in government, colleges and industry. Vaurio figures that the church will be lucky to place 15 or 20 of the ministers in local congregations. Many of the executives took national jobs in the first place because of their distaste for parish work.

Shoemaker says that liberals are "becoming painfully aware that the great social awakening which began in the '60s simply isn't going to come off." But Illinois Pastor Andrew Tempelman blames the liberals for losing by default. They got fed up and walked out, he believes, leaving churches in the hands of "the bigots, the warmongers, the peace-of-mind crowd and the good honest security seekers."

When Blake retired from the World Council last fall, the U.P.C. was a different denomination from the one he had left. Still, nothing seemed more appropriate than to welcome the superchurchman back with election to a one-year term as Moderator, or honorary head, of his church. Last week Blake appeared on the General Assembly platform, along with four other nominees, to speak and answer questions. When the votes were counted, the winner was the Rev. Clinton Marsh, a little-known synod executive of Omaha. Blake came in last. It was a rejection not so much of the man as of the era he personified.

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