Word: churches
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Although the crisis in England's country churches has long been in the making, Anglican leaders are becoming increasingly concerned about it. Lacking the money or the manpower to maintain them, the bishops of some rural dioceses have been pronouncing certain parishes "redundant"-that is, they withdraw recognition of the church, order its old doors locked, and if no other use can be found, declare the building ready for demolition. "The church is for people; it is not a society for the preservation of ancient monuments," said a recent diocesan report in Lincolnshire, where 57 rural parishes have already...
...such ministries. Previously, an elderly vicar could hang on to his parish even if no one ever attended his services. Now he can be compelled to join a group ministry or be packed off into retirement. The pastoral measure also establishes a ten-man advisory board to determine what churches should be demolished, preserved or put to some other use. Even this new concern, however, has not entirely erased the melancholy over the decay of England's country churches. "An empty country church," says the Rev. Philip Goodrich, vicar of a commuter-belt church near London, reflecting the sentiments...
When Presbyterian Leader Eugene Carson Blake first proposed the idea from the pulpit of San Francisco's Episcopal Grace Cathedral in 1960, it electrified U.S. Christianity: as a step toward ultimate church reunion, he said, mainstream American Protestants must unite. At the time, Blake optimistically predicted that the project would need ten years to bear any fruit at all; pessimists seemed to think it was impossible. Last week, as the Consultation on Church Union met for the eighth time in Atlanta to carry forward Blake's pioneering proposal, it appeared that the participants were willing to accept...
Perhaps the most significant progress the churches have made since Dr. Blake's speech is in ensuring the racial unity of the prospective superchurch. Three of the participant churches are predominantly Negro in membership, and their presence as equal partners is now taken for granted. High on the list of priorities for consideration by denominational leaders is "How shall racial balance be achieved and maintained in leadership, both lay and ordained, at all levels of the united church?" Balance is the concern. The outline plan already provides that all offices of the new church, including the episcopacy, be open...
...four denominations originally invited to form the union were Blake's United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ and the Methodist Church. Joining later were the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church in the United States (Southern), the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church and the Evangelical United Brethren. Last year the Evangelical United Brethren merged with the Methodist Church to become the United Methodist Church...