Baptized in 1929 by the Protestant Episcopal Church: 3,338 fewer persons than in 1928.
Confirmed in 1929 by the Protestant Episcopal Church: 2,027 fewer persons than in 1928.
Such was the prime news of The Living Church Annual, official P. E. almanac, out last week.
The falling figures were partially accounted for by The Living Church Annual, thus: ”It should be remembered that the attempt to count membership on a basis of baptized persons instead of communicants goes back only two years, and the reports for the previous years included estimates in a number of places, the exact record not being available . . . the decrease shown this year is probably not an actual decrease, but rather a closer approximation to exact figures.”
Total P. E. membership (baptized persons), as given in the 1930 Annual: 1,876,119.
The Protestant Episcopal Church stands midway between U. S. Catholicism and U. S. Protestantism. Many Protestants, remembering instances of Episcopalian refusal to recognize the validity of other Protestant orders (latest instance: Manhattan’s Bishop William Thomas Manning’s) forbidding Dr. Karl Reiland to allow Presbyterian Henry Sloane Coffin to officiate at a communion service in an Episcopal church (TIME, Nov. 25), think Episcopalians have no right to call themselves Protestants. Many high-church Episcopalians agree with them, dislike the name Protestant, would like to change their church’s name to something like American Catholic.* Last week the P. E. high-church weekly, The Living Church, printed an article by Dr. Frederick Henry Lynch, Congregationalist minister, editor of Christian Work and Evangelist, entitled, “Is the Protestant Episcopal Church a Protestant Church?”
Said Dr. Lynch: “The Episcopalian Church is much more closely identified with Catholicism than with Protestantism, and every attempt to practice Church Unity with Protestants proves it. I cannot help feeling that the Anglo-Catholic party which wishes to drop the word ‘Protestant’ has not only all of the logic on its side, but all of the evidence, both historical and contemporary. Furthermore, every time the Episcopalian Church refuses to recognize the orders of a Protestant minister as equally valid with that of an Episcopalian priest, or refuses to permit a Protestant minister to officiate at its altars or even refuses to join in a common Communion service with Protestants, it proves this contention. Would not the Episcopal Church be much truer to both history and facts if it dropped the word ‘Protestant’ from its title and called itself what it really is: ‘The Catholic Church’—Anglo-Catholic in England and American-Catholic in America? Then no Protestant minister would expect to be asked to share in officiating at its altars. He cannot, for the life of him, see why this act should be refused while the Episcopal Church calls itself Protestant.”
In hearty agreement with Protestant Lynch was the editor of The Living Church. Said he: “Evidently it has waited for a Congregational minister to frame the real issue; and we thank Dr. Lynch for doing it so well.”
* This name was pre-empted (1915) by a small sect (1,000) centering in Chicago, an offshoot of the Old Roman Catholic Church of Holland.
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