It was "the most significant event in ecclesiastical history since the Reformation." So said Presbyterian Patriarch Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin.
At 8 o'clock on a steaming hot morning in Madras, India, the bell of St. George's Cathedral began to ring. Into the crowded cathedral filed a crucifer and 14 men in white cotton robes. There, beneath the whirring, white blades of 30 electric fans, most of South India's several sects of Protestants united to form a new church.
The simple ceremony, launching the United Church of South India last fortnight, marks the first organic union between episcopal and "free-church" Protestant churches—the greatest...
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