Religion: Duality at Trinity

It was Sunday, 11 a.m., time for services in Brooklyn's Holy Trinity Protestant Episcopal Church. But, instead of one minister, two were on hand. One led the worship from the pulpit, the other stood at a lectern a few feet away.

The preacher at the lectern was the Rev. William Howard Melish, around whose name has swirled the most extraordinary fracas seen in any U.S. church for a long time. In 1949 Long Island's Bishop James P. De Wolfe fired William Melish's father, John Howard Melish, as rector of Trinity, because he would not curb the left-wing activities of his son and...

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