People are prone to think of the Presbyterian Church (North) as riven from top to bottom by five insuperable points of theology into the two parties, Modernist and Fundamentalist. That this is no longer so was demonstrated last week at the 138th annual meeting of the General Assembly, in a Baltimore theatre (the Lyric). Of politics the Presbyterians have plenty, and of late years their Assemblies have assumed the aspect of embattled conventions. But the political alignments and the issues in last week's election of a Moderator, were these:
1) The diehard, militant Fundamentalists, led by Dr. Clarence E. Macartney of Philadelphia, who interpret Holy Writ literally; insist that all Presbyterians shall thus interpret it; and put a candidate into the field to combat a supposed menace to the "historic, blood-bought standards of the Presbyterian Church."
2) The Moderates, led by no one man but rather by a broad group whose theology is Fundamental yet not militant to the extent of imposing its tenets upon all Presbyterians by other than the duly constituted judicial agencies of the Church. Its political program was to put in the field—as it successfully did last year after the Modernist-Fundamentalist fight had reached its peak—a tolerant nonmilitant Fundamentalist who would administer church affairs in a businesslike way and smooth over internal disputes.