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Last May, the annual meeting of Presbyterians at Indianapolis took steps to oust Dr. Fosdick. But he remains. If he is not ousted before next May, the Fundamentalists will be angrier than they now are.
The Fundamentalists in the Episcopal Church quickly followed the lead of the Fundamentalists in the Presbyterian Church. Sixty-five bishops went down to Dallas, Texas (TIME, Nov. 26). They issued a pronouncement commanding every clergyman to teach the Apostles' creed word for word, literally. At the same time the rector of a parish in Fort Worth, Texas, was charged with heresy and was told that he would be summoned to trial. The rector is Lee W. Heaton.
But no sooner did the bishops leave Texas than clergymen in every state denounced them for their insistence on literal interpretation of the creeds and for their arrogation of the right to dictate the theology of their church. The Modern Churchmen's Union, headed by Dr. Elwood Worcester, rector of the fashionable Emanuel Episcopal Church of Boston, came out last week against the bishops. Money began to be collected for the defense of Mr. Heaton in his heresy trial.
The strongest blow for the Modernist cause was struck by a venerable rector in Manhattan—Dr. Leighton Parks, who has for many years shepherded the flock of St. Bartholomew's. He defied his reactionary bishop— William T. Manning. (Bishop Manning had been a conspicuous leader at the Dallas meeting.) Last Sunday, Dr. Parks entered his pulpit, without a cossack, but wearing the gown of a Doctor of Theology. And as such, he defended the denial of the virgin birth and the denial of other "fundamentals." He challenged Bishop Manning to bring him to trial, saying, in effect: "Why do you bring to trial a poor, friendless man in Texas? Are you afraid to try Bishop Lawrence or me? (Bishop Lawrence, of Massachusetts, is considered a Modernist.) And he added, that to try Bishop Lawrence would "shake the Church to its foundations."
* The Congregationalists, for the most part, leave creedal matters to individual churches.