Unlike Catholics and Episcopalians, Methodists do not believe in that "Apostolic Succession" by which bishops derive their spiritual powers from an unbroken line of bishops dating back to the time of Christ. Methodists feel a Methodist bishop is just a plain man in an ordi- nary business suit who puts "Bishop" rather than "Rt. Rev." or "Most Rev." before his name. He is not attached for life to any one diocese but may be transferred from one Methodist "area" to an-other by the conference which elects him. Last week in Columbus, Ohio the 3 2nd quadrennial General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church elected by a two-thirds majority of the 600 conference delegates five new bishops who were consecrated by a simple laying-on of hands at a Sunday service with hymns, prayers and scriptural readings.
Rev. John McKendree Springer, for 35 years a missionary in Africa, was consecrated a missionary bishop, sent back to his field in the Congo. Another outlander simultaneously consecrated was Rev. Roberto Elphick, elected bishop some months ago by the Methodists of Chile and Peru.
Rev. Alexander Preston Shaw, 57, of New Orleans, is editor of the Southwestern Christian Advocate. Most Methodist bishops look alike, with their white faces, firm jaws, thin lips. Bishop Shaw is physically unique in that he is a Negro. He is to succeed retiring Negro Bishop Matthew Wesley Clair of Covington, Ky.
Dr. Wilbur Emery Hammaker, 60, pastor for 21 years of Trinity M. E. Church in Youngstown, Ohio, and Dr. Charles Wesley Flint, 57, Chancellor of Syracuse University, were both rightly regarded by the conference as conservative Methodists. Students at Syracuse, of which Dr. Flint has been head since 1922, professed to believe he had wished to retire because antics of some of its young men, it is still typical of how a good-sized ministerial training school operates. The fact that Union matriculates Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, exposes them to the religious views of Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ and then returns them to their original denominations makes little difference. Few young Protestants today are bothered by sectarian divisions. Those that are go elsewhere than Union-Presbyterian Fundamentalists to Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, Anglo-Catholics to Nashotah House near Milwaukee, Lutherans to Concordia in St. Louis.
All matriculants at Union must possess an A. B. degree from an accredited college. About 23 years old, each is prepared to spend three years winning the seminary's lowest degree, Bachelor of Divinity. Other degrees a student may strive for are Master of Sacred Theology, Doctor of Theology and, jointly from Union and Columbia University, Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy. (The degree which enables many a clergyman to call himself "Dr." is an honorary one of Doctor of Divinity.)