When it met in Atlantic City, N. J. last fortnight, the Eastern Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church had only one big item on its agenda: to declare itself legally dead. The M. P. Church, split off from ordinary Methodism for 111 years because of doctrinal disputes and a rooted antipathy to bishops, had rejoined it last spring, thus helped to form the nation's biggest Protestant sect, the new Methodist Church (TIME, May 8). For 16 M. P. churchmen from southern New Jersey, this merger was newfangled and nefarious. For the record, one of them asked the conference whether it "is still the Methodist Protestant conference, or is it now a Methodist conference?" Informed that it was the latter, the 16 arose, marched out of the room singing Blessed Assurance, whose chorus goes: This is my story, this is my song, praising my Saviour all the day long.
The 16 dissenters forthwith rumped themselves, declared the rump a "reorganization" of the conference they had bolted. Without mentioning bishops, they issued a statement accusing Methodist Church leaders of denying the Virgin Birth and inspiration of the Scriptures, of espousing "modernism, radicalism and communism." The ranks of the dissident M. P.s shortly swelled to 37 ministers and congregations. And they had the small but strengthening assurance that M. P.s elsewhere had done what they were doing: in Mississippi, 47 ministers bolted the Methodist Church; in Michigan, 18; in Georgia and South Carolina, a handful.
Last week Dr. Ernest Gladstone Richardson, new Methodist Bishop of New Jersey, appointed new pastors to 35 of the 37 "vacant" M. P. pulpits. He pronounced the experience "most trying." For on Sunday the 37 diehards, backed by their bristling flocks, took their stand for Methodist Protestantism, made ready to repel invaders. This they accomplished peacefully, however. In most of the churches, new pastors courteously claimed the pulpits, were courteously refused, departed quietly—or even remained to hear a diehard's sermon.