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Disunity in the name of Christ is a scandal and a shame, but it is nothing new—even Jesus had to deal with it. One day his disciples found a stranger casting out devils in Jesus' name and warned him to quit, on the ground that "he followeth not with us." Christ rebuked them. "Forbid him not," he said, "for he that is not against us is for us'1 (Luke 9: 49-50).
It has been as hard for history's Christians to heed this tolerant teaching as it was for the disciples. Quirks of custom and filigrees of doctrine, thunderbolts of power politics and showers of private revelations, have split and fissured the masonry of the church time and again throughout the centuries. The Protestant Reformation triggered a chain reaction of Christian fission that reached its explosive peak in the New World; in 1900 the U.S. had no fewer than 250 different kinds of Christianity.
Many Protestants glory in this freedom and individualism—and many of them worry about it. One of the earliest worriers was the founder of Protestantism's Reformed tradition—John Calvin of Geneva. Wrote he to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. chief architect of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: "The churches are so divided that human fellowship is scarcely now of any repute ... So much does this concern me that if I could be of any service. I would not begrudge traversing ten seas for this purpose."
One-Man Movement. Calvin crossed no seas at all, but one of his modern followers is just as ready to cross stormy seas in the cause of Christian unity. He is a squarejawed, hazel-eyed man of action, whose three euphonious names —Eugene Carson Blake—have become synonymous in church circles with efficient organization, knowing diplomacy, and zeal for unity.
Dr. Blake's activities make him sound like a one-man ecumenical movement. On the World Council of Churches he is a member of three of the top committees. On the National Council of Churches, of which he is a past president, he is a member of the General Board. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the World Presbyterian Alliance.
Theoretically at least, these are all spare-time activities. Dr. Blake's regular job for the past ten years has been Stated Clerk—permanent executive officer—of the Presbyterian General Assembly, an elected body that is the heart of the government of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (Northern Presbyterians), who number 3,259,011. Last week and this, in Buffalo, as Dr. Blake took charge for the tenth year of the General Assembly, the prime item on the agenda represented the highest ambition of his career—the "Blake Proposal" for the creation of a new, still-unnamed Protestant church out of four old ones. His plan has been Topic A in the ecumenical movement since he put forth his proposal last December.