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"He could have been enormously successful in business—head of one of our big corporations. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Gene could hold his own in quality of leadership with any of the big businessmen I know."
Warning for Ecumaniacs. In Buffalo's Klemhans Music Hall last week. Stated Clerk Blake, the fierce competitor, was pleased when the 988 commissioners (delegates ) of the 173rd General Assembly elected a new Moderator who was openly in favor of his unity proposal: Layman Paul D. McKelvey, 53-year-old president of a Los Angeles real estate investment company. Moderator-elect McKelvey lost no time in making his position clear, but he had a warning, too, for the "ecumaniacs" in his own and other churches: "The main purpose of the church is the salvation of man—the exposure of the whole man to the Gospel."
Stated Clerk Blake is confident that the General Assembly will follow his leadership along a road that within ten years (he estimates ) may merge 18.9 million Protestants in a giant church, combining the best elements of traditionalist catholic beauty and structured Calvinist form. But what of the other three partners in his proposed union?
Decisions to Come. What separates the churches are matters that were once, and to many still are, matters of intense conviction. Tradition becomes more than habit: it inspires affections and loyalties. Insofar as the differences are theological. Dr. Blake, out of his years of attending interfaith meetings, has shown a subtle awareness of what is central to other faiths and what may lend itself to accommodation if laymen and clergy can be convinced that the end is not a watering down but a strengthening of Christianity.
None of the other three churches have taken an official position on merger That will come as they gather over the next three years in meetings equivalent to the Presbyterians' assembly. Individual churchmen from the other denominations praise or criticize the proposal freely Episcopal Bishop Stephen Bayne, lately of Washington and currently in London as executive officer of the Anglican Communion, finds it "somewhat naive." Editor Peter Day, of the high church Episcopal weekly The Living Church, thinks that the desire for unity is less than it was 20 years ago. "Episcopalians, Methodists and Presbyterians are saying, 'Why talk about it? We're doing fine as we are.' In the abstract, though, nobody will vote directly against unity—that would be like voting against Mother." Episcopal Bishop James Pike, in whose ban Francisco cathedral Blake announced his proposal, has no patience with ecumenical hairsplitters. "Any group or individual," he says, "has not only the right but the duty to hold out against unity if it threatens what he considers an essential of the Gospel. On the other hand, I think ne has no right under God to hold out against unity for something that is not essential to the Gospel." Congregationalist Listen Pope, dean of Yale Divinity School, thinks that Blake's proposal could give Protestant opinion a badly needed "central, united voice."