CHURCH UNION

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27613, 21 March 1955, Page 10

CHURCH UNION

Movement “Becoming s Stronger” f “ VIEWS OF METHODIST i LEADER s J The movement towards a union of ■ Protestant churches was becoming - stronger and it was only a matter of • time before all would come together ; as one church, said the world head of the Methodist Church (Bishop 1. L. ■ Holt, of St. Louis) in an interview with “The Press” at the weekend. Bishop Holt has been a member of s the central committee of the World , Council of Churches. The council is . now a union movement but is co- , operative. At the same time, one of ; its strongest commissions is the Com- • mission on Faith and Order, whose ? commission is the union of churches, i The council has a membership of 150 I denominations. • “The principal discussions looking r to church union in New Zealand right i now involve Congregatlonalists, i Methodists and Presbyterians,” said r Bishop Holt “I would refrain from s any comment on the outcome of these negotiations, but I would say that what : is happening In New Zealand is happening in practically every country in > the. world where Protestantism is j strong.” In the United States negotiations • had been in progress between I Methodist and Protestant Episcopal (Anglican) Churches for the last three - years. Although union was not pos- . slble in the immediate future it would r come, as it had in South India. “The Methodists and Episcopalians i have the same policy and the same ritual services, since all the Methodist ’ services were taken by John Wesley i from the Anglican Book of Common I Prayer,” said Bishop Holt. Meeting manned for April In late April in St. Louis 12 bishops I from the Methodist Church (I am the s chairman) and bishops from the Protestant Episcopalian Church will • meet to discuss approaches to inter- , communion on the basis proposed by ■ th® Archbishop of Canterbury in a ’ striking address at Camberidge several ; years ago. . I do not want to leave the impression that union will come in any immediate future, but the dis- : cussions are promising. , “In the United Congregatlonalists and the Evangelical Reform ! Church will consummate union in 1957. “There is also a discussion of a still i larger union involving half a dozen of our strong denominations. That discussion has led to the writing of a plan for union, but the plan is simply , ! in the stage of discussion and is not ready for presenting yet to the legislative party of either one of the ■ denominations. “In the last generation in the United States, at least 20 unions of churches have taken place, though none of them as big as the United Church of Canada, into Which practically all Congregationalists, Methodists and Presbyterians went together in 1925. That is one of the great united churches of the world.” Since 1925 the Church of South India ‘ had been created and in Japan the 1 organisation of the United Church of Christ which was under way at the outbreak of World War n had been continued, said Bishop Holt. At the present time there was a discussion of a United Church of North India and there had been some interesting approaches between the Church of , England and the free churches of the British* Illes. . “I have been working all my life for church union and I know all the obstacles, but at the same time I am never discouraged because it seems to me that such union is the will of God and must come,” said Bishop Holt.