CHURCH UNION

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 37, 12 August 1930, Page 9

CHURCH UNION

BISHOPS' CONFERENCE

EXCHANGE OF VIEWS

LONDON, Ist August,

Whether the Bishops' meeting at Lambeth will report in favour of union with the Free Churches and whether the Free Churches will accept the principle of the Episcopate, are questions in which interest has been renewed by a meeting of Bishops and a committee of Free Churchmen, including Drs. A. E. Garvie (president, National Free Church Council, 1924-25), P. Carnegie Simpson (Professor of Church History, Westminster College, Cambridge), and John Scott Lidgett (editor of the "Methodist Times," 1907-18), under the chairmanship of the Archbishop of York (Dr. Temple) at Lambeth Palace. ~

The conference was held at the request of the Bishops, of whom the Free Churchmen asked, in view of their admission that the Free Churches possessed ministries of the Word and Sacrament, that opportunities for fellowship and inter-communion should be encouraged on the lines of the proposals connected with the formation of tho South Indian Church.

The Free Churchmen added that they saw no difficulty in the Episcopacy regarding the present organisation of some of the churches, although they did not accept the theory of a historic Episcopate. Moreover, they would not agree to re-ordination. After a friendly exchange of views the Bishops apparently found a difficulty regarding inter-communion, and their reply is likely to be conditioned by the report on the South Indian, proposals, the Bishops recognising a difficulty in agreeing to tho Indian proposals, and refusing similar schemes for the Free Churches in Britain.