CHURCH CRISIS

Southland Times, Issue 19125, 18 December 1923, Page 5

CHURCH CRISIS

IN EPISCOPALIAN CHURCH. HOUSE OF BISHOPS ATTACKED. (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) NEW YORK, December 16. (Received December 17, 9.15 p.m.). One of the bitterest controversies in the history of the Episcopalian Church of America, has been precipitated as the result of the decision of the House of Bishops to try the Reverend Lee Heaton, a young clergyman of Fortworth (Texas), on a charge of heresy, because he declared he did not consider literal belief in the story of the Virgin Birth, as essential to Christian religion. Dr. Leighton Parks, for twenty years Rector of Saint Bartholemew’s Episcopal Church and probably the most conservative and richest clergyman in New York to-day, astounded his congregation by attacking the Bishops for this step and declaring that they were attempting to unfrock all clergymen of liberal views.

The Modern Churchmen’s Union, in the meantime, has also entered the controversy, taking Mr Heaton’s defence and appropriating a considerable sum therefore. Other Episcopal clergymen, who disagree with the House of Bishops, are opposing the fundamentalist in every way, many lecturing in colleges against the literal interpretation of the Bible and portraying Christ as a modernist.