HERESY ALLEGED.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 May 1924, Page 5

HERESY ALLEGED.

CHARGE AGAINST BISHOP. INTERPRETATION OF BIBLE. TENSE FEELING AROUSED. By Telegraph—-Press Aesn.—Copyright. Received May 29, 8.10 p.m. New York, May 28. A telegram from Cleveland says the fundamentalist controversy has achieved its climax with the opening of the trial of the Rev. William Brown, formerly Bishop of the State of Arkansas, and now a member of the House of Bishops. The Rev. Brown is charged with teaching through a book entitled “Communism and Christianism,” doctrines which are contrary to the Church. Three Bishops are accusing and eight Bishops are judges.

The Rev. Brown issued a statement as follows: “While this trial is actually a battle over theological beliefs, we are making every attempt by creating a precedent to make the trial of churchmen for the symbolic interpretation of supernaturalistic passages of the Bible impossible.” The Rev. Brown challenged each of the eleven Bishops to dfffine the doctrines of the Episcopal Church, asserting that each defined differently. Brown’s counsel made formidable efforts to delay or cripple th© prosecution by challenging the court’s jurisdiction, asking the prosecution to file •a bill of particulars, demanding that the defence be permitted to interrogate the court, and filing a demur to the prosecutor’s presentment, but all these efforts failed, the prosecu•tion’s guns opened the preliminary fire. The presentment, which is a long ecclesiastical document, full of church lore, depended principally on quotations from Brown’s book. Counsel for the defence averred that the defendant wai not receiving the fairness accorded an ordinary criminal. The trial is attracting universal attention.

The controversy, one of the bitterest in the history of the Episcopal Church, was precipitated by the decision of the House of Bishops to try a young Texas clergyman for neresy, because he declared a literal belief in the story of the Virgin Birth was not essential to the Christian religion. The Modern Churchmen’s Union entered the lists in defence of the clergyman, and church dignitaries of great magnitude also attacked the House of Bishops for its decision.