UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 9, 7 January 1913, Page 7

UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM.

the AMERICAN PROPOSAL. London, December 27. At the instance of the Primate (Or. Davidson) a committee has been lormed, including the Bishop of Ox.ord (Dr. diaries Gore), Mr. Eugene Stock (ex-secretary of the Church Missionary Society), Doctors Frere and Sadler, to advance the American proposal for a world’s conference on faith and order. The Primate, after a conference with a delegation from the American church, has suggested that the English committee should merely hold itself in readiness to confer with similar committees representing the non-episcopal churches or representatives of the Roman Catholic and Eastern churches; and that all non-Anglican churches should be approached through the American promoters of the movement.

The American proposals were originated by twenty-four Episcopalians. Their undertaking, which has been formally incorporated, is to bring about a union of Christians all over the world—Protestant, Greek Catholics, Roman Catholics, everybody, everywhere. The *‘Christian Unity Foundation,” as the society is called, would discard all names and sects, and make simply one big religious body. /Twelve- of the twenty-four are clergymen, and twelve laymen. Of the first twelve half are bishops and the other half presbyters, and all schools, High, Broad, and Low, aie represented among the laymen, "ho include lawyers, men of science, business men, capitalists, and one each from the Army and Navy. The Bishops are those of Now York, Albany, Newark, Chicago, Southern Ohio, and Bishop Courtney, formerly of Nova Scotia, now rector of St. James’s Church, New York. The first meeting which led to the launching of the project was held in Now York on February 20 last year About twenty people were present and a committee of organisation warappointed. Bishop Courtney presid ed, and after the incorporation wih lie elected president of the foundation. One layman has underwritten the initial expense to the extent of £2OOO, and a campaign to establish u:> endowment is being carried on. No scries of public meetings will be undertaken just yet, only research work will be done, and conferences of the leaders held. Information concerning religious bodies will he published, methods of co-operation suggested, and the evils of division pointed out. Greater hopes are entertained of bringing the Episcopalians and Presbyterians together than any others. The tremendous difficulty of the task is indicated when it is explained that in the United States alone there arc nearly 200 independent Protestant bodies, and each year sees additions. Organic Christian unity is recognised almost as an impossible, perhaps an undesirable, ideal. Not a few declare that one organisation would be nnwieldly and probably tyrannical, and that more divisions would result. Some critical New Yorkers are condemning the new Christian Unity Foundation as “still another sect,” and expressing the hope that endowments may not ho diverted from hospitals and universities, to which, iu America,, most of them go.