Evening star., 1942-12-27
Church Groups Agree
To Merger Affecting
100000 Members
50 Denominations Vote
To Work Together
Under New Program
~ the Associated Press.

~ the Associated Press.
CLEVELAND, Dec. 26.-Church
men and women representing 80
o0o, 900 churchgoers from the Rio
Grande to the Arctic Circle have
formally buried competition as a
stock in their trade.
The report of their action, if you
saw 1t in the papers, looked dry as
dust. 1t said the eight huge Inter
donominational agencies" of the
non-Roman churches of the United
States and Canada had adopted a
report of the committee on closer
relationships"
It's a merger to put it simply, but
1t won't be in full effect until 1945
because the huge agencies who sent
representatives to Cleveland still
must approve the move in their own
conventions, and then some 60 de-
nominations must approve But it's
pretty much a foregone conclusion
they will.
Merger Of Work.
This move was a merger in only
one sense-work. 1t is not a merger
that will wipe out all the small
ceremonial differences and varia-
tions in creeds They go on, just as
in a university, the schools of law
and medicine operate separately.
But the general work of all the
nom Roman churches will be uni
fed, the work of religious educa-
ton, home and foreign missions, the
work of churchwomen and SO on.
That "non-Roman" needs explain
Ing. 1t includes q churches bodies,
the Is larger Protestant churches
and two orthodox ones, the Syrian
and Ukrainian Invitations are now
going through to three other ortho-
dox communion, the Russian, Greek
and Rumanian.
There has been talk of this merger
for years. Actually the first sugges-
ton was made 100 years ago by an
almost forgotten Lutheran, Samuel
Schmucker, who lived in Gettys-
burg, Pa. But quite obviously he
was hundred years too soon.
Aided by Rockefeller.
Then, in 1920, the home missions
people met here in Cleveland to
discuss simplifying their work. 1t
led to a grant of money from John
D. Rockefeller, jr., for survey.
That survey led to a discovery by
the church people of a fact which
the confused, church shopping"
layman had known for some time.
There were too many churches in
some towns. Some towns supported
five incompetent ministers and five
weak churches, when they would
have Jared better with two we'll
educated parsons and two finan-
cially strong churches.
So this was spread about. Church
people talked. The decisions were
left to local communities. But since
1927 there have been % mergers of
national church bodies. The Congre-
gational and Christian churches
merged, for instance And the Evan
gelical and reformed churches. In
Canada there is now United
Church, made up OF former Presby-
terians, Methodists and Congrega-
tionalists.
80 Plans Discussed.
There have been 80 such plans
discussed. Twenty-Five became fact.
Three are now pending. In thou
sands of cities and towns, literally,
churches buried their old names and
became federated churches or
community churches"
But this was on the home front.
On the national and international
front other church workers, with the
best will in the world, found them
selves stepping on each others toes.
The outstanding "steppers" were the
foreign missions and the Council
for Religious Education.
It didn't result in scrapping. 1t
Just resulted in some one saying to
some one else: Il hear you're off
for Beirut. Would you look up a
matter for us, too?"
On the home front, field workers,
taking swing out of New York,
would get into Chattanooga, for
example. Say they had arrived to
Increase weeknight study classes.
But they'd hear of some confusion
In the womens work groups. They
either supplied the answer because
they happened to know it, or they
promised to take the problem back
to headquarters. They're just
around the corner from us. Glad to
do It," So for all practical purposes
the merger was here before it was
written into a constitution.
247 Denominations in u. S.
To 60 all the way back, briefly on
the subject of church diversifcation,
here's the score:
Up to 1859 the world had prac-