Clearfield, Pennsylvania: Superintendents of the Central Pennsylvania Conference of the Methodist Church have spoken out against ministers’ wives accepting full-time employment. The report said there is a growing practice of pastors’ wives accepting such employment apart from church work. It added: “This may be necessary sometimes because of low income but it is our conviction that when this is necessary it is a bad practice… There are those who feel that one of the factors contributing to the instability of many homes in our modern lives is a full-time employment of husbands’ wives… Members of our church look to the parsonage as the ideal of a Christian home and family life”
_______
The Northwest Synod of the United Lutheran Church has reinstated and re-ordained the Rev. Victor Wrigley of Brookfield, Minnesota, who was convicted of heresy and ordered unfrocked last year.
_______
The Rev. Dr. James Pike of New York City will be given the Universal Brotherhood Award for 1957 this evening. The award goes to the dean of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for outstanding work in human brotherhood and human understanding. The occasion will be of the Universal Brotherhood Dinner of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
_______
The official Roman Catholic directory says the approximate 34.5 million Catholics in the U.S., Alaska, and Hawaii are a gain of almost a million in one year. The directory says the largest Roman Catholic archdiocese in the U.S. is that of Chicago. The biggest Catholic diocese is in Brooklyn.
_______
The chief spokesman for a Protestant group, which seldom agrees with a Roman Catholic stand, has defended the right of Catholic students to boycott a public school baccalaureate service in a Protestant church. The incident occurred in Moundsville, West Virginia, where 22 members of the high school graduating class stayed away from the baccalaureate ceremony held at a Methodist church with a Presbyterian minister delivering the sermon. The Rev. B. F. Farrell, parish priest for the 22, had said the school board rules requiring attendance was, in his words, a “violation of the rights of free exercise of religion.” Four other Catholic students in the class of 182 attended the service. Subsequently the 22 were barred from participating in commencement exercises, but got their diplomas. The executive director of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Glen Archer, said in a statement that the school board’s rule, as he put it, “is not quite in harmony with our American heritage.” This is about as gross an understatement as one could imagine. Wonder when or whether school boards and other officials, especially in public high schools, are going to eliminate the baccalaureate services entirely and thus stop violating the First Amendment? Courts have in decision after decision held such things unconstitutional. The “Father Knows Best” attitude, which seems to be an occupational disease with some administrators, feel they are law unto themselves in many things, the Constitution of the U.S. notwithstanding.
_______
New York: The poll of Methodist ministers shows that those responding oppose by a margin of 5-to-1 the use of hydrogen bomb warfare, even if our government sees no other way to stop communism. The Fellowship of Methodist Pacifists conducted the poll by sending questionnaires to 16,000 ministers. Fewer than 3,000 replied.
_______
Along the same theme, the president general of the Methodist Church of Australia says future generations would condemn the Christian church if it kept silent today about atomic tests. Dr. A. H. Wood told a Methodist rally in Melbourne that atomic war is suicide, adding, “It is not too late even now to negotiate with Russia to abandon nuclear tests and arrange nuclear disarmament.”
_______
Providence, Rhode Island: The Episcopal bishop of Rhode Island has criticized the State Department ban against American newsmen working in Red China. The Rev. John Seville Higgins calls the policy “incredibly shortsighted, if not worse.” American reporters, he says, can be trusted to observe life in Red China or anywhere else with an objective eye and report what they have seen and heard.
_______
New Haven, Connecticut: The Dean of Yale Divinity School charges that the church is the most segregated institution left in America. The Rev. Liston Pope, in a book, “Kingdom Beyond Caste,” says the church “has fallen behind most other major areas of human association as far as the achievement of integration in its own life is concerned.”
_______
Omaha, Nebraska: The 169th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the USA has taken the first step towards a merger with the United Presbyterian Church of North America. The General Assembly voted unanimously in favor of a merger. The two, if combined, would have a membership of about 3 million.