Leaders Address Different Groups
Diocesan Press Service. November 2, 1964 [XXVI-16]
During the Laymen's Breakfast at the 61st General Convention, Edward A. Doughtery of Cincinnati called on churchmen to turn upside down the familiar theory that the clergyman is the primary minister in the Church.
Now chairman of Laymen's Work for the Church's Fifth Province, he declared, "The primary role of the clergy is to prepare us, the rest of the Church, morally, intellectually, and spiritually for our (ministry to) the world..."
Presiding Bishop-elect John Hines urged a counter-attack to Communism's false propaganda to youth. He spoke during a dinner meeting of the Foundation for Episcopal Colleges.
Bishop Hines stated that the aim of Church-affiliated education institutions "should be to challenge a modern assumption that man can comprehend truth without recourse to the revelation of God in Christ Jesus... (and) to unite their truth for the sake of all mankind."
Dr. Paul Ylvisaker, Director of the Public Affairs program of the Ford Foundation, addressed the Urban Dinner. He charged the Church with defaulting from its task of attacking poverty, crime, injustice and intolerance, leaving these and other urgent needs to government to tackle first.
The Urban Affairs authority noted that the church has until recently missed the urbanizing trends of modern society. First it stayed rural in its thinking, he said, and wound up with the "compromises of suburbia. Then it became absorbed with real estate, using the tests of the market to abandon its old churches and to build its new. But the market's purpose is to tell what is, not what ought to be. What ought to be is the job of the Church--and the most vital need of the modern State. "
Harvard president Nathan Pusey challenged the theological seminaries of the Episcopal Church to "lift their view, grow bold, and come alive." He addressed the Theological Education Dinner.
Said Dr. Pusey, "a small isolated seminary seeking simply to purvey traditional learning to a small group of students in an isolated diocese cannot now meet the needs of our Church. Among our seminaries must be developed at least a few truly strong ones... Even more important, seminaries must be ready to revise their curricula, and above all, to aspire to become centers of learning and fresh thought. "