Congregational Convention

Last week the biennial convention of the Congregational and Christian Church met in the big brick First Congregational Church of Berkeley, Calif. Firmly rooted in town-meeting tradition, the individual congregations of the C. & C. Church do their own thinking and talking. For this independence the retiring moderator, Dr. Oscar E. Maurer of New Haven, Conn., last week took his fellow churchmen to mild task. "Much of our work," said Moderator Maurer, "fails in effectiveness because we so generally prefer to do it separately, each in his own way."

Dr. Maurer's predecessor as moderator, famed Statistician Roger W. Babson, jumped on this statement with both feet. Cried white-goateed, spry old Businessman Babson, 1940 Presidential candidate of the Prohibition Party: "Congregationalism was the original Protestant denomination that fought for democracy, namely delegates from each church. Now they have only one delegate from five churches, and they say they haven't hotel space for more. All nonsense." Businessman Babson then presented a resolution for the "Democratization of Congregationalism." Politely but firmly the convention pigeonholed it.

The 980 delegates mildly condemned President Roosevelt's appointment of Myron C. Taylor as his personal ambassador to the Vatican, pledged aid to war refugees, agreed that Congregationalist ministers' salaries (average: $1,640) are too low. Between sessions, they made earnest "trips of social exploration" through San Francisco's Japanese and Chinese section, toured migrant camps (said the prospectus: "Delegates to watch under bridges and beside roads for migrants, and show friendly spirit and talk to them").

Two laymen led the field in the election for moderator: a stanch New Dealer, 71-year-old ex-Governor William E. Sweet of Colorado, and a 35-year-old Maine Republican, Ronald Bridges, brother of New Hampshire's Senator H. Styles Bridges. Sweet won by 16 votes. Slight, precise Congregationalist Sweet retired from a thriving brokerage business in Denver in 1920, "to give my full time to politics and religion," believes in the "application of the Christian religion to social and economic life."

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