Federal Council

Dr. Samuel Parkes Cadman had last week been president of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America for four years and it was necessary that someone be elected to replace him. Accordingly, the delegates, convened last week in Rochester, N. Y., cast their votes and Bishop Francis J. McConnell, now of the New York Area of the Methodist Episcopal Church was discovered to have been made president.

Bishop McDonnell is the sixth president the Council has had since it was organized 20 years ago. Two of his predecessors like himself have been Methodists; Dr. Cadman is a Congregationalist, a radio-preacher, a columnist on the New York Herald Tribune, and pastor of the Central Congregational Church in Brooklyn. Before the convention opened he spoke briefly in Manhattan to the effect that he did not plan to accept $25,000 yearly to preach over the radio and to the effect that too many Protestant dollars are used to build hideous churches.

"My own church is called Central Church; why, I don't know. As to its architecture--well, two Irishmen were passing by recently and Pat was heard to say to Mike, 'You say that is a church? It looks to the like of me more like a gas-house.' Well, Pat was more right than he knew. . . ."

After this extraordinary valedictory, the delegates installed for Dr. Cadman the unique office of Radio Minister, carrying no salary, which he accepted. Then they proceeded to other business, as to:

Acknowledge firm support of the Kellogg Peace Pact and of all future measures tending to reduce armaments without suggesting a "renunciation of war"; because, as someone shrewdly pointed out, there would remain "the possibility of a defensive war."

Conduct a concentrated survey of all the moral problems which meet and face the modern church and of the ways in which it has so far shown itself inadequate to face them.

Hear read two telegrams, one from President Coolidge, one from President-Elect Hoover, complimenting the Federal Council.

There was some regret that after a round 20 years of operation, during which 28 denominations have been supplied with a central means of letting their combined views be known, the Federal Council should not have emphasized its history or have made much of Secretary Dr. Charles Stedman MacFarland whose messages, rolled out in such mimeographic multiplicity, have so often informed the U. S. that the Federal Council favors this and views that with alarm.