Reseated Bishop

In 1906, at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass., the late Bishop Frank Spalding asked for volunteers to help him in his missionary diocese of Utah. Echoing Isaiah, 26-year-old Student Paul Jones, Yale graduate, cried: '"Here I am, send me."

In 1914, Paul Jones, archdeacon of Utah, was chosen to succeed Bishop Spalding.

In 1917, patriots in and out of Utah complained about Bishop Jones's lack of enthusiasm for the War. He doggedly refused to "see how a mere declaration by Congress could alter the principles involved." The Episcopal House of Bishops appointed a Commission to look into Bishop Jones's beliefs, his patriotism, his affiliations with "questionable" Socialist and pacifist organizations. Declaring that War is "not an un-Christian thing," the Commission asked Bishop Jones's resignation, got it. The House of Bishops cautiously declined to accept the Commission's report but did accept the resignation on the basis of Bishop Jones's "impaired usefulness . . . recognized by himself." Deprived of his diocese, a bishop in name only, on half pay, Paul Jones labored for a time as a missionary in Maine, later became a secretary of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation in Manhattan.

By 1929, big, serene Paul Jones, Socialist and pacifist still, no longer seemed dangerous to the Episcopal Church. Minister to students at Antioch College, he was called to be acting bishop of the diocese of Southern Ohio until a new bishop was chosen.

In 1933, the House of Bishops issued a pastoral affirming that: "We are bound by every solemn obligation to wage unremitting war against war. . . . Love of country must be qualified by love of all mankind: patriotism is subordinate to religion.

The Cross is above the flag. In any issue between country and God, the clear duty of the Christian is to put obedience to God above every other loyalty."

Christmas, 1933, President Roosevelt issued an amnesty restoring civil rights to 1,500 pacifist agitators and draft dodgers jailed during the War.

Last week Paul Jones was once more a member of the House of Bishops. After repeated urging by churchmen, culminating lately in an earnest request by Editor Clifford P. Morehouse of The Living Church. Presiding Bishop James De Wolf Perry had reviewed his case, decided that Bishop Jones was entitled to his old seat, but not to his old vote. By the Constitution of the Church, resigned bishops may retain their votes only if they quit because of bodily infirmity or advanced age.

No Episcopal diocese is currently vacant. But Bishop Jones does not wish one, caring less for executive jobs than for the "human touch" he found in his early missionary work.

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