What Is a Christian?

The question before the court in Iowa's Black Hawk County Courthouse last week was tough to answer: What is a Christian? On the answer depended $75,000.

It had never occurred to Ophthalmologist William B. Small of Waterloo, Iowa, a prominent Methodist layman, that the answer might be difficult. When he died in 1939, his will directed that the income from $75,000 of his estate should be distributed "to persons who believe in the fundamental principles of the Christian religion and in the Bible and who are endeavoring to promulgate same." When his wife died in 1949, ten nephews and nieces sued to break the will. Their argument: "There is no common agreement as to what constitutes the fundamental principles of Christianity."

The hearings got under way in Waterloo. The first four witnesses spoke for the trustees. The Rev. Charles S. Hempstead, district superintendent of the Methodist Church, Dr. Russell D. Cole, president of a nearby Methodist school, and Methodist English Professor Miron A. Morrill all testified that a Christian can be defined as one who believes in the Apostles' Creed, e.g., the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ. Methodist Layman Stephen A. Cohagan, a longtime friend of the dead man, testified that this was what Dr. Small himself believed.

Then came witnesses for the nephews and nieces to testify that a Christian might believe almost anything, or nothing. As for the Apostles' Creed, said the Rev. Lewis L. Dunnington of Iowa City's First Methodist Church, "many things" in it are unacceptable to many Christians. On the question of the Virgin Birth, for example, "I tell my parishioners to pay their money and take their choice."

Father Robert Spahn, Roman Catholic chaplain for Iowa State Teachers College, pointed out that his church takes a strong stand against private interpretation of the Bible, and warned that a man may be deceived in thinking he is guided by providence. Christ himself, warned Father Spahn, was persecuted by "those who thought they were doing the will of God."

Pastor Charles W. Phillips of Des Moines' First Unitarian Church testified that many theologians are in "complete disagreement" over Christianity's fundamental principles. Four more ministers--two Lutherans, a Baptist and an Episcopalian--did their earnest best, and made confusion worse confounded.

When it was over, District Judge Shannon B. Charlton, a Methodist, prudently gave himself several weeks in which to prepare his decision.

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