THE RIDDLES IN
BISHOP BROWN'S
HERESY CASE
By THEODORE SCHROEDER
[Reprinted from The Open Court, Vol. XXXIX, September, 1925.]
COPYRIGHTED BY
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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THE RIDDLES IN BISHOP BROWN’S HERESY CASE
* > BY THEODORE SCHROEDER
{ % HY on earth does Bishop Brown (twice found guilty of
heresy) make such a fuss about being kicked out of the
House of Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church?” This ques-
tion is probably being repeated by millions, after each of the numer-
ous eruptions of extraordinary newspaper publicity, which have
centered around Bishop Brown's case of heresy. Probably no eccle-
siast, either orthodox or heretical, has ever before, within the same
length of time, gotten a quarter of the publicity that has been be-
stowed upon Bishop Brown. And the end has not yet arrived. The
above questions will often be repeated, after the meeting of the
House of Bishops early in October, when Bishop Brown's case will
come up for final action. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about
it which gives this heresy trial most of its news value, is the per-
sistence of Bishop Brown's fight to remain in the House of Bishops.
Bishop William Montgomery Brown is over seventy years of
age. He has long been on the retired list, and receives no money
from the Church. Even during his active service to the Church, he
always put more money into church-work than he received for his
services. For a dozen years he has not attended a meeting of the
House of Bishops, nor performed any public ecclesiastical function.
Neither does he care to resume active responsibilities. And yet he
fights, submitting to considerable inconvenience and expense, in a
seemingly futile effort to retain his status as a member of the House
of Bishops. What is the meaning of it all?
DIFFICULTIES OF THE House of BISHOPS
Insofar as any Bishops may be obsessed by the importance of
earthly and ecclesiastical pomp, and the objective reality of heav-
enly phantasms, perhaps they should not be considered capable of
imaging any other Bishop as being obsessed by plain humanitarian
2 THE RIDDLES IN Bishop BRowN’s HERESY CASE
idealism. Because they are ignorant of the psychology of conflicting
urges, the Bishops cannot imagine an extremely religious person
who temporarily expresses his religious temperament in atheistic
or materialistic terminology. Those who have a need for being
judged by the clothes they wear, will be prone to judge others by
some of their words, the clothes for part of their thoughts, rather
than to judge them by what they really are. Accordingly, most
of Bishop Brown's fellow-Bishops cannot understand him. Since
apparently he is neither fighting for supernatural glory, nor Ameri-
can dollars, he must surely be insane. Any other explanation is
apparently unthinkable, for Bishops, unless they are still orthodox
enough to believe in demonic possession. Furthermore, to excuse
Bishop Brown on the ground of insanity may both express and cre-
ate the illusion that a charitable attitude is being held by the House
of Bishops toward an “unfortunate” member. It also contains the
soothing suggestion that maybe all doubt that is cast upon the
“Divine Realities” within either Church or State, are evidence of
insanity. Of course, they must insist upon Bishop Brown's insan-
ity. But, why not put him out of the House of Bishops because of
such insanity?
The only trouble with this theory is that Bishop Brown won't
play the part, according to the ordinary conception of what an insane
man should do. Also, he is very disconcerting because of the very
devilish cunning which he exhibits in the management of his defense.
Some bishops have expressed it almost as bluntly as this: “Bishop
Brown has manoeuvered to secure extraordinary publicity, in sup-
port qf a defense which is terribly clever for embarrassing and
humiliating conservative Bishops.” I conclude, therefore, that it is
not his heresy which troubles the Bishops, half so much as his eco-
nomic views. But, because they are not ready to admit that the
Church is a mere political club, they cannot tell the public that this
is the cause of their desire to expel him. Herein is another cause
for distress. On the other hand, when Bishop Brown demands a
standard of orthodoxy in terms of a uniform theological mental
content, they are equally silent and helpless. -
Because they are unable to meet the demands of the situation,
the Bishops experience a feeling of inadequacy. Not knowing enough
about their own psychologic imperatives, they explain their discom-
fiture in terms of the objective stimulus, namely: Bishop Brown.
Accordingly, they must hate him with the exact intensity by which
they are distressed; consequently nothing can be considered in ex-
&
THE RIDDLES IN BISHOP BROWN’s HERESY CASE 3
planation, extenuation, or compromise, as to Bishop Brown's heresy.
In fact, it is quite freely and ruefully admitted that by his de-
fense this “insane” Bishop has evinced so unusual an intellectual
acumen, that it was wholly beyond the mental capacity of the Bishops
to anticipate it, even in imagination. They thought the trial would
be all over in an hour or two. The first trial lasted for five long,
tense and embarrassing days. The second lasted two whole days,
each with rauch newspaper publicity. This miscalculation also makes
them sad. If, as they now say, Bishop Brown's heresy is due to a
want of proper education, it looks as if their conception of proper
education is one that would have left him too ignorant to make any
effective defense.
Many Bishops are now free to admit that the whole heresy hunt
was a great mistake, but, unhappily, they cannot undo it. That is
another cause for being sore. They were not prepared for such a
tremendous showdown, and are quite conscious that, in the estima-
tion of a large share of the public, they have been made to look
almost ridiculous. That damages their vanity without redress. Since
Bishop Brown is the objective factor in their disappointment and
chagrin, many of them must get relief by hating him and all of his
ways. If the Bishops, themselves, were not considerably more her-
etical than Mr. Brown, they would certainly tell us that both Bishop
Brown's heresy, and his unusual defense of it, exhibit only the
superhuman cunning of Satan, whom the heretical Bishop must be
serving under a secret written contract, signed with his own blood.
According to such a more conservative orthodoxy, Bishop Brown
should be burned or stoned to death as being a wizard. For such a
more rigorous orthodoxy the Bishops are, perhaps a bit too intelli-
gent (too heretical); or, is it that they are too masochistic, or too
cowardly? The only alternative is that the House of Bishops shall
accept Bishop Brown's challenge to define orthodoxy, in terms of a
required uniform mental content.
For this challenge their much-vaunted superior intelligence
seems to be inadequate. So then, the House of Bishops is floundering
between the devil of the older orthodoxy and the deep sea of mod-
ern science. Had their boasted intellectual superiority been more
real, then they would have turned the tables, and made Bishop
Brown and his defense look ridiculous and themselves as maintain-
ing an attitude of assured confidence, instead of childlike resent-
ment. As if is, it looks to the outsider as if the whole matter were
a conflict between a conventional and an unconventional mode of
4 THE RIDDLES IN BISHOP BRowN’s HERESY CASE
satisfying an egoistic religious urge. Had the Bishops been able to
define orthodoxy, they could thereby have eliminated the greater
part of the defendant's spectacular tactics, and made the defense
appear very commonplace.
WHY BISHOP BROWN STICKS
Let me try to make a partial explanation of Bishop Brown as I
see him, and as I hope that he wishes to be understood. Perhaps
mere ordinary humans can be made to understand him, even though
his fellow Bishops fail to do so. I asked Bishop Brown why he
didn't get out. He answered: “I wish to build on the past, and could
not sever myself from it, even if I wished to do so. I have scores
of vestigeal organs in my body, that seem useless without being
harmful. Why should I have them all cut out? When any of my
vestigeal organs endanger my health, I will not hesitate to have such
of them removed. The same is true of my mental life. I must
build on the past and I cannot wholly disconnect myself from it. I
still enjoy the ceremonials and drama of the Church services. For
me these no longer symbolize the miraculous or supernatural. How-
ever, by having brought down to earth the supposed reality behind
the creeds and ceremonials, and by relating religion quite exclusively
to the practical problem of improving our human relations here and
now, the services have become more meaningful and more real for
me. thaf, when I considered them as a means to supernatural glory.
So long as these remaining habits of the past do not impair my men-
tal life or growth, I could not justify a desire to disconnect from all
of these habits and associations of my mental past. More efficiently
than ever before, I can make the Church and all its forms a useful
vehicle for transporting a live message of real progress, and of
human use here and now.”
BISHOP BROWN’s SUBJECTIVE CONFLICT
I suspect that among Bishop Brown's present associates there
are persons who could show him some flaw in this logic; in fact, I
think that I see the flaw. Therefore, I am convinced that Bishop
Brown has much more of the old-fashioned religion tucked away in
his “vestigeal” or unconscious mentation than he himself is aware of.
THE RIDDLES IN BISHOP BRow N’s HERESY CASE 5
. I would not be much surprised if in some early morning hour I
should find him around at the back door of some old-fashioned fun-
damentalist shrine, making generous donation for its support. In
my view, Bishop Brown's extravagant sentimentalism implies an
almost incurable religious component in his temperament. If relig-
ious devotion is still possible for him, then the zeal of his defense
is not the whole-hearted expression of a well-unified, exclusive de-
votion to the social betterment, such as might conceivably be pro-
moted by his contest. In that situation, the unconsciously working
urges of his personality will dominate some section of his actual
conduct, quite in contradiction to some of his conscious attitudes or
of their realizations. So the zeal of his defense, if not determined
objectively, furnishes us the exact measure of the religious zeal
that is now being ineffectively repressed, because it comes in con-
flict with some contrary, and equally sentimental interest. In such
a situation one might infer that Bishop Brown had merely reverted
to an emotional attachment to the economic class of his youth, in
which he suffered greatly as one of the exploited poor.
In that event, Bishop Brown's internal conflict of impulses might,
on the one hand, be a desire to help the exploited ones, and an
equally intense emotional aversion to institutionalized religion, as
the chief bulwark of legalized exploitation, for which the Church
furnishes a social and moral gloss. This impulse predisposed him
to accept a communist creed, and compels him to rationalize his
aversion to exploitation in terms of an opposition to the Church, or
to its theology. It may be only a confusion between theology and
religion, which makes our “heretic” express himself in atheistic and
materialistic terms. Various other Bishops of his Church, being
similarly confused, have become quite blind to the religious element
of his personality. Therefore, they view him through a critical logic,
and not with psychologic insight. To describe Bishop Brown's
personality as that of a “religious ‘atheist’,” is, for the psychologi-
cally blind ones, an unintelligible paradox. To their psychologically
uniformed minds, a Christian spirit and an atheistic rationalization
cannot be combined in one person.
On the other hand, Bishop Brown's subjective conflict probably
consists, in part, of an essentially religious (sentimental) tempera-
ment, with its former theologic rationalization temporarily sup-
pressed. So then his tenacious clinging to the “vestigeal” religious
habits of his past, might come to be viewed as the continued senti-
mental, unconscious need for a phantasmal solace, to neutralize the
6 THE RIDDLES IN BISHOP BROWN’s HERESY CASE
suffering of his childhood, just such a fictitious solace as the Church
always offers, and religion supplies.
DEMANDS STANDARD OF ORTHODOXY
I will now describe some actual conduct, in relation to Bishop
Brown's defense, and leave the readers to see, if, with that help,
they can make the still better explanation of the riddle.
Probably Bishop Brown would say that he has never asked
anything more of the House of Bishops than that it shall adequately
translate its creeds into concrete mental imagery before asserting a
belief in them, or defining orthodoxy and heresy. That seems a
reasonable request. But the ire of the Bishops is aroused by the
very fact that it seems so reasonable, and yet is apparently quite
beyond their capacities. Bishop Brown admits that, if the ancient
literalism as to miracles and the supernatural remains the test of
orthodoxy, then he is a one hundred per cent heretic. But he insists
that, by the same test, not one Bishop is one hundred per cent ortho-
dox. So far, the House of Bishops has not denied that. But, with-
out waiting for their answer, he has asked them to prove their own
orthodoxy, according to any exact general standard that has been
authoritatively established by the Church, by which they are also
willing to depose themselves as well as him. That also is so obviously
fair that they cannot, with self-approval, ignore it; but neither have
they the ability to supply such a standard. There is where the shoe
pinches. If the creeds have no definable uniform mental content,
then the whole ecclesiastical establishment that tries to live by doc-
trine alone becomes ridiculous.
As early as 1922, Bishop Brown wrote a letter to the House of
Bishops which contained the following proposition: “If the mem-
bers of the House of Bishops will place themselves on record as
believing the representations of the Bible, literally interpreted, con-
cerning the creation of Adam and Eve; the planting of the Garden
of Eden; the Fall of Adam and Eve; and its effects; the birth of
Jesus; His death and descent into hell; His resurrection and ascen-
sion into Heaven; and His second coming to raise all deceased men,
women atli children from the dead, and judge and send them to
Heaven or Hell, I will resign, and do hereby agree to resign my seat
in the House.”
THE RIDDLES IN BISHOP BROwn’s HERESY CASE 7
That ofter of the year 1922 has not yet been accepted, though
both mailed to the House of Bishops and published in the periodical
press. The charges of heresy were not served on Bishop Brown
until the year 1924. Obviously the Bishops did not find this appar-
ently easy way of getting rid of their “heretical” brother to be so
easy as it seemed. This embarrassment is apparently due to some
unorthodox or unchristian intellectual vanity, which makes it im-
possible for them to proclaim a one hundred per cent adherence to
the standards of the old orthodoxy.
... WHY NOT BOW TO AUTHORITY P
Some Bishops find fault with Bishop Brown somewhat after
this manner: “The trouble with Bishop Brown is his conceit. Prob-
ably every one of us has at some time been through his skepticism.
When our own intellect led us away from a satisfactory and a wholly
orthodox solution for the problem of our troubled souls, we humbly
bówed to the authority of the whole Church, as being possessed of
more collective wisdom than any one of us could possibly have. Only
Bishop Brown's vanity can be preventing him from likewise sub-
ordinating his personal judgment to the collective wisdom of the
whole Church. There is no other way out of his difficulty, except
that he shall humbly bow to the authority of the Church in all mat-
ters of doctrine, or get out of the priesthood.”
No Bishop is known to me who, in this respect, has contradicted
the Rev. C. S. Hughson, who has said: “No one Bishop, nor any
party of the Church, can be infallible, but the whole Catholic Church
herself speaks infallibly when she declares what we must believe or
do in order to be saved.” +
When I asked Bishop Brown why he did not bow to this “in-
fallible” authority of the whole Church, he answered: “First, I do
not know that the American Church as a whole, has ever made any
interpretation of the creeds. Secondly, because I do not believe even
the whole Church is so infallible that it is incapable of growth and
of new revelations. Any other position would imply omniscience,
which I cannot accord to any body of humans—not even to the
House of Bishops, nor to the General Assembly. The Church is
no more infallible than a labor union convention, composed of men
and women who are graduated only from the school of hard knocks.
1 The Apostles Creed, by Rev. C. S. Hughson, p. 25.
8 THE RIDDLES IN BISHOP BROWN’s HERESY CASE
The Church is mine as much as it is that of the other Bishops. I
have a duty to work from within to convert them to my way of
thinking about humanizing religion. Furthermore, I believe that
other Bishops, who attach the most value to authority, are quite as
vain and wilful as I am. I suspect they will bow to the authority of
the Church only until they find themselves in the minority, and that
they will fight as I do against being declared in the minority. I also
suspect that they do not all bow to the infallible authority of the
Church, as it has expressed itself in former times.”
“You are a psychologist,” he said to me. “I wish you would tell
me what you think about the possibility, psychologically speaking,
of anyone subordinating and thus actually changing his personal
deliberate judgment to the contrary opinion of a group of his peers.
I can understand from my own experience that before one has de-
liberated upon a subject, of metaphysics or theology let us say, it is
easy to act the part of a parrot or of a phonograph with respect to
Church authority. As a parrot I felt as self-righteous as if I had
achieved a personal judgment about a difficult controverted matter.
Let me make it concrete,” continued Bishop Brown. “Let us assume
that a very young child is taught to say, “Twice two is four.” For
a long time it may repeat the words without adequately grasping
their significance or visualizing their meaning. If later the child
actually visualizes the facts symbolized by the words, then is it psy-
chologically possible for that child to thereafter believe that twice
two make seven, merely because the illiterate parents say so and
seem to be honest? It appears to me that no authority could make
it possible for this child thereafter to believe, in the sense of visualig-
ing the facts, that twice two makes seven. Such a child could only
make the affirmation without ascribing any meaning to them.”
I suggested that this seemed to imply that he thought his fellow-
bishops to be hypocrites. “Oh, no,” he protested. “Not one of them
could possibly be a conscious hypocrite. But what I mean is that
one can very conscienciously affirm as if believing in any impossi-
bility, so long as one does not attempt to translate the words into a
concrete mental image of things and their behavior; and so long as
one does not co-ordinate this one situation or affirmation with all
of our other experience and knowledge. Any very young child or
a parrot could honestly say, ‘I believe that twice two makes seven.”
or ‘I believe in bodily restoration and resurrection, long after death
and decay,” so long as it has not learned to make its words harmonize
in mental content with the ordinary meaning of such words, nor
THE RIDDLES IN BISHOP BROWN’s HERESY CASE 9
with other human experiences, such as the chemistry of life and
decay. The bishops can do likewise. They say I am not highly
educated, but I have at least learned late in life to understand this
little bit of the psychology of belief. Have they learned even that
much P’’
“There is another answer to this proposition of submitting to the
infallible authority of the whole Church. The first article of the
Apostles Creed has been officially and authoritatively interpreted
thus: ‘Almighty Father did, at the beginning, create form, and make
of naught, heaven and earth, and all things contained in this world’”
(p. 31).
“Personally, I find it a little difficult to believe that a single mem-
ber of the liouse of Bishops now believes in the creation of the uni-
verse out of naught,’ because I am sure they are better educated
than myself, or even Mr. Bryan. I also wonder if they really be-
lieve in the creedal “hell’ or the creedal “resurrection,’ as these have
in the past been interpreted by the same ‘infallible' authority of
‘thé whole Church' and of the State. . Just look at these pages,” said
Bishop Brown, as he handed me a well-thumbed and torn copy of
the Formuiaries of Faith, which had been carefully indexed with
his pen. Here was the statement that, “Almighty God for the trans-
gression of this commandment, caused brimstone and fire to rain
down from heaven.” Also on the Day of Judgment “we shall be
cast into the brenning lake of hell, where is fire, brimstone, weeping,
wailing, and gnashing of teeth without end” (p. 162). And, again,
interpreting the seventh article of the Apostles Creed: “And all
others, which shall be judged to everlasting pain and death, being
upon His left hand, He shall send them down into Hell there to be
punished in body and soul eternally with fire that never shall have
cnd, which was prepared from the beginning of the world unto the
Devil and his angels” (pp. 239-249). “Is it possible for them to be-
lieve that a body of flesh and bone would never be consumed or
chemically decomposed by such a crematory? I find it a bit difficult
to believe,” continued Bishop Brown, “that any of my fellow-bishops
will really bow whole-heartedly to the authority of the whole Church
even upon the matter of the resurrection. See this l’” Here is what
he showed me, again from the Formularies of Faith.
“That is to say, that we shall rise and live again in the salfsame
bodies and souls that we now have, and so shall utterly overcome
(evade and escape?) death” (p. 43). Here is another: “Almighty
God shall, by the operation of His Holy Spirit, stir and raise up
10 THE RIDDLES IN BISHOP BRow N’s HERESY CASE
again the very flesh and bodies of all men, women, and children, both
good and bad, Christian and heathen, that ever lived here in this
world, from the beginning of the same, and died before that day,
and although the said flesh and bodies were dead before and buried,
yea and consumed by fire and water, or by any other means de-
stroyed, yet I believe that God shall, of His infinite power, make
them all at that day whole and perfect again, and so every man gen-
erally shall resume and take again the very selfsame body and flesh
which they had while they lived here on earth, and so shall rise
from death and live again in the very selfsame body and soul which
they had before” (pp. 59–60; see also, pp. 236, 238,239, 251).
“At that time it was not yet generally known that physical growth
was not a matter of mere additions to the chemical parts which con-
stitute the body at birth. Now, however, specialists tell us that dur-
ing every seven years or so, all the particles of our body are elimi-
nated and replaced by new cells. Do the Bishops still believe in a
resurrection of the very same chemical particles or body cells with
which we were born? But that was the conception of the creedal
resurrection as given in the Formularies (p. 42). Could they now
accept that opinion, even on the authority of the whole Church?” ”
Before the General Convention of 1789 set forth and established
the Book of Common Prayer as the Liturgy of the American Church,
a solemn concordat was entered into with the Church of England,
that the Church in the United States would not depart from the
* These quotations are from the Institution of the Christian Man, dated
1537, which was popularly known as “The Bishop's Book.” I had heard some
question as to whether this formulation really was supported by the authority
of the whole Anglican Church. Upon examination I found the following his-
toric conclusions expressed on this subject. “The Bishop's Book” consisted of
the Articles About Religion Set Out by the Convocation, and Published by the
King's Authority, in the year 1536. The “Institution” was “Compiled by a
Royal Commission Consisting of All the Bishops . . . Eight Arch-Deacons,
and Seventeen Other Doctors of Divinity or of Law . . . Most of those Con-
cerned in the Subsequent Compilation of the Prayer Book Being of the Num-
ber. These Were All Members of Convocation and All (without exception)
Subscribed Their Names to the Book as Its Authors: But From the Traditions
Which Connected Still More Closely With the Convocations, Probably It Was
Afterwards Subscribed By the Whole Body of Each Province. . . . There
Has Not Been Such a Comprehensive Consensus of Opinion Gathered Together
At Any Time Since Then in the Church of England. Introduction to the:
Doctrine of the Church of England, 1868.”
THE RIDDLES IN BISHOP BROWN’s HERESY CASE 11
Church of England in any point of doctrine, and would retain the
same discipline and forms of worship.”
“If the House of Bishops will say that they bow to the authority
of the whole Anglican Church in all of such antique literalism as is
found in the Formularies of the Faith then I, too, will bow to that
authority, or resign. I suspect that many bishops now repudiate
much of the action of the whole Anglican Church of the past, and
are content to quibble about the resurrection of a ‘spiritual body'
only. I only want them to face all such issues publicly and with
manly candor. Why have they dodged a specific answer to every
definite issue of this character that has been raised in my behalf P
The public can decide. By the way, why do they not bow to the
authority of a whole Church in its declarations against the jurisdic-
tion of one bishop over another? I wonder if the authority of the
whole Church was designed only to make me humble and to leave
, their arrogance in tact? Or, is it a power which they also acknowl-
edge, even when it conflicts with their own intelligence and vanity?
Or, their lust for power? Or for pelf? I just wonder out loud
like that. Perhaps, upon second thought, I should not have ex-
pressed such ideas, and I think I prefer that you shall not use it
against me.”
I repeated to Bishop Brown the argument that the House of
Bishops should be considered something like a social club. If, then,
he found himself out of harmony with its social life, that he should
not resist the effort to exclude him. He claimed the analogy to be
a false one, because the House of Bishops is not a social club. On
the contrary, it is more like a trade union of workers organized for
human betterment, manifesting their vague and general unity of
purpose under the more concrete religious symbols. That the creed
is indefinable shows that there is no specific belief or behavior which
constitutes the indispensable element of union. Therefore, once hav-
ing been initiated, as it were, he remains always a member of this
ecclesiastical trade union, to-wit, The House of Bishops, which pro-
vides only for “excommunicating such as are guilty of manifest
crimes.” +
“Since I have not been penalized for ‘manifest crimes’ the rules
of our organization and the Canon law as to the indelibility of orders,
if respected, require that I be allowed to retain my place in the
* Rev. Edwin Augustine White, D. D. General Convention and Dogma
Churchman, 132:10; July 11, 1925.
4 Formularies of Faith, p. 278.
12 THE RIDDLES IN BISHOP BROWN’s HERESY CASE
House of Bishops as one of the workers for a better world. No anal-
ogies drawn from the rules of mere secular social clubs can be
allowed to over-rule the positive Canon law in this matter. If the
House of Bishops shall esteem their own wilfulness more sacred
than the Canon law, they will use their admitted physical ability to
exclude them. It is up to them to show how much respect they have
for the authoritative declarations of our Church.”
Bishop Brown further contended that, since the Church is an
organization to promote human betterment under the Protestant
Episcopal symbols, and since he is devoted both to such work and to
its symbols, as if these were a copyrighted trade-union label, there
rests upon all an obliagtion for mutual tolerance as to differences in
the point of emphasis, in promoting human welfare. Bishop Brown's
present declarations put the greatest emphasis upon accelerating
the democratization of welfare. With many of his fellow-bishops
the emphasis appears to be upon the perpetuation of aristocratic
privileges. If this difference is the secret cause for the desire to
expell Bishop Brown, such merely social reasons will be satisfactory,
even though a misleading rationalization and mask, but can furnish
no actual grounds for expulsion under the Canon law. Bishop Brown
has not thwarted or impeded any social betterment for which the
ecclesiastical trade-union is presumably organized. On the other
hand, the metaphysical abstractions of the creed, which can be so
interpreted as to furnish a plausible pretext for accomplishing any
desired and (which desire the creed did not create), also falls short
when a definition of the creeds in terms of uniform mental content
is demanded.
After numerous conversations with Bishop Brown, I believe that
I can fairly summarize his conscious purposes about as follows: He
would like credit for liberalizing the Church. He believes that it
is impossible to define orthodoxy in terms of any uniform mental
content. He wishes the House of Bishops to admit that as a psy-
chologic fact, and to act accordingly. From this it would automati-
cally follow, that the Church would be officially committed to the
“broad Church” policy. Although Bishop Brown once counted him-
self as of the High Church party, he now believes that the official
policy should be neither “High” nor “Low,” but “Broad.” By this
he understands that everyone who lives a conventionally righteous
life, who enjoys working for human betterment under the Ureedal
and ceremonial symbols of the Church, shall be eligible to member-
* See Haweis, Contemporary Review, June, 1890.
THE RIDDLES IN BISHOP BROWN’s HERESY CASE 13
ship in the House of Bishops, as well as to be admitted among its
financial supporters. Some Bishops have declared that those who
support the Church financially may have this larger liberty, but
would deny it to only those who consume the wealth so contributed.
Bishop Brown repudiates all such discrimination as to the different
degrees of qrthodoxy which are to be required from those who only
supply funds, and those who, consume the Church funds. He would
have the Church act upon the assumption that, what is sauce for the
geese is also sauce for the ganders.
Bishop Brown is more than a mere theoretical humanitarian.
With him, humanitarianism is felt as a religious passion, and there-
fore is open to a suspicion of emotional distortion. His acceptance
of a radical economic program is the effect, and not a cause of his
humanitarianism. His apparent emotional disturbance will prob-
ably hinder conduct that is always wholly consistent with his the-
ory. He wishes the Church to be liberal enough to admit all like
himself to the pulpit, as well as to the pews. If the House of Bishops
will place the Church on record as opposed to the liberal attitude of
the Broad Church party, then the publicity given to his contentions
and trial will, for many persons, discredit the claims of superior in-
telligence which is so often made for the House of Bishops. Bishop
Brown is insistent that the House of Bishops shall put itself on rec-
ord in the full light of a public discussion of the issues which he is
emphasizing. He desires those who support the Church, as well as
those who only take their naps in the Church, may hereafter know
what sort of Church this is.
He believes that he cannot be put upon trial alone. Inevitably, he
says, the House of Bishops is also on frial before the enlightened
portion of public opinion, even Protestant Episcopal public opinion.
When judgment shall have been passed upon Bishop Brown, quite
inevitably and automatically the House of Bishops will, by that same
token, pass a judgment upon itself and upon the Church. What
will that verdict be? This is also the question which really interests
the public. The fate of Bishop Brown matters very little. He in-
sists that deposition can never prevent him from being a highly re-
ligious person or a real Bishop in a real Catholic Church, whatever
such word's may mean.