only the “grey-haired and baldheaded”…

Many of my reflections from Fort Worth will relate to young people. As a Kansan, sometimes resident of metro Kansas City, and a young person, this article is especially fitting.

United Church

TIME Magazine Monday, May 22, 1939

“The Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the Methodist Protestant Church are and shall be one united church.” When Bishop John Monroe Moore of Dallas, Tex. voiced those words, in Kansas City’s Municipal Auditorium one night last week, 900 delegates to the Methodist Uniting Conference answered in roaring unison: “We do so declare.” Bishops and delegates then cried aloud: “To the Methodist Church thus established we do solemnly declare our allegiance, and upon all its life and service we do reverently invoke the blessing of Almighty God. Amen.”

From this happy excitement of Kansas City the united Methodists went home to their muttons. On thousands of church buildings throughout the land, signs and plaques had to be replaced or repainted to exhibit the name of the new church. In many a locality where the work of the three late churches had overlapped, there would be mergers, although the Conference had warned against “hasty action for financial reasons.” In truth, however, the Conference had itself performed some hasty actions for financial reasons—in order to adjourn before its Conference treasury was exhausted. In slapping together the nation’s biggest Protestant church (8,000,000 members), it had settled, with a minimum of debate, matters which may need further attention at its General Conference next year.

Methodist doctrines and ritual are flexible enough so that little controversy arose over their definition. But over a lengthy and liberal social creed submitted to the Conference, there was a sputter. Delegate Alfred Mossman Landon objected to the section which promised the support of the Methodist Church to conscientious objectors. Youngish Delegate Lloyd E. Foster of East Orange, N. J. shouted that only the “grey-haired and baldheaded” objected to the section. Red-faced, Delegate Landon shouted: “I submit that the argument is a cowardly one!” Nevertheless, the Conference voted down grey-haired Mr. Landon.

Background: Alfred Mossman Landon as referred to in the article was the governor of Kansas from 1933-1937 and the 1936 Republican presidential nominee. He was defeated in 1936 by FDR in a landslide. In 1939 he would a delegate from the Kansas Conference which is only slightly different in boundary than the current Kansas East Conference.