Daily Kennebec Journal

New York Pastor Challenges Virgin Birth of Christ

New York, Dec. 16-Putting aside the vestments of priesthood and stepping into the pulpit in the black robe of a doctor of divinity, Dr. Leighton Parks, rector of St. Bartholomew's Protestant Episcopal Church, today challenged the virgin birth of Christ and the bodily resurrection.

He declared he would welcome a trial by Bishop Manning of the New York diocese.

Dr. Parks, who is 71 years of age and has been for twenty years rector at that fashionable Park Avenue Church, rejected the recent pastoral letter issued by the house of bishops of the denomination. The letter, calling upon the clergy to uphold the "Catholic tradition" of the church and the Nicene Creed, was declared by Doctor Parks to be autocratic.

After his letter had been read pursuant to requirements, Dr. Parks began his address by saying he wore no vestments because he appeared "not as your minister, but as a doctor of theology."

He conducted his earlier services in his vestments.

Declaring the integrity of the clergy was at stake, Dr. Parks asked "Am I, who have preached the faith for fifty years, to be called dishonest because I do not agree with my bishop?

"Am I to be accused of heresy because I preach doctrines for which there is ample foundation in the scripture? Are bishops the sole definers of the faith? If they are, I have no right to speak.

"Not one teaching of this church can be changed by one bishop, or by all the bishops put together. Their authority is carefully restricted, and, when the English church broke away from the Catholic tradition, it gave to each minister an equal authority with his bishop. For them to behave as final definers of the Christian faith is contrary to constitutional law."

There was widespread belief, Dr. Parks said, that the recent letter issued by the house of bishops, referred to Bishop Lawrence of Massachusetts. He declared the bishops did not name Bishop Lawrence because to have done so would have necessitated a trial for him and a trial of Bishop Lawrence would shake this church to its foundations.

Instead, he said, they have ordered to trial "a poor, unknown minister"

This minister was said by officials of the church to be the Rev. Lee W. Heaton of Fort Worth, Texas. Dr. Parks asserted he did not believe Rev. Mr. Heaton would ever be brought to trial.

Dr. Parks declared acceptance of the physical resurrection of Christ was unnecessary to the faith and asserted that making it so would be fundamental heresy because it made the physical more important than the spiritual.

The doctrine of the virgin birth, he said, was justified by only three passages in the Bible.

"And scholars tell me," he continued, "that virgin in the Greek really means married woman. We find St. Paul saying that Jesus was born of the flesh after the seed of David.

And the scholars find that Joseph, and not Mary was descended from David."

Dr. Parks, known as a "broad churchman", was called to St. Bartholomew's in 1904 from Emanuel church, Boston, where he had been rector for 25 years. He was at one time in charge of the American church in Geneva and later with the American chapel in Paris. His present church is an exceedingly wealthy one.

Dr. Parks has seldom figured in the public press. In 1916 he differed with Bishop Manning over the resurrection.

Dr. Percy Stickney Grant, rector of the church of the Ascension who engaged in a controversy with Bishop Manning last winter, also criticized the pastoral letter of the house of bishops in his sermon today. He declared many clergymen and some bishops did not accept the pastoral letter as authoritative.

"There are many in the church English and American, who still believe in an authority almost papal and wish practically to return to medieval ways". Dr. Grant said.

"They have little sympathy with protestantism."