The Detroit Tribune

Few Southerners Want Integration Says Bishop

By Clarence T. R. Nelson.

NASHVILLE, Tenn., - A white Methodist bishop, a native of South Carolina, has said that in recent weeks he has had experiences which have convinced him that great numbers of people in the South, as well as elsewhere, want equal rights for all persons.

He is Bishop John Owen Smith, head of the Atlanta Area of the denomination's Southeastern Jurisdiction, with headquarters in Atlanta. Bishop Smith was the closing speaker for the annual meeting of the Southeastern Jurisdictional Council, held September 7-8 at the First Methodist Church, Birmingham, Ala.

The outspoken prelate, one of the 20 new bishops elected in the denomination last year, told the Alabama meeting. "I don't know how we can practice Christianity and the Golden Rule without some type of intelligent integration in some fields." He had made a statement similar to this in an address on "Racial Tensions and the Church" a few weeks ago at Lake Junaluska, N. C.

The response to the Junaluska address is one of the things that Bishop Smith said have led him to his conclusion about the feeling on equal rights. He said the letters he got in response to the Junaluska address were about 200 to 1 in favor of the ideas he expressed. The letters came not only from the South but from various parts of the United States and from other countries.

Another experience that Bishop Smith told the Jurisdictional council members about concerned the response to an address he made recently to 457 Georgia Methodist ministers. He, in effect, asked how long Christians could allow discrimination to continue and gave several examples of discrimination. To a man, the 457 white southern ministers arose spontaneously, he said, and indicated that they were vigorously opposed to discrimination on the basis of color or otherwise.

Bishop Smith told the Jurisdictional council, "There are a great host of folks all around the South who would be delighted to sit down and work on these big old problems of human relations."

He also said that unless the church provides leadership now in dealing with human relations issues it has no right to expect to command a leadership role in the future. Leadership has to be earned, he declared.

The Southeastern Jurisdictional Council promotes The Methodist Church's work in nine southeastern states and Cuba. It is composed of 83 members, both ministers and laymen.