New York, April 30—The Rev. Cornelius Woelfkin, pastor of the wealthy Park Avenue Baptist church, aroused much discussion among his parishioners yesterday as a result of his sermon in which he criticized some long standing Baptist doctrines as reactionary and urged his congregation to vote to abandon them.
He also defended the stage and had a good word for Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Christian Science. John D. Rockefeller Jr. hear the sermon.
“Our practice of excluding members of other denominations unless they are baptized againin our rite is out of harmony with the spirit which is growing in the churches. We have already opened our communion table to other Christians and this proposed step follows that logically,” Dr. Woelfkin said. Do you suppose in Heaven when communion is celebrated John Calvin, John Knox, John and Charles Wesley and other great leaders in the non-Baptist world will be denied the privilege of sitting with the Baptists? We need a greater tolerance for the various sects, isms and fads that are springing up about the friends of the older churches. I do not regard them as heretical. They are the result of a spiritual urge on the part of people who are seeking what they think the church cannot furnish them.
“Sir Oliver Lodge is one of the outstanding psychics of his generation and he is trying sincerely and earnestly to lift the veil. So also is Conan Doyle, eminent and high-minded man. The healing movement, Christian Science and others are practicing a function of the church.”
From the front page of The Wilson Times, May 1,1923
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