(The following story is being told here in print for the first time. Originally prepared as a chapter in my book, Evangelical and Methodist A Popular History, Abingdon, 2004, it was not used in the interests of brevity.)
In the Fall of 1972 Charles Keysor, editor of Good News magazine, Phil Hinerman, who was chair of the Good News board at the time, and I gathered in Elkhart, Indiana, to meet with Mr. Ernest Sims. A wealthy layman from Trinity Church, Elkhart, Sims was a former president of Circuit Riders, a conservative activist group that had been organized in 1951, “to oppose all efforts to propagate Socialism and Communism and all other anti-American teachings in the Methodist Church.”
Circuit Riders was the main force behind a resolution at the 1952 General Conference condemning the Methodist Federation for Social Action and for legislation which added to the Social Creed a statement which acknowledged “the principle of the acquisition of property by…
