LOGAN HERBERT ROOTS
From “The Arkansas Gazette” Little Rock, Sept. 25,1945.
The Rt. Rev. Logan Herbert Roots, D.D., aged 75, a native of Little Rock who became a leader in Moral Re-Armament, and who for 34 year* was Bishop of Hankow, China, died at Mackinac Island, Michigan, on Monday. He was attending the MRA World Training Center, now in its fourth year at the Island, with representatives of labor, management, politics and the professions from North America and 15 foreign countries.
He was the son of the late P. K. Roots, little Rock banker, and was the namesake of his uncle, the late Colonel Logan H. Roots, for whom Fort Roots was named. In 1902 he married Miss Eliza Lydia McCook of Hartford, Connecticut. Five children survive: John McCook Roots, Dr. Logan Holt Roots, Sheldon Roots, and the Misses Frances Blakeslee Roots and Elizabeth Buder Roots, all of whom arc active in the work of Moral Re-Armament.
Funeral services will be held at the Island House, Mackinac Island, Wednesday. Burial will be on Mackinac Island. Colonel Graham Roots Hall of Little Rock, a nephew, left last night by plane to attend the funeral.
Widely Known in Far East for Christian Unity Work.
Bishop Roots, who first went to China in 1896 shortly after his graduation from Harvard University, was widely known in the Far East for his work for Christian unity. He was Chairman of the China Continuation Committee, 1913-1922, the first organization aimed at uniting the Christian forces of China. He was also identified with National Flood Relief Work and The International Red Cross.
As Chairman of the House of Bishops of the Chinese Episcopal Church from 1926 to 1931, he developed close tics with England, and as Primate introduced the China bishops to King George V in London during the Lambeth conference of 1930.
Had Many Friends Among Leaders of Modern China.
Bishop Roots was said to possess an unrivalled personal acquaintance with leaders of modern China, dating back to the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 and the first Chinese revolution of 1911. He knew Dr. Sun Yat-scn, and harbored several of his colleagues at his home in Hankow during the early day* of the Chinese revolutionary movement.
He had for many years been on terms of friendship with Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. When his wife died in Kuling in 1934, the Generalissimo sent his private plane to Peking to carry the Bishop and his sons on the last leg of their journey across Siberia from Europe, and Madame Chiang attended the funeral.
Bishop Roots first became acquainted with Dr. Frank Buchman, initiator of Moral Re-Armament, in Kuling, the Chinese summer capital, in 1917, and helped Kim organize his first international gathering there the following year. During subsequent years of travel in many parts of the world he took every opportunity of supporting the Oxford Group, saying that he saw in its activities the 'best hope of uniting the world’s moral and spiritual resources in providing a Christian answer to the militant materialism which took root in Europe and Asia after the last war.'
Moral Re-Armament Work Occupied Last Seven Years.
Since 1938, Bishop Roots had devoted his time to the work of Moral Re-Armament. He travelled with Dr. Buchman and his international teams in the United States and Canada, Britain and most of Europe.
As a personal friend of three successive Archbishops of Canterbury, and of British theologians (such as Dr. B. H. Streeter, late Provost of the Queen’s College, Oxford), Bishop Roots had much to do with the strong support given to Moral Re-Armament by the heads of the principal British church groups in recent years.
During the war, Bishop Roots travelled along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts visiting centers of war production and assisting with the MRA wartime program of industrial teamwork and national unity.
During the last year he had lived in Washington, D. C., where his apartment became a center for many of the United Nations delegates on the way to and from the international conference at San Francisco.
Bishop Roots was granted the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity by the University of the South in 1906, by the Episcopal Theological School of Cambridge, Mass., in 1922, and by Harvard University in 1925. Harvard also gave him a citatum of honor for his leadership in the Far East.
