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* U.S. District Judge James Ware in November rejected an attempt to keep the city of San Jose, California, from unveiling a statue of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl (CT, Sept. 12, 1994, p. 62), saying the statue is a cultural symbol, not a religious one. Six people had sued, claiming the eight-foot, $500,000 sculpture of a plumed serpent violates the First Amendment ban on government establishment of religion. At the same time, in the same downtown park, the city removed a manger scene that had been a Christmas fixture for 20 years. "The creche in the park was offensive to a significant part of the community," Mayor Susan Hammer said. The city returned the creche in December following a public outcry.

* Galen Hiestand is resigning January 31 after eight years as North American director of the Wheaton, Illinois-based World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF). The wef executive committee is searching for a successor.

* A group of private investors representing Family Bookstores completed a buyout from its parent company, HarperCollins Publishers, in November. Family Bookstores president Leslie Dietzman says the buyout also makes Family Bookstores independent from Zondervan Publishing House. HarperCollins's chief executive officer, George Craig, says the sale is sensible. "As a retail company, Family Bookstores does not correspond with our core business as a publisher."

* Marlin E. Miller, president of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana, died November 3 as a result of a massive heart attack. Miller, 55, collapsed while exercising at his home. He had overseen the joining of Goshen Biblical Seminary—where he was president for 15 years—and Mennonite Biblical Seminary in 1990.

* James Egan, 73, and Jack Nesbit, 67, a homosexual couple living together for 46 years, have appealed a denial of government spousal pension benefits to the Supreme Court of Canada. In November, the pair argued that the Old Age Security Act definition of a spouse as a marriage partner of the opposite sex discriminated against them. The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada said that if a court decision redefines a spouse to include same-sex couples, the family unit "would be seriously undermined."

* Ronald G. Johnson is the new president of Malone College, a 2,000-student Christian school in Canton, Ohio. He has been provost at the college since 1981 and had served as interim president since June. Johnson succeeds E. Arthur Self, new president of Seattle Pacific University.

* Michael Sweet, a former member of the Christian heavy-metal group Stryper, says a pro-abstinence music video accompanying his song "Ain't No Safe Way" has been banned from MTV because of its message. But MTV says the rejection is because the video quality did not meet programming standards, and the decision was not based on the content.

* David Brandt will become president of Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas, on February 1. Since 1988, Brandt has been at Bethel College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he has been vice president and provost. He also served as dean and vice president of Messiah College for 11 years. Brandt replaces LeVon Balzer, who is the new president of John Brown University.

* The two-member Lahore High Court of Pakistan acquitted death-row prisoner Gul Masil November 27 of blasphemy charges "against the Prophet Muhammad," concluding that he had been imprisoned for three years without bail on "evidently concocted charges." The 44-year-old Presbyterian layman had been arrested in December 1991. He was convicted a year later on the testimony of one witness and became the first person to be sentenced to death under Pakistan's blasphemy law, which involves the "use of derogatory remarks … by imputation, innuendo, or insinuation."

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January 9 1995, Vol. 39, No. 1