A church-sponsored drive to send abroad more American dollars opens this week in Washington. The United Church of Christ will spearhead the effort to tap existing missionary resources in a battle against world poverty.
“The gravest issue facing the world today is the widening gap between the rich and the poor nations,” says the Rev. L. Maynard Catchings, head of a new “office for international development” financed by the UCC’s Council of Christian Social Action. “This gap is especially intolerable to Christians whose faith compels a special concern for the poor. This gap is also intolerable because technology has made possible a world in which poverty can be eliminated.”
Catchings is setting up shop in Washington with a meager $30,000-a-year budget provided by the UCC. He has ambiguous ties with an “international development committee” formed in September with representatives of six other denominations: the American Baptist Convention, Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ), Church of the Brethren, Protestant Episcopal Church, The Methodist Church, and United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. Five of the seven communions are full-fledged members of the Consultation on Church Union; the Baptists and Brethren last year rejected anything more than observer status in COCU.
The program is the brainchild of Dr. Ray Gibbons, who feels that the Gospel commands the churches “to seek human welfare and world peace.” Gibbons, 63, has been promoting this view for years in the National Council of Churches, but the NCC has not mustered enough enthusiasm or resources to assign a full-time Washington specialist on international aid. The NCC will, however, provide office space for Catchings in the building it rents across the street from the U. S. Capitol.
Gibbons said the purpose of the new enterprise is (1) to educate church bodies about the problems of world trade, food and agriculture, population, community development, and foreign aid; (2) to interpret international development issues to churches; and (3) to engage churches in international development projects in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
“Revolution is inevitable,” Gibbons declared, “but we can help to make revolution peaceful and creative. Americans are in the unusual position of having their own cake of affluence and being able to share that affluence with the less developed nations. Indeed, if we Americans do not share our technology and productivity wisely and speedily, we may lose them in wasteful wars.”
Gibbons contends that world-wide ecumenical relations of the churches, missionary programs, and relief work provide the churches with resources and communications that can be enlisted in an effective campaign against world poverty. Catchings adds that “the determination of Christians to assist the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America represents a new partnership of the historic social action forces and the world mission forces.”
Protestant Panorama
Between 20,000 and 30,000 Protestants demonstrated in Santiago, Chile, in favor of the church-state separation ordered by the 1925 constitution and against new policies for teaching Roman Catholicism in public schools.
This week a new congregation is forming in Macon, Georgia—dissidents who left Tatnall Square Baptist Church after its pastors were ousted for favoring racially integrated worship.
The Ukrainian-background Mennonite Brethren Church formed a world conference at its recent North American meeting (about one-fourth of the 85,000 members will be in the Soviet Union) but decided not to pursue merger talks with other Mennonite bodies. The denomination merged its welfare and missions boards because “proclamation and welfare ought to be integrated.” Though they warned that political involvement is not the Christian’s primary calling, delegates urged more involvement, particularly in local government.
Church of the Nazarene officials plan civil-court action this month, if necessary, to regain control of a Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, church. The church’s pastor, Earl Huston, Jr., was excommunicated recently for dissociating the congregation from the Nazarenes and for speaking in tongues, which is against the practice (though not the official doctrinal stand) of the denomination.
Miscellany
Father Gommar DePauw, leader of the Roman Catholic traditionalist movement, said the Vatican’s decision that he is still under the control of Baltimore’s Cardinal Shehan is “juridically improper, illegal, and morally unjust.”
A joint mass in the Netherlands recently symbolized unity moves between its Roman Catholics and the 10,000 Jansenist Old Catholics, whose split dates to a 1723 excommunication and led to splits from Rome in several other nations. In unofficial negotiations, Rome has dropped the historic requirement that Old Catholics reject certain Reformation-oriented documents. The Old Catholics have intercommunion with Anglicans and a growing link to Eastern Orthodoxy.
Methodists and Roman Catholics held their second official ecumenical encounter in Chicago the week before Christmas and talked about the nature of faith. In their third meeting, June 28–30, they will discuss the Holy Spirit. Bishop F. Gerald Ensley of Ohio heads the Methodist team; the Catholic leader is Mississippi Monsignor Joseph Brunini.
A survey in advance of the first consultation on theological education in Northeast Asia shows that there are sixty-two seminaries in Japan but that only six offer graduate-level courses, and thirty-seven have fewer than ten students.
Bishops of the Anglican Church of Ireland said in a pastoral letter that Roman Catholic changes on mixed-marriage regulations are only superficial.
Among members of the new West German Cabinet is Justice Minister Gustav Heinemann, former president of the council of the Evangelical Church (EKID). In line to succeed Vice Chancellor Willy Brandt as mayor of West Berlin is a former Protestant pastor, Heinrich Albertz.
While ethnic tensions continue on Cyprus, unofficial talks toward religious understanding have begun among Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Armenians, Maronites, and the Greek Orthodox, who are led by the island’s president, Archbishop Makarios.
Australia’s new Anglican primate, Philip Strong, formally asked Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists to admit the Anglicans to union talks already in progress. His move followed action by an autumn synod meeting. Observers think, however, that the other three groups may press their own merger and invite the Anglicans in later, Ecumenical Press Service reports.
The Anglican diocese of Accra, Ghana, has decided members may receive communion from any of the six other denominations participating in talks toward a merged national church. A similar merger involving four denominations is under discussion in Malawi.
Poland’s Roman Catholic Church reports that the government plans to close six seminaries because they refused to remove their rectors and admit government inspectors. It could be the worst church-state confrontation in Poland since 1956, when an accord was reached between the church and the Communist government.
Bishop Zoltan Kaldy, 45, of the Hungarian Lutheran Church (430,000 members) said a new code adopted at the recent synod meeting—first since the Communist take-over—“reflects the fact that the church has found its place and field of service in the country’s new social order.” He said church and state can at least work together for peace.
This month, Pennsylvania’s education department will try out its new elective high school course in religious literature in the city of State College, in cooperation with Pennsylvania State University. Readings from the Bible and other religious books will be put in historical, philosophical, and literary context. Teacher training for the special course is planned this summer.
Personalia
Senior Bishop Reuben H. Mueller of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, immediate past president of the National Council of Churches, will receive the prestigious Upper Room Citation, given annually to a world Christian leader by the Methodist-sponsored devotional magazine.
A new library building at North Ĉarolina’s Montreat-Anderson College, a Southern Presbyterian school connected with the denominational conference center, will be named for Dr. L. Nelson Bell, executive editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Dr. Bell resides on the conference grounds just east of Asheville.
E. P. Y. Simpson, church history professor who submitted his resignation during current trouble at Berkeley Baptist Divinity School (Dec. 23, 1966, issue, page 35) will return to his native New Zealand this year to teach history at Massey University.
An unscientific survey by Youth (published for teens by the United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church, Anglican Church of Canada, and Church of the Brethren) showed the best-liked personalities as Martin Luther King, Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Billy Graham, U Thant, and Lyndon Johnson. But Johnson ranked even higher on the “disliked” list, along with such persons as Charles de Gaulle, George Wallace, Cassius Clay, Mao Tse-tung, and Elizabeth Taylor.
Mirroring the confusion on strategy in the civil-rights movement, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., plans to take two months off from activism to visit the Bahamas and write a book, tentatively titled “Where Do We Go From Here?”
On February 1, Southern Baptist clergyman Bill D. Moyers, 32, leaves his post as President Johnson’s press secretary and general right-hand man to become publisher of Newsday, a Long Island, New York, newspaper.
National Presbyterian Center Director Lowell Ditzen was married to Mrs. Eleanor Davies Tydings, mother of U.S. Senator Joseph Tydings and widow of the late Senator Millard Tydings.
