Church relief efforts around the world are feeling the pinch of America’s dwindling food supply. For years religious groups have relied on government surplus food to carry out welfare programs overseas. Now most surpluses are disappearing, and church-related relief agencies are getting less than half their previous allotments. People overseas who had been getting food through churches are going hungry.
A spokesman for the Jewish relief agency in New York says the cutback has already caused “considerable suffering.” He reports “a very serious situation” in Morocco, Tunisia, Israel, and Yugoslavia. In Morocco alone, the Jewish agency has 10,000 children to feed.
A representative for Church World Service, relief arm of the National Council of Churches, calls the situation “absolutely tragic.” An official of Catholic Relief Services terms it “a revolting development,” partly because of its suddenness. The head of the World Relief Commission of the National Association of Evangelicals says shipments of food supplies are six months behind the previous flow.
The United States can produce much more food than present government controls allow, and church distribution programs overseas form only a small part of American foreign aid. Yet the current shortage is cited by food experts as a possible forerunner of what some call “the impending world famine.” U. S. reserves of feed grains are said to be below the prudent level of a three-month supply. Less than a year’s supply of wheat is reported, which means that a single big crop failure could bring hunger to millions.
One consoling factor for church relief agencies is that they had already begun phasing out direct food giveaways in favor of self-help programs. The 1966 revisions in Public Law 480—the basic enabling legislation for distribution of government surplus commodities through private agencies—were designed to encourage self-help.
The shrinking surplus spurs such programs. Instead of merely doling out food for immediate consumption, relief agencies now aim to provide raw materials from which the needy in other countries can look out for their own future. This means giving wheat seed as well as flour, chicks in addition to chickens, and sewing machines along with clothes, and also such things as fertilizer, irrigation equipment, and agricultural training.
Some experts think mass distribution of birth-control devices and information is the only ultimate solution, and they are trying to step up this aspect. But it is a morally sensitive point.
Hunger-plagued India is at the top of virtually everyone’s priority list. Yet there has been some doubt whether India is doing all she can to meet her food crisis domestically (see April 1, 1966 issue). For one thing, Hindus refuse to butcher their many “sacred” cows, which siphon off thousands of tons of scarce grain every year.
Another factor: a number of countries are in a position to help India but tend to let the United States carry much of the load of supplying grain. Thus, the United States held off announcing an allocation of 900,000 tons of wheat for India (and 500,000 for Pakistan) until the Soviet Union agreed to ship 200,000 tons immediately to drought-stricken areas. A U. S. official said these shipments, coupled with other supplies assured from Canada and Australia, “should prevent any starvation” into March. India is now entering its third year of food crisis, and some areas have been on the brink of famine, particularly during 1966.
Miscellany
Pope Paul VI has called the first meeting of the Synod of Bishops that is to assist him in governing the Roman Catholic Church. The meeting will open September 29 and continue a month or more. Last month, the Pope approved regulations for the synod, including his own primacy in calling meetings, setting the agenda, approving delegates, and deciding on its recommendations.
Pope Paul this month underscored two new documents from Vatican agencies outlawing the use of “jazz” and other experiments in the Mass.
The controversial Child Development Group of Mississippi, whose cause was championed by top U. S. churchmen, won a new lease on life with the promise of more money from the Office of Economic Opportunity. CDGM acceded to demands for administrative and program changes after being cut off from federal funds for a period of nearly three months.
Responding to reports on Bible shortages in Eastern Europe, the British and Foreign Bible Society reports that about 20,000 Bibles are shipped into Rumania each year and that 50,000 New Testaments went to Poland in October. Also, paper from the West is being used to print 13,000 New Testaments and 20,000 Bibles in Czechoslovakia, and 20,000 Bibles in Hungary. Information on distribution, however, is sketchy.
South African churchmen fear clergymen from other nations may face increasing difficulty in entering the country. The government is expected to tighten issuance of residence permits and make visas valid for only one year instead of three.
A symposium on the “new morality” highlighted the Evangelical Theological Society meeting at The King’s College, which drew 112 scholars from thirty states. The new ETS president is Stephen W. Paine, president of Houghton College.
Bellwether Litigation
A non-Presbyterian jury decided last month in favor of two Savannah Presbyterian congregations that seek to retain their properties after withdrawing from the Presbyterian Church in the United States. The Savannah Presbytery is appealing the decision, and the case is being watched closely by many congregations around the country that are alarmed at trends in their denominations.
The two Savannah churches, Eastern Heights and Hull Memorial, are pastored by two young men who gave up their denominational credentials when their congregations withdrew last April. They charged that there have been “substantial deviations” in the faith and order of the Southern Presbyterian Church. In particular, they protested the approval of ordination of women in the denomination, endorsement of civil disobedience, and involvement in political, civil, and economic affairs.
Two buses carrying Epiphany pilgrims plunged into a ravine south of Manila. Initial reports said at least 85 were killed, making it the worst road disaster on record.
Following up a racial pact formed by Martin Luther King last summer (Sept. 16, 1966, issue, page 44), Chicago’s Roman Catholics this month began a large-scale voluntary campaign for non-discrimination in housing, employment, and other areas. United Presbyterians and other Protestant groups are fielding similar programs.
All Protestant and Roman Catholic clergymen in Amesbury, Massachusetts, united to urge the school board to ban the holding of school activities, on Wednesday nights, to encourage attendance at religious programs.
International Students Inc. hopes this month to finish raising a $50,000 down-payment toward a new student service center and training base adjacent to State Department offices in Washington.
A prayer leaflet published jointly by the National Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Graymoor Friars accompanies the campaign for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, January 18–25. The National Association of Evangelicals is offering free Bible materials for churches joining its World Day of Prayer on February 10.
Personalia
Michigan’s former governor G. Mennen (Soapy) Williams, 55, who just lost a Senate race, said he has thought “casually” of becoming a priest in the Episcopal Church, of which he is a lifelong member.
Following three politicians (Johnson, Eisenhower, Robert Kennedy), Billy Graham again came out fourth in the Gallup Poll’s annual list of the men in the world Americans admire most. Pope Paul ranks fifth again, but last year’s sixth-place personality, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., did not make the list.
Robert G. Wesselmann, 38, former chancellor of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Belleville, Illinois, revealed he married Frances H. Burton, 36, a divorcee, on October 23. The couple will move to Kansas City.
A federal jury in Phoenix, Arizona, convicted Joseph D. Jeffers, 67, and his wife Connie, 27, with thirteen counts of mail fraud by his “Kingdom of Yahweh,” which was chartered in Texas as a non-profit religious organization. Complaints said the couple pocketed or spent at racetracks the money the cult’s believers paid to make connections with “spirit guides” and “guardian angels.”
A federal district judge in Maine dismissed a $25 million libel suit against the U. S. government by John T. Holman, 70, a former minister of the Advent Christian Church. He said Internal Revenue had defamed him by refusing to recognize his ordination.
Reginald H. Fuller, a native of England who is on the faculty of Seabury-Western Theological School (Episcopal) in Evanston, Illinois, has been named to the New Testament professorship at Union Theological Seminary, New York.
H. Elmer Bartsch, Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor, was appointed interim deputy chief of the Christian Pavilion for Montreal’s upcoming Expo ’67.
K. H. Dahlan, a leading Muslim in Indonesia, charged Communist China’s zealot Red Guards with mass murder of Muslims in the current cultural purge.
Stanley W. Olson, former dean of the Baylor University School of Medicine and contributing editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, this month became director of the new Midsouth Regional Medical Center in Nashville and a medical professor at Vanderbilt University.
Arland Christ-Janer, president of Cornell College in Iowa, has been named president of Boston University. Both schools are Methodist-related.
Former priest Anthony Girandola, who was excommunicated for marrying in 1965 (May 13, 1966, issue, page 50), said he was refused Roman Catholic burial for his stillborn daughter.
Dom Aurelio Maria Escarre, abbot of a Benedictine monastery in Spain, has resigned his post on orders from the Vatican, Reuters reports. An exile in Italy, he had been critical of oppression by Spain’s Franco government.
Deaths
WILLIAM L. NORTHRIDGE, 80, former principal of Edgehill Theological College, Belfast, and former president of the Methodist Church in Ireland; in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
HENRY WILLIAMSON, overseas secretary of the British Baptist Missionary Society and president of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland.
