The first major cooperative venture among evangelical colleges in the United States is about to begin. Articles of incorporation are to be filed next month for a consortium through which some of the nation’s best-known Christian schools will be sharing their academic resources.
Specific goals are still to be worked out, according to Donald M. Youngren of the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies (IACS), which has acted as a catalyst in the formative stages of the new enterprise. However, coordinated research programs probably will be a key feature. There may also be some interchange of faculty and students, and sponsorship of faculty symposia.
Nine colleges have been involved in the planning: Gordon, Eastern Mennonite, Messiah, Taylor, Bethel (St. Paul), Wheaton, Greenville, Seattle Pacific, and Westmont. Malone and Asbury may also be charter members.
Incorporation papers are being drafted by presidents Hudson Armerding of Wheaton, David McKenna of Seattle Pacific, and D. Ray Hostetter of Messiah.
The consortium idea was born in informal meetings of evangelical college presidents. At the most recent of these, held in Chicago March 16, the presidents agreed to proceed with the establishment of a new organization; a full-time executive director is soon to be employed. No name has yet been selected; the term consortium may be avoided. Membership will very likely be limited to regionally accredited four-year liberal-arts colleges with evangelical commitments. Each, besides meeting the other criteria, must pay a $1,500 fee.
Some evangelical educators have long felt that biblical Christianity in this age needs an academic power center if there is to be substantial impact upon culture. Dr. Carl F. H. Henry has championed the establishment of a major Christian university as one answer. He founded the IACS with the aim of fostering high-level graduate research programs that might ultimately result in a university with a number of top-flight professional schools. High costs of land and construction are major obstacles. The IACS is currently funding a limited number of studies.
Others have suggested mass mergers of existing Christian colleges or establishment of satellite Christian campuses at the sites of great secular universities. Skyline in San Diego and Canadian Bible College in Regina, Saskatchewan, represent the latter approach. Messiah, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has a special inter-campus arrangement for students with Temple University in Philadelphia. Under this kind of arrangement, the student is expected to benefit from secular training and environment as well as from a Christian orientation.
Henry presented a paper at a meeting of the consortium presidents in Tempe, Arizona (CHRISTIANITY TODAY plans to publish the text in the May 21 issue). He did not specifically propose a consortium, but commented last month that “if the consortium somehow correlates the academic strengths of the participating colleges, and enables them to undertake cooperative new programs, it can signal an important new advance for evangelical learning. Moreover, it marks a breakthrough in evangelical cooperation beyond the evangelistic level at the equally critical educational frontier.”
The Tempe meeting also heard Dr. Earl McGrath, director of Temple University’s Higher Education Center, set forth the consortium idea in an address. (Others had previously suggested similar ideas.) He said such a cooperative project could enable member institutions “to attract the financial, professional, and social support necessary for survival as effective centers of learning.”
McGrath suggested that positions be adopted on such points as “institutional government, institutional size, faculty qualifications, teaching practices, curriculum range and diversity, living accommodations, extracurricular offerings, spiritual exercises, the physical characteristics of the campus, and financial management.” He spoke also of the need for broader criteria to replace “the conventional admission standards and grading practices with their inordinate rewards for efficiency in rote learning and routine intellectual exercises, and their demonstrable dependence on culturally conditioned traits.”
Deaths
VICTOR L. BEHNKEN, 60, third vice-president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod; in Palm Springs. California.
PATRIARCH CYRIL, 70, head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church since 1953; in Sofia, Bulgaria.
NELS FERRÉ, 62, philosophy professor at the College of Wooster since 1968, for eighteen years professor of theology at Andover Newton Theological School, also professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School; in Wooster, Ohio.
POPE KYROLLOS VI, 69, the Coptic Orthodox Patriarch, head of the church in Egypt, Africa, and the Near East; in Cairo, of a heart attack.
Mission Crisis
Ten Anglican missionary societies—including some of England’s biggest and oldest—are in dire financial straits and their work in overseas fields is threatened, according to a joint statement by their general secretaries.
The message, published in London last month, asserts that the societies’ income is static or declining in the midst of constantly increasing costs. Churches overseas continue to ask for mission help and personnel, but “we are having to delay or refuse many of these requests,” the statement said. “We are facing the prospect in 1971 of withdrawing workers already on the field. There are men and women ready to train for service overseas. What is lacking is the money to support them.”
The societies include the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Church Missionary Society, and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge—three of the largest and oldest Anglican missionary bodies—as well as the Commonwealth and Continental Church Society, the Church’s Ministry among the Jews, the Melanesian Mission, the Mission to Seamen, the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society, the South American Missionary Society, and the Jerusalem and the East Mission.
Safari
Who says the lion hunt is passé and the sun helmet old hat in modern missionary circles?
Gospel Missionary Union worker Allan MacLeod reported recently that two lions killed some thirty head of cattle outside various mission villages over a two-month period in the Kita-Sirakoro district of the Mali Republic in Africa. Superstitious natives theorized that the lions were in fact sorcerers who were turning themselves into lions. Others argued that men couldn’t eat so much meat in one night!
The lions—fully animal—were bagged; one was shot only a quarter-mile from the home of missionary MacLeod, who, incidentally, dons a sun helmet.
Churches Receive National Landmark Status
Nine historic New England churches and the Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois, have been designated as National Historic Landmarks because they are important examples of American architecture. The edifices will be added to the National Register of Historic Places published by the National Park Service, and will be given plaques and certificates. They will remain in private ownership, but the owners have agreed to maintain them as authentic examples of their architectural periods.
Religious edifices added to the register include:
Center Church (1812), New Haven, Connecticut, “an outstanding example of Federal architecture,” and Trinity Church (1814). “one of the earliest expressions of Gothic Revival style in America.” both to be designated as part of the New Haven Green Historical District. Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois, erected in 1906 when architect Frank Lloyd Wright was a member of its congregation. The building, the first in America to employ reinforced concrete as its major building material, “marks a significant achievement in the development of modern American architecture.”
First Church of Christ, Lancaster, Massachusetts (1817), “finest of the existing New England churches designed by Charles Bullfinch.” New Old South Church, Boston (1874), “one of the best ecclesiastical expressions of the High Victorian style of architecture which reached its American heyday in the 1870s.” Old West Church, Boston (1806), remodeled as a library in 1896, but restored as a church in 1963, an example of the architectural work of Asher Benjamin, which “became the prototype of many other New England churches.” St. Paul’s Church, Boston (1820), “the first important Greek Revival structure in New England.” Trinity Church, Boston (1870), built during the rectorship of Dr. Phillips Brooks, “represents the first mature expression of the work of Henry Hobson Richardson that became known as ‘Richardsonian Romanesque.’ ”
First Parish Church, Quincy, Massachusetts (1827), “a fine example of the transition between the Federal and Greek Revival styles, its massive Doric portico Grecian in inspiration, but its main body with graceful arched windows entirely within the earlier Federal and Georgian tradition.” First Baptist Meeting House, Providence, Rhode Island (1775), designated part of the College Hill Historic District. “An outstanding Georgian structure,” apart from its historic connection with the congregation founded by Roger Williams.
GLENN EVERETT
Blow, Gabriel, Blow
Nobody needs to blow the horn for an Oblate priest stationed in a St. Paul, Minnesota, parish. He blows his own. A group of young, talented singers—who write their own lyrics—have teamed up with the trumpeteer priest to record an album called Come Alive that in folk style tells of love and faith in God.
Father Biondolillo believes the Sacred Heart Singers and their album will be a big hit because “we have many things going for us—beautiful music and lyrics, angelic harmony, songs that are fresh and personal.…”
The trumpeting priest has something else going for him: his full name is Father Gabriel Archangel Biondolillo.
Ecumenism, Texas Style
Cooperation between Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in the Texas Conference of Churches (TCC)—considered a model on the ecumenical front—probably can’t be expanded to a national scale. That was the opinion of Jan Cardinal Willebrands of Rome, president of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, when he addressed the TCC’s second annual assembly in Austin last month.
The cardinal and Boston archbishop Humberto S. Medeiros (formerly of Texas) called the conference the largest ecumenical organization in the world “of which the Roman Catholic Church is a member.” Greater involvement in church conferences and councils such as the TCC will be slow, depending on local circumstances, the prelates said. Medeiros added that essential unity already exists in the Catholic Church and that further unity would come about not by force “but by free acceptance of union with the Catholic Church.”
The TCC, formed in 1969, brought together the state’s Catholic dioceses and fourteen other bodies including the Greek Orthodox. Fifteen Protestant groups now belong.
After three mostly cordial sessions, the assembly approved a patched-up resolution affirming “the right of farm workers and employers alike to organize for collective bargaining” and supporting “the nonviolent defense of the rights of farm workers to organize through … free elections.” Delegates rejected the original resolution calling for public support of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) and Cesar Chavez in their current struggle with California lettuce growers through boycott action.
The TCC also endorsed the idea of state aid for lay teachers of secular subjects in nonpublic schools, and state aid to private higher educational institutions through tuition-equalization grants and purchase-of-services contracts.
MARQUITA Moss
Dead End
Three United Church of Canada ministers who represent three different political parties in the Canadian House of Commons have agreed on one subject: taxation of church property in Canada is inevitable.
Murray McBride (Liberal), Stanley Knowles (New Democratic party), and David MacDonald (Conservative) were taking part in a panel discussion in Glebe United Church in Ottawa. They said churches couldn’t always expect a free ride at the expense of others.
LESLIE K. TARR
Religion In Transit
The first Baptist organization encompassing the entire South that is believed to be thoroughly integrated has been formed. The new American Baptist Churches of the South includes 124 congregations in twelve states.
Roman Catholic priests should be able to choose between celibacy and marriage, the National Federation of Priests’ Councils voted at its annual meeting last month. The federation, which represents about 35,000 of the nation’s 60,000 priests, also expressed solidarity with Philip Berrigan and his co-defendants in the kidnap conspiracy charges and condemned FBI director J. Edgar Hoover for what it called “premature and unfortunate” allegations in the case.
Reversing an earlier decision, the United Presbyterian Board of Christian Education decided to continue funding its forty-six related colleges.
Beginning this fall any congregation of the Episcopal, American Baptist, or Lutheran Church in America that has a vacant pastorate may apply to its national headquarters’ data bank to receive personnel profiles on clergy seeking specified parishes; the clergy similarly may receive congregational listings for jobs tailored to their qualifications.
Christianity and Crisis, the politically left Protestant journal founded by Dr. John C. Bennett, celebrated its thirtieth anniversary on a glum note last month: unless $30,000 in gifts appears by May 1, the biweekly will fold, according to B. J. Stiles, director of the journal’s board and former editor of the also ailing motive magazine. Christianity and Crisis circulation is down from 19,000 to 13,000, and ad revenue has dropped drastically.
Remember the furor over the Episcopal Church’s allocating $200,000 in 1969 for the Black Manifesto-related Black Economic Development Conference? The Black Star Press in Detroit, funded with $100,000 of that money, has published its first book: The Political Thought of James Forman. It says “armed struggle and the seizure of state power … [by] a revolutionary black vanguard party” is an “absolute necessity.”
Three Philadelphia area United Presbyterian churches closed last year, two through merger; Philadelphia Presbytery churches have dropped from 194 to 176 in the past decade.
Last year was the seventh in a row Southern Baptists led in total gifts to the American Bible Society; 1970 SBC contributions were $233,185.
Of 140 names suggested for Carl McIntire’s new college at Cape Canaveral, Florida Reformation College was picked to identify the massive former Boeing building on Astronaut Boulevard.
The Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) decided last month to refuse to fund church-chosen projects unless IFCO also approves them. IFCO’s board also agreed to grant undesignated funds to between nine and eighteen community organizations this year.
Personalia
Brian Faulkner, Protestant moderate widely regarded as an able politician succeeded James Chichester-Clark as prime minister of Northern Ireland The 50-year-old Faulkner was at one time a controversial hard-liner. He is a worshiping Presbyterian.
The New York City Council of Churches’ Family of Man Award, slated for comedian Bob Hope, was set aside instead for posthumous presentation to National Urban League director Whitney M. Young, Jr. A group of activist clergy forced the council to bypass Hope because of his “uncritical endorsement of the military establishment and the Indochina war.”
Former Evangelical United Brethren pastor V. A. Ballantyne has been named the first executive secretary of the three-year-old Evangelical Church of North America. The new denomination has 112 congregations in eleven states making up four annual conferences.
House of Representatives chaplain Dr. Edward G. Latch, former pastor of Metropolitan Memorial Methodist Church (the Nixons attended it when Nixon was vice-president), will officiate at the wedding of Tricia Nixon and Harvard law student Edward F. Cox in the White House on June 5.
Dr. Robert Schuller, pastor of the Garden Grove (California) Community Church, will preach at the 5 A.M. Easter sunrise service at the Hollywood Bowl in southern California.
Ernest T. Wilkinson, 71, president of Brigham Young University, is retiring … C. Emanuel Carlson, for seventeen years the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, retired this month.
After ten years as editor of the weekly magazine of the General Conference Mennonite Church, The Mennonite, Maynard Shelly has resigned.
Miss Georgia and Miss Atlanta, Nancy Karol Carr and Mary Jo Hall, have both served as ministers of youth at Georgia Baptist churches. Both are 22, and each has been a Christian thirteen years.
Father Paul Gauthier, apostle of the poor and one of Roman Catholicism’s principal personalities, is about to announce his official break with the church, according to a respected Milan daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera.
Scripture Union of the Americas has appointed Jose M. Guevara general secretary for Argentina and editor of Spanish-language materials for Latin America.
Sandia Base (New Mexico) chaplain John A. Lindvall has been named vice-president of Southern California College at Costa Mesa and will assist in the opening of a graduate school of theology at the Assemblies of God campus.
A black Baptist minister blind from birth and abandoned as a two-month-old baby on a circus grounds has been awarded a Ph.D. by Columbia University. Dr. Williams Butts, 48, received the academic degree after seven years of study for his dissertation on “The Problem of Meaning in Theological Language.” “Ever since I was a boy I’ve had the idea that God had something for me to do,” says the preacher, singer, and teacher.
An Ursuline nun who is a doctoral-degree student at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Sister Mary Catherine Vukmanic, has been named one of thirty-eight Garrett Fellows at the school … Sister Helen C. Volkomener of Seattle’s Providence Community is believed to be the first Catholic nun to be employed as a staff member of a national United Methodist agency—the Women’s Division of the Board of Missions.
The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada elected Parliament member Robert N.Thompson of Red Deer, Alberta, as president. Formerly a missionary-educator in Ethiopia, he is chairman of World Vision of Canada and a member of the Evangelical Free Church. Toronto Presbyterian minister Donald MacLeod and Christian and Missionary Alliance layman James Clemenger, also of Toronto, were elected vice-presidents.
William S. Banowsky has been named president of Pepperdine University (Church of Christ) in Los Angeles succeeding M. Norvel Young, who has been made chairman of the board and chancellor of the school.
World Scene
The Central American Mission’s evangelism department, directed by William Wilder, is leading the CAM’s 800 congregations in a year-long total evangelism effort. Overseas Crusades and Argentine evangelist Luis Palau are also cooperating.
The Vatican last month instructed bishops and superiors of religious orders throughout the world to bar men who leave the priesthood from all church work. The Holy See also simplified procedures for release of priests.
Pope Paul sent the head of the Greek Orthodox Church a letter expressing longing for the day “when we will be able to commune together from the same chalice of the Lord.”
Miniature Bibles, sold in Brussels, Belgium, vending machines for twenty cents, are moving well among the young.
Two Catholic lay editors of Shield magazine in Rhodesia resigned to protest a “backing down” by the country’s Catholic bishops on their strong antigovernment position against according special privileges to white Rhodesians. Catholic leaders last year said they would defy the Land Tenure Act; in February they ruled that the church’s multiracial schools would register “under protest.” Observers feel other churches will now also register. The editors called the compromise “immoral.”
The organist and the entire choir of St. Thomas Anglican Church in Golborne, England, resigned because the rector wanted “brighter and more lively hymns.”
Orthodox Jews who pray daily have fewer heart attacks than persons who rarely attend synagogue, according to the Israel Ischemic Heart Disease Project.
