Good-Bye, Cocu
The United Presbyterian Church has disengaged from COCU on schedule, having paid its ten-month contribution of $19,500. The Synods of New York and Wisconsin along with a number of presbyteries have petitioned next year’s General Assembly to reconsider membership. But Moderator C. Willard Heckel isn’t enthused about COCU (“my Episcopalian relatives love bishops; I don’t”), and he doubts whether many other leaders are.
Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ asked the UCC’s Executive Council to reexamine its “negative” reaction to COCU’s Plan of Union.
PRAYERS AND A GOOD TOE
When Don Cockroft, punter and place-kicker of the Cleveland Browns, missed a field goal in a crucial game recently he did a most natural thing for him—he prayed. One minute and fifty seconds later, with time running out, his prayers were answered and he got a second chance. This time he made good the kick to give his team a two-point victory over Pittsburgh in the last seconds of the game.
Cockroft, a Nazarene and an active member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, told interviewers later that he prayed because the game and possibly a division championship hinged on his kick. A teammate called the jubilant locker-room scene afterward “cardiac heaven.”
One victim of the Cockroft kick was fellow FCA member Terry Bradshaw, quarterback of the losing Steelers.
Vanguard: Editing Out The Pope
Early last month a new Presbyterian church, conceived last September (see October 13 issue, page 46), began the birth process at historic Tabb Street Church in Petersburg, Virginia.
The seventy delegates and official “visiting brethren” installed Todd Allen, pastor of Eastern Heights Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Georgia, as moderator of the new presbytery. They also began work on a constitution and by-laws. The new denomination will adhere to a mildly edited Westminster Confession of 1789 (deletions: identifying the Pope as Anti-Christ, and a ban against marriage between a widower and his sister-in-law) and the Presbyterian Book of Church Order.
The presbytery is the result of years of liberal-conservative haggling in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern). Several Presbyterian congregations have recently severed ties with the denomination (see November 24 issue, page 41). Although not all of them have joined the new presbytery (as of last month’s meeting Vanguard had only six congregations), Allen estimates that perhaps one to four thousand more Southern Presbyterian congregations may withdraw to join Vanguard.
Southern Presbyterian moderator L. Nelson Bell is afraid he’s right. But even so, Bell predicts a short, bleak future for Vanguard. “Judging by the past history of splinter movements in the church, it is very likely that this group will split up,” he said.
Afoul Of The Law
In separate incidents, two preachers collided with the repressive politics of countries they were visiting, and they have some lumps to show for it.
A Czechoslovak court sentenced Pentecostal minister David Hathaway of Yorkshire, England, to two years in prison on charges of attempted subversion. He was arrested at the border in June while heading a tour group. Border guards discovered Bibles and Christian literature in the storage compartment of the group’s bus. Authorities said the literature had anti-state content. Hathaway denied knowing that the contraband was aboard, but officials replied that as tour leader he was responsible. A charge that he imported Bibles illegally into Czechoslovakia was dropped.
American street evangelist Arthur Blessitt and followers were beaten and arrested by riot police in Madrid. Blessitt, on a cross-toting witness trek across Spain, was preaching to a crowd of about 1,000 in a downtown plaza when police ordered the meeting shut down on grounds it was an unlawful assembly. Blessitt balked, insisting on rights of free speech. The police, clubs swinging, dispersed the crowd. (Most, including a number of Youth With a Mission team members, fled to a nearby church to pray.) Blessitt, a local evangelical pastor, and several others were carted off to jail. Within an hour, the American consul and Catholic authorities secured their release. The bruised but determined Blessitt went back to finish his sermon—inside the church.
Bolt From The Blue
The Swamp United Church of Christ in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, recently celebrated the appearance of a strange lightning bolt 180 years ago. According to Evangelical Press news service, it seems that when circuit-riding preacher John Waldschmidt died in 1786, his wife became a demented deaf mute. During a church service six years later, lightning struck the cemetery outside. Upon investigation, say church records, the shocked congregation discovered that the bolt had split Waldschmidt’s tombstone in two—and that the widow was healed the same instant.
