The Jesus movement has vanished from news media attention, but its spirit lives on. Last month on Paul Mast’s potato farm near Morgantown, Pennsylvania, an estimated 30,000 gathered for Jesus ’75. It was the largest crowd for such an event since Campus Crusade’s Explo ’72 drew 85,000 to Dallas.
The three-day event was punctuated by rain, turning the main program area into a sea of mud at times, but the downpour failed to dampen enthusiasm.
Tents, trailers, and camper vehicles of every description ringed the meeting area on three sides. Four huge circussized tents flanked the outdoor platform. Two tents, each with a capacity of several thousand, were used for teaching seminars. Another tent housed a busy book and record shop (some 300 copies of Strong’s Concordance were snapped up, and books by Francis Schaeffer moved briskly) plus display booths rented by Christian colleges, mission agencies, and other groups. A supermarket of sorts operated in the other tent. Tank trucks brought in 5,000 gallons of drinking water every hour or so.
Major program attention was given to Bible teaching. There were series of seminars on family life, evangelism, and Christian living. In between, a bevy of musicians kept the program moving. They included Chuck Girard (formerly of the Love Song), Ted Sandquist, Phil Keaggy, and the Andrae Crouch group.
The trend today is for more teaching content and less music, commented one of the leaders.
Among the speakers: Evangelist Tom Skinner; Lutheran pastor Larry Christenson, a specialist on the family; youth evangelists Larry Tomczak (a Catholic) and C. J. Mahaney, a dynamic 21-year-old who was clearly the favorite of many young people; Loren Cunningham, head of Youth With a Mission; Philadelphia pastor John Poole; and Bible teachers Ern Baxter and Malcolm Smith. All but Skinner are charismatics.
The majority of persons attending Jesus ’75 appeared to be in their twenties. There was also a noticeable presence of family groups. Most were associated with established churches. They brought their Bibles and took notes at the teaching sessions. They were friendly but not bubbly or exuberant as they may have been at such gatherings three or four years ago.
The Jesus people have grown up, said an observer.
Jesus ’75 was the third Jesus festival sponsored by the Jesus Ministries of Ephrata, Pennsylvania. It is headed by Mennonite Harold M. Zimmerman, 48, a concrete contractor; United Presbyterian John Musser, 48, a construction foreman; and Mennonite Tom Hess, 36, a fruit packer. All are charismatics. They first became involved in the festivals when a band of Lancaster County Jesus people appealed for help with Jesus ’73. Two festivals will be held next year, one in Orlando, Florida, the other in Mercer, Pennsylvania, with the assistance of local committees.
Under the watchful direction of the three, the festivals have brought in enough money through registration fees and commissions to enable purchase of additional equipment and facilities (the group owns the necessary scores of portable toilets, for example) for use next time and to donate funds to youth mission work. An office secretary is the only paid worker.
Despite the heavy saturation of charismatic leaders and speakers, appeal was kept universal: no public displays of tongues, prophecies, or healing lines. Indeed, several speakers suggested that a need exists in charismatic circles for more reliance on faith and less on healing.
Jesus ’75 was centered on the theme of unity in Christ, a theme for which illustrations abounded. On one afternoon, about 2,000 Catholic charismatic participants attended a special mass conducted in one of the big tents by Franciscan priest Edward Dillon of Washington, D. C.
Cunningham challenged young people in his seminars to get involved in short-term massive outreach, whether overseas or in North America. Under his guidance Youth With a Mission (YWAM) has become one of the nation’s largest mission agencies, fielding thousands of young people worldwide for short-term missionary service. It has permanent bases in fifty nations. Cunningham plans to launch a cross-country bicentennial Christian witness campaign in January. Teams will converge on key East Coast cities in mid-summer—with an assist from a jumbo-jet planeload of overseas young people—and then proceed to the Olympics in Montreal for outreach work (YWAM helped to coordinate the efforts of 2,000 evangelistic workers at the Olympics in Munich in 1972).
As for the Jesus movement, it’s still going on, says Zimmerman, but it’s mostly in the churches now.
Episcopal Revolt
The bishops of the Episcopal Church have a revolt on their hands. At a meeting this month in Portland, Maine, they will discuss what to do about it.
Five more women were to be ordained to the priesthood on September 7 at the Church of St. Stephen and the Incarnation in Washington, D. C.—against the advice of their own bishops and the wishes of the full House of Bishops. Resigned bishop George W. Barrett, 67, was to perform the ordination.
Earlier, the Washington church called Mrs. Alison Cheek as a part-time priest—the first woman to be employed as an Episcopal priest in America. Mrs. Cheek and ten other women were ordained by several retired or resigned bishops more than a year ago in a service in Philadelphia. The ordinations were subsequently ruled invalid by the House of Bishops, but the women have been celebrating Communion (a priestly act) at a number of churches.
In Oberlin, Ohio, Rector L. Peter Beebe is in hot water with Bishop John H. Burt. Beebe was found guilty by a church court of disobeying Burt in permitting two women to celebrate Communion in December, but he allowed them to do it again just forty-eight hours after the verdict was announced. For that Burt restricted Beebe’s ministry to his own parish and decreed that no one can officiate at church services or be added to the church staff without the bishop’s permission. The church’s ruling body had asked Beebe to call one of the women as a staff priest. Beebe says that as a matter of justice he will continue to permit women to celebrate Communion in defiance of Burt’s orders.
The rector of St. Stephen’s church in Washington is William A. Wendt, who was found guilty by a church court of disobeying Bishop William F. Creighton in allowing Mrs. Cheek to consecrate the Communion elements. He was told by the court not to let it happen again. He may be in deeper trouble as a result of the latest developments.
Creighton said he made it plain to Wendt and Barrett that the scheduled ordinations did not have his permission.
Barrett resigned as bishop of Rochester, New York, in 1970 to avoid scandal to the church resulting from the break-up of his marriage and subsequent remarriage, according to news sources. He now serves as executive director of Planned Parenthood in Santa Barbara, California. In conscience, said he in a letter to his fellow bishops, “I cannot refuse to act in this instance.”
The House of Bishops wants a moratorium on such ordinations until next year’s triennial convention of the denomination, when there will be another opportunity to act on the issue.
St. Patrick’S: Jesus At The Core
Four years ago, St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, a landmark just across the street from the state capitol in Providence, Rhode Island, was dying. Though 6,000 were on its parish roster, only a few hundred came to Sunday masses. Smith Hill, the parish neighborhood, was headed down hill; illicit drug traffic and aging, poorly maintained, multi-family houses were signs of the decline. Construction of an interstate highway physically divided the parish, destroyed much housing, and uprooted many parishioners. The church, in financial trouble, had to close its cherished parish school.
In the spring of 1971, two new priests were sent to St. Patrick’s. Father John Randall recalls that “many parishioners were convinced … that Father [Raymond] Kelly and I had really come to bury the parish.”
Today the mammoth St. Patrick’s church stands locked and unused, closed because building inspectors found it unsafe. But the church lives. The school is open. Most of the thirty staff members volunteer their services, receiving only $7.50 a week for personal expenses. The school auditorium and a classroom are now sanctuary and chapel, adorned with banners and children’s paintings. Worship attendance has tripled. The neighborhood still has its problems, but there are signs of improvemept, partly because of an active Christian social witness in the community.
Four years ago, Bob Fitzgerald, father of nine, was traveling around New England selling restaurant equipment. Now, with help from his family and others, he runs the Earthen Vessel, a busy used clothing and appliance shop. Fitzgerald charges what he thinks his customers can afford—nothing or a nominal sum. A banner on a front wall points up the biblical inspiration for the name: “This treasure we possess in earthen vessels” (2 Cor. 4:7).
The changes in St. Patrick’s and in individuals like Fitzgerald are related. Under Fathers Kelly and Randall, who had been active in a charismatic prayer group, St. Patrick’s has become a charismatic parish. Although not all of St. Patrick’s members would identify themselves as part of the so-called Catholic charismatic renewal movement, there is no vocal opposition to it. Besides the usual daily and Sunday masses, St. Patrick’s worship schedule includes three charismatic-oriented prayer meetings a week. The main Sunday mass is decidedly charismatic.
The charismatics reopened the parish school “with Jesus as the core curriculum,” as one parishioner put it. The 175 students in kindergarten through eighth grade are not subject to the uniforms and rigid discipline that have long characterized parochial schools. Their teachers come half an hour early each day for charismatic-style prayer together, and there are daily individual and group prayer sessions geared to different age levels. Parents are expected to complement the religious education the school provides.
Without central planning or constant exhortation, many charismatic families are moving into the low-income, residually Irish parish neighborhood, often from more affluent sections of the Providence area.
The parish includes about a dozen large communal “households.” For example, besides Robert and Helen Hawkinson and their two children, the household they head includes Gina, 30, who works in the diocesan media center; Ray, 27, who teaches French in a public school; David, 22, who teaches math and science at the parish school; and Terri, 18, who just finished high school. Although she has been away visiting relatives in California for several months, Evelyn, 27, a secretary, is still considered part of the household. A room in the three-story Victorian house is kept for her.
Both 45, the Hawkinsons are parish volunteers. He handles church finances; she works with Our Daily Bread, the food co-op. Only Gina and Ray receive regular salaries, which they pool to care for household expenses.
Parish activities have an ecumenical dimension. With the neighborhood Presbyterian and Baptist congregations, St. Patrick’s helps support and staff the Butterfly Shop, which sells handicrafts, and the Shepherd’s Staff, a family counseling center, as well as the co-op. An estimated one-third of the 600 to 700 people who attend Friday prayer meetings are non-Catholic.
Right after he got back from the international Catholic charismatic conference in Rome (see June 6 issue, page 45), Randall led a retreat for some Methodists and Presbyterians. Ten years ago, he said, he would have felt “schizophrenic” about that. Now he feels “at home.”
In many ways, the worship, Bible study, community action, and parish education at St. Patrick’s are not unusual or notably Pentecostal in style. Observers, however, are impressed by the wide range of the activities, the number of full-time volunteers, and the enthusiasm and informality with which parishioners work and worship. Outsiders come away speaking of the ease with which Christian principles are articulated and connected with all that goes on.
St. Patrick’s is not without problems. Discussion at an informal Saturday-morning Bible study suggested continuing problems in parent-child relations. As in many congregations, there are varying degrees of commitment, with many content merely to attend Sunday worship. But over all, the problems are those associated with life, not a dying church.
Critics of the Catholic charismatic movement accuse it of taking ecumenism too seriously, of deviating from traditional Catholic dogma. But St. Patrick’s seems firmly committed to mainstream, post-Vatican II Catholicism, including some very Catholic practices and beliefs with which many Protestants would be uncomfortable at best. Mainline Catholics on the other hand might have raised their eyebrows at a recent Friday prayer meeting where Randall used Peter as a figure for institutional Catholicism and Paul for charismatic Catholicism. “Peter and Paul,” he proclaimed, “stand together.”
TOM DORRIS
PREPARED
Retired Foursquare pastor Melville S. Taylor had often said that when it came time for him to die he wanted the Lord to take him while he was preaching. Last month he was guest preacher at Baseview Assembly of God church in Emerado, North Dakota. He said when he started to preach that he hadn’t realized until then what the Lord wanted him to talk about, commented Steven Robbins, Baseview’s pastor. “Then he talked about eternal life. He stated in his message that he loved his family, but that if the Lord chose to take him home he was prepared to go right now.”
A moment later, said Robbins, the 71-year-old Taylor collapsed and fell from the podium, apparently having suffered a heart attack. Attempts to revive him failed.
Taylor’s long-standing wish had been honored.
Getting Higher
Contrary to popular belief, illicit drug use among the young is increasing, according to some new university and government studies. Especially involved are young people in their early twenties, with marijuana (used regularly by 21 per cent) and alcohol (58 per cent) the most commonly used substances. Government studies show that heroin users have more than doubled, from 315,000 in 1969 to 724,000, and narcotics-related deaths are up 35 per cent in the same period.
Presidential Choice
William P. Thompson, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church, is the choice of the National Council of Churches nominating committee to be the next NCC president, according to Religious News Service. If the Council’s governing board accepts the nomination at its triennial meeting in October, the result will be two members of the same communion, both of them laypersons, in top NCC positions. The General Secretary, Claire Randall, is also a United Presbyterian and not ordained to the ministry. Thompson was a Kansas lawyer before becoming his denomination’s chief executive.
Gypsy In Jail
Gypsies are among those who have been involved in the revival-like movement that has spread throughout Romania in the past few years. One of them is Evangelist loan Samu, 31, a fiery preacher. Samu was arrested last Christmas for preaching without permission and for distributing unauthorized Christian literature, according to sources. His prison sentence of nearly four years was reduced on appeal recently to two years. One of the side penalties was loss of income for his family (his wife gave birth to their sixth child in May).
Samu, like many of the Christian Gypsies, gave up his nomadic ways and settled down after his conversion. He became a postal worker, devoting his spare time to evangelism. Prior to his latest arrest he had been fined stiffly several times for ignoring government restrictions on his preaching.
Détente With The Church?
Five Baptist women have been released from prison in the Soviet Union after serving only eight months of their sentences, according to Keston News Service, which is headed by authoritative researcher Michael Bordeaux of suburban London. The five were among seven arrested in Latvia last fall when Soviet authorities discovered one of the secret printing presses operated by the dissident Baptist movement in the U. S. S. R. (see December 20, 1974, issue, page 26, and April 25 issue, page 44).
Upon their release (reportedly in connection with International Women’s Year), the women wrote an open letter thanking Christians everywhere for their prayers and asking them to keep on remembering the two men arrested with them along with Georgi Vins, leader of the Baptist reform movement who is in a labor camp in Siberia.
Curiously, the Kiev church of which Vins is an elected officer has been registered unconditionally by the authorities, enabling it to function freely without the usual restrictions placed on unauthorized groups. According to the believers in Kiev, says Keston, this is the first instance of its kind in the Soviet Union. The 500 members, who have been meeting in the woods, now have a church building, and they were renovating it at last word.
Veteran Soviet watchers are wondering if the move is window dressing or if it represents a thaw in church-state relations. Earlier, the entire membership of the Pentecostal congregation in Chernogorsk (eighty-six members arid their families) issued appeals to President Ford. They asked his help in obtaining permission to emigrate from their homeland. Commented Keston: “They no longer wish to live in a country where there is no freedom of religion.”
Hardiness In Haiti
Baptist clergyman Claude Noel of Portau-Prince, Haiti, is the new—and first—general secretary of the Council of Evangelical Churches of Haiti (CECH). Noel was appointed to his post at the recent CECH annual meeting. Another Baptist pastor, Orius Paultre, who is also a physician, succeeded him as president. They plan to emphasize evangelism and community development. (Haiti reputedly has had the lowest per capita income of any western hemisphere nation; the needs are urgent on many fronts, from agricultural development and technical training to education, medical care, and safe drinking water.)
Formed in 1972, the CECH has eighteen member denominations and missions representing about 80 per cent of the 400,000-plus Protestants (the West Indies Mission and Unevangelized Fields Mission each have about 100,000 baptized members). Its member churches are among the fastest growing in the world. The remaining 20 per cent is composed of two denominations in the World Council of Churches (Anglicans and Methodists) and independent missions and churches.
CECH programs have included a national congress on evangelism, a series of church-growth workshops, and Theological Education by Extension (TEE) offerings.
Assemblies Of God: Record Growth
While many other American denominations were experiencing declines, the Assemblies of God grew a record 10.6 per cent in the last two years, according to reports released at last month’s thirty-sixth General Council, the AOG’s biennial convention. In the United States, AOG membership is now 758,348 in over 9,000 congregations. With 1,128 missionaries serving in ninety-five countries, the overseas constituency now exceeds four million.
The 12,000 delegates and guests were joined in Denver by thousands of other visitors at an outdoor rally to launch AOG participation in the nation’s bicentennial. General Superintendent Thomas F. Zimmerman read a proclamation.
In addition to housekeeping actions, the delegates adopted a statement critical of sex education in public schools. They asked that such courses be voluntary rather than compulsory, that moral dimensions be added to teaching materials, and that parents and churches work to remove objectionable materials.
Brotherly Brethren
Canadians don’t always see eye-to-eye with Americans on important issues, but a strong sense of unity prevailed at last month’s triennial joint meeting of the Canadian and U. S. conferences of Mennonite Brethren churches. Held in Winnipeg, Canada, the denomination’s fifty-third general convention brought together 527 delegates. They represented 258 churches with 15,870 members and 18,663 in Canada.
Culminating efforts begun nearly thirty years ago, the body agreed to make Brethren Biblical Seminary of Fresno, California, the official seminary of both conferences. It was formerly under U. S. conference jurisdiction. Agreement was also reached on cooperative publishing plans.
A revised confession of faith, hammered out over fifteen years, was adopted as a “descriptive” (rather than “prescriptive”) statement of what Mennonite Brethren believe. A sample: “We believe it is not God’s will that Christians take up arms in military service.”
The denomination’s guiding board in spiritual matters presented a paper strengthening a 1972 anti-abortion resolution. “Deliberate abortion is sin,” said the board, insisting that state laws cannot serve as an “adequate basis for moral judgment for the believer.”
The delegates approved a resolution expressing “deep concern” over the Arab-Israeli situation and saying that endorsement of either side easily leads to identification with militarism. Church members were urged to pray for the salvation of Arabs and Jews.
Approval was given for some new mission ventures: financial and personnel aid to non-Mennonite Brethren evangelical groups (like the Muria Synod Church of Indonesia) and personnel assistance to non-Mennonite Brethren groups not generally considered evangelical (some independent African churches). That neither program would involve establishing churches for the denomination did not appear to be a major concern.
A missions budget of $2.4 million was accepted for the coming year; it will rise 10 per cent annually over the coming triennium.
Most of the world’s 100,000 Mennonite Brethren believers live outside North America. These include perhaps as many as 20,000 in the Soviet Union.
DORA DUECK
The Disciples: Accommodating Cocu
Continued support of its ecumenical ties, especially with the Consultation on Church Union (COCU), was evident at the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) biennial assembly in San Antonio last month.
After a half-hour debate, the top legislative body of the 1.3-million-member denomination said it was willing to recognize the baptism and membership credentials of persons coming to it from other COCU churches. While the declaration is not binding on Disciples congregations, it was considered significant because for much of their history Disciples have insisted on believer’s baptism. Many of the local churches (some think at least a third of them) will not accept a person from another denomination if he has not been immersed as a believer.
Paul Crow, Jr., president of the Disciples Council on Christian Unity and a former general secretary of COCU, hailed the vote as “the most important step toward church union” since the 1832 merger in which the denomination was born. The action was taken at COCU’s request; the Disciples are the fourth COCU participant to comply.
Proponents of the action denied that it watered down the church’s historic position on baptism. Rather, they argued, it affirmed the Disciples’ traditional stance on Christian unity.
Delegates to the assembly devoted some attention to the Lord’s Supper during a Sunday-evening program that included a “mariachi mass” led by Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop P. F. Flores of San Antonio. Mexican musicians and ballet dancers took part. The communion elements were served only to the Catholic clerics who led the service. The convention newspaper reported, however, that some delegates had taken communion earlier in the day at a Roman Catholic parish where a visiting Disciples minister preached.
Various convention programs featured an ecumenical who’s who. Speakers included Eugene Carson Blake, retired World Council of Churches general secretary; Claire Randall, National Council of Churches general secretary; Jorge Lara-Braud, executive director of the NCC faith and order commission; and Burgess Carr, executive head of the All Africa Conference of Churches and the leading advocate of missionary moratorium.
Resolutions adopted included one that supports the NCC’s endorsement of the boycott of California and Arizona table grapes and iceberg lettuce and of Gallo wines. Also adopted was a resolution opposing “any attempt to legislate a specific religious opinion or belief concerning abortion upon Americans.” The assembly voted down a resolution that would have condemned the 1973 abortion rulings of the U. S. Supreme Court. Approved was a statement putting the Disciples on record against “hard core pornography in all forms.”
In a “state of the church” address, Kenneth L. Teegarden, general minister and president, expressed concern about the “downward slide” in membership. The latest yearbook reported 1,317,044 members, a loss of 18,414 from two years earlier. Teegarden said the church should be challenged to show a 5 per cent annual growth for the next four years to correct the loss. Another denominational executive, Enoch W. Henry, Jr., told an evangelism meeting: “If current membership trends continue, the Christian Church would be extinct by the year 2000.”
Elected as moderator was James A. Moak, the Disciples’ general minister for Kentucky since 1967.
Cautious Concurrence
Cautious concessions to the influence of governmental agencies on Christian education were made last month at the biennial convention of the 390,000-member Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), held at Watertown, Wisconsin.
Under pressure from the U. S. Department of Labor to pay its school teachers equally, the synod passed a resolution that concurred “in the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work.” The vote came only after a committee proposing a new salary schedule assured delegates that “it did not concede that the U. S. Department of Labor had jurisdiction in determining or regulating the salaries paid by religious bodies to their called ministry.” About fifteen of the 275 day schools operated by WELS churches are subsidized by the synod. Technically, the new salary schedule applies only to the fifteen, but those run by the self-supporting congregations are expected to follow the guidelines.
Alleged violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act occurred most frequently in the area of housing allowances. Male teachers generally were provided such an allowance, but women were not. Under the new schedule, housing is to be provided for all teachers “according to family needs without regard to sex.”
Even more cautious was the synod’s action on the question of accreditation for its Northwestern College, located at Watertown. After two hours of debate the delegates authorized the school to explore the possibility of seeking regional accreditation unless the school determines that the accrediting body’s requirements in any way “conflict with the Synod’s scriptural principles, or philosophy of education, or if the college finds any conflict with its purpose or program.” College president Carleton Toppe admitted sharing some of the fears of delegates but asked for a “first step” in order to try to comply with the University of Wisconsin system’s requirement that all unaccredited colleges in the state must start the process by September, 1976. At that time the university system plans to stop accepting undergraduate transfer credits from schools not seeking accreditation.
Subsidies for the synod’s four academies, its two colleges, and its seminary were included in the record budget of $16.1 million adopted without dissent for the next biennium. All seven of the institutions are maintained for the exclusive purpose of educating the denomination’s future pastors and teachers.
The budget for the next two years also anticipates the establishment of forty new congregations, including several on the East Coast. Among the thirty-four congregations admitted to membership at the convention were five from the now dissolved Federation of Authentic Lutheranism, a holding body made up primarily of former members of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS). The WELS Commission on Interchurch Relations expressed the hope that the conservative force within the LCMS “might yet win its confessional battle” with moderates, but the WELS panel maintained that the Missouri group is still guilty of “unionism” because of its relations with the Lutheran Council and with the more liberal American Lutheran Church.
Oscar J. Naumann of Milwaukee, synod president since 1953, was named to a twelfth term.
