Following the overwhelming rejection last month of a gay-rights ordinance by Dade County (Miami) voters, groups on both sides of the controversy began laying plans for similar battles in other cities.
“We’re going to set up in Washington next to fight gay proposals before Congress,” declared Robert Brake, co-founder with singer Anita Bryant of Save Our Children (SOC), the group that led the opposition to the ordinance in Miami. “We’ll advise and help any anti-gay group in the country that invites us in,” he said. He said there were already inquiries from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and San Antonio.
“We got beaten badly in the battle here, but the war is just beginning,” commented John W. Campbell, chairman of Coalition for Human Rights, a Miami homosexual group. “We’re coming out of Miami with national unity and momentum,” he added.
The vote in Miami was impressive: 202,319 for repeal and 89,562 against. The ordinance, which guaranteed equal-employment and other rights to homosexuals, was passed in January by the Dade County Commission in a 5 to 3 vote. The people, said Miss Bryant, “have voted to repeal an obnoxious assault on our moral values.” Other prominent names figured in the repeal crusade (among them: Florida governor Reuben Askew and Chicago Cubs coach Alvin Dark, both evangelical Christians), but Miss Bryant was considered the leader. In a series of lectures and concerts, she helped raise almost $200,000 for SOC’s campaign.
Pastor William Chapman of Northwest Baptist Church, where Miss Bryant and her family attend, introduced her at a press conference after the voting results were announced. She is the homosexual movement’s “greatest foe,” said Chapman, “but we simply know her as a Christian, as a mother, and as a person who says it’s time for America to stand up for what we have believed in for all of our history.”
Miss Bryant pledged that “with God’s continued help, we will prevail in our fight to repeal similar laws throughout the nation which attempt to legitimize a lifestyle that is both perverse and dangerous—dangerous to the sanctity of the family, to our children, to our freedom of religion and freedom of choice, and to our survival as one nation under God.” She pledged also to “seek help and change for homosexuals themselves.”
Religious groups figured centrally in the repeal efforts. The local Roman Catholic hierarchy issued a letter to area Catholics criticizing the ordinance. A coalition of twelve Spanish-speaking Catholic lay groups said the ordinance “does not in fact contribute to human or civil rights of homosexuals” but “would limit the freedom of parents to protect their children” from homosexual influences (the main debate in the campaign was over whether homosexuals should be allowed to teach in public schools). All seven members of the local regional unit of the Rabbinical Assembly of America, a Conservative Jewish body, objected to “allowing gays to occupy positions as teachers or clergymen, where they come in contact with impressionable children as role models.” They called for repeal of the ordinance and adoption of one that “will protect homosexuals from random discrimination, harassment, and criminalization, while upholding the centrality of the heterosexual family unit.” Many Protestant churches gave all-out support to repeal efforts.
There were some clergy voices of dissent, however. Executive G. William Sheek of the National Council of Churches told Dade County commissioners in a letter that Miss Bryant and others in SOC “certainly do not represent the total Christian community.” He noted that the NCC governing board in 1975 had passed a resolution upholding equal civil rights for everyone without discrimination as to affectional or sexual preference.
Rabbi Sanford Shapiro, a regional director of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, a Reform Jewish group, noted that his organization is on record affirming that “homosexual persons are entitled to equal protection of the law with all other citizens in [such areas as] employment and housing.”
The board of elders of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, a homosexually oriented denomination, charged that Miss Bryant’s campaign was “both un-Christian and un-American.”
In other developments:
• A defrocked Episcopal priest, Claudius Vermilye, 48, was sentenced by a Tennessee court to a prison term of from twenty-five to forty years after being found guilty of charges that he used in obscene films boys at a rehabilitative home he operated. On the stand, he denied charges that he had committed homosexual acts with the boys.
• Education officials in San Francisco announced plans to introduce a new public school curriculum to “sensitize” students to accept—or at least tolerate—homosexual life-styles as just another way of living. Parents will be permitted to have their children excused from the classes. The proposal has been open for debate at school-board meetings for two years, but no one has stepped forward to oppose it, according to a spokesperson. Signs of opposition are becoming evident, however, and a major clash is expected when the word gets around.
• Gay-rights leaders asked the Federal Communications Commission to require broadcasters to give air time to the gay point of view when they air Anita Bryant’s anti-gay views. The gay activists complained that KVOF-TV in San Francisco, owned by Faith Center in Glendale, California, gave six hours on three programs to Miss Bryant and her husband Bob Green of SOC, but that it refused to grant time to gays.
• The National Gay Task Force, a coalition of homosexual organizations, launched a $1 million fund-raising drive in a campaign to educate Americans about the alleged plight of the nation’s “millions” of homosexuals.
• A California state senate committee voted to ban state recognition of gay marriages; the legislature was expected to approve the bill, which stipulates that marriage is a civil contract entered into by a man and a woman.
Polling The Preachers
Any ecclesiastical trend-watchers who fear that the United Church of Christ is turning conservative can take comfort from a clergy survey issued last month on the eve of the UCC’s biennial synod.
A survey of 2,100 ministers in the UCC, the United Methodist Church (UMC), the United Presbyterian Church (UPC), and the Reformed Church in America (RCA) was conducted by the office of research, evaluation, and planning of the National Council of Churches. The responses of UCC clergy to the multiple-choice questions showed them the least conservative of the four denominational groups on nearly every subject.
Fewer than half (47.1 per cent) of the UCC participants in the poll thought “conversion of individuals to Jesus Christ” constitutes the way “a more Christian society will come.” In contrast, 65.9 per cent of the RCA ministers chose that answer. Of the Methodists responding, 57.9 per cent picked the “conversion” answer, while 48.1 per cent of the Presbyterians did.
Other options offered for achieving “a more Christian society” were: “Efforts of individual Christians for social betterment,” “cooperative efforts of socially minded persons and organizations in securing legislation to advance human welfare,” and “leadership of organized churches in advocating measures for social betterment.”
Chosen by 73.3 per cent of the UCC clergy as “the chief aim of missions” was: “release in both individuals and society the redemptive power of God disclosed in Jesus Christ so that all human life may be made whole.” That response was also given by 38.5 per cent of the RCA, 58.9 per cent of the UPC, and 61.5 per cent of the UMC respondents. Only 1.6 per cent of the UCC, 8.7 per cent of the UMC, 7 per cent of the UPC, and 17.1 per cent of the RCA clergy chose “save those who know not Christ and will be lost unless He is made known to them” as the main missions goal.
Asked about “Christianity’s primary way of relating to other faiths (including Judaism) and ideologies,” 53.9 per cent of the RCA ministers replied, “seek to convert their members.” To the same question, 51.9 per cent of the UCC respondents said, “accept them.” Another 14.4 per cent of the UCC clergy chose “incorporate their best parts.”
In the four-denomination sample, 39.9 per cent called evangelicals “a traditional emphasis,” 31.4 per cent saw them as “a needed corrective,” and 13.3 per cent said they are “a divisive force.” More Methodist (17.1 per cent) than UCC ministers (8.2) selected the “divisive force” answer.
More of the clergy (35.7 per cent) in the composite sample chose “communicating the implications of the Gospel” as the “role the church school performs” than chose “providing instruction in and about the Bible” (30.7 per cent).
Schism in Plains
After months of controversy, President Carter’s hometown congregation, Plains Baptist Church in Georgia, has officially split. Some fifty members left last month to form the Bottsford Baptist Mission, which will be supported in part by the Southern Baptist Convention home-missions board. A former pastor of Plains Baptist, Fred Collins, will serve as pastor of the new church. Meanwhile, Bruce Edwards, who resigned the Plains pastorate under pressure in February, accepted a call to become pastor of the Makakilo Baptist Church in Honolulu.
Edwards and Carter had both worked to overturn a ten-year-old resolution barring blacks from membership in the church. After that was done last November, feuding factions (race wasn’t a surface issue) kept the pot boiling. At a congregational business meeting in February, allegedly stacked with a number of inactive members, the anti-Edwards faction succeeded in obtaining his resignation (see March 18 issue, page 51).
Like Edwards, Collins served the Plains church for only a short time (both he and Edwards were criticized for making too few visits in homes, and Collins reportedly created an uproar when he switched the order of service on Sunday mornings to have announcements at the beginning rather than in the middle).
Leaders of the new church were strong backers of Edwards, and they include Hugh Carter, the President’s cousin. Miss Lillian, the President’s mother, has attended Plains Baptist for more than fifty years, but she told reporters she doesn’t want to be “in any split-up church.” She said she doesn’t want to attend “the old church” in its present condition but doesn’t want to join the new one yet, either. “I’ll have a long talk with Jimmy before I do anything,” she said.
The President expressed no opinion about which church he will attend if he visits Plains on a Sunday. “Tragic,” said he of the church split, according to a press spokesman. (He is now a member of First Baptist Church in Washington, where he occasionally teaches an adult class.)
Little Presbyterians: Drawing Closer
Although no mergers are in sight yet, the nation’s smaller and more conservative Presbyterian denominations showed signs at their 1977 assemblies of drawing closer to one another. One sign of the decreasing isolation is the decision of several to meet at the same time and place in 1978. Bodies aligned with the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC) have been invited to meet on the Grand Rapids campuses of Calvin College and Seminary. The latest to accept the bid last month was the 11,000-communicant Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The OPC also agreed to reopen the question of union with the 18,800-communicant Reformed Presbyterian Church-Evangelical Synod (RPCES) and possibly to vote on the matter in 1979.
The 62,000-communicant Presbyterian Church in America, youngest of the NAPARC bodies (see July 4, 1975, issue, page 62), had earlier voted to hold its 1978 assembly in Grand Rapids. The PCA and OPC are active partners in a Christian-education publishing venture.
The OPC assembly also approved establishment of fraternal relations with the 29,000-communicant Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, which has applied for NAPARC membership.
The RPCES, at its annual synod, took a preliminary step toward inviting the PCA to share in the ownership and control of its Covenant College on Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. Several PCA elders already serve on the college board, and the RPCES elected one PCA member to the board of Covenant Seminary, St. Louis.
The 5,400-communicant Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America took two steps at its spring synod that put it more in line with the other NAPARC members. It dropped its “closed communion” policy, leaving it to the discretion of local church elders whether to admit to the Lord’s table Christians from other bodies. The synod also dropped the requirement that all members must subscribe to the church’s full doctrinal standards. (In the other denominations, only officers are required to subscribe.)
The largest of the NAPARC members is the 280,000-member Christian Reformed Church. Its top governing body and those of the other four NAPARC members will meet simultaneously at Grand Rapids next year.
The Newest Saint
Pope Paul VI last month canonized the third American saint, the late Bishop John N. Neumann of Philadelphia (1811–1860). Neumann, born of a German-speaking family and educated in what is now Czechoslovakia, is the first member of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States to receive his church’s highest honor (the other two were nuns, Mother Cabrini and Mother Elizabeth Seton). In several respects the honor is unusual, for his career as bishop was short. Less than eight years after his consecration in 1852 he fell dead of a stroke on a Philadelphia street at the age of 48.
Neumann came to America in 1836 to work among German-speaking immigrants. His life-style reflected the poverty of those among whom he worked throughout the East. Wherever he went, churches began to be constructed at an astonishing rate, and parochial schools soon followed. In his years as bishop of Philadelphia, the indefatigable Neumann established eighty new parishes and fifty new schools.
After beatifying him as “venerable” in 1921, the Vatican took up the slow task of checking out “miracles” attributed to his intervention. The occasion of his sainthood was celebrated by thousands of Catholics who visited St. Peter’s Church in downtown Philadelphia, where his body is displayed in a glass casket.
GLENN D. EVERETT
The Choice
As many of the faithful can attest, tides of spiritual renewal are flowing in the Roman Catholic Church, thanks largely to the modern-day emphasis on the Bible and the ten-year-old spread of the charismatic movement in Catholic ranks. This swirl of activity and thought has resulted in new kinds of problems for some parishes. For example, a Catholic priest in the San Francisco Bay area lost his pastorate and is now suspended from the duties of office for what he sees as his “fundamentalism” and “bringing the charismatic movement out of the basement” but what his superiors of the Oakland Diocese see as “parochial mismanagement.”
Father John Dollard, 58, has pastored St. Charles Borromeo in Livermore, a suburb southeast of Oakland, for the past twelve of his thirty-one years as a priest. For four years after the church’s founding he held services in area schools, and then a building was erected.
His problem, according to press accounts, began last June with letters sent to the diocese by some of his parishioners. Bishop Floyd Begin, 74, soon held a series of hearings at St. Michael’s church, also in Livermore. On July 19 the diocese charged Dollard with unorthodoxy and removed him from St. Charles. Through a technicality the order was rescinded, and he remained until September 20, when he received a letter from Bishop Begin citing him for “parochial mismanagement.” He was asked to resign and to appear for reassignment by November 11.
Then on November 15 the weekly diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Voice, announced without comment the appointment of priest James Keeley to St. Charles. On December 12 a local daily reported Dollard’s suspension from celebrating Mass, offering the sacraments, and preaching in the name of the Roman Catholic Church. The suspension, said the account, would continue until he came to the diocese for reassignment. Next it was reported that Dollard had started the Church of the Body of Christ in a Livermore school. Approximately eighty adults attend there each week. Most formerly attended St. Charles. A spokesperson describes it as “an independent Christian congregation.”
What will happen next is uncertain. Dollard says excommunication is a possibility but he doesn’t consider it very likely. He thinks that the next move is probably up to him. Nor does diocesan chancellor Brian Joyce think church officials will take any action. He says, though, “Father Dollard’s forming his own church may cause problems at this point. That’s not the usual way of doing things.”
During a telephone interview, Joyce also discussed the bishop’s letter and the causes for removal. He quoted the letter as saying Dollard was in “good standing” and was encouraged to report for a new assignment. “When Father Dollard didn’t respond to the letter. Bishop Begin telephoned him, but he wouldn’t come in to discuss this or any other matter,” said Joyce.
Joyce emphasized that the charismatic movement, Scripture, and theology were not mentioned in the letter as causes for removal. “I respect Father Dollard highly and feel he’s doing a lot of good in bringing people close to the Scriptures,” he commented. He added that the diocese doesn’t discourage the charismatic movement: there are more than fifty such prayer groups, and a vicar was appointed especially to help them. A number of priests are charismatic, including the one who temporarily served St. Charles in the fall, he pointed out, and St. Charles still has a charismatic prayer group of about fifty.
“Father Dollard’s perception of the problem may be in terms of fundamentalism and preaching the Bible,” said Joyce. “The bishop’s were of pastoral considerations, of attending to the parish. For one thing, Father Dollard’s financial policy had alienated many parishioners.”
Dollard, also contacted by phone, admitted to causing an uproar in 1970 when he told parishioners to contribute or else receive only minimal services from the church. “We had a building and people weren’t paying the bills,” he explained. (The priest made headlines for his ultimatum, and church membership plummeted from 800 to 250. Not long afterward, however, it returned to 500. By the time of his removal, he says, the church was financially sound.)
Dollard says he believes the trouble occurred because he brought the charismatic movement to the pulpit and because he preached the Word. “Ninety per cent of the people are traditional and don’t want to hear anything against tradition,” he charges. Even for many Catholic charismatics, he says, the tendency is to take the movement and paste it onto Catholic tradition. “God is blessing the movement, but someday people will have to make a choice—either the Word or tradition,” he predicts. “When I saw conflict between the two, I didn’t throw out the Word, I became silent on it,” he says. “In areas of conflict, I didn’t preach.”
What disturbed people most, he feels, was the “revival” in his parish last June when 250 people received the “baptism of salvation” and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, as it is known in charismatic circles. “They weren’t used to hearing that the baptism of salvation is an act of faith, by accepting the redemptive act of Christ.”
Reaction to the charismatic issue itself can be found in two other diocesan sources. One is a committee report published in November, 1975. In its findings it states: “This is a Christ-oriented movement, deeply dedicated to the Holy Spirit.… For many people the Charismatic Movement has meant either a renewal of faith or a return to it. Others have been brought deeply into prayer and the reading of Sacred Scriptures.”
It warns, though, against a “tendency on the part of some toward fundamentalism, self-centeredness, categorizing nonmembers as non-Christians (or lesser Christians) and overemphasis on some of the gifts, such as tongues, healing, etc.”
Worth It All
Democrat H. Thomas Colo, a Roman Catholic member of the Massachusetts legislature, thinks two Catholic priests who serve as chaplains to the law-making body are overpaid for their services. He estimated that House chaplain George V. Kerr and Senate chaplain Christopher P. Griffin are paid $70 a minute for saying a prayer each day. Kerr, who has served in the appointed post since 1959, is paid $8,397 a year, and Griffin is paid $8,881. Griffin, a retired pastor, served as House chaplain from 1955 to 1959 and has been in the Senate since then. Kerr doubles as a parish pastor in Roxbury. Both are eligible for state pensions.
During a speech that lasted nearly two hours, legislator Colo said: “As a Catholic and as a Christian citizen, I am offended. What we ask of all people, no matter how high or exalted, is that their positions are held honestly.” But he failed to get enough votes to pass a bill he introduced aimed at determining whether the chaplains are classified as “regular state employees” and thus subject to a forty-hour work week.
Argued Republican opponent Sidney Q. Curtiss: “Their work is a matter not measured in minutes or hours. They are available at all times.”
The prayers—and pay—will go on.
The other source, The Catholic Voice, regularly announces healing services and special speakers (including Protestant Pentecostal David du Plessis). In its January 17 issue, however, it carried an article entitled “Bible and Church: Is There Conflict?” The author, priest Paul Schmidt, a regular contributor, acknowledges in it that “one of the most exciting signs of renewal in the Church today is interest in the Bible.” But he insists that the Church and its ministry precede the Bible in importance and time: “As an inspired record of early stages of that living witness [the Church], the Bible also acts as a guide to continued reliability for the Church. But the Bible belongs to the Church; the Church doesn’t belong to it.”
Bible study, he says, will give the reader a new appreciation of the Church, “for apart from the living Word [the Church], the written Word doesn’t really make sense.” His remarks seem to confirm Dollard’s contention that the believer must choose either tradition or the Bible, for which he has opted.
CARLA STEPHENS
Steeple Unnecessary
Whether a building looks like a church or not is unimportant. It is a church if it is being used for regular religious services. That, in effect, is what the U.S. Supreme Court ruled when it upheld the conviction of Joseph E. Gedra, a traditionalist priest who conducted masses in his home. He was fined $50 for violating the zoning laws of Fairfax County, Virginia, where an ordinance prohibits places of worship in residentially zoned areas without a special permit.
The justices let stand a Virginia Supreme Court ruling that he was rightfully convicted. He appealed the state decision on grounds that the ordinance referred to structures that had steeples and crosses or otherwise looked like churches. His home in Vienna, Virginia, looked like the others on the block, he said. Any state interference with what went on inside the house was a violation of his right of privacy and his freedom of religion, he argued in vain.
Gedra, formerly a priest in the diocese of Washington, began celebrating the unauthorized Latin rites in 1972 for Catholics who reject the liturgical changes ordered after Vatican Council II. In 1973 he requested but was denied a zoning variance to use his home as a church.
Celebrating Unity
The so-called international faith-and-order movement will be fifty years old next month, but the World Council of Churches and other ecumenical bodies have already celebrated the anniversary. The formal launching of the Christian-unity effort and the recent official recognition of its half-century of existence both took place in Lausanne, Switzerland.
While the locale was the same (some parts of both events took place in the city’s 700-year-old Gothic cathedral), the 1927 and 1977 gatherings differed in other respects. One of the most noticeable differences was the participation of Roman Catholics this year. Pope Paul sent a message saying it is “urgent that Christians find again a unanimous agreement on the contents of their witness.…” The area’s bishop, Pierre Mamie of Fribourg, was there to represent the church hierarchy, and a prominent participant in the program was Dominican priest Yves Congar. Also included in the four-day commemoration were songs and dances by members of the Catholic Focolari movement and a prayer vigil led by the ecumenical Taize community. No Catholics participated in 1927, but now there are Catholics on the WCC faith-and-order commission.
“There are no doctrinal differences which justify continued separation of the churches,” German theologian Jurgen Moltmann said in a key address. He identified work toward a “common celebration of the eucharist” as one of the urgent needs and declared that the time for ecumenical efforts that do not lead to commitment is coming to an end.
The preacher at the principal Sunday service in the cathedral was Emilio Castro, an Uruguayan Methodist who directs the WCC’s section on world mission and evangelism. In the absence of common doctrinal statements and eucharistic fellowship, he noted, it is still possible today for Christians to express unity in the “profound, living, existential reality of a solidarity in love and justice” in the service of human liberation.
Memo From Brazil
On her recent state visit to Brazil, First Lady Rosalynn Carter met with two U.S. missionaries who had been detained for four days without charges in a Recife jail. Police apparently suspected that Thomas Capuano, a Mennonite lay worker, and Catholic priest Lawrence Rosebaugh were engaged in Communist activity as they carried out relief work among the poor. The pair spoke of denied rights, brutality, and vile conditions within the crowded jail. Mrs. Carter told reporters later that she had a “personal message” from them to take back to the President. Meanwhile, embarrassed government leaders reportedly fired the jail officials (the pair claimed their money was not returned). Capuano, described by colleagues as “a deeply committed, compassionate Christian,” says that is not enough. What is needed, he says, is wide-scale reform of the penal system, with an eye to protection of “inalienable human rights.”
French Outreach
In a French follow-up to the 1974 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, some 160 pastors, church and organizational leaders, educators, and students gathered recently in Strasbourg for a Congress on the Theology of Evangelization for French-speaking Europe. Participation spanned traditional denominational and institutional barriers, and there was a rare and strong sense of Christian unity.
The congress provided a foundation for next year’s Impact 78, a campaign of simultaneous evangelistic outreach centered in local churches and aimed at the 60 million French-speaking people in Belgium, France, and Switzerland. There were plenary sessions on theology (participants agreed that evangelism must rest solidly on the authority of the Bible), workshops on how to evangelize various social and religious groups, and evening meetings open to the public.
Congress preparations were carried out by an eight-member committee representing the French Evangelical Alliance and the French Evangelical Federation. Foremost in the leadership were Professor Henri Blocher of Vaux Seminary in Paris, clergyman Andre Thobois of the French Baptist Federation, Gerard Kuntz of French Inter-Varsity, and Theodore Snitselaar of the Scripture Union in France.
Religion in Transit
Newly released government statistics show 1,036,000 divorces were recorded in the United States in 1975, a 6 per cent increase over 1974 and the first annual total to top one million. Marriages seem more prone to go on the rocks in the South (5.5 divorces per thousand population) and the West (6.5) than in the Northeast (3.1) and North Central area (4.5). Regional differences are attributed in part to religious makeup (for example, the large Catholic populations in northern urban centers). A record 1.12 million children under 18 were in homes that broke up in 1975.
The largest and wealthiest congregation of the United Church of Canada—the Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in Toronto—has accepted a grant from Wintario, the government lottery, for music instruction. The action was in apparent definance of an oft-repeated denominational policy against gambling. “Depressing,” commented the United Church Observer in discussing what Timothy Eaton did.
Park Street Church in Boston registered nearly $450,000 in missions pledges for the coming year.
Commissioner Arnold Brown, 63, the Salvation Army’s territorial commander for Canada and Bermuda, has been elected General—the Army’s highest executive position. He succeeds Clarence Wiseman, who will retire in July. The London-headquartered Army has 2.5 million officers and adherents in eighty-two countries. After his election, Brown promised to do all he can to spread the Army’s evangelistic message and bring people to Christ.
Celebrations marking Queen Elizabeth’s twenty-fifth year on the throne began with special Sunday services in churches of all denominations throughout England last month. The queen herself attended a national service of thanksgiving in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan preached, urging that the teachings of Christ be made the foundation for personal, family, and national life. He called for national penitence, dedication to God, and thanksgiving for God’s guidance and the example of leadership “in our Royal House.”
Death
NATHAN H. KNORR, 72, president since 1945 of the Jehovah’s Witnesses; in Wallkill, New York.
Georgi Vins, the jailed Soviet Baptist dissident, was reported to be “very sick” when his wife and a son visited him in late May. He had recently been in the hospital and still needed a crutch to walk. His skin was broken out, the family says. Not long ago, a supply of mercury was found at the camp, and a number of prisoners now are wondering about the possibility of mercury poisoning, says Vins. He gave his wife a written appeal calling for an international commission to investigate the prison camp, but it was confiscated by authorities. A lawyer for Vins was to ask President Carter to intervene.
Radio Uganda reported last month that President Idi Amin has decided to forbid representatives of churches in his country from attending church meetings and other conferences abroad. The ban applies especially to Christian leaders who would like to visit Tanzania and Kenya, the radio said. In another report, Target, a Christian newspaper in Kenya, said Anglican bishop Henry Okullu of Kenya would be arrested and tried if he were to enter Uganda. Okullu, president of the National Council of Christian Churches of Kenya, denied Ugandan allegations that he was involved in a plot to overthrow Amin.
The fifty-fourth Synod of the Spanish Evangelical Church issued a call for complete religious freedom in Spain and an end to “the state confession” of Roman Catholicism.
Going from village to village, six teams of Kenyan Baptists have baptized 2,177 people and started 145 new congregations during a twenty-four-week period, according to a European Baptist Press story. The converts are from among the coastal Giryama tribe, most of whose members were either without religious beliefs or were spirit worshipers when the campaign began.
