At exactly 8:30 P.M. President Alfonzo Lopez Michelsen of Colombia walked into the Red Room of the Tequendama Hotel in downtown Bogota for an evangelical-sponsored “Banquet of Hope.” Behind him came the four major candidates for next year’s presidential election, various government officials, the heads of the country’s four major labor unions, and numerous other dignitaries. Together, they represented the highest echelons of political power in a nation where evangelical pastors were being jailed, beaten, and murdered only twenty years ago.
Their presence at the Wednesday-night banquet last month was seen by some conservative Protestant leaders as the most significant symbolic advance ever for evangelicals in the southern hemisphere. “We’ve worked for this for thirteen years,” declared Argentine-born evangelist Luis Palau, the main banquet speaker. “In a country where extermination of Protestants was once the policy of the government, the highest officials now come to listen to us,” he said. “This demonstrates a new respectability.” (It was in Colombia in 1964 that Palau launched his mass-evangelism ministry, and in the intervening years he has become Latin America’s best-known evangelist.)
The banquet was sponsored by the Colombian Confederation of Evangelicals, an alliance of leaders, churches, and mission groups of various backgrounds. The coordinator was Alfredo Torres, who directs the Colombian work of World Literature Crusade, a California-based organization. Torres spent time in jail years ago for “unlawful” preaching; at the banquet he sat next to the president and exchanged pleasantries. He noted that this was the second banquet meeting patterned after the annual National Prayer Breakfast that is held in Washington, DC.
“The president didn’t come last year, and we were glad afterwards that he didn’t,” said Torres in an interview. A missionary explained: “A politician spoke for an hour and a half, and two other program personalities got into a shouting argument over doctrine. Embarrassing pictures that showed them glaring and gesturing at each other appeared in the morning papers.”
More careful preparations were made for this year’s event. Palau was invited as the main speaker, and churches throughout the country were asked to encourage their people to fast and pray for the meeting.
It was held against a backdrop of deepening trouble for the nation’s 25 million-plus inhabitants. The coalition that has governed the nation since the end of the repressive dictatorship in 1958 is breaking up. The inflation rate is soaring toward 35 per cent; López Michelsen won the presidency in 1974 largely on the campaign pledge that he would do something about inflation. He could not deliver. Food prices doubled. In September the unions called a general strike that led to violence, more than a dozen deaths, and hundreds of arrests. The unions demanded a 50 per cent catch-up wage increase; the government balked at anything over a 20 per cent increase in the $59-a-month minimum salary.
Kidnappings and industrial sabotage by leftist guerrillas are on the increase. Violence and corruption plague the emerald trade, an important element in the country’s economy. Drug smuggling has hurt relations with the United States. More than half of all births reportedly are illegitimate.
Tulio Cuevas, head of the largest union, calls the national situation “a powder keg.” Everyone in power agrees that changes must be made.
In order to keep the speaking engagement, Palau took a day off from a major crusade he was conducting in the Dominican Republic (see following story). An evangelical senator whisked him from the Bogotá airport to a warm-up, open-air prayer meeting outside the national government building. Many of the 2,000 participants were kneeling; others were standing, some with hands lifted and tears streaming down their cheeks, shouting, “Glory to God!” There were short testimonies. “Many were killed for this day,” cried one pastor. “Now we are the church victorious.”
The evangelist gave a short message, then was ushered into the Senate chamber where he prayed with a group of legislators. “This is the first time we politicians have been challenged with the Word of God,” one of them commented.
At an afternoon press conference, reporters representing Bogota’s major dailies asked such a question as, “What must one do to be ‘born again’?” and, “What are your evangelical crusades doing to solve the problems of drugs and alcoholism?”
About 1,500 persons bought $12 tickets for the evening banquet. The papal nuncio and cardinal had been invited, but both politely declined. Seven charismatic priests were said to be in the audience.
Pentecostal pastor Hector Pardo, a former priest who spent time in jail after becoming a Protestant, led the guests in singing, “How Great Thou Art.” It was another occasion for tears of joy, and they glistened in the brilliance created by television lights. (The banquet proceedings were broadcast live on state radio and by videotape on national television the next day.)
The political figures preceding Palau were supposed to give only brief remarks. Instead, they delivered lengthy, depressing diatribes about the problems of the country, demanding that the president do something. López Michelsen brushed aside Palau’s invitation to respond. “It would take me all night to answer these moralists,” he said.
Between speeches, Palau and the president chatted about several topics. López Michelsen told the evangelist that he was much impressed by “your brother, Jimmy Carter.” He said: “When I was in Washington for the signing of the Panama Canal treaty, [Carter] took us Latin Americans into a room and read the Bible and gave a prayer.”
One of the best-educated leaders in Latin America, López Michelsen—a Catholic whose mother was Protestant—holds three earned doctorates. One of his dissertations was on the influence of Calvin on democratic society, and it was later published as a book. “Democracy cannot survive without strong doses of the Calvinist ethic,” he told Palau. “That is what Latin America needs.”
Palau replied that evangelicals “are committed to preaching an experience with Jesus Christ that will produce an ethic to transform the nations.”
Palau’s turn to speak did not come until almost 10 P.M., and the meal had not yet been served. He skipped his sermon points about the Colombian “moral crisis,” indicating that the other speakers had pointed out the nation’s problems. He moved directly to a Christ-and-salvation challenge as “our only hope.” While Palau was still speaking the waiters suddenly began serving the food, and he had to close abruptly.
After the banquet was over, the president and other politicians lingered for a half hour, conversing with evangelical leaders and signing bilingual Gideon New Testaments that had been placed at every plate. Long lines formed to get the signatures of López Michelsen and Julio Cesar Turbay-Ayala, said to be the leading candidate to succeed the president.
Amid Colombia’s political and social turmoil, the constituencies of evangelical churches are growing about three times faster than the population, and the Catholic charismatic movement is multiplying even faster than that.
The new respectability and acceptance enjoyed by evangelicals may have national boundaries, however. Visas permitting missionaries to work in the national Indian “territories” are now unavailable. The Wycliffe Bible Translators agency awaits a new contract that will allow it to continue linguistic work. Government officials want at least half of the staff members of Wycliffe and other foreign cultural agencies to be Colombians. Meanwhile, resident Wycliffe workers must undergo police checks and have permits renewed every six months.
Visas allowing missionaries to work elsewhere are granted on a quota basis. Part of the blame for the squeeze is attributed to Mormons, who alarmed officials by asking for 500 visas at one time. In 1976, 780 North American missionaries representing seventy-one agencies were at work in Colombia.
Colombian evangelicals are scattere among more than forty denominations and are fragmented by differences over tongues, separatism, and attitudes toward the Catholic charismatic renewal movement. Their greatest unity ever, according to one observer, was displayed at the Banquet of Hope.
Caribbean Crusade
The following news account is based largely on a report filed by correspondent James C. Hefley.
History buffs identify the Dominican Republic, a country that shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti, as the site of many European firsts in the western hemisphere: the first city (Santo Domingo, 1496), the first university, the first Catholic cathedral, the first coin mint, the first Masonic lodge. Some historians believe that the body of Christopher Columbus is entombed in this “land he loved most,” not far from an ancient tree stump on the Santo Domingo waterfront. Smaller than West Virginia and with a population of five million, it is the only country in the world with the Bible in its flag. Tradition says it is open at John 8:32: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
Last month evangelist Luis Palau and his team delivered the truth of God to the Dominican Republic in a nation-wide crusade. Palau and his associates preached to a cumulative total of 116,000 (thousands more were reached through radio and television), and 4,000 “inquirers” came forward at the meetings for spiritual counsel.
Four week-long satellite crusades, led by Latin-born associate evangelists, were held in early October. Palau spoke on the closing nights in three of them. Crowds of 6,000 heard him at Santiago and San Juan. At Santiago, the country’s second-largest city, there was a minor uproar when a Christian folk-rock group—invited by the local crusade committee—sang the Beatles hit, Mother Mary.
The climactic eight-day crusade in Santo Domingo (population, 800,000) was originally scheduled to be held at the National Sports Palace. Because of sports events, however, the first four meetings had to be held in the baseball stadium, located in a crowded poor section of town. Crowds averaged 10,000 a service there, almost twice the attendance at each of the last four services in the modern enclosed sports hall, which is located in a middle-and upper-class residential neighborhood. Between 200 and 400 inquirers—most of them young adults—came forward at each service.
“We had different crowds in each place,” commented Jim Williams, the Palau team’s executive director.
Trans World Radio beamed the Santo Domingo meetings live to missionary radio stations throughout the Caribbean area and Latin America. Palau appeared daily on an afternoon call-in TV show in which he offered answers and counsel to viewers with questions. Some of the callers were directed to three family-counseling centers that the team operated in the city during the crusade.
Palau took one night off from the crusade to speak at an evangelical banquet gathering in Bogotá, attended by the president of Colombia (see preceding story). The evangelist has talked with many Latin presidents but was unable to meet with President Joaquin Balaguer of the Dominican Republic, perhaps because of Palau’s known friendship with Alfonso Lockward, who may be Balaguer’s main challenger in next May’s election. (Palau says he tries to maintain a strictly apolitical stance and to touch base with a variety of political leaders. One evening he dined with the president of the Dominican senate at the home of a prominent senator in Balaguer’s party who is an evangelical.)
Lockward, 40, is an elder and lay preacher in a Plymouth Brethren assembly. Formerly the minister of planning in the Balaguer administration, he is now the presidential candidate of the Revolutionary Social Christian Party on a platform that includes land reform and redistribution. If he is elected, he will face a tough task. One American corporation alone—Gulf Western—owns more than 20 per cent of the country’s cultivable land, one-third of the sugar industry, four major hotels, and other profitable interests.
Palau says that Lockward is the first serious evangelical presidential candidate in the history of Latin America. The candidate and his wife, a lawyer, are active in evangelical affairs. Mrs. Lockward raised much of the $20,000 local budget for the Palau crusade. Lockward is president of the board of CARIBE, the missionary publishing agency of the Latin American Mission, and he is known in U.S. evangelical circles.
Lockward envisions someday a Palau crusade in Cuba under Dominican leadership. “We must meet for fasting and prayer and be ready,” he told the Santo Domingo crusade committee. “By going to Hungary, Billy Graham has made a way for us in Cuba.” Palau says he’s willing to go.
Plymouth Brethren adherents and Free Methodists provided some of the crusade’s strongest support. The counselors were trained by veteran Brethren missionary Jim Cochrane. Superintendent Angel Caceres of the Free Methodist Church served as the chairman of the crusade’s seven-member central committee.
Palau, 42, became a Christian in his boyhood in Argentina through the endeavors of a Brethren missionary who led his parents to Christ. He studied at Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland, Oregon, and married one of his classmates. He returned to Latin America as a missionary under Overseas Crusades, a California-based independent mission group. His team has always been a division of Overseas Crusades, and he was recently elected to the mission’s top executive post, succeeding founder Dick Hillis. The evangelist now resides with his family in Portland.
Palau conducts few meetings in the United States and therefore is not well known here, a factor that hinders financial support of his ministry. He has recently preached in Spain and elsewhere in Europe (where Third World figures are “in”), but his greatest popularity is in South and Central America.
Kindling Fires Along the Ohio
The following coverage is based in part on a report by correspondent Art Toalston.
Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum, located next to the city’s better-known Riverfront Stadium, seats 17,516. Still reeling from the effects of a fatal nightclub fire across the Ohio River in Kentucky earlier this year, fire marshals will not allow one more than 17,516 to enter. So, when evangelist Billy Graham conducted a ten-day crusade there last month, everyone knew exactly how many people were present when a capacity crowd was announced. The place was filled nearly every night, with the opening service being the notable exception (because of a ticket mix-up). Thousands were turned away, but some who didn’t get inside stayed to hear the sermon on loudspeakers outside.
While the marshals kept a watchful eye and never had to call firemen to the coliseum, other kinds of fires were associated with the event that was officially known as the Tri-State (Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio) Billy Graham Crusade. Said Graham on the last day, “We’re at the point where we could have continued for another month and seen the beginning of a real spiritual awakening in this area.” The response to the evangelist’s invitation to make a commitment to Christ was an unusually high 4.4 per cent of the cumulative total attendance. The number of churches—especially smaller ones—giving wholehearted support and bringing non-Christians to the meetings was considered extraordinary by Graham staffers.
Graham came into a region that was excited about a number of explosive issues. Many citizens were still numbed by the number of deaths in the fire. Cincinnati bears the dubious distinction of being the city in which convicted pornographer Larry Flynt publishes Hustler magazine. School officials are contesting a desegregation suit, and while the crusade was in progress the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People advocated a protest vote against a school tax.
“What a wonderful thing it would be if Christ could move right through the city and the suburbs and bring us together so we can tackle our problems,” Graham declared. He pointed to participation in a crusade as one of the best ways for blacks and whites to get to know each other in a spiritual dimension that will make improved relationships possible. Jerry Kirk, white pastor of College Hill United Presbyterian Church, and E. O. Thomas, black pastor of Inspirational Baptist Church, chairman and vice-chairman, respectively, of the crusade executive committee, were among those announcing a follow-up group called Evangelicals Together for Christ. It will concentrate on seeking solutions to the area’s social ills.
At the request of local leaders, one Saturday night service had a social-justice theme. In an unusual move Graham asked that the evening offering be cancelled and that would-be contributors give the money instead to their local churches, earmarked for ministries “to help needs and hurts where you live and worship.”
More than $280,000 of the nearly $400,000 crusade budget had been raised before the first meeting was held. Among the contributions were $5,000 from the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio and $3,000 from the United Presbyterian Presbytery of Cincinnati, unusual gifts in an era when governing bodies of mainline denominations have avoided formal actions indicating sympathy with Graham crusades.
Graham team member John Corts, who directed the Cincinnati effort, was even more pleased with offerings at the coliseum. The average gift was nearly $1 per person attending, almost double the amount usually received. The response was particularly gratifying because the Cincinnati campaign was the first since Graham’s finances became the subject of wide media attention last summer. After the budget was subscribed, subsequent offerings were earmarked by the local executive committee for telecasting the crusade nationwide in December and for relief work in India, where the evangelist plans to preach in December.
Support by pastors was also encouraging to team members. One minister who had been involved in preparing his congregation to participate and who enrolled in the counselor training classes said the experience was “equal to a year in seminary.” The crusade’s school of evangelism attracted an enrollment of 1,500 pastors, lay leaders, and wives. They came from seventy-eight denominations.
When it was all over, a cumulative attendance of 160,615 had been recorded, and 7,075 decisions for Christ were registered. One newspaper reported that even Graham had been “converted”—in his attitude toward the city. He did admit, in fact, that at the beginning he had misconceptions about the Queen City on the Ohio River. He said he had always heard that it was “one of the most difficult cities” from an evangelistic point of view. As he prepared to leave it, the evangelist declared that the experience gave him a very positive view instead of the one he brought to it.
Graham: Feted By Jews
“You know that I stand before you as an evangelical Christian who is committed to the beliefs of the New Testament. You do not expect me to be anything other than what I am.”
With this introduction evangelist Billy Graham last month made his first public address to a national Jewish group. He considered the opportunity important enough to fly to Atlanta on the eighth day of his ten-day crusade in Cincinnati (see preceding story). It was the annual meeting of the American Jewish Committee’s national executive council. A long-time friend, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the AJC staff, presented to Graham the agency’s first national interreligious award.
“Let us not hide our differences under a basket,” the world’s best-known evangelical told his audience of some 200 Jewish leaders. Quoting Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, he counseled understanding and respect. Then the evangelist launched into a brief review of his own testimony, ending with: “I am here today because of that commitment made forty-three years ago.”
That 1934 decision for Christ in a North Carolina revival pushed him into a study of the Bible that had profound effects, he recalled. Graham said the result was not only an intolerance of “social and personal evils” of his generation—such as racial discrimination—but also a realization of “the debt I owed to Israel, to Judaism, and to the Jewish people.”
In introducing the speaker, Tanenbaum left little question that Graham had done as much as any Christian to pay off that debt. He heaped lavish praise on the evangelist, declaring that most of the progress in Protestant-Jewish relations in the past quarter century is attributable to Graham’s leadership. Tanenbaum, who has been working at improving Jewish-Christian relations for twenty-five years, said that Israel’s political leaders—from Golda Meir to Menahem Begin—could “recite chapter and verse” of times when Graham provided assistance. In addition to aiding the cause of Israelis, said Tanenbaum, Graham has also “been present” to Jews elsewhere in their times of crisis. The evangelist was cited for his repudiation of “deceptive techniques” of proselytism by some Christian groups.
In response, Graham paid tribute to Tanenbaum for working “shoulder to shoulder” with him in trying to build bridges between attenated groups. Of the rabbi he said, “No man in this country has helped me to understand [the Jewish point of view] as he has.”
The audience was slow to warm up to Graham as he spoke of meeting “Jesus Christ face to face, a Jew who was born in Bethlehem and reared in Nazareth.” Before he finished the thirty-minute address, however, he had been interrupted by applause five times, and at the conclusion he got a sustained standing ovation.
Graham hit the issue of proselytism, currently a top Jewish concern, only obliquely in the speech. He chided Jewish parents as well as Christians for failing to transmit spiritual values to their children. America needs “a spiritual awakening that will not only dynamically influence the social and political life of this country but answer the deepest needs of our young people,” he declared. The evangelist spoke of Old Testament revivals and called on his audience to join with Christians seeking a reversal of the nation’s moral and spiritual decline. He renewed his call for daily reading of the Ten Commandments in public schools.
In a news conference prior to the luncheon Graham stuck by his position that his work is “to proclaim the Gospel to Jew and Gentile.” He reaffirmed the stand he took in 1973 at the height of the controversy over Key 73’s espousal of Jewish evangelism. In it, he said he never felt called to “single out the Jews as Jews.”
In an even-handed statement on the Middle East, the evangelist said he believes Jerusalem will one day be the capital of the world. Not only does Israel have a right to exist, he declared, but “the Palestinians also have a right to exist under legitimate leadership committed to the peace of the Middle East.”
Four days after Graham’s Atlanta statement, a full-page advertisement signed by fifteen evangelical leaders (not including Graham) appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post. It cited their belief in “Israel’s divine right to the land” and voiced apprehension over “the recent direction of American foreign policy vis a vis the Middle East.” Coordinating the ad project was Arnold T. Olson, president emeritus of the Evangelical Free Church of America. Other signers included Hudson Armerding, Pat Boone, W. A. Criswell, Kenneth Kantzer, Harold Lindsell. Clyde Taylor, and John Walvoord.
A Jewish leader who wished to remain anonymous “advanced” the cost of the ads, according to Olson. He told a reporter that about twenty evangelical leaders were asked to sign and that there were no outright refusals, although some were unable to give permission to use their names before publication deadline.
ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS
A Look At the Books
Minnesota securities authorities last month re-registered the charitable gift annuity program of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association after BGEA officials filed a 1976 financial statement with the state. The document does not include all thefinancial details that the BGEA plans to make public after the end of this year (see October 21 issue, page 44), but it is the most complete public report of BGEA finances available so far. The state securities commissioner re-registered the annuity program within a week after receiving the information. George Wilson, executive vice-president of the BGEA, said in a statement at the time of filing that “there has never been a question about the security of the annuity fund.”
According to the balance sheet, the annuity fund listed assets of $3.3 million as of September 30, up $1 million from a year ago. Nationwide, 746 annuities were in force at the end of June, the report indicated. Currently only $147,000 has been invested by Minnesotans in the fund, but the commissioner authorized the BGEA to write up to $300,000 worth of the gift contracts in his state.
Overall statistics for the BGEA at the end of 1976 showed $28.7 million in income, of which $26.9 million came from gifts. The remainder came from bequests, interest, and other sources. The year’s expenditures came to a total of $27.7 million. Of that amount, $10.4 million was designated for “evangelism ministries,” $8.8 million for broadcasting and films, $2.8 million for Decision magazine, $2.5 million for overseas activities, $1.5 million for direct mail and postage, and $1.4 million for administration.
The report filed in Minnesota did not cover all the affiliated Graham organizations, but association directors have said that all will be included in the annual report to be made public after the 1977 audit. Among the other organizations is the World Evangelism and Christian Education Fund (WECEF), headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The Minnesota report indicated that WECEF got $3.6 million from the BGEA last year. In addition, Wheaton College received $942,114 for its Billy Graham Center, other Graham affiliates got $20,996, and other religious organizations received $209,352. All the gifts were listed under the category of “evangelism ministries.”
Combat Zone
The “fight to the finish” between Baptist evangelist Bob Harrington of New Orleans and atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair is apparently over. Harrington claimed he had won a “technical knockout in the thirty-second round” when Ms. O’Hair stormed off stage at a rally last month in Bryan, Texas, and declared that she would not make any more appearances with him. It was the pair’s thirty-second public appearance together in a controversial barnstorming debate tour that began in Tennessee in August (see August 26 issue, page 34).
The evangelist described Ms. O’Hair’s refusal to continue the series as “the greatest Christian victory over an atheist in history.”
Ms. O’Hair said she stepped out of the debates because she was disgusted by Harrington’s tactics and by the attitudes of the largely Christian audiences. Frequently, she said, she was painted as a Communist. And she said she didn’t like it when Harrington led the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance, pausing to chant over and over again, “One nation under God.” It was scary, she said.
Ms. O’Hair may have left the debate series in order to do battle closer to home. It seems that while she was on the road with Harrington someone stole from her American Atheist Center in Austin, Texas, tapes containing computer programs needed for mailing and accounting. She filed a complaint with the police, and she publicly charged a former employee, Susan Stroebel, with the theft.
Her son, William J. Murray—the vice president and administrator of the center until he quit in September—came to Mrs. Stroebel’s defense. (Murray, 31, was the central figure in the 1963 Supreme Court decision that banned government-prescribed prayers from public schools.) He claimed in a press conference that his mother had violated decency standards in accusing Mrs. Stroebel, and he said that no computer tapes were missing.
In a bizarre shouting match with her son and his attorney, Ms. O’Hair called Murray a liar and accused him of siding with individuals trying to cripple the Atheist Center.
Murray suggested that Ms. O’Hair’s allegations were a ruse to cover up “managerial problems” at the center. He indicated that he may take legal action against Ms. O’Hair over the center’s operations. He declined, however, to discuss the differences that led to his resignation as his mother’s chief executive.
“No matter what Bill Murray does, I love him,” Ms. O’Hair told reporters. “I am protecting him because I am his mother.”
Earlier, both Ms. O’Hair and Murray said that the center had “made money” in her debate appearances (offerings at the meetings could be designated to either Harrington or Ms. O’Hair). However, Harrington’s business manager, Zonya LaFerney, said the evangelist had lost $60,000 in the venture (Harrington underwrote auditorium rentals and promotional costs). Audiences got thinner as the tour wore on, and one recent debate attracted fewer than 300. In some cities, pastors organized boycotts, voicing various objections to the debates.
One of the matters of controversy involved Harrington’s association with convicted pornographer Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler. Flynt recently gave Harrington a custom-outfitted $155,000 bus for his travels. (The evangelist told a reporter that he also has a Learjet for use “on weekend situations.”) Harrington said his friendship with Flynt stems from last year, when Flynt published an eight-page article about him in Hustler. He said Flynt invited him to do the interview after being turned down by Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, and Rex Hum-bard.
The evangelist said he also participated in Flynt’s wedding to Althea Leasure. Ms. Leasure markets an extensive line of sexual toys and devices through the pages of Hustler. Additionally, he preached at a Flynt family reunion.
In the face of growing opposition from ministers, Harrington is moving more and more into the personal-motivation field with lectures, tapes, and literature. A recent advertisement bills him as an “inspirational entertainer.” The lectures offer advice on how to make money, on how to be a success, on how to repair an unhappy marriage, and the like. Around his neck these days he wears a large gold pendant proclaiming, “It’s fun being successful.”
Special Report
Six former students of Ambassador College, the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) school in Pasadena, California, have published a scathing attack of the school, the church, and its leaders. Their criticisms are contained in Ambassador Report, a ninety-two-page magazine they released late last month. The church’s leaders—WCG founder Herbert W. Armstrong, 85, and his son, Garner Ted, 47, president of Ambassador and the voice of the sect on hundreds of radio and television stations around the world—had no immediate comment.
The magazine’s thirty articles attempt to document charges of sexual immorality, deception, financial irregularities (including misuse of charity funds), intimidation of employees by “computer snooping,” secret monitoring of college classrooms, exploitation of members, opulence, false prophecies, and doctrinal accommodation.
Five of the magazine’s publishers are recent graduates of Ambassador: Robert Gerringer, Bill Hughes, John Trechak, and Leonard and Margaret Zola. The sixth, Mary E. Jones, attended for two years. They had been members of the WCG from four to fifteen years.
All six were involved with another Ambassador alumnus, Timothy Nugent, in a similar but smaller publishing project last year, Ambassador Review. As a result of “irreconcilable differences” with Nugent—who headed the anti-Armstrong coalition—his colleagues split with him and continued the publishing venture with a new name. Charging that his former collaborators had pirated his material, Nugent secured a temporary restraining order to halt distribution of the magazine. A few days later, however, he settled out of court, and the ban was lifted.
The slick-paper, full-color Ambassador Report cost more than $10,000 to produce and represents two years of research, according to the publishers. Three of the articles score the playboy life style of the younger Armstrong—in whom, writes Trechak, “one is tempted to believe … the hypocrisy of Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry is actually surpassed.”
One of the two cover stories, “In Bed With Garner Ted—America’s Playboy Preacher,” purports to be an interview with a young woman allegedly seduced by the handsome church executive.
The other cover story features the views of chess wizzard Bobby Fischer. He disclosed that although he was not a member of the WCG he contributed $94,315 to it over an eight-year period that ended in 1974. “I’m not interested in getting my money back,” he is quoted as telling interviewer Leonard Zola. “I just want to make sure that nobody gets ripped off mentally.” He is also quoted as saying: “This idea of Herbert’s that you can’t trust your own thoughts—that’s the key doctrine that I think has to be blasted out.”
Fischer apparently took his complaints to the publishers of the Ambassador Reportearlier this year, but he now contends that the material was printed without his permission. He has retained attorney Stanley R. Rader, the legal brains behind the WCG and one of its vice presidents, to represent him and “punish” the alleged offenders. The publishers acknowledge that Fischer tried to get the article deleted.
Fischer himself was sued last month in a Pasadena court by Holly Ruiz. She is asking $5,000 damages, claiming that Fischer broke into her apartment on October 10. She alleges that he struck her when she refused to sign a statement saying that he was unaware that conversations about his involvement with the Armstrongs had been tape recorded. Mrs. Ruiz reportedly had attempted to sell the interviews to a national magazine.
Several days after the Ruiz incident occurred, Bill Hughes—the Ambassador Report’s business manager—reported that his apartment had been burglarized. Stereo equipment and other articles of value were shunned, but 200 tape recordings and other supporting documents were taken, he said.
In an introductory statement in the Report, Trechak says that the publishing board tried without success for fifteen months to meet with the Armstrongs and other church leaders to discuss their criticisms. Rader, however, insists that no such communication reached him or other officials. In a telephone interview he branded the magazine’s contents as “scurrilous material with no foundation in fact.” He said that the publication contained “nothing new” and amounted to “a rehash” of defamatory criticisms that were aired several years ago and were “adequately dealt with” at that time. Further response to the resurrected charges, he stated, is therefore unnecessary. He added, however, that certain allegations in the Report concerning him are libelous and that he plans to take legal action against the publishers.
The publishers said that 5,000 copies were distributed to persons who had sent donations for the project or whose names had been referred to the publishers (Box 4068. Pasadena, CA 91106).
The back cover of the Ambassador Report carries the caption, “Tithing Pays Off!” It shows photos of what are described as the homes and grounds of the two Armstrongs, Rader, and executive assistant Robert Kuhn. Estimates of the value of the residences range from $300,000 to $2 million.
Such charges as those contained in the publication resulted in a schism and a purge of some WCG clergymen in 1974 (see March 15, 1974, issue, page 49). The church currently claims a membership of 60,000 worldwide.
JOSEPH M. HOPKINS
Rediscover America
“Religion is increasing its influence on society, but morality is decreasing. The secular world shows that religion is not seriously affecting our lives.”
Such was the lament of converted Watergate figure Charles Colson (Born Again) at a Nashville luncheon during the annual meeting of Religious Heritage of America, an organization founded in 1951 by Chicago insurance man W. Clement Stone (a sometime Nixon financier) and other business leaders, including Wallace Johnson, co-founder of the Holiday Inn motel chain. Colson, the former special counsel to Richard Nixon, cited conclusions of pollster George Gallup to support his contention, and he pointed to the profusion of pornography and the increase in abortions.
Colson’s concern is shared by the leaders of RHA, and in response they unveiled a fifteen-year campaign to be called Rediscover America. It will emphasize “a return to honesty in personal and national life.” Its culmination is set for October 12, 1992, the five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery of America.”
“Dishonesty is the litter on our moral picnic table,” said Stone, who serves as RHA’s president.
“If we do not wake up and sell Americans on America, it could be we’ll not have Americans to sell America to,” said Johnson.
William J. Simmons, a retired black educator who is president of the Nashville Rediscover America Committee, asserted that problems of honesty revolve around a moral “breakdown of affluent rich people.” There, he said, is “where we need honesty.”
RHA’s founders believe that “the strength, growth, and survival of our nation may be credited to the active belief … in [Judeo-Christian values] by our nation’s founding fathers and succeeding generations.”
At an awards dinner on Halloween night that was attended by 650 persons from across America, RHA cited a number of people it felt had contributed to that goal. They included: Robert Schuller, a Reformed Church in America clergyman who is pastor of the Garden Grove (California) Community Church (named Clergyman of the Year); Paul Brandel, a layman of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America and a Chicago attorney (Churchman of the Year); and Mrs. Henry Cannon, a United Methodist member and the entertainer known as “Minnie Pearl” on the “Grand Ole Opry” show (Churchwoman of the Year).
Faith and Freedom awards went to editor Lillian Block of Religious News Service, communications director Everett Parker of the United Church of Christ, and Southern Baptist radio-television producer Jim Rupe. Colson received a Life Inspiration award, and special awards were given to comedian Jerry Clower, a Southern Baptist layman, and author-lecturer Heath Bottomley.
WALLACE HENLEY
Wrong Boss
Garnet Morris Bryant is out of a job and some lucrative benefits. He says it’s all because he followed his conscience and the literal teachings of the Bible.
Bryant, 32, was fired from his job on an assembly line for a Ford auto plant in Louisville, Kentucky, after he refused to take orders from his foreman. A licensed preacher and evangelist for the United Christian Church, he balked when Joyce Woosley was promoted last May to be his supervisor. His repeated requests to be transferred to a department with a male foreman were denied. Ford suspended him several times and gave him a leave of absence to do missionary work for the 21-year-old conservative denomination. When he returned last month, he was told he would have to work for Ms. Woosley—one of three women foremen at the plant—or be fired.
Bryant cites Paul’s words to Timothy as authority for his stand: “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence” (1 Timothy 2:12).
His dismissal came six months before his tenth anniversary with the company; pension benefits do not become effective until the completion of ten years. His job paid $400-plus a week.
Bryant, who will become the unsalaried pastor of a small church, says his denomination hasn’t helped him much. The United Christian Church has some 3,000 ministers, and about one-third of them are women.
Piping Hot
Fourteen pipes from the organ at the Episcopal chapel at the University of Miami in Florida have been stolen since the opening of classes this term. The pipes, ranging in length from the size of a cigarette holder to more than three feet, are valued at $600. School officials think it’s more than a case of simple vandalism. They say a student may be stealing the pipes to use as marijuana-smoking “bongs,” which are similar to water pipes. Chaplain Henry Minich is inclined to agree. “Some students,” he said, “have told me the pipes could be used as bongs.”
