Claims of victory shouted by some foes of television pollution may be premature, but at year’s end there is some evidence that they are at least learning where the battles are. Confrontations with the network (ABC), sponsors, and stations presenting the series named “Soap” indicated that some Christians and others interested in better programming are having an effect. “ABC will long remember the sting of ‘Soap’ in its eyes,” remarks Harry N. Hollis, Jr., director of family and special moral concerns for the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission and one of the program’s sharpest critics.
Even though the series continued to draw a large segment of the prime time evening television audience, it has been a costly venture for the network. The commission for which Hollis works claimed after three months of anti-“Soap” campaigning that the program lost all of its original commercial sponsors, that ABC lost at least $1 million from unused and reduced commercial time, and that the network resorted at one point to giving free commercial time to a potential sponsor. The church-based effort, which included protesters from many denominations, also resulted in an avalanche of mail on the desks of network and station officials.
Attention was focused on “Soap” because, critics said, each weekly episode is based on a sexual theme portraying the immoral conduct of one of the characters. Hollis and Foy Valentine of the Christian Life Commission wrote ABC-TV president Fred Pierce, “The problem is not that ‘Soap’ deals with sex but that it treats sex in an irresponsible manner. It irresponsibly laughs at and shamelessly exploits the tragedies of adultery, homosexuality, impotence, incest, crime, and senility.”
ABC claimed that the series has redeeming social value because “no character is ever rewarded for immoral behavior.” The U.S. Catholic Conference snapped back that ABC was not very convincing since retribution for immoral behavior may not come for nine episodes and that even some regular viewers might miss the point since the crime and the punishment were separated by nine weeks.
Opposition to the program has brought together some unusual coalitions. More than 200 people in San Antonio, Texas, including prominent Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish leaders, signed a full-page ad in the city’s three daily papers protesting the show and inviting readers to a workshop on “television consumer education.” The event at First Baptist Church (where Southern Baptist Convention president Jimmy Allen is pastor) drew 1,500 persons, who were urged to join the fight to get the networks to clean up their shows. Among those on hand for the meeting were Catholic and Methodist bishops.
Also in San Antonio, a suit was filed in state court by Baptist evangelist Edward R. Human asking that the ABC outlet there be enjoined from airing “Soap” on grounds that it was a public nuisance and that it interfered with parent-child relationships. A state judge dismissed the action, but the preacher’s lawyers then filed a similar suit in federal court.
State papers of three denominations—the Texas Methodist, the Texas Catholic, and the Baptist Standard—collaborated on a joint editorial criticizing the series. The editors said: “ ‘Soap’ has become more than a single television program. It has become a symbol of the type of television program we may expect to be offered in large doses in the future.”
Nationally, criticism of the show also came from the broadcasting arm of the National Council of Churches.
Sending The Very Best
Old-time religious themes topped the trends in this year’s batch of Christmas cards.
“We say the religious cards have made quite a comeback,” said Elnor-Jo Beal, president of a prestige greeting-card publishing firm that services upper-class shops. “They’re our best seller this year,” she told a reporter.
Some stores across the country ran out of cards with religious motifs and messages, and customers had to settle for something else. The trend caught some suppliers by surprise.
The emphasis was on cards featuring the Nativity, the Madonna and Child, and the Wise Men at the Manger, commented Harry J. Cooper, director of the fifty-two member National Association of Greeting Card Publishers.
Various sources in the industry attributed the trend to the new mood in America, the heavily publicized conversions of well-known personalities, and pulpit exhortations urging church members to send religious cards.
Many modern themes appeared in the cards, too, including recognition of the women’s movement. A card published by the Forer firm bears a cover message, “Peace on earth, goodwill to men.” Inside it says: “and women too.”
The show also won dubious honors in two polls. The Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) asked 175,000 families in its constituency of one million to rate the programs on television, and “Soap” came out as the second “most offensive” (after CBS’s “Maude”). Jerry Falwell of “The Old-Time Gospel Hour” sent ballots to his mailing list, and 375,000 responded, with “Soap” winning the “worst program” ranking.
Probably more important to the network and station managers were the statistics which were turned up by television rating bureaus after the fall season started. Although the report was open to a variety of interpretations, the finding that the number of homes using television was declining caught professionals without an explanation. Both the Nielson and Arbitron rating agencies showed a 3 per cent decline. “Why did it happen?” Broadcasting magazine asked in an editorial. “Time spent trying to make programming better suit the needs and wishes of the audience is never wasted—not even if done on the assumption that everybody hopes will be proved wrong,” it commented.
In a speech before a group of advertising executives, editorial director Merrill Panitt of TV Guide magazine spoke with alarm about the state of the industry. The current situation, he said, is much more serious than the quiz show scandals of the 1950’s. “At that time,” he explained, “a mere handful of shows were involved in hanky-panky. Now we have frantic network competition that instead of working to improve the quality of the product, as it does in other businesses, actually has resulted in depressing the creative quality of programming.” He called for advertisers to insist on good shows, “not just bland programs that avoid excessive violence and sexual innuendo, but programs that might even provide some intellectual stimulation for the audience.”
Meanwhile, the chief censor at CBS, Van Gordon Sauter, told the board of managers of United Methodist Communications that most churches fail to make their views known to the networks. He said, “We never hear from the churches, with the exception of the United Methodist Church and Everett Parker of the United Church of Christ.” He reported that there is a new sensitivity to blasphemy and that it is “coming right out of the roots of this country.” The network is deluged with mail on the subject, Sauter said.
Shift at the Top
Several hundred thousand people have signed up for one or more Scripture-memory courses offered by the St. Louis-based Bible Memory Association (BMA) since its founding in 1944. The courses are age-graded, ranging from one Bible verse a week for pre-school children to an adult course that requires the memorization of more than 400 verses. A few hardy individuals have tried to memorize the entire Bible (more than 773,500 words). The fifteen-week courses utilize books and other materials to assist enrollees in memory work, and there are rewards for those who succeed—from Bible games for children to a week at camp for teen-agers and adults.
The BMA was founded by Nicholas A. Woychuk, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister who later switched to the United Presbyterian Church. In recent years the BMA program has spread to several overseas countries. Nearly 43,000 persons enrolled in BMA courses last year, and some 4,600 spent a week at camp. The current year’s budget exceeds $700,000, and there are thirty-eight fulltime staff members. The BMA owns four camps in Louisiana, New York, Georgia, and Michigan.
This year has been marked by turmoil for BMA’s leaders. Woychuk, 62, was asked by the BMA thirty-seven-member board in March to step aside as executive director after a series of meetings failed to resolve a number of Woychuk’s “personal” and management “problems,” according to BMA sources. Woychuk, however, was retained as a consultant at full salary, and he kept his seat on the board. The sources say that the board did this out of respect and appreciation for Woychuk’s years of service. To replace him, the board named Robert Griffin, a Southern Baptist pastor from Mobile, Alabama, who was hired last year to assist Woychuk in management. Griffin has been active in BMA work since 1948, when he won a week at camp for memorizing verses.
In late summer more “serious” matters came to light, said the sources, including irregularities that were uncovered by a preliminary audit. The irregularities spanned seven years and involved “tens of thousands of dollars,” said the sources. A report was presented at a board meeting on September 30, and after long deliberations the thirty-two members who were there—a number of them Woychuk’s backers from the beginning—unanimously agreed that Woychuk should sever his relationship to the BMA. He and several friends left the meeting for a short time, then returned with a resignation letter. In it, Woychuk cited his “unwise use of [BMA] funds” and “personal indiscretions.” He said he had confessed them and had received forgiveness.
A few weeks later Woychuk announced the formation of Scripture Memory Fellowship International, with himself as director. Its program apparently will be similar to the BMA’s. Woychuk revealed that he personally owns the copyrights of the main materials published by the BMA. In an interview, he said that he is willing for the BMA to use the materials “for now,” but he is not sure about what he will permit in the future.
Woychuk acknowledged that he had made some unwise decisions, but he insisted that the BMA board was partially to blame. “I had an unlimited expense account but no guidelines,” he said. He denied some of the other allegations that were made in the board meeting and are now circulating among BMA’s constituency. These relate to his travels and associations. Woychuk accuses the board of “spying.”
BMA’s leadership says Woychuk took with him a copy of the BMA mailing list. Woychuk, however, insists that he does not possess a copy of the list. He does manage to keep many of his supporters informed, though.
Woychuk “is trying to make this look like a power struggle,” commented a BMA leader. “It is not.”
Whatever it is, it may get worse before it gets better, and it eventually may land in court.
EDWARD E. PLOWMAN
A Vanishing Breed In Brazil
The Brazilian government announced early this month that it will not renew its contract allowing Wycliffe Bible Translators to continue work among Indians in the Amazon area of Brazil.
“The Brazilian government prefers from now on to allow only Brazilians to work in the Amazon area,” commented Mauricio Rangel Reis, Minister of the Interior. A brief note was delivered to Wycliffe, stating that all of its workers must leave the tribal areas by the beginning of 1978. The order affects eighty-four adult workers in the tribal areas. About 200 other staff members are associated with the field workers in administrative, clerical, communications, and other support services. They operate out of four centers in the cities of Belém, Cuiabá, Manaus, and Porto Velho.
Wycliffe, which has worked in Brazil since 1956, has come under sharp attack on several fronts in the past year. As in a number of other countries, the mission operated in Brazil under contract, using the name of its cultural and research entity, the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). Anthropologists and other specialists working with the Indian tribes have repeatedly accused SIL workers of being more interested in teaching Christianity to the Indians through Scripture translation than in engaging in scientific study of Indian language and culture.
Last month, a Rio de Janeiro newspaper published an allegation, attributed to ministry official Reis, in which Wycliffe was accused of doing secret geological surveys in the resource-rich Amazon area. The charge was vehemently denied by Wycliffe leaders, and no government people have pursued it.
Missionaries have taken soil samples in the tribal region in efforts to help the Indians increase crop production. And because so many of the villages are in remote places, Wycliffe has hacked out numerous jungle airstrips and relies on a fleet of six Cessna 200 aircraft to move its workers around. Two-way radio is a vital link in the system. Mission leaders theorize that all of this could have aroused suspicion and led to the geology-related charge. And there are indeed foreign exploiters—including smugglers—at work in the jungle region.
Other factors may be involved in the government’s decision. Sources in Brasilia, the capital, note that the Ministry of the Interior may be caught up in land conflicts between Indians and white settlers moving in to farm. The ministry has a mandate both to help develop the Amazon and to protect its resources, including the Indians.
“It could be that [SIL] is just not wanted because [its workers] defend the interests of the Indians,” one official told the Associated Press.
Part of the reason may be undercurrents of anti-Americanism in Brazil, say some observers who cite strained relationships between the Brazilian government and the Carter administration.
There are an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 Indians in Brazil. SIL workers from the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Holland, West Germany, and elsewhere have been working among about fifty tribes. Wycliffe troubleshooters and Brazilian supporters of the mission, including some high-level government people, were trying to get a reversal or delay of the ouster decision this month. Several Catholic bishops were approached for support also (the Roman Catholic Church has been intensifying its activity in defense of Indian tribes in recent years). Meanwhile, the Wycliffe missionaries will apparently continue their research and publishing work in the urban centers. They will also concentrate on recruiting and training of Brazilians to take over their work, according to a Wycliffe leader.
A total of fifty-three religious groups are registered with the government to work among the tribespeople. Of these groups, thirty-one are foreign-based, and all but one of the foreign groups are Protestant.
By law, groups working with the tribes are required to be under government control, but the remote locations of many tribes and the lack of funds and personnel have kept the government from exercising closer supervision. However, General Ismarth de Oliveira, president of the National Indian Foundation, the government department that authorizes foreigners to work among Indians, says that the authorities will have a stronger presence in coming months. Some mission groups report that hassles over visas, regulations, permits, and the like already are on the increase.
Foundation officials acknowledge that many Indian tribes would have been wiped out had it not been for the help of missionary groups working with them. They also concede that the government will have a difficult time in providing the same services to the Indians as the missionaries have provided. Some missionary groups have established schools and hospitals in the jungle for the Indians.
In a major story on the situation, the Associated Press reported that one of the main concerns of Indian-affairs experts is that Indian languages and culture are dying as modern man moves into the wilderness. “Many of [SIL’s] missionaries are trained linguists and anthropologists,” said the AP report. “The group has published hundreds of works on Indian languages and cultures—works that may stand as the only written record of Brazil’s vanishing tribes.”
Ugandan Refugees: A Helping Hand
Sometimes people will give more of themselves than they will of their money. That’s what organizers of one aid program for Ugandan refugees is learning. RETURN, sponsored by African Enterprise and led by exiled Anglican Bishop Festo Kivengere, set out six months ago to raise $15 million to help relocate students, professionals, and businessmen who fled Idi Amin’s reign of terror (see August 12 issue, page 38).
The initial fund-raising has brought in only about $500,000 so far (with less than a third of that coming from the United States), but Kivengere and his colleagues have been more than pleased with other offerings. In America, for instance, fifty-four congregations have agreed to provide a “home away from home” for Ugandan students. RETURN will fly them to America by February, and the churches will pick up all other living and educational costs as well as “a caring community” for each individual. Some churches in Western Europe are also sponsoring students. So far, more than 125 young Ugandans have been placed outside their homeland. (Those studying in Africa get $100 each from RETURN for clothing and start-up costs, but the United Nations and host African institutions care for their other expenses.)
RETURN has also made contacts that have enabled 300 Ugandan business and professional people to get new work. Each of them was given $100 to start. Refugee doctors have been in great demand, and some African countries have actually sent recruiting teams to the Nairobi headquarters of RETURN. Lawyers and teachers have been harder to place, but jobs have been found for some of them.
For every student already sponsored abroad, RETURN has another one that it is ready to recommend. Some 500 others have applied for help and are being screened by a panel of exiled Ugandan educators. Among the professionals, the ones that RETURN is having the hardest time in placing are the ex-pilots, engineers, and air traffic controllers.
The response to the appeal for help is worldwide. Kivengere plans to spend a week in Australia in February on the first anniversary of the death of Archbishop Janani Luwum. A special observance of the occasion is planned by the Anglican Church there, with offerings to be designated for RETURN.
Britons at Home
Britain is not only becoming less Christian because of declining church membership, but “increasingly anti-Christian because of the rise of other faiths.” So says the first British Protestant Home Missions Handbook, published recently by the Evangelical Alliance in London. It is prefaced by an article from Tom Houston, a Bible-society executive, who says: “There is no task of greater priority in all the churches in Britain today than to learn again to make new Christians faster than the old die and the lapsed leave.” He goes on to suggest ways of tackling the problem.
The figures compiled by statistician Peter Brierley make somber reading. Only 18.2 per cent of all Britons over age 14 were listed as church members in 1975. The figure would have been lower but for Northern Ireland’s astonishing 76 per cent and Scotland’s 39 per cent. Total Christian church membership: 7.85 million. Perhaps the most depressing aspect is that the Church of England membership is down to an estimated 1.862 million—slightly more than 5 per cent of the English population in the past-fourteen category.
While many of the African, West Indian, Holiness, and Pentecostal churches show significant increases over five years, most striking are the statistics for cults and for other religions. The estimated total for Buddhists. Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs has risen over the period from 381,000 to 636,000. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and Spiritualists have also recorded substantial gains.
The main part of the fifty-six-page handbook gives a directory of home missions, along with details of denominational headquarters and of the chief offices of other religions in the country. It is a complementary volume to the handbook on Protestant missions overseas published last year.
J. D. DOUGLAS
Reconciliation In Rhodesia
Fighting and political negotiating are not all that occupy the citizens of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) these days. The unreported activity claiming the attention of many in that African nation is prayer. There have been 5 A.M. traffic jams in Salisbury, the capital city, as people drive to prayer meetings, according to Anglican Bishop Festo Kivengere. There is spiritual hunger throughout the land, he said.
Kivengere, exiled from Uganda, was in Salisbury last month as a speaker at the unprecedented Christian Leadership Consultation. The integrated meeting of 160 black and white church leaders concluded with adoption of a document confessing that failure to pray together has “fractured the body of Christ.”
Conferees agreed that “we have allowed ourselves to appear to be separate churches, one predominantly black and one predominantly white, supporting our restrictive group interests.… We have been forced to face the fact that this dividedness has isolated us from one another, has produced virtually contradictory prayers, has hindered God’s healing of the land.” The fact that the Christians have kept to their racial groups and have prayed for the interest of their respective groups instead of for the nation as a whole has “left the nation spiritually rudderless,” said the statement.
After adjournment of the event, teams were dispatched to convey the message to leaders of the major political groupings. Michael Cassidy, a white South African and leader of the African Enterprise organization which helped to stage the consultation, reported a warm welcome at each stop. While no interview was arranged with Prime Minister Ian Smith, there were conferences with his deputy and with the nation’s president. Also receiving a delegation was United Methodist Bishop Abel Muzorewa, leader of one of the principal black political groups. Deputies of the leaders of two other black groups were visited.
Although there have been multi-racial meetings of Christian leaders before, this one was thought to be more representative of the Rhodesian churches than previous ones. Others have emphasized a topic such as evangelism, but the Salisbury consultation last month was considered the first top-level parley to take up the issue of reconciliation in the divided nation. As the churchmen were meeting, Smith was continuing his negotiations with Muzorewa and the other political leaders. On the last day of the churchmen’s consultation there was a portent of possible settlement on the political scene as Smith announced for the first time his acceptance of the “one man, one vote” concept of government.
Discord
President Dennis Fitzpatrick of FEL Publications, a Los Angeles firm that publishes religious music, filed an $8.6 million damage suit against the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States. He charges that a number of Catholic churches and schools have committed copyright violations against his firm in the use of pirated hymnals, resulting in heavy losses to his company. The suit asks that such use of illegally copied music be stopped and that the pirated hymnal collections not be destroyed or hidden but instead be turned over to FEL. The suit also alleges that the bishops have failed to provide adequate direction to the faithful concerning the proper use of copyrights.
Religion in Transit
Dozens of students from several Christian colleges helped to clean up the debris left at Toccoa Falls College after a dam burst and flooded the campus (see December 9 issue, page 48). Thirty-nine persons were killed. So far, say college officials, more than sixty persons—many of them relatives and friends of the victims—have professed faith in Christ in the aftermath of the tragedy.
The non-executive staff members of the National Council of Churches voted 107 to 61 to be represented in collective bargaining by a staff association rather than by a labor union affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Three persons voted against having any union. NCC officials are now trying to hasten the healing of relationships ruptured in the months of electioneering. Elsewhere, employees in the mail room of the United Methodist Publishing House in Nashville voted 60 to 35 against union representation.
Letters to pastors purporting to be from poor Appalachian families in need of clothing and other assistance may be bogus, the Kentucky Council of Churches has warned. The council suggests that help should be channeled through established church-sponsored systems.
Tied in balloting for first place in submissions from some 200 reviewers, writers, and critics who took part in Eternity magazine’s annual “Book of the Year” poll were How Should We Then Live? by Francis Schaeffer and God, Revelation, and Authority by Carl F. H. Henry. It was the first tie for first place in the poll’s nineteen-year history.
Arthur Jones, 41, British-born editor of the important National Catholic Reporter (circulation, 50,000), was named publisher and chief executive officer of the independent lay-edited weekly newspaper, succeeding Donald J. Thorman, who died recently at age 52 of hepatitis. Thanks largely to Thorman, the paper is must reading for anyone wanting to keep abreast of Catholic affairs.
Police in Nashville arrested three members of a ring that is believed to have stolen up to 1,200 Bibles valued at $30,000 from Thomas Nelson Publishers. The scheme allegedly involved a Nelson employee and a former employee. The Bibles were apparently peddled through a “connection” in the North, say police.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that a New York state law to reimburse 2,000 religious schools for state-ordered recordkeeping and testing services violates the Constitution.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a federal court of appeals ruling in Chicago which held that the National Labor Relations Act does not apply to Catholic schools. The lower court’s action overturned an NLRB ruling ordering the bishops of the Chicago and Fort Wayne-South Bend dioceses to bargain with unions representing lay teachers in church schools there. The court said that the NLRB’s action violated church-state separation provisions. In its appeal, the NLRB said that the lower court’s ruling permits the bishops to claim a “constitutional right to commit unfair labor practices.” (There are about 107,000 lay teachers in nearly 10,000 primary and secondary schools associated with the church.)
Personalia
Political notes: Arkansas governor David H. Pryor appointed fellow Democrat Kaneaster Hodges, Jr., 39, an ordained Methodist minister who practices law, to the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death last month of John L. McClellan, a former Baptist Sunday-school teacher, at age 81. Pryor, a Presbyterian, is expected to seek the seat in next year’s election. In Illinois, Pastor Don Lyon of Open Bible Center hopes to unseat in the March primary fellow Republican John B. Anderson, who has served in Congress for nine terms. Pryor considers Anderson, a prominent evangelical, too liberal. Evangelist Leroy Jenkins announced he will seek election as governor of Ohio on the Democratic ticket in 1978.
Deaths
ALBERT BRUMLEY, 72, writer-composer of hundreds of Gospel songs (“I’ll Fly Away”); in Springfield, Missouri.
ARTHUR B. RUTLEDGE, 66, retired Southern Baptist home-mission leader; in Atlanta, of a heart attack.
FRANK A. TOBEY, 74, Baptist clergyman and former chief of chaplains of the Army; in Fair Hope, Alabama, of cancer.
B. J. Thomas, the rock singer whose records have sold 20 million copies (“Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and others), became a follower of Christ last year and is now a leading Christian spokesperson in entertainment circles. He will headline the big New Year’s Eve party at Knott’s Berry Farm, a popular southern California tourist attraction that features many Christian music groups. Many young evangelical artists took part in a recent “Sonshine Music Celebration” that attracted 25,000 at Knott’s.
World Scene
The 109 member bodies of the Baptist World Alliance have pledged $500,000 toward a $1 million goal for a worldwide immunization program, aimed at ridding the world of communicable childhood diseases by 1990, according to a BWA announcement. The program is being carried out in cooperation with other organizations. The BWA also reported that it has provided more than 20,000 Bibles and hymnals for Eastern European countries during the past year.
Koson Srisang resigned under pressure as general secretary of the Church of Christ in Thailand. Srisang voiced criticism of a military trial of Thai university students. The church council, however, expressed disapproval of Srisang’s action, advising that church leaders need to recognize and respect the existing law and government. Srisang, a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, will teach at Princeton Seminary during the coming year.
