Ten evangelical Christians traveled to Barrytown, New York, recently for a weekend of dialogue with fifteen students of the Unification Theological Seminary and a faculty member described as a nonmember of the Unification Church (U.C.), the controversial sect led by Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon. The no-holds-barred encounter was convened by Richard Quebedeaux, a United Church of Christ member who has written several books on evangelical trends.
Mennonite scholar Rodney Sawatsky, church historian at Conrad Grebel College (University of Waterloo) in Ontario, moderated the discussions. The evangelical panel included Quebedeaux, two seminary professors (Missouri-Synod Lutheran and United Presbyterian), two college religion instructors (from Canada and Pennsylvania), two West Coast InterVarsity Christian Fellowship staffers, a religion books editor (Roy Carlisle, a Presbyterian, of Harper & Row), and Campus Crusade for Christ executive Paul Eshleman, a Presbyterian. Several of the participating “Moonies,” as Moon’s followers are known, were formerly state directors for the U.C.
Eshleman, who directed the nationwide “Here’s Life” campaign for Campus Crusade, on the eve of the conference addressed one-third of the seminary’s 106 students in a voluntary-attendance session. The lecture included an explication of Campus Crusade’s “Four Spiritual Laws,” an evangelism tool that charts the Christian plan of salvation. The next morning, when the twenty-six conferees introduced themselves by relating their religious testimonies, one Moonie told of being moved by Eshleman’s talk and meditating in the woods alone for four hours in the darkness of night until at last he “found peace.” Several Moonies told of being “born again” into the evangelical Christian faith prior to embracing Moon’s “Divine Principle.” Most cited apathy and hypocrisy in the historic churches as reasons for leaving them—and vision, zeal, love, and discipline as attractions that drew them to the U.C. (The Moonies believe that Christ failed to achieve full salvation and that a Korean-born messiah—possibly Moon—will complete the task.)
Participants were reminded of their common goal—to exchange viewpoints. Christology, Creation, the Fall, Authority, Salvation, and Eschatology were discussed in turn—as were the Unification doctrines of indemnity, the Divine Principle, Moon’s role as the Third Adam, and spiritual communication with the dead. Between sessions and sumptuous meals prepared and served by seminary students, those so inclined strolled the verdant 250-acre campus of the former Christian Brothers monastery and browsed in the 22,000-volume seminary library. First-time visitors were surprised to find, in addition to standard biblical reference works, more than 300 periodicals, ranging from the Christian Century to CHRISTIANITY TODAY, and from The Lutheran to Logos Journal. Even recent anti-Moon paperbacks—for example, Jerry Yamamoto’s The Puppet Master and James Bjornstad’s The Moon Is Not the Son—were available to students and had been read by some of the panel members.
Cross Words
They “crucified” Willie Dicks, 37, in a park in Oakland. California, last month. Attendants tied Dicks, pastor of St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church in nearby San Jose, to the twelve-foot-long cross he had carried into the park and propped against a pine tree.
He had carefully marked with a pen the fleshy parts between his toes and fingers where he wanted the three-inch nails, which had been immersed in disinfectant, to be driven. Pain flashed across his face as the nails were driven in, and blood trickled from his left hand and a foot. But an attendant supported his body around the waist to take the weight off the nails.
Said the bearded black clergyman to 100 curious onlookers: “I would like to say from this cross that I’m disgusted that our senior citizens cannot walk through the streets of the cities without being robbed and raped. I’m asking you here today to refrain from all crime.”
When he finished his exhortation against crime, an assistant using heavy wire cutters cut off the nail heads and Dicks was pulled free.
Denied accreditation by the New York Board of Regents last February, the seminary has filed suit, charging discrimination. Subsequently, in a companion suit, the U.C. entered six counts of libel against ex-Moonie Gary Scharff for testimony he presented before the board. The church is seeking $15 million in “compensatory and punitive damages” in that case.
Despite its non-accredited status, the three-year-old seminary attracts 300 applicants annually, of whom one-sixth are admitted to the two-year program in religious education. All 106 students—twenty of them women—are college graduates, all are Moonies, and all are on full scholarship. Twelve members of the 1978 graduating class of fifty-two have been accepted at recognized theological schools in the United States, Canada, and Britain.
Oddly, only three of the twelve faculty members (five of them part-time) are members of the U.C. The others represent a variety of theological backgrounds. Two are Roman Catholic, two are Presbyterian (including United Presbyterian Herbert Richardson), one is a Jewish rabbi, one is a Greek Orthodox scholar, another is a minister of the Reformed Church in America (Thomas Boslooper), and still another is a Unitec Methodist pastor (Henry O. Thompson). All are listed in U.C. literature as having earned doctorates. The formal curriculum is supplemented by guest lectures by visiting scholars—about forty of them during the 1977–78 academic year from big-name schools.
The dialogue was the latest in a series of seminary seminars. During the recently concluded academic year five dialogues involving visiting professors and three featuring visiting theological students were held at Barrytown. In addition, U.C. seminary students attended several ecumenical student conferences elsewhere. Student coordinator Anthony Guerra, former director of U.C. operations in Tennessee and Massachusetts, said that the seminars were conceived by Moon to provide stimulating doctrinal exchanges between seminarians and non-U.C. theologians, and to build bridges between the U.C. and other communions.
Student-led worship services are held in the seminary chapel each weekday morning at 6:30. Following a slightly later chapel session on Sundays, an estimated 75 per cent of the students and faculty fan out to area churches for Sunday school and worship. Seminary president David S. C. Kim and his family attend a Presbyterian Church. (Kim and Moon are the only survivors of the quintet who formed the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity in Seoul in 1954.) Dean Therese Stewart, a former nun whose husband Ernest is the building superintendent at the seminary, worships with a United Methodist congregation. Asked about the reception accorded the Moon disciples, President Kim replied that at first pastors and parishioners are guarded, but when they realize their fears of infiltration are groundless, they become more friendly and accepting. One male student assists the pastor at a black Baptist church. Students, Kim said, are enjoined against proselytizing, and they are instructed to attend the churches singly or in twos—never in groups. He asserted that the U.C. is not really a church but a movement seeking to unite all churches. Hence, said he, the
Moonies do not administer sacraments, but find fulfillment of their ecclesiastical needs through involvement in local congregations of various church bodies.
Moonie Pam Fanchier told seminar participants of her seizure by her parents in an unsuccessful deprogramming attempt four months after she joined the U.C. following her graduation from the University of Kansas in 1975. As a consequence of the incident, relations with her parents have suffered, she said. Although they occasionally communicate by telephone, she hasn’t seen them for three years. Moonie panel members stated that with the church’s “increased stability and maturity” the number of such episodes has diminished. Virtually no parental abductions have occurred in 1978, they said. Citing Stillson Judah’s calculation that a third of all converts to new religious groups drop out voluntarily, they acknowledged that between 3,000 and 4,000 disciples have left on their own over the past five years. Susan Reinbold, the church’s director of public affairs (until replaced in June by Kathy Lowery) estimated in a telephone interview that some 300 Moonies have been forcibly removed by their parents since the deprogramming crusade began in earnest in late 1974. About half of these, she said, have returned to the Unification fold. A notable example is former Fort Worth socialite Cynthia Slaughter, 27, who rejoined the church in June in Boston following an absence of three years. Deprogrammed by cult foe Ted Patrick after she had spent only six weeks as a Moonie, she reportedly went on to assist in twenty-five deprogrammings herself, and she was a frequent speaker at anti-cult meetings.
Several lawsuits arising from parent recovery efforts are in process. Wendy Helander, 21, twice “rescued” by her parents only to return to the Moon group, is seeking an injunction against further attempts. Verdicts in the case, involving deprogrammers Patrick and Joe Alexander, Jr., are pending. But this spring an out-of-court settlement was reached with Baptist minister-educator George Swope, who directed the now-defunct rehabilitation center in New Hampshire where Miss Helander allegedly was confined. Details were not released. Following the earlier rescue attempt in 1975, Miss Helander won a $5,000 judgment against Patrick. Her parents, who live in Guilford, Connecticut, say efforts to recover their daughter have cost them more than $40,000. They lost a counter suit in which they sought a conviction against the U.C. for “kidnapping back” their daughter.
Church officials have announced that they will appeal a court decision denying the suit of Leslie Weiss against Patrick and Albert Turner for alleged conspiracy, assault and battery, and false imprisonment. If the appeal fails, this will be the first such case lost by the U.C., say church spokesmen. Miss Weiss joined the Moon movement in June, 1974, at age twenty-three. Her parents, who enlisted the services of Patrick, have since died. Turner, whose daughter Shelly has filed suit against the U.C. for alleged violations of her civil rights during her tenure as a Moonie, made his Warwick, Rhode Island, home available to the Weiss family for the deprogramming sessions. In a twenty-two page opinion dated June 1, 1978, U.S. District Judge Francis J. Boyle explained his decision: “What occurred here was simply an effort, in private, to persuade a willing listener to disavow the tenets of the Unification Church. To hold otherwise would be to deny defendants their First Amendment right to freedom of speech, one of the very rights which plaintiff herself asserts as the basis of her civil rights claim.” Miss Weiss, however, contends that she was manipulated into the deprogramming situation through deceit and trickery.
Are the Moonies overcoming the public relations problems that continue to plague them? Salonen believes that they are. When he assumed the presidency five years ago, he says, there were fewer than 1,000 U.S. members—and most of them resided in U.C. centers. Now, as members are growing older and marrying, many are moving into homes in their respective communities and finding jobs to support their families. Others are furthering their education in colleges and universities.
No Toll Calls Allowed
When police in Porter, Indiana, picked up Naam Hankins, 56, for public intoxication, he was feeling pretty low. He’d had a fight with his wife, he told Officer Daniel O’Kelly, and he said he wanted to use his one phone call to talk to the only friend he had—God. O’Kelly denied the request, explaining that policy prohibits the placing of long distance calls.
There is a trend, Salonen added, away from street and house-to-house solicitation in favor of financing by means of church-sponsored industries. Locally incorporated Unification groups have recently established a boat-building business in Alabama and fishing operations in Norfolk, Virginia, and Gloucester, Massachusetts. In response to the criticism that Moon-related businesses, manned by church volunteers, threatened local workers, Salonen said that workers are being recruited from the local communities as well as from U.C. ranks. All employees must be paid the minimum wage required by law, Salonen added, and the firms pay local, state, and federal taxes. (Moon’s people sell their fish at cut-rate prices, thus many once-hostile local residents now welcome the newcomers.)
When the twenty-six participants in the evangelical-U.C. dialogue at Barrytown met for their final session, convener Quebedeaux, in an emotionally charged speech, admitted that he had not been enthusiastic about his first encounter with the U.C. seminary students last March. But, said he, two visits to the seminary had changed his mind. “I’ve never seen a place where agape has worked out so well,” he said. “Theologically, doctrinally, I think you’re wrong. Emotionally, I think you’re right.… You may be heretics—I’ll let God decide that. But I love you, and I believe the world is a better place because of you.”
A Moonie responded similarly, expressing respect and love for the evangelical participants. The gathering concluded with a period of spontaneous prayer led by Moonies and evangelicals alike.
One evangelical seemed to sum up the sentiments of a number of his colleagues as he offered a farewell comment: “I’m going back and telling everyone I found real Christian fellowship in Barrytown. Of course, I must tell them, too, that many Moonies seem to be following Reverend Moon more than Jesus Christ. But I want you to know that I love you and that I will be praying for you—that the Holy Spirit will convict you of error and lead you to truth. God bless you all.”
The corridors of the seminary were buzzing with talk about plans to fly more than 300 Moonies, including the entire seminary student body, next fall’s incoming class, the Korean folk ballet, and the New Hope singers, to England this summer for an intensive evangelistic campaign. Moon flew to London in May, prompting speculation that he had skipped the country to evade a subpoena to appear before the House Committee on International Relations in Washington. There were rumors that he planned to transfer the church’s international headquarters to England.
Both allegations were denied by Neil A. Salonen, president of the Unification Church of America, in a telephone interview. The European tour, he said, had been in the works since 1976. According to an official church statement. Moon has planned for some time to “shift his focus to an international level,” and the subpoena was allegedly received at U.C. headquarters on May 17, four days after Moon’s departure from the U.S. (See also following story.)
Shortly after his arrival in England Moon married 118 European couples in a mass ceremony. Salonen acknowledged that Moon’s application for renewal of his visa was rejected by British officials. The decision has been appealed, he said, and Moon is permitted to remain in England pending the final verdict—which gives him a four-month grace period. Moon reportedly intends to leave for the Orient at the end of the summer, anyway, said Salonen.
The church has repeatedly denied ties with the Korean Central Intelligence Agency and with the autocratic government of South Korea president Chung Hee Park. Salonen insists that Moon has never met Park. He also says that factories owned by Moon—contrary to publicized reports—have never manufactured any kind of weapons for the South Korean government.
According to Salonen, American membership in the U.C. stands at 35,000, of whom 7,000 are “full-time volunteers”—the vast majority “live-in” disciples. A 1976 survey by the church indicated that 75 per cent of its members were in their twenties; fewer than 10 per cent were thirty or older. Blacks accounted for only 6 per cent of the Moonie population though the proportion was rising, the report stated. The survey disclosed that 27 per cent of American Moonies had completed four years of college; only 22 per cent had no training beyond high school. U.C. members were scattered throughout all fifty states, with more than 70 per cent of them concentrated on the East and West Coasts. New York City had the largest Moonie population. Since the church has no international administration, Salonen explained, inclusive statistics are difficult to ascertain. He estimates world membership at three million in 122 countries.
Occult Supermart
Some 20,000 people visited a supermarket of occultic and psychic means to self-realization in San Francisco’s recent four-day “New Age Awareness Fair.” Two hundred booths in the Show Place featured a potpourri of “consciousness raising” schemes through the teachings of Eastern gurus, astrologers, psychic readers, pyramid-power advocates, and a variety of meditative methods. (Satanists were excluded, say organizers.) With the stark exception of the evangelical witness of the Berkeley Christian Coalition, most of the metaphysical merchants seemed agreed on one concept: holistic health and mind-stretching power are available for all who will tap the mysterious forces within man through proper parapsychology methods, diet, psychic release, and occultic symbols.
Fifty psychic readers using astrology, tarot cards, numerology, handwriting analysis, quartz crystals, bio-feedback, palmistry, Druid rune stones, and Kirlian auras offered to predict for a fee (usually $6) a person’s future or to inform him of his past life in previous incarnations.
Physical problems were dealt with by groups pushing psychic surgery, acupressure, yoga exercises, wheat grass juice, and spine-rolling massagers.
“We want to win people to the awareness and consciousness movement, said Rousan Coronado, manager of the fair.
The Berkeley Christians viewed the event as a sample of what may be ahead for America “on a much larger scale.”
ROBERT L. CLEATH
God and the Law In Dallas
It’s been a long hot summer for the Board of Education of the Dallas school district, the nation’s eighth-largest urban school district (136,547 pupils).
It all began when Superintendent Nolan Estes, a lay leader at the city’s First Baptist Church (see March 18, 1977, issue, page 52), resigned from the $47,500-a-year post, effective next January. He had served for ten years.
A search committee was appointed to recommend a replacement for Estes. It concluded that a large number of Dallas residents want their superintendent to be “visibly and devotedly religious.” With that in mind, at least three of the board members included questions about religious beliefs, church affiliation, and church attendance in their interviews with six leading candidates. Some of the candidates expressed resentment, saying their religious activities were none of the board’s business. (Only one of the top contenders is described as “actively religious”—Houston educator Linus Wright, who is a leader in a Church of Christ congregation.)
The issue spilled into the press, prompting public controversy. The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith charged that the emphasis on religion was possibly unconstitutional and clearly a violation of federal civil rights legislation. Other watchdog groups expressed their concern also.
Dallas County district attorney Henry Wade last month declared that the board’s actions constituted a criminal violation of Texas statutes. He said that he would have little choice but to take the matter to a grand jury if he received a complaint, since the Texas Education Code clearly prohibits religious tests in job placement. The code makes violators subject to fines and jail terms. No formal complaints had been filed as of early this month, and prosecution seemed unlikely.
But that was only a fraction of the board’s troubles. Early in June, an appeals court decided that the school system has not complied with desegregation requirements despite a decade of litigation and various plans. As a result, the federal government has threatened to withhold $4.5 million in aid. The board is taking its case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Next, Estes and the board members refused to release embarrassing test scores showing that half its new teachers failed a mental ability exam. The scores also indicated that teachers and administrators together averaged lower than a sample of high school students at a private school in affluent North Dallas. Efforts of the board to contravene an attorney general’s ruling on public access to those records became pointless when the Dallas Times Herald obtained a copy of the scores.
Finally, refusal to obey a judge’s order to release information about student discipline landed the board in court for a contempt hearing.
Dallas Times Herald columnist Jim Henderson, noting the board’s search for a new superintendent, commented acidly: “One must sympathize with the anguish of this difficult … search for a soul who can reconcile devotion to the Scriptures with disdain for the law.”
It’s the Law In Kentucky
Kentucky’s new law requiring display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms took effect in mid-June. But its sponsor, State Representative Claudia Riner (D-Louisville), wife of a Baptist clergyman, says she fears it may be “choked to death in red tape.”
Implementation of the legislation is contingent on sufficient funds in voluntary public contributions being received. At last count, the state reported that only eleven dollars had come in for the project.
Representative Riner says state officials rejected her offer to help raise donations and oversee production of 31,000 copies required (at an estimated cost of $ 17,000). Instead, State School Superintendent James B. Graham told Mrs. Riner that his department would assume responsibility for the project.
Another Kentucky law requires daily Bible readings in public school classrooms, another involves recitation of the Lord’s prayer, and still another permits teachers to teach the biblical account of creation. Children whose parents object are exempted from participation in the Bible reading and prayer practices. A legislative study commission, however, announced last month that the laws probably are unconstitutional because they support religion. The commission also gave a failing grade to a law that bans distribution of immoral and irreligious books in schools because it “gets fully into the realm of freedom of expression.”
They Love Mark In London
London’s West End theater district has been lit up by a most unexpected hit that has been drawing capacity audiences: a single actor reciting verbatim the King James version of the Gospel of Mark. Performing on a bare stage with three chairs and a table, Alex McGowen presents with dramatic flair the action-packed narrative of the shortest Gospel and portrays Jesus, Peter, and numerous other biblical people.
McGowen, a well known British actor who played the title role in the acclaimed Hadrian VII, explains in a brief on-stage opening statement that his motivation to do a one-man show based on the Bible came from a godly grandfather. McGowen says that when he decided at age 16 to become an actor, the old man prayed that he would not be drawn into a life of sin.
There are plans to bring McGowen’s St. Mark to America this fall.
ROBERT L. CLEATH
Muzzled in Mexico
Mexico’s Office of the Interior last month ordered the suspension of Spanish-language religious radio programs on fifty stations throughout the country.
The action was reported in the July 12 edition of a major national newspaper, Excelsior. The government, said the story, considers that religious broadcasts “lend themselves to swindle the public, since some of the programs in question indicate to the radio listener that through prayers he may be healed of such and such an illness, and some broadcasters on stations on the northern border have even asked for financial help, which is not permitted.”
In the government’s view, the story went on, “the broadcasts lend themselves to quackery, since the leaders even offer healing of the sick by means of ‘miracles.’ ”
The great majority of Christian programs do not discuss healing, according to mission sources. Among the non-healing broadcasts canceled immediately in Mexico City were “Words of Hope,” “Luis Palau Answers,” and “Good News.” Daniel Ost’s “Living Water,” which does include prayers for the sick, was also eliminated.
Official hostility toward evangelical broadcasts surfaced more than a year ago when a number were canceled by government order. The pressure eased, and some were later reinstated by stations that said the broadcasts had cultural and spiritual value. Other programs, such as the Spanish version of “Back to the Bible” and the Mennonite “Light and Truth,” were allowed to go on broadcasting.
Radio producer Juan M. Isais, a member of the Community of Latin American Evangelical Ministries spawned by the Latin America Mission, charged that the action violates human rights proclamations of the United Nations.
Most of the Mexican religious broadcasters, insisted Isais, have been cautious to stay within the letter and spirit of the law, especially since Christian programs were totally illegal only a few decades ago. Considerable progress has been achieved in recent years, he pointed out. Isais noted, however, that a few broadcasters with wide impact feel that such caution does not reflect the urgent need to preach the gospel to the masses.
There are no Protestant radio stations in Mexico. All evangelical programs beamed to the nation’s more than sixty-two million people are aired on commercial outlets.
Ruled Out In New York
Within a month of his return from the United Presbyterian general assembly, Pastor Charles Mangione of First Presbyterian Church in Flushing, Long Island, was summoned to appear before the ministerial relations committee of the Presbytery of New York City. He was told to bring along his unordained assistant, James J. Spitzel, a candidate for the ministry under the spiritual supervision of the Presbytery of Pittsburgh.
Although he was not a commissioner (delegate), Mangione had gone to the San Diego assembly in May to work with the evangelical coalition that lobbied for a “no” vote on the homosexual ordination issue. The issue had been raised by the New York City presbytery, where a self-affirmed homosexual was seeking ordination (see June 23 issue, page 38). At the assembly, Mangione found himself in opposition to some of the prominent New York City commissioners.
(Despite spirited arguments from the New York City delegation, the assembly voted to advise presbyteries not to ordain practicing homosexuals. The denomination’s top administrator, William P. Thompson, later issued an opinion that presbyteries must accept the assembly’s “guidance.” In a key follow-up development, the Presbytery of Pacific turned down a recommendation that it ordain Chris Glaser, a leader of the United Presbyterian gay caucus and a member of the task force that urged the assembly to give presbyteries the option of ordaining self-affirmed homosexuals.)
Unable to chastise Mangione for his private attendance at the assembly and his work with the evangelical caucus, the New York City presbytery’s committee on ministerial relations apparently took aim at his assistant, Spitzel. He and another candidate for the ministry from the Pittsburgh presbytery, John Palafoutas, had stated publicly their conscientious objection to the ordination of women. In the famed 1974 Kenyon case, which arose from the Pittsburgh presbytery, the denomination’s top court ruled that ordination should be withheld from a candidate who says he will not ordain women. Thus blocked, a number of candidates with such scruples have accepted employment that does not require ordination. Spitzel became assistant to the minister at Flushing, and Palafoutas became “supply” pastor at nearby St. James Presbyterian in the Ridgewood section of Queens. As unordained workers they are not permitted to admister the sacraments, officiate at weddings, or vote in church governing bodies.
Until the presbytery’s ministerial relations committee moved in, the two men said, they were unaware of any objections to their job performance.
The committee recommended that the presbytery deny the men permission to continue working in their respective churches. After a long debate the governing body agreed. An attempt was then made to get the action reversed, but it failed by a vote of 71 to 58.
Mangione filed a protest against the presbytery’s action and is seeking a “stay of execution” pending disposition of the complaint in the church courts. In a letter to his congregation last month, the Flushing pastor explained: “I am convinced that the Presbytery of New York City has overstepped its boundaries in seeking to exclude two candidates from working … for no other reason than their personal convictions that they in good conscience cannot now ordain women as elders.” Mangione himself has participated in the ordination of women.
The presbytery acted under provisions of the denominational constitution that apply only to pastors, some authorities argue. Others, however, insist that the rules apply to all professional workers in churches that are within a presbytery’s jurisdiction.
Court Case
Alabama’s Supreme Court last month got a church property case that will be watched with more interest than such cases usually attract. Under appeal is a circuit court ruling that awards the property of Trinity Presbyterian Church of Montgomery to a “loyal minority” that wanted to stay in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (PCUS) when the majority of Trinity’s members voted to join the new Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) in 1973. The congregation, widely considered the most influential in the state, has over 1,700 members, many of whom are leaders in Alabama affairs.
The circuit judge who heard the case, G. H. Wright, Jr., had to be called in from another county when all the local judges disqualified themselves because of their affiliation with the PCA through Trinity or another congregation. He ruled that the PCUS should get the name and property since its general assembly had declared invalid the procedure by which Trinity left the denomination. The congregation had voted 814 to 112 to apply to its presbytery (district governing body) for dismissal. The presbytery had authorized a commission to dismiss congregations that met certain criteria, but the 1976 assembly ruled that such a transfer of power to a commission was not permissible.
Wright based his ruling partly on an 1872 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. Trinity’s lawyers contended that later Supreme Court rulings modified the 1872 precedent as it might apply to churches with presbyterian polity. The congregation’s majority has been permitted to retain use of the property while the case is under appeal. No decision is expected before next May.
The state’s high court will be at less than full strength when it takes up the Trinity case. Some justices are members of either PCA or PCUS, and they will have to disqualify themselves.
Religion in Transit
New York City’s historic St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery Episcopal church was gutted by fire last month. The church was built in 1799 over a vault containing the remains of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch governor-general of New Amsterdam, as New York was then called. The shell and steeple of the building were declared sound. Restoration costs were estimated at between $500,000 and $1 million. Ironically, the fire was touched off accidentally by a worker’s acetylene torch near the completion of a nine-year renovation project.
All parents, including those who call themselves atheists or agnostics, should provide religious education for their children. So says famed pediatrician and author Benjamin Spock in an article on “What to tell your child about God.” Sunday schools, he writes in the August issue of Redbook magazine, “have much to offer … as long as the teachers have a positive attitude.” Faith ought to be communicated at home, too, he emphasizes.
Evangelist Morris Cerullo recently purchased San Diego’s historic El Cortez Hotel for use as his international headquarters and as a short-term ministerial training center. The price was not disclosed, but the property—including a convention center and other facilities—is said to be valued at $4.3 million.
The Hare Krishna movement is going straight: shaved heads, sandals, and orange robes are out, suits and ties are in. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness decided that the distinctive appearance of many of its male members often turned off the public. With the new conservative-businessman look, followers report that literature acceptance has risen dramatically.
The Freedom from Religion Foundation has taken the state of Wisconsin to court in an attempt to halt its legislature’s “unconstitutional” practice of opening each session with prayer. Assembly leader Edward Jacamoms pointed out that the first U.S. congress appointed chaplains to open its daily sessions with prayer. It was this same congress, he declared, that wrote the First Amendment to the U.S. constitution, “so I don’t think that the founders intended to bar legislative bodies from opening their sessions with prayer.”
The New York State Assembly passed a bill designed to deny religious property tax exemptions for “churches” and other organizations that appear to exist mostly to provide tax exemptions for its members. The measure, which is vaguely worded and subject to challenge, was prompted by the mass mail-order ordinations of most of the citizens of Hardenburgh as ministers of the Universal Life Church. They turned their homes into meeting places, and a sympathetic assessor removed them from the tax rolls (see July 21 issue, page 45).
The New Jersey Supreme Court upheld by a vote of 5 to 2 the constitutionality of renting public school buildings to churches and synagogues during weekends and after school hours—as long as the rental fee is adequate and the arrangement is temporary, such as when a church is seeking to purchase or construct permanent quarters. Prolonged use is out.
The United Church of Christ’s racial justice commission sent to President Carter a list of alleged “political prisoners” in the United States. They include the so-called Wilmington Ten, whose imprisoned leader Ben Chavis helped to draw up the list. Chavis, who was convicted of firebombing along with others in a 1971 incident in North Carolina, was granted study-release status to study at Duke University Divinity School.
Deaths
ROBERT G. LEE, 91, long-time pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, eloquent preacher best known for his “Pay Day Someday” sermon, author of fifty-three books, and three-time president of the Southern Baptist Convention; in Memphis, of a heart ailment.
CARLYLE MARNEY, 61, Southern Baptist clergyman, author, lecturer and founder of Interpreter’s House, an ecumenical study center; in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, of an apparent heart attack.
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER III, 72, former chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation, philanthropist and benefactor of liberal Protestant causes, population control activist, and member of New York City’s Riverside Church; near Scarborough, New York, in an auto collision.
An endangered species? Records show that the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has 21 per cent fewer members (1.2 million) than ten years ago and 9.7 per cent fewer clergy. Of the 6,710 ministers on the roster, the number of those who serve non-Disciples congregations rose 84.1 per cent during the decade.
World Scene
More than 700 persons from forty-two countries participated in Youth With a Mission’s witness campaign during the World Cup soccer championship games in Argentina this summer (it was winter there). Teams fanned out in major cities. They went door to door, handed out literature, spoke in schools and on street corners, staged witness marches, sponsored coffee-house minitries, and even held open-air meetings. Rarely allowed because of political unrest, these meetings featured music, drama, and preaching.
Missionaries in Zaire recently sent out a call for 18,000 French-and Kikongo-language Bibles for school children in Zaire. Funds from Bible Literature International of Columbus, Ohio, have provided 13,300 so far.
Help may be on the way for Ireland. The predominantly Roman Catholic nation has a soaring birth rate, but it is illegal to sell, advertise, or distribute contraceptives. Legislation will go before parliament this fall to legalize the sale and distribution of birth-control aids. Church officials state their opposition but hint they might go along if sales are restricted to married couples and if tight controls are placed on advertising.
