Somehow, it seems, controversial minister Carl McIntire, 73, of Collingswood, New Jersey, always manages to stay one step ahead of creditors, and tax collectors.
The founder of the Bible Presbyterian Church and assorted other separatist organizations survived a near-fatal illness last fall that left him weakened for months but no less determined to carry on his fight against Communism, ecumenism, and what he feels is wishy-washy evangelicalism. From his hospital bed in Philadelphia, he directed important planning for this summer’s tenth congress of the International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC), which he and other separatist churchmen organized in Amsterdam in 1948 in opposition to the World Council of Churches. His wife Fairy and aides meanwhile scurried frantically to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay back taxes and thereby forestall takeover of McIntire’s beachfront conference complex in Cape May, New Jersey, where the ICCC was scheduled to meet in late June.
In all, an estimated 4,000 delegates and visitors from several dozen countries attended at least part of the ten-day ICCC congress, which was held at the Christian Admiral, McIntire’s flagship hotel and auditorium in Cape May. Many delegates from Third World countries relied entirely on McIntire for their expenses, placing further financial pressure on him. (Many Asian participants, however, paid their own way.) Wan, his cheeks sunken, the still-recuperating separatist leader led many of the sessions himself, and he reportedly had a major role in drafting most of the congress’s statements and resolutions.
As expected, McIntire was reelected to the ICCC presidency, and J. C. Maris of the Netherlands was reelected general secretary. (Maris’s denomination, the 75,000-member Christian Reformed Church in the Netherlands, withdrew from the ICCC in 1977. In explaining their action, the church’s leaders alleged that McIntire was autocratic, was too politically oriented, and was vague about financial dealings. Prior to the severance, several ICCC staff members in Maris’s office quit, citing financial irregularities.)
In a series of resolutions, the congress predictably:
• Condemned Marxism “in all its forms,” and declared that the message and mission of the church “includes the exposure of and the opposition to all error, including Marxism-Communism.”
• Criticized the United Nations-sponsored International Year of the Child, saying it attacks the Ten Commandments by “inciting children to rebel against their parents,” and denounced attempts to create test-tube babies.
• Opposed America’s diplomatic recognition of mainland China, the Soviet-American SALT agreements on weapons limitations, and religious legislation in India that can be used to curb evangelism.
• Condemned liberation theology as satanic, oppressive, and antibiblical.
• Accused the National Council of Churches of hypocrisy in opposing U.S. efforts to develop nuclear power while remaining silent about similar endeavors under way in Communist countries.
• Upbraided the World Council of Churches for its “defamation” of Chile following the ouster of Marxist Salvador Allende, and expressed oneness with the people of Chile in their fight against Communism.
• Upheld the inerrancy of Scripture, and criticized the “new evangelical movement, which fellowships with unbelief and says that one may deny inerrancy but still be called an ‘evangelical.’ ”
In other actions, the delegates approved a McIntire-envisioned International Accreditation Association of Schools and Colleges, voted to receive 54 new member churches (the ICCC now claims 325 member denominations—many of them very small ones—in about 65 countries), and for reasons of limited finances agreed to hold its 1983 congress in Cape May again instead of Vancouver, where the WCC’s general assembly will meet.
During off-hours, participants congregated in language-group prayer meetings, took in illustrated lectures on unidentified flying objects, led by Robert Barry of McIntire’s UFO bureau, and strolled in the perfect weather among the town’s splendid examples of Victorian architecture or along the beach.
For McIntire, the congress festivities offered rare moments of refreshing relief from steadily worsening circumstances. The aged eight-story, 333-room Christian Admiral, McIntire’s flagship property acquired in 1962, showed signs of serious disrepair and neglect. Barriers at the front entrance kept visitors away from an area where bricks and concrete were torn loose. Structural cracks were plainly evident. Behind, the $1.5 million library-classroom-administration building, constructed years ago for McIntire’s Shelton College, stood as a painful reminder of Shelton’s departure to Florida when New Jersey took away its license in a dispute with McIntire.
Farther down the beach Congress Hall—McIntire’s most modern conference property in Cape May—was unable to be used for guests, because of building code deficiencies. Across the street from Congress Hall lay the charred remains of another McIntire property, the vintage Victorian-style Windsor Hotel, torched by a still-unknown arsonist only weeks earlier.
The Windsor fire came amid a series of legal skirmishes between McIntire and the Cape May city council over the issue of taxes. Despite the minister’s contention that his property deserved tax-exempt status, the city insisted that he pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. At one point the city fathers took steps to ensure that taxes would be paid first out of any insurance reimbursement in the event of a McIntire property loss. McIntire warned that by its action the city council was inviting his enemies in town to commit arson. Sure enough, the Windsor burned down shortly afterward. Critics at first pointed an accusing finger at McIntire. They suspected he had opted for insurance proceeds instead of costly repairs. McIntire, however, disclosed that because of sagging finances he had been forced to let the Windsor’s insurance policy lapse months earlier. For him it had been a total loss.
The Cape May tax issue is still in the courts. An appeals court last month overturned a lower court ruling and ordered McIntire to pay nearly $200,000 in back taxes on the Christian Admiral. The ruling noted that McIntire occasionally rented space at the Admiral to secular organizations. Cape May’s city attorney said that McIntire now owes more than $600,000 in overdue taxes.
At the same time he was fighting to survive in Cape May, McIntire also was struggling to hang on to his properties in Cape Canaveral, Florida. In 1971, with only a $54,000 down payment, he acquired for $14.5 million a commercial space industry complex that had been developed at the Cape by Shuford Mills of Hickory, North Carolina. The complex included two office buildings, the 200-room Hilton Hotel and 1,500-seat convention center, 280 apartment units, and 300 acres suitable for condominium development. With the scaling down of space shot activities at nearby Cape Kennedy, the business that had leased the complex pulled out, and Shuford was happy to find a buyer.
McIntire, however, fell behind in payments, and in 1974 Shuford quietly took back everything except the hotel-convention center, an office building that McIntire had converted for use by Shelton College, and a 24-unit apartment building the minister had bought outright for an undisclosed sum to house retired people. McIntire fell further behind in payments and Shuford gave him an ultimatum: pay in full by July 1 or get out. With help from contributors and a commercial lender, McIntire squeezed in under the deadline with the $1.15 million balance due. In all, he ended up paying a total of $3.2 million for his college and hotel conference facility at Cape Canaveral. He also had shelled out $55,000 a year for taxes.
It appears now that McIntire may want to sell his Florida property. Attendance at Bible conferences there has been less than encouraging, and last year only 40 students were enrolled at Shelton College. Currently, McIntire and his aides are negotiating with New Jersey officials over plans to bring Shelton back to Cape May. Tenants of the building behind the Christian Admiral have been told they must vacate by September 1. New biography sheets on Shelton president Glenn Rogers and chancellor McIntire list Shelton’s location as Cape May.
If McIntire sells his Florida property, he should have enough left over to repay all his creditors, pay his Cape May tax bill, make a few urgent repairs, and perhaps give him a new lease on life. If so, it will not be the first time that he has had a golden touch.
For example, in 1971 McIntire bought the deteriorating YWCA in downtown Atlantic City for $143,000 and announced plans to open a Bible institute and hold Bible conferences for the public. No Bible institute was opened, and only a few conferences were held. With casino gambling on the horizon, he quietly sold the building for $550,000 in September 1977 to a pair of local investors, Harvey Fischer and Edwin H. Helfant. Shortly after buying the property, Helfant—who had links to syndicated crime, according to news sources—was found slain in gangland execution fashion. The building—only a block from the Resorts International casino—has since been torn down and the property sold again, this time to anonymous buyers, apparently for purposes related to gambling.
No heir apparent is in sight to take over McIntire’s U.S. work when he leaves the scene, but several strong candidates are available to take the ICCC helm, probably guiding it from a foreign port. One of the most likely of these is K. L. Nasir of Pakistan, a former long-time member of the WCC Faith and Order Commission and former president of the United Presbyterian Seminary in Pakistan. He helped to lead the United Presbyterians out of the WCC in 1968. Currently he is president of Faith Seminary in Pakistan and an ICCC vice-president.
Turkey
Terrorist Target
In a report distributed this summer, Operation Mobilization reports the death of Dave Goodman, who had been working in Turkey as a teacher for the past three years. According to a CHRISTIANITY TODAY correspondent, the 25-year-old American was shot by a man who rang his doorbell at eight o’clock one morning. The killer escaped with his partner in a waiting car. Because of the intense fear of terrorists, who have been responsible for numerous killings during the past two or three years, the search for witnesses among neighbors has proved fruitless.
It has been suggested that Goodman, whose wife was pregnant, died because he was an American, and not because of any Christian connection. It seems just as likely that he was the first Christian to be killed for his faith and witness in Turkey since World War I. While the Turks of Asia Minor particularly have never been so intensively evangelized as now, the sobering fact remains that there is still no organized Turkish church under Turkish leadership with members who are converts from Islam.
Badly needed is a readable Turkish translation of the New Testament that can be followed easily by all ages. Such a work is in the course of preparation. Translators have so far allowed the Pocket Testament League to print 100,000 copies of John’s Gospel. It is hoped that the United Bible Societies will agree to sponsor the complete translation.
Czechoslovakia
Checking Tourist Generosity
Three young American tourists were detained last month by Czech authorities in Brno, Czechoslovakia. Lenore Hunt, 23, of Galesburg, Illinois, Albion Buckingham, 26, of Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, and Michael Birks, 21, of Fairfax, California, were seized by Czech officials on July 3, and were still being held incommunicado at month’s end. No U.S. officials had been allowed to speak with them.
The group, members of the Summer Youth Training in Europe organization, a program affiliated with Slavic Gospel Association, was found in possession of religious literature, including Czech Bibles intended as gifts for Czech churches. Officials in Prague have indicated that a charge of unlicensed importation of literature is pending for the arrested Americans.
Summer Youth Training in Europe spokesman, Rom Maczka, said it was customary for touring students from Christian colleges in the United States to take gifts, including religious literature, to the churches on their travels through Western and Eastern Europe. “Nothing in Czech law,” he said, “prohibits the carrying of such literature into the country. The literature in question was available for inspection. It was not of a political nature.”
The absence of communication from the young people, and the silence of Czech authorities concerning them, has raised fears that the group is undergoing interrogation.
Israel
The Government’s Hidden Hand: Sinister or Harmless?
The Israeli government supports an antimissionary organization, Yad Le’achim. Fifteen percent of the organization’s yearly budget comes from the Ministry of Religion’s secretive Special Projects Fund and its top officials are government employees.
So claims Alhamishmar, one of Israel’s daily newspapers, reporting a recent interview with one of the Yad Le’achim’s special agents who majors in infiltration of missionary ranks and “exposure” of their “hidden identities.” The man described one case in which the organization harassed an individual suspected of being a missionary until the person concerned fled the country.
When contacted about this report, the director general of the Israeli Ministry for Religious Affairs, Israel Lippel, denied that any government employees served with Yad Le’achim. While confirming that the organization does receive government subsidy, he said the assistance was intended for Yad Le’achim’s major educational work among immigrants and not its secondary antimissionary thrust.
A recent spate of articles on “the mission” (a term used derogatorily to describe Christian groups in Israel) has centered on two Christian schools run by the Anglican and Scottish Presbyterian churches in Jerusalem and Joppa respectively. Christians have learned to regard such incidents as preparation for steps to be taken against civil liberties with a view to further inhibit Christian witness in Israel.
Already Israel has a law forbidding parents to send their children to a school of their own choosing if the proposed school teaches a religion other than that of the parents.
BARUCH MAOZ
World Evangelization
Tempering the Weak Link in the Missions Chain
Churches helping churches in missions. That is the thrust of a new movement that is catching hold in the churches of North America.
Meeting at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts, last month for its fifth annual conference, the Association of Church Missions Committees (ACMC) fielded 700 delegates from 153 churches and organizations. This was up from 300 two years ago, and from 500 last year. And more than half were first-time attenders.
Overwhelmingly, the participants were lay members of local missions committees, there to learn how to make missionary programs in their churches more effective. They attended workshops such as “caring for your missionary family,” “the cost of missions today,” “missions education for children,” and “counseling the prospective missionary,” and traded notes over their meals as to what “worked in our church.”
In plenary sessions they listened to mission specialists Edward Dayton, David Howard, J. Christy Wilson, and Ralph Winter, pastors Stanley Allaby and Gordon MacDonald, and Haitian Christian leader Jean-Claude Noel.
ACMC was born out of the realization by missionary strategists at Fuller Seminary’s School of World Mission that the local church was the weak link in the world evangelization chain. Eighty-five percent of all North American Protestant churches, they found, lack a lay body to take responsibility in missions. Churches with a committee typically functioned without written policies, with little or no missions expertise, and with little continuity. In 1973 C. Peter Wagner, in his book Stop the World, I Want to Get On, identified the need for a lay organization dedicated to the centrality of the local church in world missions.
Fuller Seminary and the William Carey Institute organized a National Institute for Missionary Committee Chairmen the following year; 63 churches sent representatives. During the institute, Stephen Tavilla, a fruit and vegetable wholesaler and a member of Grace Chapel, Lexington, Massachusetts, called a meeting to gauge interest in creating an ongoing association of churches. The 26 churches represented at this meeting established ACMC and formed a steering committee.
Tavilla remains the president of ACMC. Donald Hamilton, a former Xerox Company executive and at the time executive director of the William Carey Institute, was tapped as the ACMC executive director. John C. Bennett is the organization’s associate director.
Today, the Pasadena, California-based association has a $267,000 budget, and seven full-time and four part-time staff. More than 400 churches belong, and Hamilton says that new churches are now joining at the rate of one a day. About 60 percent of the churches are affiliated with some 30 denominations, while about 40 percent are independent.
Still, most of the at least 335,000 local churches in the United States and Canada have never heard of ACMC. And the association reckons that although 10 percent of the churches may have some kind of missions program, the interest and commitment of the majority of these is peripheral. ACMC defines a functional church missions program as one that has an established and functioning missions committee, the basic decision on the use of the mission funds of the church, a personal relationship between church and missionary, and an annual conference or other vehicle for special missions emphasis. It reckons that as few as 5,000 churches, or less than 2 percent of all congregations in North America, share all of these characteristics.
Member missions committees pay annual dues (for basic services) according to the church’s annual missions budget: $30 for those with a budget of $10,000 or less, more on a sliding scale for those with larger budgets. Finances are still shaky for ACMC, since dues currently cover only about 16 percent of the budget.
New members receive the Missions Policy Handbook as part of their membership. This looseleaf workbook, reprinted after the initial 2,000 printing was exhausted, identifies 60 issues in organization and policy which should be considered by the local missions committee, laying out possible variations. It has already stimulated dozens of churches to move from fragmentary or no written policies to comprehensive written guidelines.
Several Bible colleges and seminaries are using the Handbook in their course work in missions in the local church. Students at the Columbia Graduate School of Missions, for instance, must work through the Handbook for their course project, coming up with a suggested missions policy for the churches they attend.
A research report on church self-evaluation, evaluation of mission agencies, and evaluation of missionaries has been prepared with the participation of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association and the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association. (Deeply involved churches seek controlled access to field evaluation of their missionaries’ performance; mission agencies seek standardization of reporting to curb the proliferation of paper work.) Demand is building for an evaluation handbook that will help churches interpret and act on the results of shared evaluation.
The association sends a bi-monthly 12-page newsletter to members, holds regional seminars, operates a resource desk and document center for its members, and serves as a source for print and audiovisual materials.
ACMC caters to a broad evangelical spectrum. It subscribes to the National Association of Evangelicals statement of faith and the Lausanne Covenant. Some denominations have reservations about ACMC intervening in any way between its local churches and its missionary arm. An affiliate membership category allows some 15 denominations to use and adapt ACMC materials. These have taken the ACMC helps and, says Hamilton, “laundered them in reformed theology,” or in Wesleyan, Pentecostal, or other traditions.
But denominational congregations as much as independent churches can measure the financial impact that ACMC involvement can carry. Nineteen churches responded to an informal ACMC survey of churches that had joined two years earlier. Their collective missions budgets increased by the sum of $2.3 million over the two-year span.
Grace Evangelical Church of College Park, Georgia, illustrates the dynamics. Started by six couples five years ago, it called as pastor William Waldrop, an Army retiree, in 1975. He attended the 1976 ACMC conference. The church made its first missions faith promise of $5,000 that year. Its 1977 faith promise jumped to $35,000; last year it jumped to $110,000. The congregation still numbers only 140 members.
Waldrop, elected to the board last month, basically attributes the spectacular rise in missions enthusiasm at Grace Church to the influence of ACMC.
HARRY GENET
World Scene
An evangelical agency came out with a bold denunciation of the Somoza regime in late June, several weeks before its downfall. The Latin American Evangelical Center for Pastoral Studies, based in San José, Costa Rica, issued a declaration offering support in “the struggle to annihilate this dictatorship,” and reconstruction assistance. The center is affiliated with the Community of Latin American Evangelical Ministries (commonly known as CLAME); Orlando E. Costas is the director.
A building described as “the world’s largest evangelical church” was dedicated in Saõ Paulo, Brazil, last month. Some 8,000 persons attended ceremonies opening the headquarters temple of the Brazil for Christ Evangelical Pentecostal Church, founded in 1955 by Pastor Manoel de Mello. The massive temple took 17 years to build. It is surpassed in size, however, by the main building, which is nearly as long as a football field. Roman Catholic Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns and World Council of Churches general secretary Philip Potter took part in the dedication.
Greece moved to establish diplomatic relations with the Vatican last month, a move opposed by the Greek Orthodox Church, Holy Synod.
Demand for the Bible is up sharply in Poland after Pope John Paul II’s visit there in May. The Frankfurt Bible Society in West Germany reports that an extra printing of 20,000 copies of a pocket edition were “bought immediately.” A Polish-language New Testament of 16,000 copies sold out as well, the society said, and urgent orders for 25,000 additional copies have been received.
Romanian Orthodox priest Georghe Calciu has been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment (see May 25 issue, page 47). Two members of the free trade union also received sentences: one for ten years, and one for five-and-one-half years. Romanian religious dissidents imprisoned during the last 12 months now number at least 30, according to Keston College.
The two Pentecostal families who took refuge in the American embassy in Moscow one year ago are hardly alone. The U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe has recently published a list by name and address of more than 10,000 Soviet evangelical Christians who have publicly declared their intention to emigrate from the Soviet Union, but have been prevented from doing so. The Washington-based government agency is chaired by Congressman Dante Fascell (D-Fla.). Commission member John Buchanan (R-Ala.), a Baptist minister, is credited with pushing the project of compiling, translating, and arranging the information. The list is believed to document only about half of the believers who desire to emigrate.
Czechoslovakian Christians are celebrating the 400th anniversary of an old Czech translation of the Bible (the Kralice) by publishing a new translation in Slovak. Authorities are allowing the Czech Ecumenical Council of Churches to print a first edition of 120,000 copies. The United Bible Societies are providing the paper. 16,000 copies of Scripture portions from the new translation, issued last year, were sold out in a few weeks. While Czech is the literary language of the entire country, Slovak is the contemporary language for 30 percent of the population.
The All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) has asked its general secretary to please come home. Canon Burgess Carr has been on a sabbatical leave in the United States since March 1978. When he left Kenya, the controversial religious leader, a native of Liberia, was involved in a dispute with the Kenyan government and said he had “no intention of going back there.” The AACC general committee, meeting in Yaounde, Cameroun, urged Carr to return from his self-imposed exile by September. It also expressed concern about the financial situation of its 118-denomination organization. The committee attributed the problem in part to an overdraft caused by the construction of the new AACC headquarters in Nairobi. Kodwo E. Anlkrah of Uganda is serving as interim general secretary.
The Israeli government has ordered Quaker welfare workers to stop providing legal aid to Arabs in the West Bank. The Legal Aid Center of the American Friends Service Committee in East Jerusalem has provided counsel for Arab landowners who appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court against the military government’s requisition of property to be used by the army or by Jewish civilian settlers. The Israeli government contends that the Friends are duplicating its services. An American official said, however, that he is unaware of any legal aid provided by the Israeli government for Arabs.
The United Mission to Nepal has begun to recruit missionaries from surrounding Asian nations. The UMN, formed 25 years ago when the Nepalese government refused to allow numerous organizations to work in the country, recently added three new member bodies, bringing the total to 32. At this year’s annual meeting, the mission decided to aim at acquiring 25 percent of its new personnel from Asia. Carl J. Johansson, the recently installed executive director, has completed a 10-year American Lutheran Church pastorate in Minnesota and previously served as a missionary in Tanzania.
The Evangelical Fellowship of Burma was formed last year to promote cooperative endeavor among the small evangelical constituency, it was recently learned. Robin H. Seia, a Free Will Baptist evangelist, was appointed general secretary. Burma is a predominantly Buddhist state, with Christians found almost entirely among minority tribal groups.
Construction on what was to have been the largest Roman Catholic church in Asia has been halted—at least for now. The Basilica of the Holy Infant project was the idea of Imelda Marcos, the first lady of the Philippines. Construction work atop a mountain 12 miles east of Manila began this spring on the multimillion-dollar basilica designed with a 10-story dome, and to accommodate 50,000 worshipers. When Mrs. Marcos asked for Cardinal Jaime Sin’s blessing on the project in early February, he refused. “The top priority today is for adequate housing for the poor and not luxurious housing for the Holy Infant,” he wrote her. “We were told that the money would come from contributions,” Cardinal Sin said, “but I’m afraid it would have been donation by force.” After a visit from the Cardinal, President Ferdinand Marcos ordered a halt to construction in April.
The Christian community in South Korea is experiencing extraordinary growth. In fact, according to a newly issued Asia Theological Association pamphlet by Joon Gon Kim, six new churches are being started every day. The Haptong Presbyterian Denomination has almost doubled in under five years—from 680,000 in January 1976 to 1,100,000 now, the report says. Seoul’s Full Gospel Central Church reports that about 2,500 new members—mostly new converts—are being added each month. Its membership stood at 88,000 in June.
China is wooing the Tibetan Dalai Lama. Reliable sources indicate that the People’s Republic has been making overtures for about two years to the Tibetan spiritual leader and Tibetan refugees exiled since 1959 in Northern India. The Dalai Lama last month acknowledged interest in accepting a federation of Tibet with China.
China’s National People’s Congress has enacted new laws to protect religious beliefs, according to the New China News Agency. The new criminal law, enacted last month, provides for up to two years in prison for any official “who unlawfully deprives a citizen of his legitimate freedom of religious belief or violates the customs and folk-ways of a minority nationality to a serious degree.”
Tourist smuggling of Bibles into China has apparently caused officials to retract part of their relaxed travel restrictions. Customs inspectors are again implementing restrictions against Bibles found in suitcases or in the mail. A Hong Kong resident who sent more than 200 Bibles into the People’s Republic over a week’s time in June had them all returned to him undelivered.
Five ministers have been ordained in an irregular ceremony by the more conservative dissident faction within Japan’s largest, and liberal, Protestant denomination, the Kyodan. The faction, known as Rengo, began in 1969 out of disagreements over the church’s response to student demonstrations. It was formally organized in 1976. The ministers it ordained will not be recognized by the Kyodan.
Deaths
Called Home while Away from Home
Tragic accidents last month claimed the lives of two prominent evangelicals: Nathan Bailey, former Christian and Missionary Alliance president for 18 years and past president of the National Association of Evangelicals; and J. Barton Payne, noted theologian and a past president of the Evangelical Theological Society. Each man died far from home—while overseas for ministry-related work.
Bailey, 69, died of internal injuries suffered in a July 10 automobile crash near Nottingham, England. He was returning from a meeting with English CMA church leaders when his rented car collided first with the back end of a truck and then with an oncoming car, after he unsuccessfully tried to pass two vehicles ahead of him. No charges were filed, said Robert Battles, CMA general secretary who also was in England at the time, and an inquest was to last through July. Bailey’s wife, Mary, also in the car, was listed in “guarded condition” in a Nottingham hospital.
Bailey, who headed the worldwide ministries of the CMA for six three-year terms, from 1960 to 1978, had stopped in England after being in Hong Kong. There he had been reelected president of the Alliance World Fellowship at its quadrennial conference. (The Fellowship is an international advisory council of church leaders representing the CMA constituency of over one million members in some 10,000 CMA churches in 47 countries.) He served as president of the World Relief Commission from 1967 to 1976, and then was president for two years of National Association of Evangelicals.
For J. Barton Payne, 56, professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary in Saint Louis, death came in Japan, where he was on a sabbatical lecture tour. Known as an “enthusiastic mountain climber” by his friends (he once climbed Mount Olympus), Payne began a solo ascent of Mount Fuji early last month. Three helicopters and more than 40 persons—including students from two Japanese seminaries—began looking for Payne after the noted theologian did not return when expected. His body was found July 5 about 1,000 feet from the summit of the mountain’s 12,400-foot conical peak.
Spokesmen said Payne died from head and neck injuries suffered in a fall. Although he lay in below freezing temperatures, Payne probably died immediately and not from exposure. (Hiking on Mount Fuji is limited to July and August because of the cold; even in July, the average temperature at the summit is only 41 degrees.) The weather was reportedly poor on the day of his climb, with rain, probably high winds, and reduced visibility. The next day, typhoon conditions turned back other climbers.
Payne’s funeral and cremation was July 6 at Fuji-Yoshida, and his wife, Dorothy, and son, Philip, a TEAM missionary, both spoke at the service. A memorial service was planned for Payne at Covenant Seminary at the beginning of fall classes. Payne was a frequent writer for theological journals, an author of several books, and a contributor to work on the New American Standard Bible and the New International Version.
LESLIE R. MARSTON, 84, for 29 years a bishop of the Free Methodist Church and a former president of Greenville (Illinois) College; July 14 in Winona Lake, Indiana, after a stroke.
Personalia
W. Sherrill Babb, 39, has been appointed president of Philadelphia College of the Bible. He succeeds Douglas B. MacCorkle who resigned in 1977 after a 14-year presidency. Formerly dean of faculty at Moody Bible Institute, Babb is chairman of the Research Committee of the American Association of Bible Colleges.
Habeeb Hazim (Ignatius IV), 59, was officially enthroned last month as the head of the 1,500,000-member Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East. He succeeds Patriarch Elias IV who died of a heart attack on June 21. Ignatius IV is a Syrian by birth.
Pauline Webb has been appointed to head religious broadcasing on the World Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) beginning in October. A Methodist, who is a member of the World Council of Churches executive commmittee, she is a strong campaigner for the appointment of women ministers.
The Baptist World Alliance general council meeting last month in Brighton, England, nominated officials for offices to be voted on at elections during the BWA Congress in Toronto next July. They are Gerhard Claas for general secretary and Duke K. McCall for president. Claas, who would succeed Robert S. Denny, is a West German pastor now serving as BWA associate secretary for Europe. McCall, who would succeed David Y. K. Wong of Hong Kong, is president of the Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.
