CALIFORINA
Creationism’s New School Vista
A flurry of media attention has surrounded the school board of Vista, California, since a conservative Christian majority was elected last November. That attention intensified in the wake of a recent 3-to-2 vote approving a policy permitting discussion of creationism in the public schools.
Though some teachers have threatened to ignore the policy, school board president Deidre Holliday says it only codifies what teachers told her they already were doing. She also says parents and students in this conservative San Diego suburb had expressed interest in learning more about creationism.
The policy approved August 12 consists of three directives: no theories of science should be taught dogmatically, and no student should be compelled to believe or accept any theory in the curriculum; scientific evidence that challenges any theory of science should be presented to students; and discussions of divine creation should be included at appropriate times.
According to Holliday, “The science teachers are very uncomfortable with the fact that we have encouraged—not mandated, but encouraged—challenges to any theory in science.”
GEORGIA
County Resists Homosexual Agenda
In votes taken two weeks apart in August, commissioners in conservative Cobb County, Georgia, passed legislation declaring homosexuality incompatible with community standards and cut off about $120,000 in county funds for arts programs next year. The sponsor of the legislation says it was enacted to deter attempts to push a homosexual agenda for public schools, marriage, and elsewhere.
“There had been complaints that the arts were being used to promote homosexuality,” county commissioner Gordon Wysong, sponsor of the bills, told CT. “There is no arts funding in Cobb County anymore.”
The resolution declaring homosexuality incompatible with community standards was condemned by supporters of homosexual rights, but Wysong says his bills received strong support in the county. He says homosexual-rights organizations “orchestrated five separate demonstrations here, but the fact was that they lost.”
Wysong says the commission has been threatened with legal action by the ACLU and People for the American Way. “Frankly, [we] have invited them to go ahead. They have no case,” says Wysong. “We are not going to be intimidated.”
SURGEON GENERAL
Nominee Elders Finally Confirmed
A coalition of religious groups repeatedly used delaying tactics while hoping to defeat the confirmation of Joycelyn Elders as surgeon general, but the Senate finally approved her September 7 by a 65-to-34 vote.
Foes complained about the nominee’s advocacy of early sex education and condom distribution in public schools while director of the Arkansas Department of Health (CT, Sept. 13, 1993, p. 64). Elders has toned down her rhetoric, even apologizing for saying, “Look who’s fighting the prochoice movement—a celibate, male-dominated church.” Despite the apology, skepticism remains. Thomas V. Wykes, executive director of the Catholic Campaign for America, said, “Elders is a radical advocate of policies contemptuous of Catholic teaching.”
Boston physician Mildred Jefferson, who chaired an ad hoc committee hoping to derail Elders, said she had shown an “incompetence in handling public health matters.” Jefferson cited the surgeon general’s failure to disclose a high defect rate in a batch of condoms distributed through Arkansas school health clinics. Elders has said she did not want to undermine a “public confidence in condoms.”
CONVENTION
ELCA Backs New Diaconal Ministry
Delegates to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Churchwide Assembly in Kansas City, Missouri, voted 790 to 192 August 29 to establish a new category of “diaconal ministry.” However, the ministers—those involved in Christian careers such as music or education—will not be ordained, despite a recommendation from a task force that studied the proposal for five years.
The issue had been fomenting since three Lutheran bodies merged to form the 5.2 million-member ELCA in 1988. Proponents sought ordination, but in a rite different from pastors.
Still, task force leader Paul Nelson said the new category is a “bold new venture.”
Also during the convention, a group calling itself The Network urged the ELCA to affirm “committed and faithful same-sex relationships” and “to accept qualified men and women—regardless of sexual orientation, single or partnered—as pastors and professionals.”
“The gospel of Jesus Christ does not call us to be comfortable and safe,” said David E. Nelson, a local pastor and spokesperson for The Network. “Martin Luther has taught us to go boldly forth, even if all the answers are not in.”
Earlier this year, however, the denomination suspended two San Francisco congregations that asked homosexuals to be ministers.
ABORTION
Priest Removed over Proposed Ad
Catholic Archbishop Oscar Lipscomb relieved Magnolia Springs, Alabama, priest David Trosch from his duties at Saint John the Baptist Church on August 23 for spreading “an erroneous teaching that the killing of abortionists is morally acceptable.”
Initially, on August 17, Lipscomb had offered Trosch the option of recanting his views in order to remain an active priest. Trosch had unsuccessfully attempted to place a newspaper advertisement in the Mobile Press Register. The ad depicted a man pointing a gun at an abortionist who was holding a knife over a pregnant woman.
The advertisement, designed by the 57-year-old Trosch, contained only two words in the text: “Justifiable Homicide.”
But after the August 19 shooting of Wichita, Kansas, abortionist George Tiller, the archbishop acted, saying Trosch was “in serious error as a teacher of Catholic moral theology.”
Lipscomb went on to reprimand Trosch, saying, “It is a basic principle that a good end does not justify the use of an evil means.”
Tiller, wounded in both arms, returned to Women’s Health Care Services clinic the following day. Rachelle Renae “Shelley” Shannon, 37, of Grants Pass, Oregon, has been charged with attempted murder and ordered to stand trial November 15. Judge Michael Corrigan ordered Shannon to remain in jail in lieu of $1 million bail.
PEOPLE AND EVENTS
In Brief
The last local film-review board in the United States has gone the way of the silent movie. On August 11, the Dallas City Council disbanded the Dallas Motion Picture Classification Board, which, since 1966, had deemed certain movies for children under 16 “unsuitable” because of violence, sex, or drugs. The 26 members were volunteers, but the city cited legal costs for rulings challenged by theaters and distributors as a factor in disbanding the panel.
• Theologian Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY (1956–68), will receive the Religious Heritage of America Gold Medal on October 11 at the group’s annual national awards program in Minneapolis. Other award recipients will include disabled persons advocate Joni Eareckson Tada, Christian Film and Television Commission chairman Ted Baehr, former Los Angeles Times religion writer Russell Chandler, and Asbury Theological Seminary president David L. McKenna.
• Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International (FGBMFI) founder Demos Shakarian died of heart failure at age 80 on July 23 in Downey, California. Shakarian founded the organization, which now has 3,000 chapters in 115 countries, in 1951. He regained the FGBMFI presidency in 1989 after an internal struggle for control.
• Ebenezer Baptist Church pastor Eugene Lumpkin has been removed from the San Francisco Human Rights Commission by Mayor Frank Jordan, who six weeks earlier had defended Lumpkin’s right to say homosexuality is an abomination in God’s eyes. But Jordan said Lumpkin crossed the line when the pastor defended stoning as a biblical means of executing men who have sexual relations with other men.
• Retired railroad executive Harold C. Harris of Roanoke, Virginia, is the new president of Gideons International. Harris, a United Methodist layman, was elected at the association’s international convention July 25. Gideons are active in 156 countries.
• Deirdre J. Good, a professor at General Theological Seminary in New York, has filed a complaint with the city’s Human Rights Commission, charging sexual-orientation discrimination. The seminary, which requires faculty to live in campus housing, revoked Good’s housing privileges when she invited a female companion to live with her. The seminary says the action violated a policy requiring persons living together as couples to be married.
• Edward L. R. Elson, 86, chaplain of the U.S. Senate for 12 years ending in 1981, died August 25 of heart failure and complications from Parkinson’s disease. He had pastored National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., and baptized President Eisenhower.
• Roger E. Williams has taken over as executive director of Mount Hermon Christian Conference Center in California, succeeding Edward L. Hayes, who left to become president of Denver Seminary. Williams had been executive director of Gull Lake Bible Conference in Michigan.
• The Zondervan Corporation is reorganizing into Zondervan Publishing House and Family Bookstores units, both reporting to parent company Harper-Collins Publishers. Twenty jobs at Zondervan’s Grand Rapids, Michigan, headquarters will be eliminated. The new president of Zondervan Publishing is former vice-president Bruce Ryskamp.
