* Bill Tarter resigned as the president of Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC) on June 22, 11 months after he succeeded the retiring founder, Robert H. Bowman. “The board requested his resignation after thoroughly investigating charges of impropriety made by present and past staff members of FEBC,” Bowman wrote in a letter to donors. “The situation had to do with inappropriate conduct and a degree of personal moral failure.”
On August 15, the board named Bowman’s son, Jim, executive vice president, to oversee daily administrative decisions and take overall responsibility for the ministry. Jim Bowman has been with FEBC for 32 years and had served before the appointment as head of operations since 1977.
* Campus Crusade for Christ International worker Uzziel Karangwa and three Free Methodist pastors working with him were murdered in July in Kibungo, Rwanda. They had been showing the film Jesus in Rwandan villages near the Tanzanian border. Marie Umuhire, a Jesus film staff member in charge of coordinating materials for follow-up, also was killed along with her family and a guard at Campus Crusade’s headquarters in Kigali.
* The Australian Senate in July passed a law providing for prison terms of from 12 to 17 years for residents who have sexual relations with children in foreign countries. The Child Sex Tourism Bill targets pedophiles who travel overseas. Germany, Sweden, and Norway have passed similar laws.
* The Swedish Parliament has followed a Scandinavian trend and approved the Registered Partnership Law by a 171-to-141 vote, permitting homosexuals to marry. Denmark became the first country in the world to allow same-sex marriages in 1989. Norway did the same last year.
* Russell Dilday, fired in March after 16 years as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (CT, April 4, 1994, p. 85), last month became a distinguished professor of homiletics at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas. Dilday, 63, will also be special assistant to Baylor president Herbert Reynolds.
* George W. Cornell, who covered religion for the Associated Press for 43 years, died August 10 in Manhattan. When Cornell, 74, began specializing in religion coverage in 1951, his columns were the first on the subject carried on a regular basis by a news wire service. “His extraordinary talents, strength of character, and consistent objectivity made him a journalist without peer,” Billy Graham said.
* Donald Wubs, 60, of Bartlett, Illinois, was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to pay $13 million restitution July 25 in connection with defrauding 632 Chicago-area Christian investors in his Born Again Believers Club. Wubs started the investment firm in 1979 but declared bankruptcy in 1991. At the time of sentencing, his net worth was $3,563.
* The U.S. Senate voted 63 to 36 last month to cut off federal funds to school districts that “carry out a program or activity that has either the purpose or effect of encouraging or supporting homosexuality as a positive lifestyle.” Bob Smith (R.-N.H.), who cosponsored the measure with Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.), said some schools had used federal funds to buy books that are “so graphic and so disgusting that I can’t display them.” The House had approved a similar proposal earlier.
* Wesley Granberg-Michaelson has been elected general secretary of the Reformed Church in America. He previously worked in Geneva for the World Council of Churches, serving as moderator of the Task Force on Relations with Evangelicals.
* John Van Diest, the founder of Multnomah Press, has formed a new publishing company in Gresham, Oregon, Vision House Publishing. Van Diest was publisher of Multnomah Press from 1974 until its sale to Questar in 1992.
* Jacob A. O. Preus, who guided the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) through its most turbulent years, died August 13 after suffering a heart attack. He was 74. As LCMS president from 1969 to 1981, Preus tried to halt theological liberalism and defended the authority of the Bible. The battle resulted in 100,000 people leaving the denomination.
* A. LeVon Balzer became president of John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, in August. He had been president of Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas, for six years. George Francis Ford resigned as president of the school in April after 10 months. He had been the first non-Brown family member to head the 75-year-old school.
* Hiram Sanders, 58, became president of Nazarene Bible College in Colorado Springs, September 1. He had been superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene Missouri District since 1984 and succeeds Jerry Lambert, who became the denomination’s education commissioner.
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