* The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the conviction and five-month jail sentence of Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry on a contempt-of-court conviction. The charge stems from pro-lifer Harley Belew showing a 20-week-old human fetus to Bill Clinton at the 1992 Democratic National Convention in New York. Even though Terry was not at the scene, he was convicted of “aiding and abetting” Belew. Prosecutors said Terry, who began serving the sentence November 9, had been responsible for allowing his followers to disobey a federal injunction barring Operation Rescue from “presenting or confronting” Clinton “with any fetus or fetuses or fetal remains.”
* Tony Alamo, a 59-year-old evangelist with a ministry to drug abusers and the homeless, has been fined $210,000 and sentenced to up to six years in prison following his conviction by a federal jury in Memphis for understating his income for 1985 and failure to file tax returns for 1986 through 1988.
* C. Charles Van Ness, president and chief operating officer of Cook Communications Ministries International (formerly David C. Cook Foundation), will retire January 1. Van Ness, who has been with the Elgin, Illinois-based company since 1962, became president in 1989 when David C. Cook III retired. He will continue as a trustee, a post he has held since 1967.
* A federal court decision requiring several ministries to return money donated by an insolvent benefactor has forced one of the groups, Proclamation International (PI), to cease operations. The Pensacola-based mission to developing countries, which was ordered to return $51,228, will retain its corporate status while its lawyer appeals the ruling. “We’re not totally out of existence,” says Don Dunkerley, pi’s executive director. “If we preserve the corpse, it can be resurrected if the appeal is won.” Meanwhile, Dunkerley says he is continuing his “personal ministry” through a local church.
* William “Mike” Henning, an influential voice for renewal in the Episcopal Church, died September 6 of stomach cancer. Henning, 45, had been immediate past board chair of Episcopalians United. He was rector at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, for the past seven years and a dean and professor at Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, for ten years previous.
* A Pensacola, Florida, jury deliberated only 20 minutes November 2 before convicting Paul Hill of the July 29 shotgun slayings of abortionist John Bayard Britton and bodyguard James Barrett (CT, Sept. 12, 1994, p. 56). The following day the jury recommended that Hill be sentenced to death in the electric chair. Hill, acting as his own attorney, called no witnesses during a three-day trial. Judge Frank Bell had prevented the former minister from using a “justifiable homicide” defense.
* In the wake of a plethora of new angel books on the shelves of both Christian and secular stores, readers now may subscribe to Angel Times, “the first national magazine completely devoted and dedicated to the angelic realm.” Linda Vephula is publisher of the Atlanta-based bimonthly periodical, which hit newsstands in October. The magazine promises to feature the nation’s “foremost” angel experts.
* Bryan Chapell was elected president of Saint Louis-based Covenant Theological Seminary, the national seminary of the 200,000-member Presbyterian Church in America, September 24. He joined the school’s faculty in 1986 and became academic dean in 1988, helping Covenant to grow to 730 students from 151. Chapell succeeds Paul Kooistra, who is the new chief executive officer of Mission to the World.
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