Happy trails, Dale Evans “Queen of the West” Dale Evans, wife of “King of the Cowboys” Roy Rogers (1912-98), died yesterday at her home in Apple Valley, California. Apart from countless radio programs, movies, music recordings, and television shows she starred in with her husband, the two were also involved in evangelism and ministry. “I would love to be an evangelist,” today’s New York TimesquotesEvans as having once said, “but I think God has revealed to me that I can serve him best by just remaining at my post.” Religion News Service profiled Evans’s faith in 1999, noting, “Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, America’s favorite cowboy and cowgirl couple, probably will be remembered as much for their professional achievements as they will for their public and unapologetic evangelical Christian faith. Their lives were as unblemished as the characters they played in a lifetime of Westerns, where the good guy always won.”
Independent Baptist leader Jack Hyles dead at 74 Jack Hyles, pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, founder of Hyles-Anderson College in Crown Point, Indiana, and one of the leaders of the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement, died Tuesday after undergoing open-heart surgery. Between 15,000 and 20,000 people now attend services at First Baptist every Sunday. When he started there in September 1959, the weekly attendance was 44. “When he was a scrawny, nervous teenager who said he wanted to be a preacher, nobody took him seriously,” writes the Chicago Sun-Times. “When the Southern Baptists kicked him out of their denomination in the 1950s for being too conservative, they said his ministry was over. When he chose the interests of poor, inner-city kids over millionaire church members, they said he’d never keep the doors of his church open. In more than 50 years of ministry, the Rev. Jack Hyles, pastor of mammoth First Baptist Church of Hammond, Ind., proved them all wrong.” (The Times of Munster, Indiana, has several articles on Hyles, including an editorial, a chronology, and an article on what’s next for First Baptist. See also the Associated Press’s brief obituary, and more on Hyles at JackHyles.net, The Jack Hyles Home Page, and First Baptist‘s Web site.)
More stories:
Nigeria:
- Borno state to introduce Shari’ah | More than a dozen of Nigeria’s northern states have adopted Islamic law (Panafrican News Agency)
- Nigeria: Shari’ah marches on | Under Shari’ah, life goes on but Christians say they’re “second class” citizens (Daily Mail & Guardian, Johannesburg, South Africa)
- Archbishop Carey flays campaign for use of condom (Vanguard Daily, Lagos, Nigeria)
- Carey says HIV/AIDS is humanity’s greatest enemy (Panafrican News Agency)
- Beware of prosperity preachers, Carey tells Christians (the Guardian, Lagos, Nigeria)
Other stories:
- Woman can’t sue church over alleged ‘slut’ slur | Church is protected by First Amendment, but not necessarily pastor, rules appeals court (The Miami Herald)
- Jimmy Swaggart recovering from angioplasty (The Advocate, Baton Rouge, Louisiana)
- Papal ambassador visits earthquake ravaged areas (The Times of India)
- Moderator preaches ‘more relevant’ message | “We need to have more relevant teaching and preaching in churches where we’re actually dealing with the problems people are struggling with day by day rather than dealing with problems that are just of our own imagining,” says incoming Moderator of Northern Ireland’s Presbyterian Church. (BBC)
- Restoration of relics miff some | Coptic Christians upset over $8 million restoration of Cairo’s 4th-century Hanging Church (Associated Press)
- Methodists give $10,000 to group trying to get rid of Chief Illiniwek | Denomination’s General Commission on Religion and Race attacks University of Illinois mascot (Chicago Tribune)
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