* Steven L. Snyder, who for nearly a decade served as president of the U.S. affiliate of Christian Solidarity International, a Swiss-based human-rights group, has founded a new interdenominational religious liberties organization in Washington, D.C., International Christian Concern (ICC). Snyder, 47, says ICC will network with governmental and nongovernmental agencies to help Christians around the world who experience religious intolerance. “As faith is on the rise in most parts of the world, intolerance against Christians is growing,” Snyder says. “Governments and Islamic extremists are increasingly targeting those who are proclaiming their Christian faith.”
* More than 6,000 delegates representing 60 nations attended the seventeenth Pentecostal World Conference in September in Jerusalem. Speakers at the triennial event included Pat Robertson, David Yonggi Cho, Peter Kuzmic, and Reinhard Bonnke.
* At a September meeting convened by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, on the island of Patmos, a dozen Orthodox leaders from around the world issued a message condemning “nationalist fanaticism.” The Serbian Orthodox church has been criticized for taking sides in the war in the former Yugoslavia. The Orthodox statement said national fanaticism results in hatred and repression of minorities. Meanwhile, Catholicos Aram I of the Armenian Apostolic Church said he is working to help the Serbian church “make a positive contribution.”
* Joseph W. Tkach, Sr., who in 1986 succeeded founder Herbert W. Armstrong as leader of the Worldwide Church of God and moved the group toward mainstream orthodoxy (CT, Oct. 2, 1995, p. 15), died September 23 after a four-month battle with bone cancer. On September 5, the church’s advisory council of elders appointed his 42-year-old son, Joseph W. Tkach, Jr., as pastor-general of the 95,000-member movement.
* For the first time since its founding in 1863, a Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) church has ordained three women, although Takoma Park, Maryland, senior pastor Arthur Torres stresses the laying on of hands ceremony has no authority outside the local Sligo SDA church. The SDA World Congress in July rejected a proposal to allow geographical regions to ordain women. “Our ecclesiology has not changed in regard to ordination, and local churches do not have the authority to ordain to the ministry of the world church,” says Alfred C. McClure, president of the SDA church in North America.
* More than 30 Christian organizations cosponsored the first National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day October 11 to counter the Human Rights Campaign Fund’s National Coming Out Day. “Individuals and organizations that promote homosexuality as just another healthy alternative to normal sexuality are promoting a lie,” says 35-year-old Anchorage organizer Michael Johnston, who left the lifestyle after being infected with HIV in 1986. “It is beyond comprehension that [these activists] would encourage young people to follow in their footsteps.” Groups supporting the event included the American Family Association, Exodus International, Family Research Council, and Traditional Values Coalition.
* Historian and author Mark Noll is the new senior director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals (ISAE) at Wheaton (Ill.) College. Noll replaces Edith Blumhofer, director since 1993, who will be working with Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia. Noll is author of “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” and is cochair of the editorial board for CTi’s newest publication, “Books and Culture: A Christian Review.” ISAE was founded in 1982 to encourage research on evangelicalism in North America.
* Olive Branch Mission, Chicago’s oldest social agency for the homeless, has laid off 10 of its 23 employees due to a “temporary slump in giving,” according to acting executive director Marty Lash. “Giving for the homeless is tougher these days,” Lash told CT. “We have to work harder for the contributions.” Lash says the jobs have been “temporarily eliminated” in an organizational restructuring. In August, Olive Branch sold its buildings and moved into a newer headquarters, a former Catholic monastery.
* Bill Hinson has been elected president of the Atlanta-based Haggai Institute, a 26-year-old organization that trains nationals for evangelism in Third World countries. Founder John Edmund Haggai is chair and chief executive officer of the institute. Hinson has been vice president of international liaison for the Haggai Institute since 1989.
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