Resigning • Joel Edwards, as general director of the U.K.’s Evangelical Alliance (EA), in September. The first black director of EA, Edwards completed his second five-year term last year. Edwards will continue to serve as a commissioner on the U.K.’s Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Murdered • Chaldean Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, in Mosul, Iraq, by an unidentified militant group. His body was discovered on March 13 after his family failed to meet kidnappers’ ransom demands of $1 million and $2.5 million. The kidnappers had also ordered his family to organize a Christian militia to fight alongside Muslim militants against U.S. forces in Mosul.
Died • Robert Walker, a pioneer in Christian publishing, on March 1 in Carol Stream, Illinois. He was 95. Walker founded and led a number of magazines, including HIS, Christian Bookseller (now Christian Retailing), and Christian Life (now Charisma & Christian Life). He also published the first national story on Billy Graham and was instrumental in starting the Christian Booksellers Association and the Evangelical Press Association (EPA). The EPA awarded him its first Magazine Publishers Award in 1994.
Appointed • Alistair Brown, as president of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, Illinois. A former pastor and mission administrator, Brown takes over the seminary during financially straitened circumstances. The school, which claims a number of notable alumni, including Tyndale Publishing House founder Kenneth Taylor and Christianity Today‘s first editor, Carl Henry, has faced flat enrollment for a decade and is exploring the sale of its 28-acre campus. Brown served most recently as general director of the U.K.’s Baptist Missionary Society.
Retired • Gary and Carol Johnson, longtime leaders at Bethany House Publishers. Gary, president, and Carol, vice president of editorial for fiction, have served at Bethany House since the 1960s, acquiring authors like Janette Oke and titles like Kingdom of the Cults. Launched in 1956 at Bethany College of Missions in Minnesota, Bethany House was purchased by Baker Publishing Group in 2003.
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Related Elsewhere:
Joel Edwards became a commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission in late 2007.
The U. K. Evangelical Alliance and the EHRC have short bios of Edwards.
BBC 4’s Today Programme has featured Edwards’s theological reflections in its daily “Thought for the Day.”
Paulos Faraj Rahho was kidnapped in February and found dead in a shallow grave a couple weeks later.
Christianity Today published an obituary for Robert Walker online.
Alistair Brown will be Northern Seminary’s 10th president.
Gary and Carol Johnson officially stepped down at the end of February but will continue to work part-time.
