Congo: Survivor Describes Massacre of Priests

A series of sleepy towns dot the upper reaches of the Congo River, which in northern Katanga province becomes known as the Lualaba. One of these sunbaked towns is Kongolo, a trading center with some 27,000 inhabitants. Here a dusty road leads into the rolling hills and an imposing complex of buildings breaks the alternate monotony of cotton fields and tall elephant grass. The complex represents the focal point of a wide area of Roman Catholic influence, and it includes a small cathedral, a seminary, and a cemetery.* Few non-Africans had ever heard of Kongolo until last month, when it gave rise to an account of one of the worst anti-clerical atrocities of modern times.

The account was provided by an African seminarian who fled from Kongolo. This was the essence of his story:

On New Year’s Eve, a group of soldiers and several hundred youth descended upon the compound, ignoring a white flag which the missionaries had raised. The troops searched the premises and ordered students out. The next morning the troops were back. They checked the identity cards of all the Belgian priests stationed there, then turned on them. The priests were lashed while African students stood back and watched at gunpoint. Following the beatings, the priests were led away and machine-gunned to death. Then their bodies were dismembered and the students were forced to dispose of the mutilated members in the Lualaba.

The town of Kongolo had been abandoned by Katanga troops on December 28. Katanga President Moise Tshombe said he had been forced to pull out of Kongolo in the face of heavy pressure from United Nations and central government forces. Other sources said the Kongolo invaders represented the rebel regime at Stanleyville headed by leftist Antoine Gizenga.

The seminarian was quoted as saying that the attackers were infuriated because the missionaries celebrated when the troops were driven out of the town temporarily. Another motive given was that the priests were “poisoning the minds” of young people by “preaching against procreation.”

The priests were identified as members of a Roman Catholic order known as the Congregation of the Holy Ghost Fathers. The order, founded in 1703, has headquarters in Paris, but is also well known in the United States. It operates Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as well as seminaries in Norwalk and Ridgefield, Connecticut, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Philadelphia. Another seminary and a prep school are operated in Philadelphia, in addition to a military academy in Rock Castle, Virginia, and a high school in Riverside, California.

The Vatican News Service listed 20 names in its list of victims. Earlier reports said 18 priests were killed and that another was missing.

All the dead were identified as Belgian and Dutch-born, with the possible exception of one German. Some sources said, however, that several African nuns were among those killed. One dispatch suggested that there had been some cannibalism.

The troops involved apparently were the same contingent that massacred 13 Italian U. N. airmen in Kindu last November. The nearest U. N. troops were some 150 miles from Kongolo through dense jungle and bush land.

There has been only one other mass missionary slaying in recent years. That was on January 8, 1956, when five young missionary men lost their lives at the hands of spear-bearing Auca Indians in the interior jungle of Ecuador. Several of the Aucas responsible for the deaths have been identified and are now being taught Christian principles by Mrs. Elisabeth Elliot, a widow of one of the slain missionaries, and Miss Rachel Saint, a sister of another. The missionaries are said to be encouraged by the Auca response to the teachings of the gospel.

The seething tumult of the Asian-African countries has many an ironic turn. In Arab lands, pro-Communist leaders often malign missionaries as agents of the Western imperial powers. Forgotten is the fact that it was in fact some missionaries, as at Beirut University (Presbyterian) in Lebanon, who first inculcated democratic and revolutionary notions in the minds of young Near East intellectuals. Cut loose from their Christian context, their practice eventually led in non-Christian directions. In the Congo, scene of some of the most violent anti-missionary activity, the Protestant witness has mainly been evangelical. But revolutionary agents have struck at both Protestant and Catholic missionary effort. The Roman Catholic posture has the added element of the church’s historic commitment to the view that the state is the temporal arm of that church.

A Wave Of Religious Persecution

A new wave of religious persecution seems to be developing around the world.

Even as accounts of the Congo massacre were pieced together, dispatches reaching Hong Kong told of a French Catholic missionary priest who was machine-gunned to death by guerrilas outside a village in South Vietnam.

In Russia, meanwhile, a number of Jewish leaders were imprisoned while authorities suppressed various Jewish cultural and religious activities.

Several weeks ago, a Pentecostal preacher in the Western Ukraine was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of “attempting to recruit peasants” as sect members. Last September, four Pentecostal leaders in the Ural Mountain area were convicted on charges of spreading teachings and engaging in activities “of a character hostile to humanity.”

Soviet acts against the Jews are reported to stem from the fact that Jews resist absorption into prevailing cultural patterns. Some observers note that a similar point is raised against the Christian Jews who are now living in Israel.

In the United States, dynamite explosions damaged three Negro churches in Birmingham, Alabama. No one was in any of the churches at the time. However, two policemen suffered minor injuries as a result of one of the blasts.

Merger Mapping

The first full-scale discussion among representatives of the four churches included in Dr. Eugene Carson Blake’s sweeping Protestant merger proposal will be held April 9–10 in Washington (D. C.) Cathedral.

It was also in an Episcopal cathedral (Grace in San Francisco) that Blake first outlined his plan for union of the United Presbyterian, Protestant Episcopal, and Methodist churches and the United Church of Christ.

That was in December of 1960. Since then, the United Presbyterians and the Episcopalians have agreed to join in such talks and the United Church has said it would “respond affirmatively” if invited to participate.

The Methodist Church has had no opportunity to take official action. The Methodist Commission on Church union, however, is empowered to participate in the discussions, although no official action can be taken without the appoval of the Methodist General Conference.

Representatives of the other church bodies would also have to submit any union plan to their denominational conventions for approval.

Blake, chief executive officer of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., said that approximately 36 representatives—“probably both clergymen and laymen”—will be included in the Washington meeting. Fie said the meeting would actually constitute the formal issuing of an invitation from the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches to the United and Methodist churches to participate in the union talks.

The Sin Of Sermon-Listening

Too many churchgoers tend to regard sermon-listening as an end in itself, says lay evangelist Howard E. Butt, Jr., so much so that sermon-listening may actually be one of America’s greatest sins.

At historic New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D. C., last month, Butt rebuked sermon-listening as an “escape”:

“God wants transformation from listening into living.”

Baptist Butt, head of a Texas retail chain, was principal speaker at a cooperative, interdenominational “Christian Layman’s Workshop.” The two-day workshop drew some 1,000 men and was described as the largest interdenominational, interracial meeting of Christian laymen ever held in the national capital area.

“I don’t believe America can survive communism for another ten years.” This was the reason given recently by an American businessman for rejecting a proposition made to him by Charles Pitts, another of the conference’s speakers. Outlining this as a major challenge to Christianity, Pitts, holder of a pilot’s license since he was 16, asserted that many Christians are ineffective because they take their eyes off the instruments and are as a result flying through life upside down.

A warning against communism was sounded also by Congressman Walter Judd of Minnesota, who pointed out that not since the Crusades has the Church had such a fiercely missionary competitor. Judd, former medical missionary in China, vividly reminded the assembly of the dedication typical of Communism, from whose ranks no one higher in rank than colonel has ever defected.

Mormon Skyscraper

Mormons plan to erect a skyscraper in New York City to serve as an administrative and worship center for the New York Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The structure will rise some 30 or 40 stories. Portions will be rented out as office space or apartments to defray some of the expense (property acquired thus far has cost some $1,250,000).

“Any part of the building that is not specifically church will be taxed,” said Gerald G. Smith, a regional official.

Mormons in the New York metropolitan area are said to number “more than 3,000.”

The new center, scheduled for occupancy by April, 1965, will include offices, a chapel, classrooms, and an information bureau.

The ‘Octapla’

The New Testament Octapla, in which eight English translationsTyndale’s final revision, Great Bible, Geneva Bible, Bishop’s Bible, Rheims New Testament, Kings James Version, American Standard Version, and Revised Standard Version. are bound together on facing pages, will make its bookstore debut March 1. Its only predecessor, The English Hexapla, was published in 1841. Thomas Nelson and Sons is publisher of the Octapla.

Subsidy Speculation …

Democratic Representative John W. McCormack of Massachusetts took office last month as Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives amidst pledges that he would continue his credo of ‘fairness and respect for the religious beliefs of others.”

The Roman Catholic Congressman said that his views “were entirely different than they have been portrayed.”

McCormack denied ever having said that he would oppose aid-to-education bills that did not include assistance for private schools.

He said he favors long-term government loans to both private and public schools for construction purposes, but added that if a bill were reported out of committee with no provision for private schools he would still vote for it.

“I also believe in the 50 per cent forgiveness for those who have received Government loans to finish their college education and to enter the career of teaching,” he said in an interview with U.S. News and World Report. “When they teach in public schools, they are given, as you know, 50 per cent forgiveness of the loan over a five-year period. This should be extended to private schools.”

Shortly after Congress reconvened, Democratic Representative Cleveland M. Bailey of West Virginia, chairman of a House subcommittee on education, introduced a bill to extend the 50 per cent forgiveness provision to private schools.

Meanwhile, Democratic Representative Roman C. Pucinski of Illinois called on Congress to take immediate action to give relief to “parents who are saving taxpayers at least two billion dollars a year” by maintaining the nation’s private and parochial schools systems.” Pucinski said he will press for early consideration of his measure, introduced late last session, to amend the Internal Revenue Code so that any amount contributed by a taxpayer for education of his children at a private, non-profit elementary or secondary school may be considered a deductible contribution. At present, contributions to private or parochial schools are not tax deductible if the taxpayer has dependents who are enrolled, since such contributions are deemed to be expenditures for education and these outlays are not tax deductible.

While many observers were commending President Kennedy’s church-state stand during his first year in office, supporters of federal aid to parochial schools took encouragement from one passage in his State of the Union message, according to Religious News Service.

The champions of parochial-school aid felt the President had indicated that he would sign a bill that includes long-term, low-interest loans to private and parochial schools to help them construct additional classroom facilities for the teaching of science, mathematics, foreign languages, and physical education.

The President said:

“I sent to Congress last year a proposal for federal aid to public school construction and teachers’ salaries. I believe that the bill which passed the Senate and received House committee approval offered the minimum amount required by our needs and—in terms of across-the-board aid—the maximum scope permitted by our Constitution. I therefore see no reasons to weaken or withdraw that bill and I urge its passage at this session.”

Pucinski suggested that “the bill” was actually the education subcommittee’s “package of three bills,” one of which contained a provision for long-term loans to help private schools in construction of facilities.

… And More Precedent

Parochial schools and other private, non-profit institutions would be eligible to participate in the proposed $460,000,000 federal fallout shelter construction program.

Roswell L. Gilpatric, deputy secretary of defense, says that under the Kennedy administration’s proposal, schools could receive grants to build shelters that would serve the dual purpose of gymnasiums.

He said grants also would be given to state and private non-profit organizations operating hospitals, clinics, and welfare institutions.

The administration’s budget calls for a total of $695,000,000 for civil defense purposes. About $460,000,000 of this amount would launch the public shelter program, beginning in July.

Although details are not yet worked out, the government would probably pay about $25 of the estimated $40 it costs shelter. The difference, he added, would to provide space for one person in a be made up by local government authorities.

Each shelter eligible for the proposed aid. Gilpatric added, must have room for at least 50 persons, be open for public use in time of emergency, and be under the direction of local civil defense authorities. He stressed that no federal subsidies would be given for shelters where racial segregation would be practiced.

Brazil: Study In Communist Exploitation

Communist activity in Brazil is growing so rapidly that many feel it now poses a distinct threat to Christian missionary activity (see box on following page). The following report, prepared forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Professor José Maurício Wanderley, editor of Brazil Presbiteriano, official publication of the Presbyterian Church of Brazil, traces some of the factors which have contributed to the Communist gains. The article was translated from the Portuguese by Langdon Henderlite, aCHRISTIANITY TODAYnews correspondent in Brazil.

The numerous and sudden social changes which have afflicted Brazil during the last 30 years have served as a propitious field for leftist propaganda. Especially has this been true in the northeast of Brazil, a region subject to droughts and floods where social restlessness and uneasiness have taken on serious and dangerous aspects. So much so, that after years of disinterest, the last two Brazilian administrations, with U. S. cooperation, began to execute social assistance plans and to set up projects with a view to ameliorate the distress of the region’s 23,000,000 inhabitants.

Brazil has been classified as an underdeveloped and backward country, like other Latin American nations. All have inherited a civilization shaped by Spanish Romanism with its distaste for conditions conducive to democratic regimes in which there could exist opinions contrary to those held by Roman Catholic sociologists. The wavering and uncertain democracy of the Iberian-American nations is an evident and indisputable fact. For centuries, moreover, these nations have suffered from the pressure of more prosperous countries which, for obvious reasons, offered less than sufficient help and left the needy nations with no recourse than to continue being the suppliers of raw materials for foreign industry.

The mass communications media, however, contributed to a popular awakening. The people discovered that a gulf separates their living conditions from those enjoyed in the more prosperous nations, and they began to think of themselves as the victims of a terrible injustice. Whereupon communism came forward with bundles of promises and anti-capitalistic propaganda, and an impatience was born with demands for immediate social change. A mental climate of unstableness ensued, which led to walkouts and strikes in groups heretofore immune, such as those of teachers and professors. The government made some attempts to correct social imbalance by readjustment of pay scales, creation of new schools for children and for illiterate adults, and studies relating to agrarian reform. Unfortunately, these reforms have been slow and the majority of the people have lost faith.

Considering its great reserves of natural wealth, Brazil could have attained a great measure of development through its own efforts had it not been for a failure to pursue and practice an intelligent and virile democracy. The same situation is encountered in nearly all nations of Roman Catholic structure.

It is not surprising that in a country with 51 per cent illiteracy and with a superficial religiosity, a condition of desperation should develop. Communists have capitalized on this desperation by infiltrating labor unions, government agencies, schools, and even the armed forces.

Recent government statistics about northeast Brazil show that the privileged class makes up three per cent of the population and the middle class twelve per cent, the rest being underprivileged. The average annual income per capita for the region is 35 U. S. dollars. The illiteracy rate is 80 per cent. Only six per cent of the children of school age are enrolled in schools and only one and four-tenths per cent of these complete the primary course.

By contrast, southern Brazil has been developing rapidly. New industries have been built and new roads established. Brazilia, the new capital which is the world’s most modern city, has been widely publicized. Three hydro-electric plants have been erected, along with many other projects, all by working the money presses overtime, which has cost the country a dangerous inflationary spiral. The devaluation of the country’s currency has aggravated still further the situation of the less-favored population in the large coastal cities of the northeast, creating new labor problems for the displaced and suffering population.

A word should also be said with regard to the attitude of evangelical forces in Brazil in the face of its self-appraisal and its move toward Marxism. For 100 years the evangelical church in Brazil received from the mother churches and taught as doctrine the thesis that the Christian should not become involved in world society because he is a pilgrim who is journeying to a celestial country. The world was said to belong to the Evil One and the church was described as belonging to neither. This is the main reason why the evangelical witness has been lacking, with rare exceptions, from the political reality of Brazil.

Today Christians are taking exception to that teaching and leaders are arousing the evangelical forces of Brazil to their responsibility in the face of rapid social change. Evangelical university students, aided by Christian leaders, are promoting studies along these lines. A small part of the church is beginning to understand that loyalty to its Lord implies participation in a prophetical attitude with those who suffer unjustly. It implies a battling for justice and represents an effort to show that Christian faith must enter and influence every sphere of national life.

Threat To Missions?

Protestant missionaries in Brazil are becoming concerned over the extent of Communist activity in the country and the threat it represents for Christian witness.

A poll shows that some missionaries are more worried than others, but all seem agreed that infiltration is extensive. They place great hope in an informed national laity as a means of stemming the Red tide.

Says one missionary: “It is the general impression that communism does pose a threat to foreign missionary activity in Brazil and to national missionary activity also. Just how remote is the threat is anyone’s guess.”

Says another: “A definite threat to all Christian work and unfortunately some of the young people in the church agree to the professed goals of Communist activity.”

Still another describes the local newspaper, the only one in the area, as “owned and run by the Communists.” He declares that the paper is “filled with anti-U.S.A. propaganda” and that it “picks up all sorts of small incidents, blows them up, and makes the U.S.A. look like some terrible monster.”

Two of the missionaries polled called special attention to Communist infiltration among youth. One noted that communism has “strongly” influenced young people who have grown up in evangelical families. He reported that Communist influence was “very strong” in the university groups.

Pressure On The Professors

Obviously acting under Communist pressure, the Theological (Protestant) Faculty of East Berlin’s Humbold University issued a statement last month identifying itself with East German government policies and strongly backing its “defense” measures.

The declaration cited the faculty’s “responsibility for the political and social education of students under its care” and said it was necessary today to discuss with them the “vital questions of our people and guide them toward a sober and reasonable and understanding and appreciation of the measures essential for peace.”

Noting that the Soviet Zone Republic, like any other state, has the task to defend itself, the statement emphasized that “Christians who take part in these defense efforts may have a good conscience.”

“Those who have conscientious scruples regarding the use of arms for the protection of peace,” it continued, “should, during friendly and patient talks, [be convinced] … of the necessity for, and the need for, Christians’ contribution toward armed defense of peace and our Republic.”

Details of the theological faculty’s “adoption” of the statement were disclosed in West Berlin church quarters which noted Communists had exerted pressure against the faculty for some time to fulfill “more effectively” its educational task toward students under its care.

These sources said a young “progressive” theologian appointed to the university by the Communists had drafted the statement which was first rejected by the faculty.

Instead, it approved a draft by Professor Heinrich Vogel of West Berlin which recognized the right of the state to defend itself, but upheld the church’s right and the faculty’s determination to protect conscientious objectors.

Communist functionaries, not satisfied with this declaration, finally enforced “adoption” of the issued statement by excluding all West Berlin members of the faculty council from voting. But even several East Berlin professors were reported to have expressed opposition to the final product.

The statement came in the wake of an appeal by the Evangelical Church of Berlin and Brandenburg urging all pastors to “stand up for conscientious objectors in the Soviet Zone and thus demonstrate that the church’s frequently expressed protection of C. O.’s is not a hollow phrase.”

Bigamy Revisited

A showdown between rabbinical and civil authorities in Israel was averted last month when parties to a widely-publicized divorce suit agreed to a settlement out of court.

The question at stake was whether a Jew may take a second wife if his first wife, whom he married in a civil ceremony, will not agree to a divorce.

Zalvi and Leah Mashiah, the Jewish couple involved, were married 14 years ago in Bulgaria and emigrated to Israel. In August, 1960, the husband applied for a divorce to a rabbinical court in Tel Aviv. That court ruled in his favor, but the wife appealed the decision.

When the case reached the Israeli High Court last October, it requested rabbinical authorities to explain their stand in favor of the husband. They declined to reply on the ground that the High Court, as a civil body, had no jurisdiction in the case.

The High Court then asked the government to intervene. At the same time, it supported the wife’s claim that the rabbinical ruling would cause havoc in a state where thousands of civil marriages were contracted—thus permitting husbands to take second wives if they so desired.

Civil marriages are no longer permitted in Israel, nor are such unions contracted outside the state recognized. A 1953 law granted religious authorities sole jurisdiction in matters of marriage and divorce.

The High Court was ready to hear arguments in the Mashiah case when Dr. Yomtov Kovo, the wife’s attorney, announced that she had won a settlement out of court and was prepared to accept a divorce.

The Pope’S Primacy

Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras is reported ready to recognize the primacy of the Roman Catholic Pope on the condition that his status would be “first among equals,” the position the Ecumenical Patriarch now holds in relation to other Eastern Orthodox Patriarchs.

After a four-hour interview with Patriarch Athenagoras, Greek journalist Paul Paleologos wrote last month that the Patriarch said the Eastern Orthodox Church “does not deny that the Pope is first in rank among the Christian bishops.”

The Paleologos story appeared in To Vima, a daily newspaper in Athens.

“The Orthodox Church is ready to recognize this primacy of the Pope but under the condition that he is recognized as first among equals and not first without equality to the heads of the other churches, which would liken him to a dictator monarch of Christianity.”

If this arrangement were accepted, the Patriarch is quoted as saying, the “first step towards the unity of the two churches will have been completed.”

A meeting between the Patriarch and the Pope has been in the oiling for some time, but nothing final has developed.

Challenging The Pope?

“More Catholic than the Pope” was the description the late Canon T. C. Hammond had given himself. The life and works of Hammond, who died recently in Sydney, Australia, were reviewed at a memorial meeting in London last month. One speaker recalled how Hammond, an Irishman with all the impetuousness of his race, took prompt action when a notable convert to Rome came to lecture in Dublin. To notices which urged, “Come and hear Ronald Knox at the Theatre Royal on why he became a Catholic,” Hammond circulated his own notices: “Come and hear the reply to Romanism in T. C. Hammond’s Christian chapel.”

After he went to Australia, Hammond’s many activities included a fortnightly broadcast called “The Voice of Protestantism.” Under Hammond’s ministry some 500 individual Roman Catholics were known to have been converted, among them a number of priests and ordinands.

J. D. D.

The American Pattern?

A newly-published statistical survey, Facts and Figures about the Church of England, shows a gain in the number of Roman Catholics admitted to the church in 1958 (3,771) compared with the average for 1954–1956 (3,480). However, there was a considerable drop in the number of non-Catholics received into the church (6,959 in 1960 compared with an average of 11,295 for the previous three years). An even more alarming decrease is found in the figures for Sunday School attendance—257 per thousand of child population aged 3–14 in 1922, 149 in 1959. In his preface the Bishop of Middleton, Dr. E. R. Wickham, observes that Anglicans are “moving in the direction of the American pattern, where afternoon Sunday School and Sunday evening services really exist no longer.” Ordinations increased from 444 in 1954 to 559 in 1960, hut the average age of the clergy was high (53 years), and the church “could do with another 7,000 clergymen.”

A ‘Very Christian’ Visit

Dr. J. H. Jackson, president of America’s largest Negro church body, says his recent call on Pope John XXIII was one of the many current manifestations of the growing spirit of friendliness between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

The president of the 5,000,000-member National Baptist Convention, U. S. A., Inc., reported last month that his private audience with the Pope was “very friendly, very cordial, very Christian.”

During the audience which lasted about 30 minutes they discussed the coming Vatican Council, prospects for Christian unity, and world peace, Jackson said.

The Negro Baptist leader visited Rome in December on his way back from New Delhi, where he attended the World Council of Churches assembly. He gave reporters details of his visit with the Pope upon his return to his Chicago home.

League Of Right-Wingers

Dr. Billy James Hargis, director of the Christian Crusade, says a national league of right-wing anticommunism groups is being established.

Hargis announced that organization of the new political “fraternity” would be reported at the conclusion of a “national anti-Communist leadership school” in Tulsa, Oklahoma, January 29-February 2. The league, he declared, will meet regularly in Washington with conservative Congressmen. There was no immediate comment from Washington.

Hargis said leaders of many ultraconservative anticommunist groups have enrolled in the proposed league, including the controversial John Birch Society of which he is an advisor.

Excluded from the league, he added, will be organizations with racial or religious prejudices and “extremist” groups like the “American Nazi Party.”

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Methodist Bishop Hiram A. Boaz, 95, former president of Southern Methodist University; in Dallas … Greek Orthodox Archbishop Theoklitos, 71; in Athens … Dr. Karl Anton Mueller, 94, a bishop of the Moravian Church in America; in San Francisco … Dr. Kenneth S. Wuest, 68, retired professor of Moody Bible Institute; in Oak Park, Illinois … Lieutenant Colonel Fred Seiler, 85, retired Salvation Army leader; in Ocean City, New Jersey … Dr. William H. Leach, 74, editor of Church Management; in Cleveland Heights, Ohio … the Rev. Campbell Bannerman Smith, 61, Canadian Pentecostal leader; in a highway accident near Napanee, Ontario … Amelia Collins, 87, a leader of the Baha’i World Faith; in Haifa, Israel.

Retirements: As president of Union Theological Seminary, New York, Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen, effective June 30, 1963 … as professor of pastoral leadership at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Dr. C. Morton Hanna.

Appointments: As head of the department of church history at Central Conservative Baptist Seminary, the Rev. Robert Delnay … as professor of practical theology at Gordon Divinity School, Dr. Gwyn Walters.

To The Top

Dr. Willa B. Player, president of Bennett College, Greensboro, North Carolina, and a Negro, became last month the first woman president of the National Association of Schools and Colleges of The Methodist Church.

She was elected to a one-year term during the annual meeting of the 60-year-old association in Cincinnati. The association embraces 135 colleges, universities, theological seminaries, and other schools in the United States related to The Methodist Church. It is the nation’s largest Protestant higher educational system.

Dr. Player was vice-president of the association last year. As president she succeeds Dr. Carl C. Bracy, president of Mount Union College, Alliance, Ohio.

Edgar J. Goodspeed

Dr. Edgar J. Goodspeed, 90, known throughout the English-speaking world for his Bible translations, died in. Los Angeles last month following a stroke.

His “American” translation made Goodspeed famous. In addition, he wrote more than 50 books, the last being Matthew—Apostle and Evangelist, published in 1959.

Goodspeed was the son of Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed, one of a small group of religious leaders who established the University of Chicago in the late 1890s.

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