News Worth Noting: November 09, 1962

SUITABLE COMPROMISE—Judy Rae Bushong, Ohio teen-ager whose concept of modesty caused her expulsion from school, was back in classes. Judy attracted international attention by refusing to wear the short-legged gym suit prescribed by school officials. Compromise settlement provides that her gym suit can be extra long.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA—United Church of Christ President Ben Mohr Herbster calls for systematic rehabilitation program for ministers who crack emotionally under strain of their work. Although only “a very small minority” of United Church ministers suffer severe psychological difficulties, says Herbster, “these men need help … desperately.”

Lutheran Church in America’s Board of Theological Education is considering a plan to increase seminary training from three to four years. LCA’s ten seminaries have been asked to make specific suggestions for an added curriculum.

A General Synod for the five Dutch Reformed churches in South Africa was officially constituted last month, culminating plans that had been discussed for more than 100 years. The General Synod will enable the five churches to present a united front, said Religious News Service, while preserving individual identities.

The Triennial Conference of the Baptist Union of Australia voted against affiliating with the World Council of Churches. Victoria was the only one of six state unions to recommend affiliation with the WCC. A majority of the state unions also voted against membership in the Australian Council of Churches.

New developments in Lutheran Scandinavia’s controversial issue of women in the ministry have lost much of their power to arouse intense debate, according to National Lutheran Council News Bureau. Press and people took little note, the bureau said, when a Swedish bishop ordained a pastor’s wife and a Norwegian bishop appointed a retired clergyman to minister periodically to dissenting members of a parish served by a woman.

Two more Protestant church bodies were accepted as members of the National Association of Evangelicals by its Board of Administration, bringing the total NAE constituency to 40 groups. New member denominations are the Evangelical Congregational Church with about 30,000 members and the Pilgrim Holiness Church with some 32,700.

Latin America Mission reports that its year-long “evangelism-in-depth” campaign in Guatemala has already produced an estimated 10,000 conversions to Christ. United evangelistic campaigns have been held in 33 Guatemalan cities.

At least 80 Christian natives are said to have been killed and another 76 injured in a five-day pillage and burning of about 80 small villages by pagan tribesmen in remote western New Guinea. Word of the outbreak came from the Rev. Charles Craig, field secretary of the Australian Baptist Mission, who said the victims did not include any missionaries. He reported that two chiefs led about 1,000 tribesmen in the attack which stemmed from fear of loss of power and prestige due to the mission’s growth.

DEPOSITIONS—The Rev. Edwin E. West, involved in a dispute with Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike, was deposed from the ministry at his own request so he could serve as minister of the schismatic Orthodox Anglican Church of the Redeemer in Palo Alto, California. The church withdrew from the Protestant Episcopal denomination, charging Pike with doctrinal error.

Dr. N. Burnett Magruder was discharged as executive director of the Louisville Area Council of Churches after the council’s executive board voted 21 to 7, with 8 abstentions, in favor of the move. Magruder, a member of the John Birch Society, said Protestantism was vigorous enough to accommodate conflicting points of view and observed, “I am sorry that this principle was not affirmed.”

Dr. Henry J. Stokes, Jr., who as pastor of First Baptist Church of Macon, Georgia, preached against segregation, will leave his pulpit January 1 following a request from the congregation’s Board of Deacons that he resign. He said he was asked to leave because “my preaching, particularly as it regarded justice to minority race groups, did not set well with some in the church.”

PERSONALIA—The Rev. John P. Donnelly. editor of the official newspaper of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Spokane, Washington, was named director of the Bureau of Information of the National Catholic Welfare Conference.

Dr. Robert E. Davis was named executive director of the American Baptist Division of Christian Higher Education.

MISCELLANY—Pacific Garden Mission, world’s most famous rescue mission on Chicago’s Skid Row, marks its 85th anniversary this month with a rally in the new International Ballroom of the Conrad Hilton Hotel.

The Evangelical Free Church of America dedicated a new $400,000 headquarters building in Minneapolis last month.

Northern Baptist Theological Seminary campus in Chicago is being purchased for a Baptist home for the aged. The seminary is moving to a new campus in suburban Lombard next summer.

A statement adopted at the Oxford Conference of Evangelical Churchmen said intercommunion among Anglicans and the free churches should not depend upon whether the free churches accept the Church of England’s traditional form of episcopal ministry.

Protestant churches in Greece appealed to Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis against action by local authorities in attempting to confiscate property belonging to a Protestant community in Katerini. A near-riot occurred when police tried to seal off the property.

Emergency aid for earthquake victims in Iran is being supplied by the World Council of Churches, Church World Service of the National Council of Churches, World Vision, and Seventh-day Adventist Welfare Services. In addition, Francis Cardinal Spellman, Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, presented $10,000 for earthquake relief to the Iranian U.N. ambassador.

WORTH QUOTING—“Any church is going to be useless and irrelevant unless there shall be in it the gospel’s clear and unmistakable call, the Spirit’s witness. People are hungry for that.”—Methodist Bishop Nolan B. Harmon.

“Although scores of Canadians conduct research in the breeding and care of poultry and livestock, there does not appear to be one full-time research person in Canada compiling data on marriage and its problems.”—From a committee report of the United Church of Canada General Council.

“I am a very lucky fellow and I certainly thank God for a second opportunity. You don’t often get another chance to prove yourself, in baseball or in life.”—Ralph Terry, who pitched the New York Yankees to victory in the deciding game of the 1962 World Series, recalling his loss of the seventh game of the 1960 series.

“Some say [God is] a little man with a long beard. I don’t believe that. I can’t believe he’s a small person. He must be BIG. I think of him as a sort of power—a big power.”—Teen-aged actress Hayley Mills, in interview with Youth magazine of United Church of Christ.

Deaths

ARCHBISHOP ATHENAGORAS CAVADAS, 78, Exarch of the Greek Orthodox Church in Western and Central Europe and a former president of the World Council of Churches; in London.

DR. THORVALD B. MADSEN, 74, retired vice-president of Trinity College and Theological Seminary; in Chicago.

BISHOP ARNE FJELLBU, 71, who played a key role in the resistance movement by Norwegian Christians during the World War II Nazi occupation; in Trondheim, Norway.

DR. CHARLES S. DETWEILER, 84, retired American Baptist missionary who had devoted 50 years of leadership to mission work in Latin America; in Denver.

DR. CLYDE JOHNSTONE KENNEDY, 55, president of Shelton College and former president of the International Council of Christian Churches; in Collingswood, New Jersey.

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