News Worth Noting: April 12, 1963

STRANDED WITH THE BIBLE—“I am starting my adulthood with full knowledge or what I have to do. I wasn’t rescued until I understood, until I realized my sins and decided to make recompense for them.” So said Helen Klaben, adventuresome 21-year-old Brooklyn girl who with a 42-year-old Mormon lay preacher, Ralph Flores, survived seven weeks of sub-zero cold following the crash of their light plane in the Yukon Territory. Said Miss Klaben, who is Jewish: “It was Ralph’s Bible. I read both the Old and New Testaments. I know what I have to do, what my work is, what faith is, faith in God.”

PROTESTANT PANORAMA—A “Canadian Southern Baptist Conference” was organized at Kamloops, British Columbia, reportedly looking toward eventual formation of a Canadian Baptist Convention on a par with U. S. state conventions.

Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod will send 20 observers to the Lutheran World Federation assembly at Helsinki this summer.

Methodist Television, Radio, and Film Commission opened a Hollywood office. Shooting of two new episodes of a children’s television series is already under way. The new office is located near Hollywood and Vine.

New England Fellowship of Evangelicals is launching a program to combat juvenile delinquency. Executive Secretary Tolbert E. McNutt cites a threefold approach to counter delinquency—through social workers, a boys’ town, and parent education.

Lutherans are coming out with a contemporary English version of Martin Luther’s 430-year-old Small Catechism.

Newly released Church of Scotland Year-Book reveals a net loss of 8,663 communicants during 1961, the last year for which comprehensive statistics are available. The yearbook gives the total number of communicants as of the end of 1961 as 1,290,617. Population of Scotland is 5,178,490.

FOREIGN MISSIONS—Nine seafaring missionaries en route to Haiti were reported safe after their 100-foot vessel sank in choppy seas off the coast of Mexico. Leader of the rescued group was the Rev. Howard A. Smith, 51, minister of Calvary Church of the Full Gospel in Wilmington, California.

Presbyterian U. S. Board of World Missions will undertake long-range studies on pastoral care of missionaries and support of mission institutions overseas. The board has cited difficulty in meeting increasing costs.

The Evangelical Church of Laos ordained its first minister last month at a simple ceremony in Luang Prabang. He is the Rev. Moun Douangmala, who has been a Christian believer for some 30 years. The only other minister national in Laos is the Rev. Saly Kounthapanya, who was ordained by the Christian and Missionary Alliance mission in 1951.

Native New Guineans snapped up the first 15,000 volumes of the Four Gospels printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society in pidgin English. An immediate reprint was ordered. Pidgin English is a simple language, based mainly on English, which is used in New Guinea and Papua and is the only common language in an area where hundreds of native dialects are used.

MISCELLANY—Excommunication of deposed Argentine dictator Juan Peron reportedly was lifted by the Roman Catholic Church. Aides of Peron, who took refuge in Spain in January, 1960, say he wrote to Pope John XXIII several months ago, stating he was a repentant and faithful member of the church and desirous of “reconciliation.” They report he was officially absolved in a private ceremony.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer declined an invitation to visit the United States this spring. Lisle M. Ramsey of Religious Heritage of America disclosed Schweitzer’s decision following a trip to the famed medical missionary’s station in Lambarene, Gabon.

Proposed legislation to ease restrictions on Spanish Protestants was treated pessimistically in Ya, the Roman Catholic daily newspaper in Madrid. An article written by Father E. Guerrero, S.J., asked whether an “easy and even cordial getting-along-together spirit [between Catholics and Protestants] may not finally result in the playing down of Catholic requirements and aspirations, ending up in indifferentism.”

Construction of a Christian settlement at Ness Anim in West Galilee was expected to start soon with the rejection by the Israel Parliament’s Interior Committee of demands from Orthodox Jewish groups to halt the project.

The Baha’i International Community submitted an aide-mémoire to the U. N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva asking assistance to obtain release of nine Baha’is sentenced to death and imprisonment in predominantly Moslem Morocco last December. The aide-mémoire called it “a clear case of religious inquisition.”

St. Louis University and Catholic University of Quito, Ecuador, will conduct an exchange of professors and students as well as teaching methods with a $400,000 grant from the U. S. Agency for International Development under the Alliance for Progress.

FBI reports a seven per cent increase in crime during 1962. Crime rates rose to record highs in all areas of the nation. The number of persons under 18 arrested increased by nine per cent.

PERSONALIA—The Rt. Rev. Arthur Lichtenberger, presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, disclosed that he was suffering from symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. He canceled all speaking engagements but said he would try to complete his term of office as presiding bishop—until the denomination’s next general convention in 1964.

The Rev. Charles Webster, Jr., was dismissed as Baptist Student Union director at Clemson (South Carolina) College. His ouster was announced following a congregational meeting of the Baptist Church of Clemson. The church finances Baptist student work at the Clemson campus, aided by a state convention appropriation. Webster said he was removed for befriending Harvey Gantt, first Negro to enroll at the school. Several church spokesmen insisted that other than racial issues were involved.

Dr. Markus Barth, son of theologian Karl Barth, appointed professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (United Presbyterian).

The Rev. Oscar A. Anderson accepted the presidency of Augsburg College, Minneapolis.

Dr. A. R. Keppel resigned as president of Catawba College (United Church of Christ) to become first executive director of the new Piedmont University Center of North Carolina in Winston-Salem. Keppel was succeeded at Catawba by Dr. Donald C. Dearborn.

Dr. Jack S. Wilkes, Methodist minister and president of the University of Oklahoma City, elected mayor of Oklahoma City.

The Rev. George E. Kempsell, Jr., Protestant Episcopal rector whose outspoken stand against racial discrimination in Scarsdale, New York, attracted wide attention, named rector of St. Michael and All Angels Church in Dallas, Texas.

Bruce A. Brough, former editorial assistant at CHRISTIANITY TODAY, joined the staff of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration periodical.

WORTH QUOTING—“Communism is not a religion, because its dogmas are like shifting sands, or more properly the devil quoting the Bible. It can be compared to addiction much more than to religion or faith.”—John Santo, ex-Communist, in testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Deaths

THE RT. REV. A. W. NOEL PORTER, 78, who served as Episcopal bishop of the Sacramento, California, diocese for 24 years; in Palo Alto, California.

DR. LYLE O. BRISTOL, 48, former dean at Eastern Baptist College and Crozier Theological Seminary; in Medford, Massachusetts.

COL. EDWARD P. FELKER, 71, general counsel for Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State; in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

BISHOP KAI JENSEN, 64, who last May became the spiritual head of the Lutheran Diocese of Arhus, Denmark; in Arhus.

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