News Worth Noting: December 20, 1963

A Sunday-evening church service ended with fatal blasts of buckshot in Asheville, North Carolina, this month. A 57-year-old ex-convict barged into the sanctuary of the West Asheville Assembly of God and killed the minister, his own recently divorced wife, and himself. Police apparently were unable immediately to fix a specific motive in the shootings. The slain minister, the Rev. Lester M. Cobb, 44, leaves his wife, a son, and three daughters.

Protestant Panorama

Southern Baptist Hospital Board asked the American Hospital Association to “curtail its activities in seeking government participation” in the work of voluntary hospitals.

Seven new Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) have been established in Puerto Rico in three years. Goal for the decade is twenty new congregations.

United Presbyterian Commission on Religion and Race pledged “unflagging support” to President Johnson in carrying out civil-rights policies of the late President Kennedy.

In New Zealand, the Anglican Synod of the Waiapu diocese approved a tentative plan of merger with other Protestant denominations. Archbishop Norman Lesser observed, however, that the plan would not be put into effect if it would “render the hope of union with the Roman and Orthodox churches unlikely or impossible.”

In Sweden, the Riksdag (Parliament) is weighing a measure to allow laymen to participate in the election of bishops in the Lutheran state church. The proposal originated in the executive branch of the national government and was approved by the church’s general synod.

Miscellany

A Communist newspaper in the Uzbek Soviet Republic reported that three women Baptist missionaries had been charged with illegal religious activities and sentenced to two years in prison. It said the women had been accused of “organizing secret meetings of an unregistered Baptist sect.”

A significant increase in the sale of religious and inspirational Christmas cards since the assassination of President Kennedy was reported from New York by Religious News Service. Particularly in demand were two cards painted by Mrs. Kennedy for the benefit of the National Cultural Center. One depicts the journey of the Magi, and the other shows an angel heralding the nativity.

Protest marches against the ban on public school devotions were conducted in Washington, D. C., and Hartford, Connecticut, last month. An assortment of about 350 pickets paraded in front of the White House on Thanksgiving Day. Two days later, 600 Assemblies of God young people demonstrated on the steps of the Connecticut capitol.

National Council of Churches delivered an initial check of $12,000 to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church of Birmingham, where a bomb explosion killed four Negro girls on September 15. The money represented donations to a fund established by the NCC’s Commission on Religion and Race.

The Rev. Elmer B. Sachs, president of an evangelical youth organization known as Sky Pilots, was sentenced to six months in a Colorado prison for failing to pay a $1358 civil judgment.

The Rev. Koji Honda, leading Japanese evangelist, will conduct a nine-day “Olympic Crusade” in the Tokyo Bunkyo Auditorium next September. The crusade will be jointly sponsored by the Honda Crusades organization and World Harvesters, Inc.

An $8,500,000 expansion program was announced for Wagner College, New York City’s only private, Protestant-related liberal arts college. A dormitory is already under construction, and funds are being sought to erect a new science building. The college, whose picturesque eighty-acre campus overlooks New York harbor, is associated with the Lutheran Church in America.

A new publishing plant for All-Church Press designed to quadruple its printing capacity was formerly dedicated in Fort Worth, Texas, last month. The ceremonies also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the organization, which publishes congregational and denominational newspapers.

Fifty-eight American couples flew to Korea last month to adopt a group of orphan children ranging in ages from three weeks to thirteen years. The flight was sponsored by a Protestant group on the West Coast in cooperation with Flying Tiger Lines. Costs amount to about $950 per couple. Another flight is planned for April of next year.

The Canadian House of Commons passed a private bill providing a name change for what will hereafter be known as the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Canada (former name: Canadian Union Conference Corporation of the Seventh-day Adventists). The bill also adds an official French name and enlarges the power of the corporation to hold land and publish literature.

Personalia

The Rev. Alton M. Motter named executive director of the Minnesota Council of Churches.

Dr. Harold H. Hutson appointed executive vice-president of Methodist-related American University.

Dr. Gilbert F. White, professor of geography at the University of Chicago, elected board chairman of the American Friends Service Committee.

The Rev. Angus Finlayson named moderator-designate of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.

Dr. Courts Redford, executive secretary of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board, plans to retire at the end of 1964.

Paul E. Hoffman, managing editor of the theological quarterly Lutheran World, was ordained in Geneva in what was described as the first Lutheran ordination service in the city’s history.

They Say

“How long shall we continue pompously to aver that the chief contribution of Jesus was simply to rehash all that had been said before by his Jewish ancestors? How long before we can admit that his influence was a beneficial one—not only to the pagans, but to the Jews of his time as well, and that only those who later took his name in vain profaned his teachings.”—Rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath, in an address at the forty-seventh general assembly of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

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