Victory for Italian Protestants

Italian evangelicals are testing the benign attitude now being expressed toward Protestants in Vatican circles. For more than a year students of Rome’s Italian Bible Institute have been preaching weekly without difficulty in the main squares of that city. Except for the Salvation Army and a rare Pentecostal foray, street meetings were almost an unheard-of occurrence in Italy until cases won before the Constitutional Court in the last two years convinced Protestants that they had been granted unlimited freedom.

February 10, however, authorities in the Adriatic city of Foggia (pop. 150,000) looked askance on Protestant efforts to take their message into the public squares. Members of Foggia’s Plymouth Brethren Assembly had advised the police that the students of the Italian Bible Institute would be preaching in several squares on three afternoons during an evangelistic campaign to be conducted in their hall by the visitors from Rome. Although no permission was needed, the police blandly denied them their constitutional rights and warned that any such attempts would end in arrest. Two meetings were called off.

Not to be put off, faculty members of the Rome institute challenged the police to consult their local bishop quickly for, like it or not, the Vatican’s seeming good will toward Protestants was going to be tested in the main square of the city. Even vehement threats from the provincial head of the government secret service did not turn back the determined group.

At five P.M., under the scowling surveillance of twenty uniformed police, the small band of evangelicals gathered in the heart of the city, unpacked an accordion, and began to sing a hymn. As the director of the institute, the Rev. Royal L. Peck, began to speak to the gathering crowd, an officer stepped up and demanded that he cease preaching. Not to be denied, Mr. Peck politely asked the officer to desist from interfering with a constitutionally legal religious meeting and stated he would be happy to answer for his actions later before the Chief Commissar. The officer stepped back into the crowd, and the meeting continued for thirty-five minutes.

As soon as the crowd disbanded, Director Peck and another faculty member, Bernard Oxenham, were whisked away to police headquarters. But the bluff had been called, and after a brief inspection of their passports and residence permits the two men were released without charge.

Local Protestants interpreted the affair as a striking victory for liberty, indicating that the Gospel may be preached openly in spite of police denials and threats of arrest. As a result of this initial clear-cut victory, plans are under way for two months of open-air evangelism by both the Pentecostals and the Brethren of that southern province.

Protestant Panorama

Nine Lutheran pastors in the established Church of Sweden have resigned from the ministry in protest against their church’s decision to ordain women, according to a report of Ecumenical Press Service.

Deaths

THE RT. REV. RICHARD R. EMERY, 53, head of the Protestant Episcopal Missionary District of North Dakota; in a car-train collision at Grand Forks, North Dakota. Killed in the same accident were the REV. EDWIN L. BIGELOW, 39, chaplain at the University of North Dakota, his wife, and their seven-year-old daughter, and an eighteen-year old student.

DR. JOHN ABERLY, 96, retired president of the Lutheran Theological Seminary; in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

United Presbyterian Commission on Religion and Race is appropriating funds for “legal outposts” designed to help persons arrested in civil rights cases. The outposts are being established by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

American Baptist General Council is taking steps to promote organization of a “North American Baptist Fellowship” to be related to the Baptist World Alliance. Stated purpose is “to continue the gains and values growing out of the Baptist Jubilee Advance.”

Miscellany

A dynamite charge destroyed the home of an American missionary family in central Viet Nam and injured its three occupants. The blast was believed to have been set off by Communist guerrillas. The injured were Mr. and Mrs. Roy Spraggett and a small daughter. They serve under the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade.

Cadets at the U. S. Air Force Academy protested the school’s chapel-attendance requirement in letters to the Denver Post.

The entire Jesuit missionary force in Haiti was expelled last month. Action against the eighteen priests and brothers—all from Canada—was taken on grounds of alleged anti-government activity. They denied the charge.

The Evangelical Church in West Berlin declined an invitation to participate in the Communist-endorsed Christian Peace Conference to be held in Prague in June. Leaders of at least two other West German churches have indicated a willingness to cooperate.

A $1,000,000 Student Center is under construction at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas. Target date for completion is November of this year. Southwestern is the world’s largest Protestant seminary.

The Gospel of John of The New Japanese Bible went on sale throughout Japan. It is being produced under the sponsorship of numerous evangelical groups in the country in cooperation with the Lockman Foundation. The complete New Testament is scheduled for release at the end of the year.

The 1964 summer program at Pinebrook, one of the largest and best-known Bible conference grounds in America, will be under the direction of Church Centered Evangelism, Inc. Director Ross S. Rhoads announced a ten-week program for “inspirational vacationing” in the Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania, resort. The camp is owned by the widow of the late Percy Crawford, founder, and is being operated by Rhoads’s organization under a lease agreement.

Fire swept the campus of Methodist-related Columbia (South Carolina) College, causing some $2,000,000 damage. Mary Hardin-Baylor College in Belton, Texas, also was hit by a costly fire that destroyed its administration building.

Personalia

Dr. Billy Graham chosen to receive the Upper Room Citation for 1964.

Dr. James F. Hopewell, 34, named director of the Theological Education Fund of the World Council of Churches. He will assume office next September and will succeed Dr. Charles W. Ranson, who is retiring.

Myron Augsburger, noted evangelist, named president of Eastern Mennonite College. He will succeed Dr. John R. Mumaw when Mumaw’s term of office expires July 1, 1966.

Dr. Ray Summers named chairman of the Department of Religion at Baylor University (Baptist).

Dr. C. H. Becker resigned as president of Warburg College (Lutheran).

Dr. Eugene Carson Blake named chairman of the National Council of Churches’ Commission on Religion and Race.

They Say

“Do not despise soccer when thinking of the world’s moral progress. It is a religious exercise, a ritual of high expertise and just to watch it is an exhausting occupation.”—The Rev. Edward Carpenter, Archdeacon of Westminster.

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