Uppsala: Awkward Ecumenical Timing

The World Council of Churches edged closer to Roman Catholicism last month. But the WCC’s Fourth Assembly got embarrassingly sandwiched between a pair of papal pronouncements that stalled doctrinal detente.

Five days before the assembly opened in the tradition-filled university town of Uppsala, Sweden, Pope Paul recited a few traditions of his own. Besides ecumenical beliefs, his “Credo” reaffirmed papal infallibility, transubstantiation, and the immaculate conception and assumption of the Virgin Mary. Paul’s version of ecumenism was the hope that “Christians who are not yet in full communion of the one and only church will one day be returned in one flock with only one shepherd.”

Then nine days after Uppsala closed, Paul produced his long, long awaited decision on birth control. It was a thumping endorsement of traditional bans (see page 41).

Uppsala advocated family planning, though it recognized Eastern Orthodox objections to artificial methods.

If the World Council spoke with difficulty on birth control, it said nothing at all of the momentous liberal changes in Czechoslovakia, or of the ominous response from a Soviet Union fearful its satellites would hurtle completely out of orbit. John Meyendorff, Eastern Orthodox theologian from the United States, said the Orthodox of the Soviet Union and East Europe exercised “a sort of implicit veto power” over mention of freedom of speech and religion in Red lands. A church pronouncement on the delicate Czech situation, however, might have done more harm than good. Washington was equally silent.

Czech churchmen at Uppsala were understandably circumspect. If the liberal evolution succeeds, Czechs may see the Prague-based Christian Peace Conference leaders so prominent in World Council affairs as the advance guard of the new atmosphere, or as outdated apologists of the Soviet policy line. The only notice of cold war tensions was news that two Lutheran bishops from East Germany had been refused permission to attend Uppsala. Others absent were delegates of the Orthodox Church of Greece, despite their apparent success at muffling WCC criticism of the military regime there.

With 140 of 704 voting delegates, the Orthodox formed the largest confessional group in the assembly. And if Orthodox power was seen in the handling of politics, it also had an influence for traditional theology. The sermon by Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad had more Bible and more Gospel than many. And Metropolitan Ignatius Hazim of Syria cut across the assembly’s secular orientation: “The structure of this world is not only that of a dialogue animated by the gift of the Logos; it is also demonological, traversed by the Devil.”

Orthodox lands were exempted from criticism, and the WCC did not arbitrate between its friends on both sides of the tragic Nigeria-Biafra war, but things got specific on Viet Nam. The assembly asked the United States to stop—immediately and unconditionally—bombing in North Viet Nam, and called on “all parties” to stop military action in the South. The resolution said Viet Nam shows “the tragedy to which unilateral intervention of a great power can lead.” Here again, Uppsala was upstaged by events elsewhere, this time at the Paris peace conference. The harsh tone of discussions caused dovish U. S. Senator George McGovern, a Methodist delegate, to say, “The delegates from no nation come to this assembly with clean hands.”

Some 200 U. S. participants announced support for four men convicted of conspiring to evade draft laws. The assembly also appealed for support of conscientious objectors to particular wars, thus winning praise from the anti-Viet Nam war spokesmen. But the progressive Washington Post attacked the WCC decision: “An individual’s passionate dislike for the war in Viet Nam (as distinguished from war in general) is likely to be related to his political views, his attitude toward Communism, his concept of the United States’ role in world affairs, or other factors only indirectly related to conscience.”

The assembly renounced war, and weakened radical advocacy of violence in the context of internal revolutions. But a statement that such violence is “morally ambiguous” had an ominous ring amid escalating threats from militant blacks and whites in America and disorders in the two U. S. cities with elected Negro mayors.

International development was a major theme. The assembly vowed Christians would tax themselves to aid poorer nations, and 400 delegates skipped a noon meal to symbolize commitment. The WCC channels $13 million a year through 600 church welfare projects. Yet the plea to affluent nations to give 1 per cent of their gross national product to poorer nations by 1971 was poignant in a year when France and Britain were beset with economic problems and in a month when the U. S. Congress slashed foreign aid to a twenty-year low.

Development, at least, is one area where the WCC and the Vatican can work together. A “Joint Working Group” between the two won official status. Paul became the first pope to send a message to a WCC assembly and said the presence at Uppsala of forty Catholic observers confirmed “mutual intention to extend the collaboration.” By adjournment, the first nine Catholic theologians had been added to the Faith and Order Commission.

Beyond cooperation, most buzzing was about formal Catholic membership in the council. Jesuit editor Father Robert Tucci, the first Catholic to give a major WCC address, said that the question of Catholic membership “cannot be evaded,” and that Catholic ecclesiology provides no insuperable obstacles. Although Tucci spoke as an individual, his major themes had been approved by the Vatican’s ecumenical office. Some sort of affiliation someday now seems inevitable, despite such practical problems as how to represent the vast Catholic membership.

German Pentecostalist leader Christian Krust also addressed Uppsala, and offered a new note by telling how he came to “a living faith in Jesus Christ.” Fie said that if the ecumenical movement leaves basic Christian faith and regards the gifts of the Floly Spirit as “identical with the human intellect,” it might prepare the way for the Anti-Christ. Undismayed by the massive black-clad bloc of Soviet delegates, Krust struck another seldom-heard note in urging the WCC to aid persecuted Pentecostalists in the Soviet Union. A Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod speaker was also on the program, and the denomination’s theology director joined Faith and Order.

Of the six major documents discussed at Uppsala, the one on “Renewal in Mission” got the roughest treatment. It passed after coming to the floor twice, but not before some Scandinavians had threatened to pull out of the WCC if there were not more emphasis on preaching of the traditional Gospel. The final version was an effort at synthesis.

Minnesota Governor Harold LeVander, a Lutheran delegate, lamented the lack of “Christocentric” standards in the statement on human rights and said he couldn’t see “much distinction between this assembly and governors’ conferences I have attended.” A respected non-American politician likewise said the assembly was spiritually sterile.

The typical delegate was 51.7 years old, and what with the university setting and loud protests from 130 specially invited youth observers, it must have seemed like class-reunion time for old grads. On the assembly’s enormous graffiti board someone had written, “Is Jesus a delegate? Only 1 per cent under 33.”

Outside the first service at Uppsala Cathedral—before the WCC had had a chance to say anything—a Cambridge postgraduate student seized a TV ladder, mounted it, and in three languages called for debate on the WCC. Police grabbed him, and also a student pastor from Strasbourg.

Continued police presence long after the King of Sweden and President Kuanda of Zambia had gone home was one of the enigmas of Uppsala. An unsigned document at Fyris Hall, the 2,250-seat sports arena where sessions were held, protested the police. But a motion for their removal by one of the German delegates was not seconded after the chairman, Ernest Payne of Great Britain, intervened to say the world had become a dangerous place.

Besides the protests of youth against the establishment in general, other demonstrations sprang up sporadically: National Liberation Fronters against the war, Ian Paisley against the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Greeks against the current Greek regime. There was also a fleeting glimpse of Carl McIntire. Some wished the protestors’ enthusiasm could have been injected into assembly proceedings, where delegates were inundated by ten pounds of paper apiece, kindly donated by a Swedish mill. Wags had a tag for the jargon thereon: “Uppsalalia.”

UPPSALA BUSINESS

Elected as the new World Council presidium: U. S. United Presbyterian Moderator John Coventry Smith; Patriarch German of the Serbian Orthodox Church; Ceylon Methodist D. T. Niles; British Baptist Ernest Payne; Anglican Bishop A. H. Zulu of South Africa; and German Bishop Hanns Lilje, who defeated a floor move for Swedish laywoman Mrs. Birgit Rodhe. Honorary president: former General Secretary W. A. Visser’t Hooft.

Central Committee: Chairman, M. M. Thomas, layman from India who headed the 1966 Church and Society conference. Among the 120 members are five U.S. Negroes, three of whom were added after white nominees withdrew.

New member denominations: the Kenya Methodist Church (13,000 members) and three groups from South Africa: United Congregational Church (104,000), Evangelical Lutheran Church (110,000), and Moravian Eastern Province (23,300). As associate members: the Methodist Church of Cuba and the Eglise Protest ante Africaine of Cameroon.

Budget: The assembly cost $506,000, not counting travel. Churches are asked to increase WCC support by one-third next year for a budget of $1,320,000.

OUR MAN AT STATE

One person who didn’t get to Uppsala (see above) last month was Harry W. Seamans, U.S. Department of State executive and a veteran visitor to church conventions. He was barred from visiting World Council of Churches sessions by an old friend, WCC General Secretary Eugene Carson Blake, who cited space limitations.

Seamans had expected harsh indictment of the United States, and was somewhat relieved that the proposed one-sided anti-U.S. assaults underwent de-escalation at the assembly.

Seamans, 70, as State’s chief liaison officer with private organizations, upon request “interprets” the administration’s foreign policy to the nation’s churches, and he keeps boss Dean Rusk informed of church trends and any “new questions” raised by denominational officialdom. He also seeks to dispel or to tone down what he feels to be undue criticism of U. S. policy in proposed church pronouncements. He does this by addressing “pointed” questions of fact to resolutions committees and key leaders. He claims success in a number of instances but declines to divulge details.

Seamans began working with churches for State in 1946. Upon mandatory retirement this year he received State’s “Superior Service Award,” then was promptly rehired on special orders from Rusk. Before joining State he held other administrative posts in the government and in the Young Men’s Christian Association. At one time he was National Executive Secretary of the Student Fellowship for Christian Life Service.

An author of publications in his field, he holds degrees from Presbyterian-related Park College (Missouri) and Columbia University. He once wanted to be a minister and studied for a while at Union Theological Seminary, then later served as a visiting lecturer at Yale Divinity School. At age 30 he left Presbyterian circles for what he saw as the more liberal theological climate of The Methodist Church. As a Methodist layman he has on occasion drafted his denomination’s resolutions on international issues.

To keep abreast of things for State, Seamans monthly skims more than 300 periodicals, maintains files (some are classified) on denominations and leaders, and writes summaries of church conventions. He frequently ushers ecclesiastical emissaries to interviews with Rusk (Blake is a regular visitor). And when he travels with Rusk, who is a friend from pre-State days, they invariably talk about the current church scene rather than about politics.

Milk Run To Starving Biafra

Estimates that one million persons will starve to death this month in secessionist Biafra have spurred escalation of church involvement in the Nigerian war.

Protestant, Roman Catholic, and other agencies were reportedly flying several planeloads of relief supplies a night into Biafra. The planes land on narrow, dimly lit roads after dodging radar-directed fire from Nigerian gunboats. Two have crashed. (The same planes, under different charter, often haul munitions.)

Less than thirty tons of food is airlifted per night, but daily needs range from 200 to 1,000 tons. Stockpiles rot at Lagos, since no land route is open. Meanwhile, thousands of the 14 million Biafrans are dying each week, many of them children.

Biafrans have refused to accept food through Nigerian channels for fear of poisoning, and Nigerians have refused to permit air corridors or to lift a port blockade. (German Catholics said they would attempt to run the blockade with a small relief ship.)

The World Council of Churches reported that it had sent $3.8 million of food and medicine to both sides, then appealed for another $3 million, one-third to be raised by United States denominations.

The Assemblies of God, with more than 400 churches in Biafra, will channel appeal funds through the World Relief Commission of the National Association of Evangelicals. Other U. S.-based groups with major missionary commitments in both federal and rebel areas, such as the Sudan Interior Mission (900 churches) and the Southern Baptist Convention (1,400 churches), have declined to engage openly in relief work. They cite fear of political reprisals.

Church efforts are coordinated by the International Red Cross and supplemented by government grants. The United States has funneled $1.4 million through Catholic Relief Services and has promised to pick up the ocean freight tab for Church World Service, relief arm of the National Council of Churches. And the West German government gave $500,000 to German Catholics and Lutherans for African aid.

There are prominent churchmen on both sides of the conflict. Some, including a WCC president, Sir Francis Ibiam of Biafra, were delegates to the WCC at Uppsala, where they engaged in a verbal skirmish.

Hostilities between Hausa and Ibo tribal factions erupted in 1966 in a series of military coups and counter coups, followed by a massacre of thousands of Ibos in the north. Nearly two million other Ibos fled to their native eastern region, where independence was declared last May. Christian Ibos charged that northern Muslims aimed to exterminate them.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

SUDAN TO ADMIT MISSIONARIES

Tanzanian Roman Catholic Fathers Barnabas Temu and Mark Riwa this summer will become the first missionaries allowed into southern Sudan since the purge four years ago in which a million Christians reportedly lost their lives. The Sudan admits only missionaries of African origin recommended by the All Africa Church Conference.

When the Sudan government changed in December, 1966, an AACC factfinding mission discovered that church leadership had been liquidated and asked permission to send in aid. The government announced that the hour of peace had come and that missionaries were welcome.

For a year and a half this seemed an empty diplomatic gesture. The regime refused to issue any missionary permits and did not grant amnesty to Sudanese Christian refugees in neighboring nations. But after the June assassination of an opposition leader in the Sudanese Parliament, the Sudan came under heavy attack in the African press. The government hastily granted entry permits to the two Catholics, who will teach at a seminary in Malakal.

What the pair will face is difficult to determine, since foreign journalists find it near-impossible to get into southern Sudan. Two Nairobi reporters who managed the trick this spring found an unpromising region of waterless scrub forest and grasses, and came across a ragged rebel army preparing war against the northern government.

The trouble is longstanding. When the Sudan became independent, the northern Arabs hoped to Islamize the blacks of the south and applied social and economic pressures. Yet the Christian community continued to prosper. The government then announced a secession plot and rushed troops south, and the confrontation began. Now northern Muslims are beginning to realize that to save the Sudanese nation they must ignore differences of culture, mentality, and religion, which are the sources of the present drama.

ODHIAMBO W. OKITE

EVANGELISM, AFRICAN STYLE

Delegates from thirty African nations last month convened the West African Congress on Evangelism in war-stricken Nigeria. The 459 participants met on the University of Ibadan campus, 200 miles from the fighting (see story above). Some other delegates were barred by Nigeria because their nations recognized Biafra, the breakaway rebel government.

The congress, sponsored by the Nigerian Evangelical Fellowship and the New Life for All saturation-evangelism organization, was the first continental outgrowth of the 1966 Berlin World Congress on Evangelism and the Wheaton missions conference.

Speakers generally avoided the war issue and confined themselves to evangelism topics: the biblical definition, methods most appropriate for Africa, and cooperative programs. Speeches were translated into Hausa, English, and French.

Congress Chairman David Olatayo, head of NEF, predicted stepped-up outreach as a result of the meetings.

Coordinator Wilfred A. Bellamy of the Sudan United Mission reported that NLA successes in Nigeria had sparked so many requests from other countries that a traveling NLA workshop team was being organized in response.

Lagos businessman A. T. de B. Wilmot said the evangelism cause could be furthered if boards and denominations surrendered control to the local churches. They could then be linked along “fellowship” lines for common evangelistic objectives. “Most of our rules,” he said, “create distinct denominations, but never a distinct people for God.”

Kassoum Keita, a Mali pastor, urged continued efforts to reach Muslims despite threats of “violence.” (Direct missionary work is prohibited by law in many Muslim areas.)

Much time was devoted to prayer for the souls of Africans. Delegates also prayed for peace in Nigeria; among those kneeling together while their countrymen warred were Hausa Christians from the north and Assembly of God Ibos from the southeast.

DONALD BANKS

EVANGELICALS AND ARCHAEOLOGY

The electrically charged atmosphere of a victorious Israel and a united Jerusalem provided the setting for the most ambitious joint convention ever held by the Evangelical Theological Society and the American Scientific Affiliation, a body of evangelical U. S. scientists.

Before the 1967 Six-Day War, the host American Institute of Holy Land Studies on Mount Zion looked down on Jordanian gun emplacements (courtesy of the Soviet Union) and a military no-man’s-land. G. Douglas Young, director of the ten-year-old, degree-granting graduate school, organized a superlative program focusing on current archaeological work.

Even those whose reading had been limited to such popular treatments as Werner Keller’s The Bible as History saw the amazing degree to which archaeology of the past fifty years has confirmed the precise historicity of the Bible.

One field trip was to the dig where Mosche Kochavi has located a gigantic Canaanite Bronze Age city, comparable in size to Megiddo, that is almost certainly the biblical Debir (Joshua 10). W. F. Albright identified the site ten miles to the east; he could not accept the biblical location in high country, doubting Canaanite remains could be found there. Kochavi, taking the Bible more seriously, found them. Kochavi’s possible clincher is the “upper” and “nether” springs at Debir (Joshua 15; Judges 1)—a rare phenomenon in such arid country, yet present at Kochavi’s site.

Eminent Israeli archaeologist Johanan Aharoni, who supports Kochavi’s claim, discussed Ai, presently thought to have been at a site that apparently does not correspond in time to the Old Testament city. “We don’t seem to have located biblical Ai yet, but I am sure that it is somewhere,” he said, calling for “fresh data” on the subject. Institute researcher Thomas Drobena cautioned that where archaeology and the Bible seem to be in tension, the issue is almost always dating, the most shaky area in current archaeology and the one at which scientistic a priori and circular reasoning often replace solid empirical analysis.

In New Testament studies, a case of speculation-gone-wild was provided by Hebrew University’s David Flusser. Following the lead of a few professionals (Allegro) and numerous amateurs (Charles Francis Potter, Bishop Pike), Flusser saw definite Essene sources for certain phrases and ethical concepts in the New Testament. Hypothesis yielded to fact as ETS and ASA members examined such firm sites of Jesus’ activity as the Antonia Fortress, where he was judged (not scientifically investigated until 1930).

Needs of the present were brought home dramatically when an Israeli government lecturer alleged that Jewish references in the Fourth Gospel were the basis of Christian anti-Semitism; when contacts with local clergy showed the degree to which universalistic theologies have reduced stress on missions to the Jews; and when knowledge of state interference with evangelism dampened the positive evaluation participants had of the young State of Israel, whose citizens, ironically, have undergone much unjust religious persecution themselves.

And always haunting the picture eschatologically was the sealed Golden Gate of the Old City, which, tradition says, is destined to be reopened when the Temple is restored and Messiah comes. JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

CHRISTIANS IN A NUTSHELL

Pre-publicity in Cincinnati newspapers for last month’s North American Christian Convention told the story in a nutshell: “Your Kind of People … Intelligent, Conservative, Progressive, Patriotic. 15,000 are coming to Cincinnati this week.”

At the city’s cavernous new Convention Hall (with ashtrays removed and beer taps dry), the visitors heard inspirational preaching, sang militant gospel hymns, and scurried around to workshops on everything from teaching retarded children to the work of elders and deacons.

The basic conservative position of the convention was expressed by President W. F. Lown of Manhattan (Kansas) Bible College, who blamed liberal theology for the restructure that is expected to win approval at this fall’s convention of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ).

“It is assumed that nothing we could say in this session would in any way stay the onward sweep of restructure,” Lown admitted. “There is little reason to doubt that the urgent emphasis upon restructure is to put ecumenically minded Disciples in a political position which will enable them to officially negotiate with the ‘emerging ecumenical structure’ ”—a reference to the Consultation on Church Union.

Restructure would modify the traditional autonomy of local congregations treasured by conservative Disciples in the NACC group. Although the NACC is drawn mainly from this denomination, increasing participation is coming from the Churches of Christ, who share the common spiritual heritage dating from Alexander and Thomas Campbell.

A Churches of Christ minister, Dr. William Banowsky, won hands down as the most popular speaker at the convention. The young and handsome new vice-president of Pepperdine College in Los Angeles told college youth about the two days he spent with Hugh Hefner, ruler of the Playboy empire, in preparation for a public debate with the magazine’s religion editor.

Banowsky accused Hefner of being a non-Playboy who is committed to the success of his magazine and to making money. “He doesn’t practice what he preaches,” Banowsky said. “He would have neither the time nor the energy to edit the magazine if he did.”

Banowsky says the hedonistic Playboy philosophy is without social conscience and debases sex. He advised his listeners to stop buying the magazine and lining Hefner’s pockets.

“I haven’t bought a copy since the debate two years ago,” he said, adding: “They send it to me free.”

Dr. Sam M. Hamilton of Fort Hays Kansas State College struck a little closer home with a learned, scorching treatise on “entrenched clericalism,” charging that it threatens the simplicity of churches that boast they are patterned after New Testament principles:

“I read and reread the Book of Acts and the Epistles, and I seek in vain the notion that evangelization is the exclusive responsibility of a class of officials, whether they be apostles, prophets, or evangelists. I look in vain for the notion that it is the sole duty of some ‘to pay and others to pray.’

“I look in vain for a New Testament church scrounging all over the ‘brotherhood’ trying to find a ‘preacher’ (call him preacher, minister, or resident evangelist—I care not what the current euphemism is) so they can have some ‘preaching.’ I search in vain for young ‘Timothies,’ with not-so-young ‘Timothies’ jockeying for the power and prestige of the more important pulpits (it’s called, euphemistically, ‘seeking larger fields of service’).”

This year’s convention president, Burris Butler of Standard Publishing Company, was succeeded by Douglas A. Dickey, a campus minister at Purdue University.

JAMES L. ADAMS

ACTS 29

A stormy chapter has been added to the history of the burgeoning Campus Crusade for Christ organization (see April 12 issue, p. 40).

Three of its top five campus staffers have quit and formed a “non-institutional church” movement dubbed “Acts 29” (the Bible book ends with chapter 28). They are: Jon Braun, 35, formerly Crusade’s national coordinator, and former regional directors Pete Gillquist and Robert Andrews, both 30.

They were joined by 150 others (an estimated one-third were Crusade people) last month in La Jolla, California, for a week-long strategy session in which eleven “ruling elders” were appointed, among them Braun and his two colleagues. Another leader, Louis Meyer, 51, who left the Roman Catholic priesthood after a recent Luther-type conversion, vowed to take Acts 29 to “underground” Catholic circles.

Braun describes Acts 29 as “a fellowship of Christian activists calling for a reformation in the contemporary church and advocating the emergence of a first-century-type church both within and without the organized ecclesiastical establishment.” One hoped-for exclusion in first-century practice is glossolalia, but, says Braun, Crusade’s ban on the experience will not be binding.

Small Acts 29 groups will reach the “secular-oriented” person who dislikes traditional structures, explains Braun, and thus will complement—not compete with—the organized church. These groups will meet in dormitories, homes, job sites, even restaurants. Acts 29 “churches” are already established on some two dozen college campuses, Braun says; their “membership” is composed mostly of former Crusade-related youths.

Braun and the others have been banned from Crusade appearances for one year by Crusade chief Bill Bright, who is said to fear alienation—and financial shutoffs—by mainstream churches should Acts 29 be mistakenly associated with Crusade. Bright resisted for more than a year Braun’s suggestions that Crusade form such a movement for follow-up of its converts.

Acts 29 will forgo incorporation and a “clergy class”; local “elders” will coordinate “free” services of “spontaneous” testimonies, discussion, and prayer. Adherents will administer communion and baptize one another. When a prominent evangelical pastor questioned the “authority” of such practices, Braun charged him with having a “closed-shop mentality” and said he would explain his position in his forthcoming book, Mandate for an Open Shop.

Acts 29’s major emphasis, Braun said, is on “real-life righteousness” that is devoid of legalism and based on the love of Christ.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

CHURCH PANORAMA

The Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) assembly urged its 2,261 churches to end any racial segregation immediately, its national agencies to seek Negro employees, and its state assemblies to merge remaining black and white organizations.

The 65,000-member Evangelical Covenant Church called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference “the most effective available non-violent means” to racial justice; said dissent on Viet Nam should be “lawful and orderly”; and created a world-relief commission.

Minneapolis pastor Robert Featherstone was elected moderator of the Baptist General Conference, which this year reported income over $2 million for the first time; membership is 94,000.

The 170,000-member General Association of Regular Baptists attacked civil disobedience, the new morality, and “ecumenical evangelism.”

The United Missionary Church and the Missionary Church Association merged into the Missionary Church, which has 21,000 members, 354 churches, 194 foreign missionaries, and four colleges.

Northwest leaders of the former Evangelical United Brethren admit defeat in trying to keep congregations going at two churches that were among fifty-four that withdrew from the United Methodist Church.

The Rev. Randle Dew, 44, of Louisville, will head the as-yet-unnamed domestic “peace corps” of the United Methodist Church.

An inter-racial group of forty Churches of Christ ministers met in Atlanta and criticized “the sin of racial prejudice” among their constituency of 2.5 million. They offered two pages of specific cases.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe issued its first public financial report, showing annual receipts of $252,676.

PERSONALIA

Sister Ann Patrick Ware, religion teacher at the University of North Dakota, was named a theological consultant to Church Women United—first Roman Catholic nun on the permanent staff of the National Council of Churches.

David O. Moberg, 46, of Minnesota’s Bethel College (Baptist General Conference) is new sociology-anthropology chairman at Marquette University, a Jesuit school.

David M. Howard, assistant general director of Latin America Mission, has been loaned for three years to Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship as its missionary director, replacing Eric S. Fife, who is on leave because of poor health.

Executive Secretary Philip S. Hitchcock of United Presbyterian Men, a former Oregon state senator, represented his denomination before the Republican Platform Committee this month.

The U. S. Tax Court ruled that Robert Lawrence, unordained full-time education minister at a Baptist church in Springfield, Tennessee, must list his housing allowance as taxable income.

Charles W. McKinney has been promoted to editor-in-chief of Moody Press, replacing Robert K. DeVries, new director of publications at Zondervan Publishing House.

Dennis F. Kinlaw, 46, Old Testament professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, Kentucky, is new president of neighboring Asbury College, site of turmoil over December firing of its president.

H. Conwell Snoke, executive secretary of the $21 million Methodist Investment Fund, was elected president of Goodwill Industries, which aids handicapped workers.

Former Southern Baptist staffer Bill Dyal won the highest award given to an American by Colombia, where he is Peace Corps director.

French Father Damien Boulogne held a press conference ten weeks after he received a heart transplant and enthusiastically upheld the morality of such operations.

The Rev. S. Loren Bowman, 55, head of Christian education for the Church of the Brethren, was named the denomination’s new general secretary.

The Rev. Harry Loving, 39, of Emmanuel Baptist Church, San Bernardino, California, pleaded guilty to grand theft of $ 150,000 in loans he floated by using church property as collateral.

Methodist Turnover

The Rev. Roy Nichols, 50, pastor of a 2,400-member Harlem church and a new member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, is the first Negro ever elected a U.S. Methodist bishop by an integrated conference.

As eleven of fifty-four United Methodist bishops reached retirement, this summer’s conferences also elected as bishops: Dean William Cannon of Candler School of Theology, Professor Alsie H. Carleton of Perkins School of Theology, President David Mertz of Lycoming College, and the Rev. James Armstrong of Broadway Methodist Church, Indianapolis.

Retiring bishops are Fred Pierce Corson, Paul Garber, Edwin Garrison, Walter Gum, H. R. Heininger, Fred Holloway, Paul Martin, Otto Nall, Angie Smith, Richard Raines, and Donald Tippett.

MISCELLANY

Governor Raymond Shafer signed a bill making Pennsylvania the first state to give public funds directly to private schools. A pilot $4.3 million program that began July 1 faces immediate court challenges. Editor Frank N. Hawkins of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette quit the state Board of Education in protest.

A Christian Churches minister in Lexington, Kentucky, said a $4,000 denominational grant to his urban-training center for seminarians should have gone to ghetto groups instead. But director John Compton said much of the $373,500 in national grants went to white service agencies because “someone has to pick up the pieces” in case of city turmoil.

Of 127 draft-counseling centers listed in a new directory by the New York State Civil Liberties Union, nearly half have a church or synagogue connection.

Military police arrested nine U. S. servicemen in Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Marin City, California, two days after they took sanctuary from military service and chained themselves to clergymen.

Fourteen Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish bodies have formed Metropolitan New York Project Equality, committing their purchasing power to equal-opportunity employers.

Irving West, 20, of Westminster, Maryland, is appealing his thirty-day sentence under an old state law against swearing in public.

An aged man and his granddaughter were sentenced to two years in jail and fines of $166 each for proselytizing for the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Greece.

Holiday Inns of America will soon feature a series of thirty-minute Sunday worship services, using local ministers, who will be treated to dinner. HIA president is Wallace Johnson, a Southern Baptist of Memphis.

At a Jerusalem convention, the body representing the world’s 1.5 million Reform Jews demanded equal treatment under Israel’s laws, which recognize the Orthodox branch alone.

A crusade led by Ford Philpot in Kinshasa, capital of the Congo, drew estimated attendance of 200,000, with 25,000 public commitments to Christ. The meetings capped a two-year evangelism program of the Congo Protestant Council.

DEATHS

FRANCIS CARDINAL BRENNAN, 74, Pennsylvanian and prefect of the Vatican’s sacramental discipline congregation, thus the first American to head a Curia office; in Philadelphia, of cancer.

LEO SOWERBY, 73, distinguished U. S. composer of church music; longtime choirmaster of the Chicago Episcopal cathedral, then first director of the College of Church Musicians, Washington, D. C.; of a stroke at Camp Wa-Li-Ro, Ohio.

ROBERT W. MANCE, JR., 65, Washington, D. C., physician and treasurer of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; of a heart attack while attending the World Council of Churches assembly in Sweden.

CHESTER L. QUARLES, 60, administrator of the Mississippi Baptist Convention; of a heart attack in Cuzco, Peru, en route to a Brazil planning session for the Crusade of the Americas.

MRS. WALLACE PADDON, 61, former president of the Women’s Union Missionary Society, first board to send single women as missionaries; of cancer, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

RICHARD E. WEINGART, 32, new dean of the Hartford Seminary Foundation; in an auto crash in Worthington, Massachusetts.

JACK HOLCOMB, 46, gospel tenor; in Dallas, of a heart attack.

MRS. RALPH AINSWORTH, 26, active Baptist and fifth-grade teacher in Meridian, Mississippi, who led a double life; in a gun battle with police as she and fellow Ku Klux Klan member Thomas Tarrants III allegedly tried to dynamite a Jewish businessman’s home.

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