News Briefs from August 1, 1969

DEATHS

BEVERLY DANDRIDGE TUCKER, 87, former Episcopal bishop of the diocese of Ohio; in Cleveland, Ohio.

F. ERNEST JOHNSON, 84, former research director for the National Council of Churches and professor of education at Columbia University; in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

JESSE P. SEWELL, 93, president emeritus of Abilene Christian College; in Abilene, Texas.

MASAHISA SUZUKU, 58, moderator of the United Church of Christ in Japan (Kyodan) and son of a Shinto priest; in Tokyo.

Panorama

Canon J. A. I. Falope, general secretary of the Christian Council of Nigeria, was reported to have voiced a strong protest against the World Council of Churches’ “political involvement” in the Nigerian-Biafran conflict. Falope described as “provocative and un-Christian” WCC acceptance of a new Christian Council in Biafra.

By refusing to take a clear stand on the Black Manifesto, the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) has lost its only Jewish member. Discussing withdrawal of the American Jewish Committee, Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum (former IFCO president) said he feared the manifesto would hinder the black cause in America.

Some 100,000 of America’s 325,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses crowded into New York’s Yankee Stadium during a week-long mid-July convention. Along with thousands of witnesses meeting simultaneously in other cities, they spent the week studying the sect’s tenets and learning how to share their beliefs with others.

President Nixon ended months of speculation by announcing that he would not send an ambassador to the Vatican. Instead he will have administration officials meet with the Pope “periodically.”

The General Association of Regular Baptists voted unanimously to withdraw from the International Council of Christian Churches. The GARB, one of the council’s largest constituents, cited “irresolvable problems” regarding the ICCC and “slanderous statements” attributed to ICCC President Carl McIntire against GARB leaders.

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary announced that it is buying the 120-acre campus of a Roman Catholic school in Hamilton, Massachusetts. It hopes to gain possession by the fall of 1970. Until then, the seminary will be located on the Gordon College campus in Wenham, Massachusetts.

Three St. Louis blacks met unexpected resistance recently when they demonstrated during a noon mass. As they walked down the aisle of St. Louis Cathedral chanting “racists, racists,” a white man jumped up and attacked them. Others followed him into the aisle, knocking down the blacks (who were later arrested). It was the seventh week of racial protests at the cathedral.

World Parish

Representatives from nearly all of Russia’s religious groups met north of Moscow recently to discuss international peace—in their first interchurch conference since 1952. The assembly, called with the full blessing of the government, was seen by some as a Russian answer to the Prague Peace Conference, which had opposed the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia last year. The Russian delegates called for a world peace conference to be held in Kyoto, Japan, next year.

Christianity is growing in Poland. According to reports from behind the Iron Curtain, 230,000 Bibles or Scripture portions were sold in Warsaw last year. A widely hailed Barry Moore evangelistic crusade in Toronto drew a crowd of 15,000 to a closing service in the Maple Leaf Gardens, despite a drenching rain. Some 450 persons made decisions for Christ during the campaign.

Japan’s Buddhists, spurred by Christian missionaries’ techniques, are actively organizing Sunday schools. Their goal: 14,000 new ones in five years.

Wycliffe Bible Translators will soon begin sending missionary-linguist teams to study tribal languages in the Republic of Panama. It will be the organization’s twenty-second country.

Personalia

A Lutheran layman with a seminary education, Charles Lutz, will succeed Philip A. Johnson as associate executive secretary of the U. S. Conference for the World Council of Churches. Lutz has headed an urban training center in Minnesota. Johnson will be executive secretary of the newly formed World Association of Christian Communication.

Tilford E. Dudley, a Washington-based executive of the United Church of Christ, was fined $200 on a charge of disturbing the peace after an airline stewardess testified against him in a Boston courtroom. The stewardess said Dudley inquired persistently about flying to Cuba. Dudley said he would appeal the conviction.

California’s self-appointed ordainer of more than 17,000 ministers (“I do it for the price of a postage stamp”), Kirby J. Hensley, has been sentenced to a year in jail for peddling honorary doctor of divinity degrees. His charge: violation of the state’s education code.

The Rev. Paul H. A. Noren, pastor of America’s largest Lutheran church, Mount Olivet in Minneapolis, spoke Sunday, July 13, at the ninth White House religious service.

A U. S. appeals court has reversed the conviction of Yale Protestant chaplain William Sloane Coffin, who aided numerous youths in turning in their draft cards. Because of what the court called a “prejudicial error,” he will face trial again. Dr. Benjamin Spock, well known baby doctor convicted along with Coffin, was freed outright by the appeals court.

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen of Rochester, New York, has been named by Pope Paul to the Vatican Secretariat for Non-Believers. The agency handles relations with Communists and atheists.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.