Summer Is Convention Time

Evangelical Free Church: Smiles In Green Lake

Seven hundred Evangelical Free Church of America delegates gathered in Green Lake, Wisconsin, and settled nearly all their business with unanimous votes, smiling their way through revision of church bylaws and a stronger, more expensive ministerial pension plan. The only discord was in the heat of what observers predicted would be the conference hot spot—discussion of the Trinity schools’ financial crisis.

The conference theme—stewardship—was a result of a drop in giving to denominational projects during the past year. This was in the face of an increase in per-capita giving; the Evangelical Free Church is already among the top five of U. S. church bodies. But the denomination’s nearly autonomous local congregations gave only 30.7 per cent of their overseas missions contributions to Free Church programs, and decreased their school giving for the second straight year. The result at Green Lake: many sermons on stewardship, pastoral training in money management, and a strong push for bequests.

Some smiles disappeared when Trinity College and Divinity School president Harry L. Evans complained of a “huge deficit” from decreased giving, and accused delegates of lack of appreciation for the schools. Most delegates accepted the chastisement and voted for a half-million-dollar loan program and reconsideration of a 1967 decision denying Trinity permission to accept government aid. With a little grumbling they raised the annual per-capita giving goal (an ideal only partially met) from ten to fifteen dollars.

But a final motion to authorize new building raised a sharp cry from the Reverend Paul Anderson of Connecticut, who accused Evans and the entire Free Church of fiscal “naïveté” and called for a complete investigation. Stunned delegates listened as Evans replied: “Our records are clean … and we are proud,” then rose in support of “Harry,” unanimously approving his request to authorize new construction.

In other actions the Evangelical Free Church: elected Dr. Arnold T. Olson to his seventh three-year term as president of the denomination and Dr. Mel Larson to his fifth term as editor of the Evangelical Beacon; requested President Nixon to “reconsider … the appointment of a personal representative to the Vatican,” which undermines “separation of Church and State”; approved a five-year program of spiritual advance (a “new spirit of ’76”), extending Evangelical Free missionary outreach; and voted to participate in the Key 73 nationwide evangelism effort.

ROBERT E. FRIEDRICH, JR.

Canadian Baptists: A Confident Assembly

Some 500 delegates to the triennial assembly of the Baptist Federation of Canada showed marked enthusiasm about incorporating young people into the outreach programs of their churches. Large numbers of young people attended the meeting, held July 2–5 at historic Marlborough Hotel in Winnipeg.

Twenty high-school and college-age youths arrived a week early, camped in a local church, and visited the most attractive as well as the seamiest sections of Winnipeg. They entered rescue missions, jails, and the Corn Exchange and faced the coolness of wealthy suburbanites and the anger of skid-row dwellers. A rowdy along the way pulled a switchblade knife on one group. Testimonies during the assembly revealed the spiritual impact these experiences made on the youth.

Ten young people were sent to Bolivia for a six-week tour of missionary duty. The federation paid most of the expenses, but the volunteers had to raise $300 each.

Delegates warmly welcomed a recommendation not only to use Christian young people in evangelistic efforts but also to involve them more in the decision-making of the churches, associations, conventions, and the federation itself. One youth rose to thank the assembly for the confidence it placed in modern youth. The generation gap closed at least temporarily with a thunder of applause.

Confidence was the general theme of the assembly, expressed in the phrase “A Sure Thing in the Market Place.” The federation was formed in 1947 by the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec, the Atlantic Baptist Convention, and the Baptist Union of Western Canada. This year the federation added a fourth group: the Union of French Baptist Churches of Canada. Assembly delegates unanimously agreed to set up a task force to study the possibility of a single national convention in place of the federation’s four conventions, which together represent a constituency of about 136,000.

The federation’s missions committee announced that $40,000 is being allocated for establishment of a multifunction Christian center in North Preston, Nova Scotia; it will serve the largest rural black community in the province.

The assembly elected Dr. Thomas B. McDormand president of the federation for a three-year term. McDormand, who has served as general secretary of the Atlantic convention and is a former president of Eastern Baptist Seminary in Philadelphia, succeeds Joseph J. Arthurs, a Manitoba farmer.

W. WEESE

Free Will Baptists: Fending Off The Jones-Ites

Bob Jones and Bob Jones III may say the leaders of the National Association of Free Will Baptists are heretics, but last month the denomination defended its officials against such attacks.

Delegates to the thirty-fourth annual convention of Free Will Baptists, meeting in Fresno, California, approved a resolution expressing “confidence in the doctrinal stand of our denomination and its leaders.…” Leaders singled out in the report were the heads of the church’s national departments and World Vision International president Dr. Stanley Mooneyham, a former moderator of the denomination. Attackers mentioned by name included Bobby Smith, Billy Baugham, and the two Joneses. Bob Jones and Bob Jones III are president and vice-president, respectively, of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina; the other men are graduate students there.

A spokesman said the students, with “approval and support” of the Joneses, charged the denomination and some of its leaders with liberalism and leaning toward “heretical doctrine of the so-called neo-evangelical mood.” The statement reaffirms the church’s “commitment to the fundamentals of the faith” and opposes “all philosophies which soften resistance to false doctrine, including neo-evangelicalism.”

A highlight of the four-day convention was a missionary service at which about sixty persons made decisions for Christ; several indicated a desire to be missionaries. About 3,000 from forty-five states and five overseas countries attended the conference. Dr. Robert Picirilli of Nashville was reelected moderator of the 250,000-member denomination.

Unity International: United They Stand

No black caucus petitioned for special funds. No churchmen pressured for liberalization of doctrines. No feminists urged greater women’s rights. And no youth lobbied in behalf of peace in Viet Nam.

What was this—the convening of a small, white, Southern, fundamentalist sect? No; it was the Unity International Convention—70, held in Kansas City’s Municipal Auditorium, and attended by 7,000 representatives of the Unity movement from forty states and ten foreign countries.

Started seventy-nine years ago by a contemplative couple after they were disenchanted by denominational rivalries, Unity carries its major influence within existing churches. But it has also given rise to a number of centers or congregations. Unity generally affirms standard Christian concepts and considers the Bible the Word of God, but adds its own special disciplines and metaphysical dimensions.

James D. Freeman, the movement’s spiritual research director and writer-poet, explains that the name reflects the basic conviction that the Creator and creation are in unity. “It’s a kind of Christian mysticism, but with everyday, practical applications.”

Unlike other church groups, including the Unitarians (officially the Unitarian Universalist Association), with whom they are sometimes confused, members of Unity have had few complaints from their black brethren. Mrs. Rosemary Fillmore Rhea, granddaughter of the founders of the movement, pointed out that Negroes have always been welcomed: “Unity is a fact in all our relations … regardless of race, color, religion, politics, or possessions.” The convention co-host, Charles E. King, was black, many blacks were visible in all meetings, and another Negro, Nat Simmons, conducted a special session on black authors.

Ken Tiffany, comptroller for the Association of Unity Churches, noted that there are fifteen predominantly black churches in Chicago, Los Angeles, and some Tennessee cities, and twenty-five Negro ordained ministers. He added that at least 70 per cent of the 233 Unity churches and centers are racially integrated. Yet Unity has always appealed to white, upper-income groups.

Women’s rights have never been neglected in the movement. The founders, Myrtle Fillmore and her husband, Charles, fostered the organization after claiming they had been healed of tuberculosis and crippling arthritis. Several major addresses during the 1970 convention were by women. Included was a speech by Mrs. Johnnie Coleman, the outgoing president of the entire Association of Unity Churches. The president-elect is a man—the Reverend Phillip M. Pierson of Sacramento, California.

Originally nearly all Unity ministers were women, but they now make up about only 40 per cent of Unity clergy. The association lists 400 ordained ministers and an additional 300 licensed teachers and counselors.

Unity work is centered in four main areas: the Association of Unity Churches (which reports 100,000 members and is especially strong in Florida and southern California); “The Word,” a short daily broadcast on 500 Mutual network stations; Silent Unity, a telephone counseling ministry answering more than 10,000 distress calls each week; and Unity School of Christianity, located on an estate in Lee’s Summit, a suburb of Kansas City. The Unity School trains teachers and ministers and publishes more than four million pieces of literature each year.

JAMES S. TINNEY

Baptist General Conference Calls For Media Boycott

A boycott of mass-media presentations that are “antagonistic toward a Christian view” was called for by 875 voting delegates of the Baptist General Conference, meeting recently in San Diego.

Stating that “the philosophies being advocated by these mass media are increasingly secular,” the resolution called on the 105,000 members “to state their alarm and to reflect disenchantment” through non-patronage. It also noted what it called the aggressiveness of the media in its attempts to shape culture.

The Baptist General Conference continues to show healthy growth; twenty-four new churches were added this year for a total of 693. The highest income ever received was recorded in 1969–70 at $2,219,000. A budget of $2,320,000 was set for 1970–71, of which 45 per cent will go to foreign missions.

A possible merger of the BGC (of largely Scandinavian heritage) with the 74,000-member North American Baptist General Conference (of German ethnic origin) was discussed, but immediate action beyond “cooperation … in an increasing number of mutually agreeable areas with the purpose of testing the feasibility of the merger” was delayed.

More than 700 young people in witness teams and music groups scattered through San Diego coffee shops, service centers, and beaches, recording 200 spiritual decisions.

Dr. Carl Lundquist, president of Bethel College and Seminary, in his traditional report urged others to recognize the “eschatological dimension to youth’s thinking.… The world does not have much time.” He said their concern for “action now” is a “legitimate voice of dissent in our land and on our campuses that we must hear.”

Fundamental Baptist Fellowship Association

Calls for increasing efforts toward reconciliation between black and white Christians and opposition to violence were among resolutions of the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship Association at its annual convention in Cleveland, Ohio, last month.

Organized in 1962 with a strong evangelistic orientation and foreign missions emphasis, the group unites Baptist churches whose predominant ministry is within black communities of eight cities in the Midwest and South.

Getting Friends Together

A four-way merger to form a new nationwide denomination of conservative Friends has been proposed. Members would be the Oregon, Kansas, Ohio, and Rocky Mountain yearly meetings of Friends. Together they have 213 affiliated churches and about 22,000 members.

The yearly meetings have been loosely federated in the Evangelical Friends Alliance since 1958. The merger was proposed at a meeting of spokesmen from eighteen states and three foreign countries, held in Wichita, Kansas; a committee was named to draw up merger plans.

WATFORD REED

Orthodox And Reformed Presbyterians Delay Union

Merger plans hit summer doldrums for the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod (RPCES) and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC). This year’s church meetings failed to approve any preliminary plan of union as expected one year ago.

In fact, the possible merger plan was never submitted by the joint negotiating committee, largely because of hesitancy on the OPC side.

The OPC General Assembly in mid-July in Portland, Oregon, authorized the two-year negotiations to continue but took no stronger action toward union. Citing this inaction as restricting their side, the RPCES turned from church growth through merger to growth through evangelism at its meeting two weeks later in Seattle, Washington.

However, the Reformed group was ready to approve a preliminary plan for union, according to Joel Belz, editor of the RPCES magazine Mandate.

The two problem areas of negotiation are “Christian liberty” and Reformed doctrine. The first involves application of the Christian ethic to the Christian life. While the churches’ standards are almost identical, the RPCES is considered stricter in matters like drinking and smoking. The OPC is also wary of the RPCES’s commitment to the Reformed doctrine, fearing that it leans to Arminian and dispensational theologies.

While a recent limited survey indicates 77 per cent of RPCES ministers expect union within the next ten years, and 65 per cent favor union, neither side appears to be in a hurry.

Said an Orthodox Presbyterian spokesman: “We want to take things slowly and end up with one bigger denomination, not three smaller ones.”

The newly elected Reformed moderator, the Reverend Richard W. Gray of Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, strongly supports union.

A Puppy For Peru

A Labrador Retriever puppy and a red plush photo album aided earthquake victims in Peru last month. They were among items auctioned in Peru, New York, by the Community and Roman Catholic churches for a total of $2,400 in relief funds for the stricken country.

Meanwhile, the small town’s Latin American namesake continued digging out from under crumbled adobe buildings and mud slides. Among those killed in the fifty feet of mud that buried Yungay (see July 31 issue, page 33) were the wife and four children of Juan Villenca, pastor of the local Church of God (Cleveland).

His was one of forty-six Protestant churches that the Peruvian Council of Churches reported destroyed or heavily damaged. Assemblies of God, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Nazarene, and Pilgrim Holiness churches were also quake casualties. A Salvation Army officer estimated losses at $500,000.

Relief for those and other losses continued to come from religious sources, including German, Norwegian, Danish, and Canadian Protestant churches. Lutheran World Relief set aside $250,000. Meanwhile, a hundred Iranian communities were also in need after an earthquake, and relief agencies hurried to hurricane victims in Texas, Cuba, and Florida.

“All of this [relief work] may seem far from preaching the Gospel,” a Lutheran missionary wrote home to Bloomington, Minnesota, “but in works of mercy Christ is preached.” The Reverend Robert Engwall told of an unchurched Peace Corps worker at the Lutheran medical post who “offered to swap two impossible-to-buy bottles of Coke for a New Testament.” He added: “We are sure others, too, have been touched.”

Nigerian Relief Continues

June was to be the cut-off month for relief food distribution in Nigeria’s wartorn areas, but the time was extended as the protein deficiency disease kwashiorkor continued to take its toll. Protestant and Roman Catholic relief teams will continue food distribution through state channels until September, when crops should be ready for harvest.

As undernourished peasants anxiously tend their crops, malnutrition cases are actually increasing in some pockets. In Onitsha the patient load increased nearly 100 per cent. However, the director of the Save the Children Fund in Nigeria, James Bell, said the government is getting food to most places despite bad transportation problems.

Armed robbery is a big concern, as former soldiers roam the countryside seeking food. The government is taking stem measures. In one community 7,000 villagers watched a ten-man firing squad execute a man who stole a pig and stabbed the owner and her daughter to death.

General Yakubu Gowon, the head of state, told reporters he would soon announce the date for return to civilian rule. He denied that ex-Biafran leaders were being detained, pointing out that Dr. Francis Ibiam, former Eastern Nigeria premier and Biafran spokesman during the war, has been permitted to visit his family in Europe. Ibiam, a vice-president of the World Council of Churches and president of the Nigerian Bible Society, says he intends to resume his work as a Presbyterian minister.

W. HAROLD FULLER

Religion As An Elective

A special Protestant-Catholic commission on education is urging the Ontario public-school system to provide elective courses in religion.

Canada has never held a theory of education based on the church-state separation principle, which has prevailed in the United States. Until a few years ago nearly all children in Ontario received either Catholic or Protestant instruction by clergymen who came to school during class hours. But increasing complaints by parents have curtailed this program. Some school boards with strong Jewish and humanistic influences have dropped religious education altogether (see June 5, 1970, issue, page 47).

Two years ago a government committee recommended a program to enable teachers to discuss religious matters as they occur in English, history, and other social-science classes. But the plan hasn’t been carried out.

The latest proposal comes in a brief to the Ontario Minister of Education from the Ecumenical Study Commission on Religious Education.Nine commission members are appointed by the Canadian Council of Churches and seven by the Ontario Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Education.

“Believing that education is essentially concerned with the things that make us human,” the brief declares, “we cannot conceive of eliminating religion from the educational process.”

Under the suggested plan, school boards would decide whether they wanted elective courses in religion. The courses would give full academic credit and would be taught by “certified specialists in religious studies on the regular full-time staff of the school.”

Some church spokesmen promptly registered opposition. One said that “school-board type of religion … is just a watering-down of Christianity until it becomes a pale pink eyewash.”

The brief identifies “the three basic religions of contemporary Canada” as “Christianity, Judaism, and secular humanism.” To counter the objection that religion teachers either would lack personal conviction or would evangelize their students, the brief argues: “We would regard it as both natural and desirable that those equipped to teach religious studies would in all likelihood be committed to one particular religious conviction; a teacher of English or art who has no favourite patron or system is as rare as he is colourless, and there is no reason to demand or expect that a teacher of religion should be any more—or any less—objective than the teacher of any other of the humanities.”

The drafters of the brief went on to say that they hoped “the type of training that he had received in university would have cured him of any propensity to ‘proselytize,’ and school boards would have every right to demand this.”

ROBERT BROW

Ordination: A New Adornment?

Women are an ecumenical problem.

Within the past decade a number of interfaith negotiations have been imperiled by the question of the ordination of women. And the recent decision by the Luthern Church in America to grant ordination to women drew immediate fire from the head of the more conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (see July 17 issue, page 33). Further, a prominent Roman Catholic theologian present at the LCA convention to speak on Lutheran-Catholic dialogue wished aloud that the ordination decision had been delayed until greater progress has been achieved in unity talks between the two faiths.

Last month, however, an official national dialogue commission of the Catholic Church and the Reformed-Presbyterian churches concluded that “ordination of women must come to be a part of the church’s life.”

“There is a growing consensus … that there is no insurmountable biblical or dogmatic obstacle to the ordination of women,” the theological section of the consultation concluded in a statement published in the summer issue of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. The report was based on a three-day spring meeting in Morristown, New Jersey, the first of a series on the role of women.

The Catholic Church doesn’t admit women to either the priesthood or the diaconate, but most member churches in the Reformed-Presbyterian group ordain them to the full ministry. Even so, added the report, all the churches have relegated women to “a secondary and often demeaning ministry.… We have found the evidences of discrimination based upon sex to be so substantial that we are obliged, being led, as we believe, by the Holy Spirit, to confess our guilt as members of our respective churches and as members of our social order.”

Religion In Transit

The Evangelical Church of North America, organized in Portland, Oregon, two years ago, reports a 6 per cent growth in Oregon and Washington to 6,109 members and fifty-six member congregations in the past year. Overall the denomination has about 10,000 members in ten states.

Sola Scriptura, a new theological journal released last month to “emulate and stimulate the spirit of the Lutheran Confessors,” says it is an “international voice of authentic Lutheranism.”

Establishment of a federation of conservative Lutheran bodies was proposed by Lutherans Alert-National at its annual convention in Moorhead, Minnesota, last month.

Members of the bishops’ committee on farm labor helped negotiate the recent contract between Cesar Chavez and California table-grape growers. The Catholic background of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee is underscored by a picture of the Virgin Mary and a statue of Christ on the cross that adorn the walls of the union headquarters in Delano.

A.D. 1970 didn’t last through its namesake year. The successor to the 105-year-old Catholic weekly, Ave Maria, folded last month after eighteen issues. Declining circulation and revenue were cited for suspending publication.

Urban Ministries, the first predominantly black-owned publishing company to produce interdenominational Sunday-school literature and focus on black urban-church needs, has been formed in Chicago.

A New York state law which set aside $28 million in public funds to recompense private and church-related schools has been challenged in a New York federal court. The Public Education and Religious Liberty Committee and thirteen individual plaintiffs contend the law is unconstitutional.

The Reverend Travis Case of Tabernacle Baptist Academy in West Memphis, Arkansas, said the church-owned school, to be opened next month, will be segregated, despite an Internal Revenue Service order removing tax-exempt status from segregated private schools.

The Division of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has been established in the National Institute of Mental Health. The starting budget will be $3,175,000.

A $20,000 grant to Christ Church (Presbyterian) of Burlington, Vermont, to support its model program in juvenile delinquency prevention and control was the only church-sponsored project to win a federal grant this year under the Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Control Act of 1968.

Personalia

John M. Berentschot, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in San Mateo, California, was elected president of the Conservative Baptist Association of America … George M. Orvick, pastor of Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Madison, Wisconsin, has been named president of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod … Dr. Marshall Leggett, pastor of Broadway Christian Church in Lexington, Kentucky, was elected president of the North American Christian Convention.

Federico Alessandrini, lay deputy director of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican City daily, has succeeded Fausto Villainc as head of the Vatican press office. Villainc will become auxiliary bishop of Siena.

Grandchildren watched and friends choked with emotion as the 91-year-old bridegroom and the 82-year-old bride plighted their troth. Lyle E. Talbott (his fifth wedding) and Ann Shannon (her third) were married in a Portland, Oregon, church where they met through a social program for the elderly sponsored by Lincoln Street Methodist and nine other city congregations.

Negro evangelist William E. Pannell has been elected to the Fuller Seminary board of trustees.

The Reverend B. J. Stiles, former editor of controversy-crusted motive magazine, has been named chairman of the board of Christianity and Crisis, a fortnightly journal published in New York.

Deaths

MARK FAKKEMA, 80, first executive director of the National Association of Christian Schools; in Chicago.

J. ROSWELL FLOWER, 82, pioneer figure in the Assemblies of God and last survivor of officials elected at the denomination’s organizational meeting in 1914; in Springfield, Missouri.

VINCENT C. HOGREN, 62, vice-president and director of Christian Life Publishing, onetime radio announcer for Billy Graham and “Songs in the Night,” former president of Scripture Press; in Frankfurt, Germany, while vacationing, of a heart attack.

DANIEL T. NILES, 62, ecumenical leader, a World Council of Churches president, Ceylonese Methodist churchman; in Vellore, India.

THEODORE O. WEDEL, 78, former canon of Washington Cathedral and warden emeritus of its College of Preachers, husband of Cynthia, who is president of the National Council of Churches; in Alexandria, Virginia.

World Scene

While membership in Lutheran churches in the United States and Canada showed an increase during the past year, a slight drop (33,138) was recorded on a worldwide basis; the heaviest losses were among the churches of East Germany. The Lutheran Church in Indonesia showed the biggest gain.

The Confessional Lutheran Church of Finland has broken pulpit and altar fellowship ties with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod because the latter has accepted “new, loose ecumenical principles into its doctrine.”

After prolonged pressure from the Nationalist Chinese government, the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan voted to withdraw last month from the World Council of Churches until it “stops calling for the entry of Communist China into the United Nations.”

Pope Paul’s scheduled visits include the Philippines and Australia this November, and Yugoslavia in September, 1971. The latter would be the first visit by any Roman Catholic pontiff to a Communist country.

A British peer, Lord Grantchester, plans this year to get the Church of England’s status changed to a “private” denomination, not one sponsored by the government—nor headed by Queen Elizabeth.

The Reverend Robert Yeomans of Shrewsbury, England, was trying to get some enthusiasm from a choir rehearsal of the hymn “I Cannot Help but Wonder Where I’m Bound.” A grating in the floor gave way and Yeomans sank through the hole up to his chest.

The next Pan-Orthodox Conference will be held after two years, according to Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras—not sooner as Greek Orthodox Archbishop Iakovos and other American bishops had requested (see July 31 issue, page 30). Furthermore, consideration of the changing situation in America probably won’t be on the agenda.

Missionary Aviation Fellowship is building a prototype of an inexpensive, easily operated hovercraft for use by missionaries. One area where the service is needed is Africa’s Lake Chad.

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