‘Year of the Woman’ for Baptists, Presbyterians

NEWS

Seminars on the charismatic movement. Let’s get out of Viet Nam as soon as possible. Ralph Carmichael musicals. A vote for womanhood. Jesus-movement kids and street kids in need of Jesus. Black viewpoints. Feed the poor. Show-and-tell attention for Indian Americans. Down with the system. Up with evangelism.

There were soothing sounds for just about everybody at last month’s annual meeting of the American Baptist Convention in Minneapolis. Liberal and evangelical delegates alike went home remarking about the convention’s spirit, which was almost as sweet as the gallons of communion grape juice donated by a Baptist grape-grower in California.

It was music to the feminine ear when unopposed nominee Mrs. Marcus Rohlfs was introduced as the new president of the 1.4-million-member ABC. A widowed social-action advocate from Seattle who has been ABC home-mission president for the past three years, Mrs. Rohlfs became the fifth woman president in ABC history. (Until this year the ABC was the only major denomination to have elected a woman to its top post.)

Clinking sounds resonated from the treasurer’s report. ABC income is rising ($11.9 million in 1970), though it is still below the mid-sixties level. Delegates adopted a belt-tightening budget of $12.5 million for 1972—$1.1 million less than 1970’s.

They also received a study committee’s plan to reorganize the ABC. The proposal calls for biennial conventions, the formation of a 170-member policy-making board to replace the present smaller General Council, and a change of name to “American Baptist Churches.” The restructure is designed to involve more churches at local and regional levels. Studies show that fewer than half of the ABC’s 6,000 churches have even one delegate at the annual conventions. The plan will be voted on next year at Denver.

Also to be considered at Denver: a proposal for a multi-million-dollar fund-raising campaign for minority groups to be conducted jointly by the ABC and the predominantly black Progressive National Baptist Convention.

Among resolutions, delegates voted 1,451 to 199 for an early withdrawal of American troops from Indochina “hopefully” by December 31 of this year. Past ABC president Thomas Kilgore, a Los Angeles pastor, was defeated in a move to delete “hopefully.” Surprisingly, he was opposed by arch-pacifist Edwin Dahlberg, a frequent visitor to Viet Nam, who implied that reason dictated inclusion of the word.

During debate over a controversial statement on non-traditional “family life styles” that could have been interpreted as endorsing premarital sex and homosexual practices, ABC treasurer Milton Bennett—a Toledo restaurant operator—invoked the parliamentary law requiring that a majority of delegates be present when business is transacted. Only a fourth of the 2,800 were on hand, bringing automatic adjournment. In an informal rump session that followed, conservatives pushed through 328–159 a substitute that subjected life styles to New Testament standards.

Bennett’s ploy was the first such call in the memories of ABC officials. It will not be the last; delegates spoke privately of using it next year (many of the ABC’s most controversial resolutions over the years have been passed by a fraction of the quorum).

Guest speakers at the convention included anti-war navy veteran John Kerry; evangelical author Keith Miller, whose anti-institutional sentiment won much applause; Operation Breadbasket’s Jesse Jackson, who complained he hadn’t “gotten a dime” from the ABC; and black evangelist Tom Skinner.

Blacks and liberals applauded Skinner’s attack against “the System”; conservatives applauded his insertions of fundamentalist doctrine. (The evangelist says that while he has earned the right to preach to radicals and liberals, thirty-two Christian radio stations have tossed him off the air because of anti-system remarks.)

Convention afternoons were crammed with scores of seminars, including some manned by Campus Crusade for Christ staffers and other young evangelicals. Among the most popular was one led by charismatic pastor Ken Pagard of Chula Vista, California. He said the charismatic movement is growing in the ABC, with 600 pastors listed.

The two-year-old American Baptist Fellowship, an evangelical group hoping to change the rather liberal public image of the ABC, drew 150 to afternoon sessions. Speakers included theologian Carl F. H. Henry.

Some seminars, programmed to offer insight to delegates and a crack at pancultural communication, featured non-Christian young people from homosexual and communal scenes.

In contrast, recent converts with visiting musical groups (mostly from ABC colleges) testified of new life in Christ and told of the Jesus movement spreading through their ranks. Between performances they held street concerts downtown.

Events of the final evening expressed the mood of the convention. An Indian grandmother “adopted” outgoing president Roger Fredrikson into her family. And—despite the ugly language and demands laid down by a tribal band of outsiders three nights earlier—Elizabeth Walters, Indian supervisor of an ABC children’s home in Bacone, Oklahoma, said Indian Americans were asking for no handouts, “only that you walk down the trail with us.” Then a pretty Indian teacher from New York led the thousands assembled in a sing-along: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound …”

At another point everyone held hands—black and white, Hispanic and Indian, young and old, liberal and conservative, preacher and layman—and sang, “We shall overcome.”

It was that kind of a convention.

United Presbyterians: Jesus Saves

“Perhaps it’s the year of the woman,” suggested Mrs. Lois H. Stair, first woman in history to be named moderator of the United Presbyterian Church. She was elected by the 183rd General Assembly, meeting in Rochester, New York, last month.

Perhaps so! But if it is the year of the woman, the 48-year-old Wisconsin-born moderator will find it is also the year of the youth, balky commissioners, and a new and critical look at many routine denominational programs.

During opening sessions of the ten-day assembly, the youth advisory delegates, who have speaking privileges but no right to vote, seemed to dominate the microphones while the older commissioners tended to sit back and let the youth speak. This determined much of the debate and some of the action. Thus commissioners, who did not seem to be impressed with the growing programs of the National Presbyterian Church and Center in Washington, D. C., initiated action to provide a minister of evangelism who would “work the streets of Washington with particular attention to youth.”

Youthful delegates and advisors also challenged the report of a Special Committee on the Use of Drugs, maintaining that the committee overlooked the power of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ to break the drug habit. An amendment to the report, passed on their insistence, provided that the General Assembly “take note of the fact with thanksgiving that through conversion to Jesus Christ many young people have found and are finding deliverance from drugs” and affirmed the power of Christ “to set them free.”

Another amendment instructed the committee to investigate cases of release from drugs resulting from the ministry of the so-called Jesus people or street Christians.

Some of the Jesus people were in evidence during the opening days of the assembly, though not so many as expected by the United Presbyterian Liberation Front, which had encouraged them to come to Rochester. Did the commissioners approve? In part they did. Said the first woman moderator of the church: “I find the Jesus people both hopeful and disturbing. They express their faith more clearly and with more joy than we do … but some of their movement has been turned inward. The Gospel turns us out to others.”

Outward would be a good direction for the church to go: the 3.1-million-member denomination has lost 77,000 members this year, according to Stated Clerk William P. Thompson. Total contributions were up slightly; most other statistics reflected the downward trend. In recent years the moderator’s own church in Waukesha, Wisconsin, has declined from 1,800 to 1,100 members.

JAMES M. BOICE

Epa: Looking Out For The Evangelicals

It was a case of insiders looking out and outsiders looking in at the twenty-third annual convention of the Evangelical Press Association in Chicago last month. And both focused on how evangelical publications can do a better job of reaching the reading world for Christ.

Outsider John McCandlish Phillips, an evangelical who is a feature writer and reporter for the New York Times, led off the first session with a plea that Christian publications be the base for “a vital assault on the power centers of the nation.”

Insider Sherwood E. Wirt, editor of Decision magazine, urged the 244 representatives of the 200-member EPA not to become so impartial “that you become the devil’s secret weapon.”

A convention highlight was the “over-the-fence” view of a battery of evangelicals who hold key posts in the secular media as they looked at the religious press. Some stinging indictments were made; on the whole, however, the evangelical press was tossed a small bouquet for its increasing relevance and professionalism.

Newsweek Chicago bureau chief Don Holt led a well received workshop on “Where Is America Headed?” “There’s an apathy and a weariness,” he said. “People are suffering from media overload.” He characterized this weariness as a turning back from “even the quest” of solving racial problems. The general feeling, he added, is that “we’ll pull into our campers and retreat.” America may have a cleaner future, Holt hypothesized, but it will be a distracted society—“and that’s a core problem.”

One hopeful sign, according to the Newsweek newsman, is a “strong returning to basics” evidenced in the popularity of camping, family farming, communes, and even the Jesus movement. Holt predicted the Jesus movement “will sweep the country this summer.”

C. Charles Van Ness, editorial director of the David C. Cook Publishing Company, was elected to a two-year term as EPA president, succeeding Wirt. Peter Meussen, business manager of the Banner in Grand Rapids, was chosen vice-president. Mel Banks, president of Chicago’s Urban Ministries and leader of a convention panel on “Blacks and the Evangelical Press,” became the first Negro officer of the association; he and Dick Champion of the Pentecostal Evangel were elected adviser-directors.

RUSSELL CHANDLER

News Coverage Cited

CHRISTIANITY TODAY received a first place in the Evangelical Press Association’s Higher Goals contest in Chicago last month for its news section. The award was conferred in the “standing feature” category. The magazine placed third in the “general” category of the Higher Goals phase.

Campus Life, a publication of Youth for Christ International, was selected as EPA’s Periodical of the Year from sixty-eight entries.

The outstanding characteristic of CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S news, a citation said, “is the almost unbelievable thoroughness of its coverage. This completeness can be seen in the number of separate articles as well as … the presentation within each story. There is evidence of careful selection.…”

Tooling Up For World Revival

“The world stands on the verge of the greatest spiritual awakening since Pentecost!” For Dr. Robert Coleman, professor of evangelism at Asbury Theological Seminary, that’s not just wishful thinking but a calculated prediction. “Never have opportunities for Christ been greater,” he told delegates to the seventy-fourth annual General Council of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Houston last month.

Coleman feels that the Great Commission will be fulfilled in this generation. A survey of mission fields and an analysis of new means of proclaiming the Gospel suggests he may be right. Whole villages in Indonesia are said to be willing to convert to Christianity, but they have no teacher. Church growth projections in Africa are little short of phenomenal, but hundreds of tribes are without a missionary. Through radio and television it would now be possible for every person on earth to hear the Gospel—if there were enough funds.

Leaders of the CMA, a foremost evangelistic communion, probably sense the possibilities better than most other Christians. Right now, their missionary advance is held back not so much by political restrictions or competing ideologies as by lack of resources in the sending churches. At its six-day meeting in Houston, the CMA took bold steps to strengthen its base in North America.

A sweeping reorganization of the leadership structure was approved in principle. The aim is to encourage new initiatives and better coordination of programs. Regular infusions of fresh blood are to be guaranteed by limited tenure for officers in the future.

CMA congregations exercise considerable autonomy, so extension drives conducted by the international officialdom take some doing. Much of the current burden for building a broader home base lies with Iowa-born Leslie W. Pippert, 57, who under the reorganization will become vice president for North American ministries.

Pippert, a Taylor University graduate, won election at the council in Houston to a fifth three-year term in the office known as “home secretary.” He has presided over a period of steady but unspectacular growth, and has inaugurated a number of long-range programs that last year paid off in spurts in membership, ministerial recruitment, and funding. Pippert has spearheaded aggressive follow-up to recent congresses on evangelism and is going all out for Key 73. Special efforts to promote urban ministries with black people are also under way.

Part of the CMA’s failure to grow faster at home is attributable to the constituency’s vacillation on educational policy. The job of putting the pieces together now falls to the Reverend Jack F. Shepherd, former director of Jaffray School of Missions. The 53-year-old Shepherd succeeds the retiring Dr. Gilbert Johnson as education secretary of the CMA. Johnson was able but buffeted by cross-currents over whether CMA colleges should be Bible or liberal-arts oriented and whether the denomination should start a seminary of its own.

A total of 1,128 voting delegates registered for the Houston sessions. President Nathan Bailey told them the 1,376 CMA churches in North America reported a record number of nearly 18,000 conversions during 1970. The CMA currently supports 919 missionaries and estimates its total overseas community at 500,000.

DAVID KUCHARSKY

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