McIntire’s Mélange

Dr. Carl McIntire, the usually indefatigable fighting fundamentalist, threw in the towel twice last month after being clobbered by the New Jersey state board of higher education and, in unrelated action, by estranged leaders of the Valley Forge-based American Council of Christian Churches, which he founded in 1941.

The radio preacher announced that his embattled Shelton College will move from Cape May, New Jersey, to the former Boeing building in his recently acquired multi-million-dollar complex at Cape Canaveral, Florida (see January 29 issue, page 31), in time for the fall semester. The exodus marks the end of McIntire’s hassle with New Jersey over loss of Shelton’s right to grant degrees (see February 12 issue, page 45). The board had cited the school for alleged inadequacies and infractions.

McIntire at first vowed to fight the case in the courts, but, he explained on radio, he would lose too many students and dollars in the long litigation. He switched money solicited on his broadcasts for the legal battle to a “refugee fund” for moving expenses. What about the new building Shelton will leave behind, a million-dollar white elephant? “It will stand as a monument to the educational tyranny of New Jersey,” McIntire says. (The board may not have heard the last of McIntire; he is dickering to buy a huge but deteriorating YWCA building in Atlantic City for a Bible institute and conference center.)

McIntire predicts Shelton will thrive in the milder climate of Florida’s educational requirements. The move aborts his previously announced plans to open a new Florida school named Reformation College.

In the American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC) matter, McIntire acceded to a New Jersey superior-court injunction that forbade him to hold a scheduled convention in Virginia in the name of the ACCC. He canceled the meeting.

The action stems from the ACCC’s annual meeting in Pasadena, California, last fall when McIntire took the floor during a recess, installed himself as president, and purged the ACCC rolls of its incumbent leaders (see November 20, 1970, issue, page 44). McIntire, declaring his group the true ACCC, called for a spring convention in Richmond and set up new ACCC headquarters in New York. The Valley Forge ACCC meanwhile carried on business as usual—though with financial hamstrings.

The dispute resulted in the freezing of ACCC funds by two banks. After months of intrigue and tension, and faced with mortgage foreclosure on its property, the Valley Forge ACCC filed suit.

In addition to banning McIntire’s use of the ACCC name, the court ordered the banks to release their funds to the Valley Forge group, and set a later hearing on the other charges.

The suit charges that McIntire pirated away the ACCC’s International Christian Relief commission, that he misappropriated ICR funds, and that he wrongfully solicited money in the name of the ACCC for his own use. It calls for an accounting and a refund of the money to the ACCC.

In an interview McIntire said he would seek no counter-injunctions: “I would take apostates to court, but not brethren.” He asked ACCC president J. Philip Clark to meet with him and to dismiss the suit. But ACCC executive secretary John E. Millheim vowed to a reporter: “We refuse to back down one iota in our demands.” He said many McIntire backers have become disenchanted and are now in the ACCC corner.

Other troubles plague McIntire. A “truth squad” that says it represents fifty members of his church—the 1,800-member Bible Presbyterian Church of Collingswood, New Jersey—charges that he is neglecting pastoral duties, that attendance is sagging, and that he is not telling the truth about finances or how many stations carry his “Reformation Hour” broadcast (he mentions 600 on the air).

McIntire says the squad’s leaders—George DeFebb and Wayne Rambo—are no longer members of the church. Not so, reply the dissidents, who still attend. They say that since the church board removed them from membership without a hearing or charges (required by church law), the ouster is invalid. Both are former McIntire aides. DeFebb was a liquor salesman when hired by the minister in 1963 as a troubleshooter and advance man. Rambo, who worked in the office, was expelled from Shelton in 1967, says McIntire, “for discipline reasons.”

McIntire tells his listeners that the press is out to get him. In March the Miami Herald ran a two-part article that contained devastating allegations about his broadcast practices and financial dealings. He said he would reprint it in the Christian Beacon with a line-by-line refutation. He hasn’t yet done so.

The April 1 issue of the Wall Street Journal linked McIntire and ICR head James T. Shaw to an international highfinance scandal, involving ICR’s practice of “bartering” donated surplus and unwanted relief goods for cash and other usable commodities. The article said the ICR had on hand $12 million worth of powdered-milk products that contained cyclamate. It quotes McIntire as saying that a John H. Bevel, the central figure of the story and the current object of a police search, came to Shaw with a barter idea. Correspondence on ICR letterheads over purported signatures of Shaw, the article went on, showed that the ICR wanted to make a swap for motor vehicles, and that Shaw granted Bevel “exclusive right” to trade the goods.

The ICR reportedly was unable to deliver relief supplies it had collected for war-starved Biafra because of the Nigerian army’s blockade. After the war, the Journal said, Bevel worked on a deal to sell more than $1 million of these goods to—ironically—the Nigerian army. Last summer, the story asserts, the ICR received for certain supplies $100,000 of a sum Bevel had allegedly obtained fraudulently from American Express—using worthless stock certificates and ICR shipping receipts as collateral.

McIntire told Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitney that he and Shaw backed out of the deal after American Express warned that something was amiss.

However, in an interview with CHRISTIANITY TODAY, McIntire denied ever having had any connection with Bevel, and said the ICR had not received the $100,000. He also denied complicity in the Nigerian army deal. The relief goods had been delivered to Biafra through secret connections, he explained. He refused to answer questions about the whereabouts or disposition of the controverted milk products, but it was learned that some are still stored in the ICR’s name in Baltimore and Houston warehouses. Some have simply been dumped, one foreman said.

Meanwhile, McIntire stepped up recruitment for a big “Victory in Vietnam” demonstration in the nation’s capital on May 8. He thinks Nixon has thrown in the towel on Indochina.

The Nnea: ‘Important Crossroads’

It was no accident that the eighth annual convention of the National Negro Evangelical Association and the twenty-ninth of the predominantly white National Association of Evangelicals were both held in Los Angeles last month only a day apart.

NNEA president William Bentley told NNEA delegates in the convention’s opening address that the eight-year-old organization now stands at an important crossroads. Speaking of possibilities for cooperation, he declared: “How we proceed to do the God-imposed task, and in what direction we will go in fulfilling the charge given us, are questions only we—and not our critics—can answer.”

“The diversity of our leadership can work to our advantage …” Bentley, a Chicago clergyman, continued. “It can also most easily develop down-to-earth strategies for reaching the entire spectrum of black Americans more efficiently than can other less-diversified groups.” Then, speaking of cooperation between evangelicals of different races, Bentley added: “The presence on our board and in our membership of white Christians of good will and honest intent … can be a strength rather than a handicap.”

A pulpit exchange on the closing day of the NNEA convention and the day before the opening of the NAE enabled about a dozen white ministers to speak in black churches in the Los Angeles area and about the same number of black pastors to speak to white congregations.

A dialogue session to explore cooperation possibilities between the black and white groups was planned the same day to bridge understanding gaps between the two evangelical organizations. But the session failed to materialize, and a final press conference was also called off.

The NNEA was organized in Los Angeles in 1963; this was its first convention since in the City of the Angels. It was the first time that the NNEA and the NAE held national conventions in the same city.

The stated objectives of the NNEA are “to promote and undergird a dynamic Christian witness among Afro-Americans and to help all evangelicals to find involvement with vital social issues.”

The sessions at the Los Angeles Hilton were mainly inspirational, however; no resolutions were brought to the convention floor. NNEA field director Aaron Hamlin explained that the convention purpose was to give “an opportunity to pool ideas and discover ways of working together.” About 200 denominations are represented in the NNEA, Hamlin said.

The convention theme was “Christians in the Winds of Change.” Besides Bentley, evening speakers included international evangelist Bob Harrison of San Francisco; William Pannell of Detroit, vice-president of Tom Skinner Crusades; and John Perkins of Voice of Calvary Bible Institute, Mendenhall, Mississippi.

Workshops were conducted in evangelism, Christian education, social action, missions, and youth.

VIRGIE W. MURRAY

Up With Humbard

Mackinac College, Michigan birthplace of Moral Re-Armanent’s popular Up With People youth program, is now the Rex Humbard Center for Christian Development. The plush, well-equipped, thirty-two-acre island campus was purchased by the Cathedral of Tomorrow, Humbard’s suburban Akron, Ohio, church. The purchase price was not disclosed; the school had asked $7.5 million after it folded last year, but some real-estate sources say Humbard got it for $1.7 million. Its value has been estimated at up to $17 million.

Humbard, whose own college degrees are all honorary, immediately commissioned a feasibility study to determine whether he should establish a college and seminary. Initially he hopes to offer training in language, practical ministerial work, and all phases of television. His morning services, attended by 6,000, are televised on 321 mostly UHF stations to a claimed audience of 18 million. His church already owns a UHF station and a videotape production house.

The Nae: New Marching Orders?

In Los Angeles twenty-two years ago Billy Graham started in earnest his march for Jesus that catapulted him and the evangelical movement into a place of respect and power. As the twenty-ninth annual convention of the National Association of Evangelicals drew to a close at the Hollywood Palladium last month,A full report of the NAE Los Angeles convention will appear in the news section of the May 21 issue. the 52-year-old Graham was giving what amounted to new marching orders.

But many of the troops would find some of those orders difficult, such as the suggestion that “perhaps” it is time for evangelicals to lead demonstrations on Washington. “We are concerned about race, war, and pollution, but our greatest concern is for the spiritual welfare of America,” the evangelist declared in his prepared text. Most evangelicals to date haven’t had an overwhelming zeal for this type of activism.

Possibly even more difficult for some of the sixty-nine mostly small denominations connected with the NAE is his proposal that some kind of new umbrella group be formed to embrace evangelicals around the world. It should be, the evangelist suggested, “wholly for fellowship, sharing experiences, and prayer—and to stimulate evangelical theology, modern missionary activity, and evangelism.”

The idea of bringing evangelicals together sounds superb on the surface. But for some of the denominations that seem to thrive on theological hair-splitting, Graham’s proposal was a bit wide. It would mean establishing contact with evangelicals in churches affiliated with the liberal World and National Councils of Churches.

But Graham asserted that such an international fellowship is necessary. International meetings of evangelicals in recent years testify that a great segment of the world church is evangelical, evangelistic, and missionary-minded, he said.

Some of the troops have been looking around in amazement at what the new wave of youth evangelism has been accomplishing. Graham indicated that those who have always held that the work of God must be accomplished thus-and-so had better stop quibbling and start welcoming the new converts.

“Some of them could use a touching up here and there in their theology,” Graham told a press conference, “but I’m for them. These youth are finding reality in Jesus.”

Graham said of the emerging group of evangelists: “They have great gifts from the Holy Spirit at communicating the Gospel. Many of these young evangelists are on the ‘frontiers’ to which some of us older traditionalists may have seldom contemplated to venture. Many of them may do it differently, but thank God, they are doing it!”

WILLIAM WILLOUGHBY

Snails And Scriptures

Three armed young men in Istanbul attacked the American director of a Bible shop and a Muslim Turk co-worker. Two of the assailants who were arrested said they acted out of opposition to the distribution of Christian literature. “It is like selling snails in a Muslim neighborhood,” they said.

One of the victims was Paul Nilson, 44, of Wheaton, Illinois, who is in charge of Bible-society work in Turkey. The other is a custodian in the building, which houses a Turkish branch of the United Church of Christ Board of World Ministries. Neither was seriously injured. For many years the Bible society has enjoyed the blessing of Turkish authorities. It operates an attractive bookstore on the main thoroughfare in Istanbul. Within the last two years, however, the shop has been broken into several times and burned once. Informed sources blame the harassment on the extreme right-wing Ulku organization, which is both anti-Communist and anti-Christian.

Discredited

Congress must extend its federal trade laws to include non-profit organizations.

That’s the word from a Federal Trade Commission investigator who says the FTA is powerless to stop the alleged “fraudulent claims” of a Columbus, Ohio, correspondence school. He said the school, Ohio Christian College, headed by the Reverend Alin O. Langdon and his Calvary Grace Christian Churches of Faith, “has misrepresented its accreditation and the value and equivalence of its degrees, credits, and courses, and made other false claims.”

Evidence indicates, he adds, that Langdon is in sole control of the operations and all the church property. The operations include Alpha Psi Omega Society, advertised as an organization of guidance counselors (it is not), and the National Education Accrediting Association (officially unaccredited).

At present the FTA lacks jurisdiction over such state-chartered non-profit agencies.

GLENN D. EVERETT

Heritage Preservers

Religious Heritage of America, an interfaith organization “dedicated to preserving the Judeo-Christian heritage and working to instill its principles and influence into all areas of American life,” handed out its annual recognition awards in Washington, D. C., this month to:

• Presiding Bishop John E. Hines of the Episcopal Church, named Clergyman of the Year for his brotherhoodbuilding work with blacks;

• American Can Company chairman William F. May, Churchman of the Year for a variety of humanitarian concerns;

• Mrs. Howard C. Davison of International Christian Leadership, Washington, D. C., Churchwoman of the Year for organizing the Congressional Wives Prayer Group and her work with the prayer-breakfast movement;

• John A. Redhead, Jr., recently retired pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Greensboro, North Carolina, Gold Medal for a lifetime of service as a relevant evangelist.

A joint award was given to RHA’s Nashville head, James M. Hudgins, and Cecil Scaife of Columbia Records for their efforts to ban pro-drug songs and drug-using artists from the recording, radio, and television industries.

Grieving The Greeks

Orthodox-Anglican relations were strained last month when the dean and chapter of St. Paul’s Cathedral canceled a service commemorating the 150th anniversary of Greek independence. In a statement explaining their very late reversal of the decision to permit the gathering in the famed Wren building, the authorities said the occasion “has been used for propaganda purposes in connection with the present regime in Greece.”

Archbishop Athenagoras, ranking Greek churchman in Britain, who was to have preached the sermon, angrily denied that the service would have any non-religious intention, and charged that the dean had allowed himself to be influenced by those given to fishing in troubled waters.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Nigerian Expropriation

Expressing appreciation for the “selfless services” of medical missionaries, a Nigerian government official last month made official the state’s takeover of the Sudan Interior Mission-hospital at Kaltungo.

Keeping The Wolf From Good Shepherd’S Door

Pay up or get out.

That’s what officials of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) have been saying for more than a year to Pastor Robert G. Doll and the members of Denver’s Good Shepherd Baptist Church, dually affiliated with the American Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Convention, U. S. A., Incorporated.

Now the Lutherans mean business. They served eviction papers that could bring immediate or delayed expulsion, depending on what section of law applies.

It’s not that Doll, a white, and his predominantly black congregation (two dozen active adults and scores of youth) are deadbeats. Rather, they say, they are trying to strike a blow for Christian ethics and ecumenism. They claim that the building was paid for once by earlier Lutheran occupants and thus became community property of the entire Church.

It all began when a struggling Lutheran congregation abandoned the building in 1964. Later the WELS sold it to Good Shepherd for $24,612.05 at 6 per cent interest in monthly installments of $150. In 1969, Doll, an American Baptist Home Mission Society community organizer, became Good Shepherd’s pastor. The church stopped payments to WELS in April, 1970, with the explanation that the Holy Spirit told them to.

“Why,” Doll asked the WELS, “have some Christians in America been left, with their meager resources, to assume the awesome burden which, in truth, is a total Church responsibility?” Responded WELS executive secretary Harold Eckert: “We must reply that the Holy Spirit … does not speak to us as you claim he spoke to you.” Furthermore, he said later, the WELS had borrowed money against Good Shepherd’s payments and spent it for Lutheran outreach.

In another exchange, Eckert reminded Doll of Psalm 37:21“The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again; but the righteous showeth mercy, and giveth.” and Doll asked him to reread the second part of the verse.

Doll and other Baptist clergymen who have come to his support concede that Good Shepherd has no legal basis for its act, and plead for mercy from the WELS instead. Yet Doll is willing to argue the case in court in hopes of setting a precedent. A precedent of sorts has already been set by the government of Nigeria, which took over two mission hospitals without compensation on grounds that donors had already paid for them (see above).

A Church of God in Christ minister down the street from Good Shepherd has meanwhile offered to buy the contested property from the WELS, and is raising money for a down payment. Last month a youthful fund-raiser stopped at the Doll house and asked for a contribution.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN.

The commissioner for health and social welfare of Nigeria’s North-East State added that he hoped the hospital takeover would be regarded with “joyous spirit depicting the ability of the government to undertake a function which it rightly owes to the people.”

Several days before the April 8 ceremony, Colonel Musa Usman, a Muslim and governor of the predominantly Muslim North-East State, explained the government’s action to a gathering of mission leaders in the state capital. He said the takeover of SIM’s Kaltungo hospital and the Sudan United Mission’s (Danish branch) Numan hospital is part of a twenty-year plan to assume responsibility for the state’s health services.

There is pressure from some taxpayers, especially in larger centers, he said, for the government to provide free hospital care that missions are unable to do. (The state pays missions’ salaries of Nigerian nurses only; it does not give grants for medicines.) The governor also told the mission representatives his state would encourage new mission work in rural areas where the government can’t provide services.

When asked about the turnover, SIM officials said they saw no problem to future work in the area. While Kaltungo hospital had a spiritual as well as a medical ministry, it was no longer considered essential to church progress in the area, which has 90.000 Christians. Meanwhile, staffing at Kaltungo had become increasingly difficult. The SIM operates a leprosarium and fifteen dispensaries in the North-East State, and three other hospitals, six leprosariums, and sixty-six dispensaries in other states of the federation.

The situation at Numan, seventy miles south of the Benue River, presents a problem for the SUM’s Danish branch. The branch’s central administration is at the same compound, and relocation would be expensive.

The government has so far promised no compensation to either the SIM or the SUM.

Last year another Nigerian state, the North-West, took over a Southern Baptist hospital because the Baptists couldn’t staff it. The nation undoubtedly will nationalize basic medical services eventually, but at present there seems to be no move to control more hospitals.

W. HAROLD FULLER

Doctrinal Changes At Fuller

A few years ago Fuller Theological Seminary was rocked by a theological controversy that led to the resignation of some members of the faculty and board. The seminary has recently published its new doctrinal statement involving changes that were at the heart of the earlier controversy.

The original statement said that the Bible is “plenarily inspired and free from all error in the whole and in the part … [and is] the only infallible rule of faith and practice.” The new statement eliminates “free from all error in the whole and in the part.” The Bible is infallible in those matters relating to faith and practice, according to the new statement.

The former statement committed the school to premillennialism saying that Jesus Christ would return “to establish His millennial kingdom.” Now it reads that he will come to “establish His glorious kingdom,” which permits an amillennial view.

A third change has to do with the condition of the unredeemed dead. The original statement assigns “unbelievers to eternal punishment”; the current statement says “the wicked shall be separated from God’s presence.”

The new doctrinal statement was published at the time the seminary launched a three-year enlargement campaign designed to raise almost $5 million for buildings, endowment, and academic needs.

500Th Anniversary Of Dürer

The West German Federal Republic is noting the 500th anniversary of the famous Reformation artist Albrecht Dürer with a commemorative stamp. The German post office will also issue something new for collectors and art lovers: color postcards depicting five famous Dürer paintings that hang in Nuremberg, including his self-portrait (illustrated above).

Each of the five cards will show a painting on one side and, on the other, the commemorative stamp, with Dürer’s stylized signature. The cards will carry the information that 1971 is Dürer Year in Nuremberg. The artist was born there May 21, 1471.

This year from June 2 to 5 in Augsburg, Protestant and Catholic groups will gather to broaden ties of brotherhood and understanding in place of the annual Kirchentag of the German Evangelical churches and the Katolikentag of the German Catholics.

The West German Federal Republic will issue a commemorative stamp to mark the combined “Okumenisches Pfingsstreffen” (Whitsuntide family gathering).

GLENN EVERETT

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