Riding the (Air) Waves

This year’s annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), representing 86 per cent of total religious broadcasting, was calm in comparison to last year’s stormy sessions over new gospel music. The majority of the 519 delegates seemed determined to ride the waves, not make any. Besides, there were other worries.

Congress recently passed a bill requiring all radio and TV stations to permit “reasonable access” to lowest-rate broadcast time by candidates for federal office. The NRB in a resolution asked that educational and non-commercial stations that do not air political broadcasts be exempted from the law.

Delegates also urged Congress to amend the Communications Act “to reestablish an orderly renewal procedure” with provision for “immediate hearings” in disputed cases. The move is directed at the current practice of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of permitting competitors to take over when station licenses are up for renewal. The license is awarded to the party stating in an application the best case for serving the public.

Some station operators wondered how they should respond to requests from atheist agitator Madelyn Murray O’Hair for free time under the FCC’s “Fairness Doctrine” governing controversial subjects. Guest speaker Vincent Wasilewski, president of the National Association of Broadcasters, replied that the FCC had left it up to local operators to decide whether religion itself is controversial, and that there is no obligation to answer Mrs. O’Hair’s letters.

During a panel session one night, Trans World Radio, a mission broadcaster, treated delegates to an intercontinental broadcast via satellite. Broadcasters on three continents chatted with one another live for half an hour on dual channels leased from an AT&T satellite at a cost of about $1,000. A number of Christian radio stations in the United States also listened in.

Afternoon workshops were sparsely attended; only four showed up to discuss how religious broadcasters should handle social issues. A missions seminar revealed several trends, including Far East Broadcasting Company’s help in getting nationals into broadcasting (stations are being built in thirteen provincial capitals in the Philippines). The U. S. based Rumanian Missionary Society reported that its broadcasts beamed to Rumania were getting nearly 8,000 letters per year.

As was true last year, no station managers or owners dropped in on the youth programming workshop. Disc jockey Scott Ross announced that his two-hour Jesus rock show was now on nearly eighty secular stations. His show features “message” songs, Jesus music, testimonies of name musicians, and even invitations to receive Christ. Response, says Scott, has been “fantastic.”

Although a few youth programmers reported innovative breakthroughs, there are indications that a stiff reaction to the young is building up among many broadcasters. WMBI’s Perry Straw said that Moody Bible Institute president George Sweeting handed down a “hard line” on youth and music programming after a youth show was picketed by discontented fundamentalist Paul Lindstrom of Chicago. The San Francisco-based Family Radio Network has cut back on youth programming, and owner Harold Camping has banned the use of much contemporary Christian music, as has evangelist Jack Wyrtzen on his Word of Life program. A young producer complained that his youth-oriented show was turned down by virtually every broadcaster there.

In interviews, some operators responded that they feared loss of donations if they kept pace with youth, and others admitted outright that they opposed the sounds and styles of the new young Christians.

National headliners and FCC commissioners also addressed the gathering. Senator Mark Hatfield chided those who aired political views in the name of religion, and suggested that “faith” broadcasters should spend less time begging for donations. Maintaining that 93 per cent of impact on persons is through non-verbal means, he implored the broadcasters to communicate love.

Africa: Unprecedented Response

Revival tides continue to flow high in Africa. Mission sources report that more than 15,000 new believers among the southern Ethiopia Wallamo tribe were baptized in 1971, and that Wallamo evangelists baptized more than 10,000 people from neighboring tribes. The Sudan Interior Mission has made translation of the Scriptures into the Wallamo language “a top priority project.”

SIM workers also tell of “unprecedented spiritual response” in the strongly Islamic Kano area of Nigeria—despite a cholera epidemic that wrought personal tragedy among families of national evangelists. After hundreds of persons received Christ in Kano city a Nigerian counselor commented, “Kano has never witnessed such revival before.”

“Tens of thousands of Africa’s bush people are coming to Christ,” declared Asbury evangelism professor Robert Coleman after a recent visit.

Forecasts Conservative Baptist foreign-mission head Warren Webster: “The entire Animist world of 150 million people is up for grabs in this decade; they will turn to Christ or to some ‘ism.’ The Church must keep its evangelistic task uppermost.”

The Multiplying Millions

Kuwait, a small country located at the southeastern tip of Iraq on the Persian Gulf, has the largest population growth rate, according to the latest population chart issued by the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D. C. At its present rate of 8.2 per cent, Kuwait’s estimated 600,000 population will double in just nine years.

Only about 2 per cent of that population is Christian. The Roman Catholic Church has two parishes and five priests in Kuwait; there are no Protestant missionaries. But in Costa Rica, which pulled the number-two spot with a rate of 3.8 per cent (its population will double in nineteen years), at least thirty mission organizations are at work.

English Church Merger

In the first union of English denominations since the Reformation, the Presbyterian Church of England and the Congregational Union of England and Wales have voted to merge. The Presbyterians were already committed to union and awaited the result of Congregational voting last month: 2,133 of the 2,280 churches voted, 1,668 in favor, 465 against. The total membership supporting the merger, to become effective in October, was 82.2 per cent. Earlier, all but two of the 308 Presbyterian churches voted approval.

Some of the Congregational dissentients have already formed an association to maintain an “essential Congregationalism” in which each church is free to govern itself.

The new United Reformed Church will have a membership of 260,000.

In May, the Anglican church will vote on whether or not to link up with the Methodist church, which has already approved such a move.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Bibles And High Ups

Kenneth Taylor’s Living Bible paraphrase, Pearl S. Buck’s Story Bible, and a recent translation of the Torah were presented to the White House library by Arthur J. Goldberg, former U. S. Supreme Court justice, on behalf of the Laymen’s National Bible Committee. Goldberg, the first Jew to hold the post, was chairman of the 1971 Bible Week; President Richard Nixon was honorary chairman.

Meanwhile, Chilean Roman Catholic cardinal Raul Silva Henriquez was reported to be shipping 10,000 copies of the Bible to Communist Cuba at the “personal request” of Premier Fidel Castro. The cardinal said Castro requested the Scriptures after Henriquez presented him with a Bible during his recent twenty-five-day state visit to Chile. At last word, however, a paper shortage had delayed shipment.

Rebuilding In Love

Barn-raisings may be outdated, but in Texarkana, Texas, several Baptist churches got together for a church-raising in a show of racial brotherhood.

Last March arsonists destroyed St. Paul Baptist Church, owned by a black congregation, following student racial disturbances that closed the high school. White Baptists from Tyler, Dallas, and Texarkana pitched in with St. Paul’s people to rebuild the church; Texarkana’s white First Baptist Church donated $5,000. The arsonists were never found, and the town’s $5,000 reward for their capture also was donated to the rebuilding fund.

The walls, made out of finished spruce logs trucked in from Colorado, were raised in just two weeks. The all-volunteer—and mostly unskilled—builders plan to have the $100,000 building ready for worship next month, one year after the fire bombing.

Commented Lory Hildreth, pastor of Texarkana’s First Baptist Church: “Both races are working together, shoulder to shoulder, rebuilding in love what was destroyed by hate.”

Stop The Music

A self-styled “oobie-doobie” girl, Canadian Carol Feraci, disrupted a White House dinner honoring Mr. and Mrs. DeWitt Wallace, founders and co-chairmen of Reader’s Digest and this year’s winners of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Miss Feraci was a last-minute substitute in the Ray Conniff Singers, the after-dinner entertainment. But the guests, among them Dr. and Mrs. Billy Graham and Dr. and Mrs. Norman Vincent Peale, got more entertainment than they expected. The Canadian singer pulled a hand-lettered sign from her dress that read “Stop the Killing” and said: “Stop bombing human beings, animals, and vegetation. You go to church on Sundays and pray to Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ were here tonight you would not dare to drop another bomb. Bless the Berrigans and bless Daniel Ellsberg.”

After Conniff ejected her and apologized, Nixon responded, “Oh, forget it. Those things will happen.”

Graham pointedly shook hands with each of the remaining singers—some of them visibly distressed by Miss Feraci’s action. “No matter how you feel, this was not the time or place,” he said.

Religion In Transit

More than 360,000 persons in North America applied for Bible-instruction courses offered in 1971 by the Seventh-day Adventist “Voice of Prophecy” broadcast, an increase of 82,000 over 1970.

The 16,300-member First Baptist Church of downtown Dallas plans to build a forty-story home for the aged, according to pastor W. A. Criswell.

Fourteen Presbyterian, Catholic, and Lutheran churches in eight California cities have formed a Sanctuary Caucus to offer refuge and meals to servicemen who don’t want to go to war.

Two records were set at the annual meeting of the General Board of the Church of the Nazarene: a budget of $7.7 million (including $4.9 million for foreign missions) and appointment of thirty-three missionaries.

A Minneapolis Jesus People congregation moved into its own church building last month. It is being purchased from the city’s First Christian Reformed Church, which has moved to the suburbs.

In memorial services for Martin Luther King, Jr., held at a Harlem Baptist Church and attended by more than 1,500, pastor Wyatt T. Walker described King as “the only authentic spiritual genius Western religion has produced” this century.

Members of the Yarmouth, Maine, Unitarian Universalist Church voted to refuse to allow the public, especially long-haired youth, to sit on the church steps and walk in the churchyard, ostensibly because of littering.

An emergency ministry to veterans of the Viet Nam war facing problems of employment, education, discrimination, disabilities, and drugs has been established by the United Presbyterian Church. With first-year funding of $20,000, it will join with other groups in a common program through the National Council of Churches.

Deaths

LEONARD CARROLL, 51, general overseer of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee); in Cleveland, Tennessee, of a heart attack.

GEORGE NAPOLEON COLLINS, SR., 73, bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Florida and the Bahamas and president of the AME Council of Bishops; in Lake City, Florida, after an auto crash.

PAUL G. ELBECHT, 50, president of Concordia Lutheran College, Austin, Texas; in Austin, of a heart attack.

HOWELL FORGY, 73, the Navy chaplain whose exhortation “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition” during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor became a World War II slogan and song title; in Glendora, California, after a long illness.

KARL HOLFELD, 69, former president of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada; in Calgary, after a long illness.

FRANK HOUGHTON, 77, general director of the China Inland Mission (now Overseas Missionary Fellowship) during the crucial 1940 to 1951 period; in Tunbridge Wells, England, from bronchial pneumonia.

G. ELSON RUFF, 67, editor of The Lutheran, a Lutheran Church in America publication, since 1945; in Philadelphia, of a heart attack.

If the Supreme Court overrules a Wisconsin Court decision exempting Amish children from public high-school attendance, most U. S. Amish families will not comply but will leave the country instead, predicts public-education specialist Donald A. Erickson of the University of Chicago.

Clergy and Laymen Concerned, an interfaith anti-war group, has taken over a nationally syndicated radio program from the Businessmen’s Educational Fund and renamed it “American Report.” It is used by hundreds of stations.

The historic sanctuary and educational building of the Lake Avenue Baptist Church in Rochester were destroyed by fire. They were insured for $900,000.

Personalia

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference has named Baptist minister C. T. Vivian, a close associate of the late Martin Luther King, Jr., to head the SCLC’s Chicago branch. He replaces Jesse Jackson, now pushing his own new group, PUSH (People United to Save Humanity).

After three and one-half years, the sometimes besieged W. Seavey Joyce, S. J., has resigned as president of Boston College, one of the nation’s largest Jesuit schools.

Vaughan P. L. Booker, convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1970, was accepted as a candidate for the Episcopal priesthood by Bishop Robert L. DeWitt of Philadelphia. He aims to become a prison inmate-chaplain.

A new spat may be brewing in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod over the refusal by the Concordia Seminary (St. Louis) board to grant tenure to Old Testament professor Arlis Ehlen. He is being released, sources say, for alleged liberal views.

Dr. Walter F. Wolbrecht, who lost his job as executive director of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in a denominational shakeup last year, has been named president of Chicago’s Lutheran School of Theology, a Lutheran Church in America school.

Episcopal bishop Horace W. B. Donegan, 71, of the diocese covering New York City and its environs, will retire in May. Coadjutor Paul Moore Jr., will replace him.

Collins Radio engineering supervisor David M. Hodgin, a lay leader of First Christian Church, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, announced in a church service that he had quit his own job rather than force out two of his “more valuable than me” employees in a cutback of 550 persons at his plant. He wants to form a corporation based on “human dignity and full participation.”

Arizona mission vicar Harold S. Jones, a member of the Dakota (Santee) tribe, has become the first American Indian to be consecrated as a bishop of the Episcopal Church. He will serve the South Dakota diocese.

President Kent S. Knutson of the American Lutheran Church in a special message to members of the ALC’s 4,822 congregations appointed them “evangelists, all of you, each one,” in preparation for the nationwide Key ’73 evangelistic campaign.

The controversial Catholic pastor of San Francisco’s ghetto-district Sacred Heart parish, once the site of Black Panther breakfasts for children, changed jobs this month. Father Eugene J. Boyle is now director for justice, and peace—a newly created post—of the National Federation of Priests’ Councils.

A Harris poll shows SCLC’s Ralph David Abernathy as the black leader U. S. blacks respect most. Next are Mayor Charles Evers of Fayette, Mississippi, and Roy Wilkins, whose NAACP ranked first in respected organizations.

Life magazine says comedian Vaughn Meader, famous for his impersonations of President John F. Kennedy, is now “an aging Jesus freak,” following trips into the drug and occult scenes. His strange new comedy album, “The Second Coming,” about Christ’s return, rankles many radio listeners, but Meader explains, “My Jesus has a great sense of humor.”

World Scene

In Ethiopia the newly constituted 200,000-member Word of Life Evangelical Church, composed of 1,600 congregations and an outgrowth of Sudan Interior Mission work, has applied for government recognition.

Full intercommunion between India’s Mar Thoma Syrian Church and the Church of South India has been established, and negotiations are under way toward “organic union,” say sources.

Protestants and Catholics alike are victims of a renewed Communist hard line in Czechoslovakia. The regime has restricted religious education, stepped up ideological attacks, and arrested church leaders on political charges.

Christian mission work has been resumed—after a lapse of 120 years—among the “Sea Gypsies” who live on boats and on islands off the southern coast of Burma. A Burmese Baptist, a product of missionaries ousted in 1966, built a church and school on the island of Mali.

The Greater Europe Mission of Wheaton, Illinois, and the Belgium Gospel Mission of Philadelphia have merged, with the GEM assuming control. BGM’s Brussels Bible Institute becomes the sixth such GEM school; four other GEM institutes report record enrollments.

An Assemblies of God spokesman says his denomination is growing so fast in Korea that one church in Seoul now numbers 13,000 members, requiring six services and a pre-dawn prayer meeting to accommodate everybody. He adds that at least 10 per cent of the 36.5 million Koreans are believers.

The European Student Missionary Association will hold its annual conference March 3–5 at the European Bible Institute in Lamorlaye, France. About 300 youths from twenty Bible schools and fifty missionaries along with local evangelicals are expected to attend.

The Indian Parliament rejected a “Prevention of Conversion Bill” that would have virtually outlawed conversion to Christianity in India. Indian mission executive Rochunga Pudaite hailed the significant news and commended the government for “willingness to uphold religious freedom and democracy.”

The 200,000-member Presbyterian Church in Taiwan has called on Chiang Kai-shek’s government to hold parliamentary elections for the first time in twenty-five years. Other churches reportedly will join in the call.

A murder convict who recently received Christ through listening to the “Unshackled” broadcast in his Monrovia, Liberia, prison is the first person to be given clemency and his release by newly installed president William R. Tolbert, a devout Baptist.

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