Parting Presbyterians

Parting Presbyterians

One of the better known Southern Presbyterian congregations successfully petitioned its presbytery last month for transfer to another denomination. The 843-member West End Presbyterian Church in Hopewell, Virginia, adopted the petition by a unanimous (331–0) vote of the congregation. The Hanover Presbytery approved the petition on a recommendation from a special commission that said the church has been Presbyterian “only in name.” The Reverend Kennedy Smartt, pastor, has applied for membership in the Delmarva Presbytery of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod.

MORE MISSING MISSIONARIES

Of four Plymouth Brethren missionaries who were victims of a Pathet Lao attack in Laos, two are apparently dead. The other two were reportedly being held by their Communist captors.

Bodies of two women were found in a burned-out building when government troops retook the village of Kengkok. They were believed to be Evelyn Anderson, 25, of Quincy, Michigan, and Beatrice Kosin, 35, of Fort Washakie, Wyoming. Swiss sources said Samuel Mattix, 19, of Centralia, Washington, and Lloyd Oppel, 20, of Courtenay, British Columbia, were taken captive. The four were working in Laos with the Brethren’s agency, the New Jersey-based Christian Missions in Many Lands.

Veteran missionary Leslie Chopard, 49, and his family were in the same village when the attack came, but they managed to escape. Chopard said he believes the women, though found tied, were victims of the fighting and not of execution. The young men were captured as they tried to reach his house, he said.

At least ten Protestant missionaries, including several conscientious objectors, were killed in previous fighting in Southeast Asia. Five others have not been heard from since their capture years ago.

The same presbytery has refused to recognize a withdrawal resolution adopted (87–26) by the Tabb Street Presbyterian Church in Petersburg, Virginia. It has threatened to take legal action against the congregation.

A withdrawal case involving the Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Hampton, Virginia, is being appealed to the state supreme court. A lower court judge has turned down a Norfolk Presbytery petition for intervention. A court order allows the church to transfer its assets to its newly incorporated day school.

The pastor of the church, the Reverend J. B. Slicer, was one of six clergymen who with ten elders signed a resolution to create a new association to be known as Vanguard Presbytery. A constituting convention was scheduled for mid-November in Petersburg.

At least four other Southern Presbyterian congregations have voted recently to sever denominational ties. They include churches in Valhermosa Springs, Alabama; Huntsville, Alabama; Louisville, Kentucky; and Cynthiana, Kentucky. All the departing churches have cited liberal theological trends in the denomination as their reason.

Last month the Central Mississippi Presbytery adopted a resolution that calls for “the peaceful and orderly separation” of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. into two denominations. The church’s 1971 General Assembly turned down a proposal to permit such a division, asserting there is no constitutional provision for it.

Meanwhile, the National Presbyterian and Reformed Fellowship is calling a meeting January 4 and 5 in Atlanta to explore the possibility of organizing “a national synod of genuinely Presbyterian and Reformed churches.” A resolution adopted by the fellowship, a group of theologically conservative ministers and elders from nine denominations, specifies that the “synod” would “not constitute organic union of its participating churches,” but provide “a true spiritual bond.”

Old-Time Pentecostal Power

Americans and Canadians from twenty Pentecostal denominations and groups representing 1.5 million members marked a quarter century of cooperation as the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America met in Toronto last month. PFNA chairman Robert W. Taitinger, superintendent of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, noted with satisfaction “the emerging charismatic interest” in all churches today.

Indeed, even as the 300 PFNA delegates met in downtown Evangel Temple, a large charismatic group of mainline church-goers was meeting quietly in nearby Metropolitan United Church. But while content of the two meetings may have been similar, styles were certainly different. The PFNA evening services had a rollicking camp-meeting atmosphere that warmed the hearts of old-timers in the movement as they contemplated the coming of Christ, which they expect to take place soon.

Conspicuous by its absence from PFNA ranks is the Church of God in Christ, whose headquarters is in Memphis. But Assemblies of God superintendent Thomas Zimmerman says the PFNA door is open to the predominantly black denomination—second-largest Pentecostal body in North America.

LESLIE K. TARR

Accc’S Fundamentalism: The ‘Swinging’ Churches

Basking in the Florida sun, members of the American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC) urged evangelicals in non-evangelical churches to come in from the cold and withdraw membership and support in those denominations. Singled out in one resolution was the United Methodist Church. The ACCC, whose twelve affiliates have about 5,000 congregations, criticized the Methodists for promoting a “so-called social gospel … and many ungodly and un-American activities.”

Meeting at its three-day annual convention in Jacksonville, the council also took a swing at the National and World councils of churches. It described both as furthering the cause of doctrinal apostasy and called on “every true believer” to separate from denominations aligned with the councils.

Key 73 also came in for an indirect attack as the ACCC called for a “return to Scriptural evangelism in 1973.” The “new evangelism” ignores Bible standards of “holiness, godliness and separation from apostasy and heresy,” the statement charged, and aids the “Anti-Christ ecumenical movement by directing innocent babes in Christ into false religion.” In other resolutions, the ACCC delegates called on Christians to lead efforts against pornography and homosexuality; opposed liberalization of abortion laws; described the present welfare system as “playing into the hands of all the enemies of our nation” and urged a welfare reform ministering only to those with genuine needs; reaffirmed the right of parents to educate their children as they see fit and without forced busing; and called on President Nixon to oppose federal aid to religion, including parochaid.

The Clergy Vote In Canada

Five clergymen were among the 264 persons elected to the House of Commons in the Canadian general election last month. Two are members of the New Democratic Party (NDP), a moderately socialist party, and three are Progressive Conservatives.

The New Democrats fielded a number of ministers as candidates, but only former party leader Tommy Douglas (Baptist) in British Columbia and Stanley Knowles (United Church) in Alberta were elected.

The elected Conservatives, who nearly tied Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s liberals, include Anglican professor Reg Stackhouse, of Wycliffe College in Toronto; Alex Patterson, a Nazarene from British Columbia; and David MacDonald, a United Church of Canada minister who was re-elected in Prince Edward Island. No ministers were among those elected from the Liberal party ranks, and the one United Church minister who sat as a Liberal in the last house was defeated.

Also elected was Douglas Roche, editor of the Western Catholic Reporter, a liberal Catholic newspaper published in Alberta. He took an Edmonton riding (district) for the Conservatives.

Robert Thompson, well-known president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and a long-time parliamentarian, was defeated. He served in the last parliament as a Conservative member from Red Deer, Alberta, considered a “safe” riding. After retiring from the Alberta seat, he was drafted for a British Columbia riding where he made a strong challenge to the incumbent NDP member. Thompson may now retire to work with the Evangelical Free Church’s Trinity Western College in British Columbia, though the possibility of another general election in the next few months (neither party has a majority) may result in a further try for a House seat.

Earlier this year, in another Canadian election British Columbia voters chose the New Democratic Party over the ruling Social Credit party, and in so doing elected the first Jewish premier in Canadian history: David Barrett, 41.

Among those ousted in the vote was one of the province’s best-known evangelical politicians, Phil Gaglardi, an ordained Pentecostal minister. Gaglardi, bombastic little convert from alcoholism, was a successful pastor in Kamloops, British Columbia, before entering politics. He was a highway minister in the Social Credit government for sixteen years before being demoted for allegedly allowing a relative to fly to Texas on a highway department jet. Later, apparently because the government needed the evangelical vote that Gaglardi could attract, he was restored to full cabinet membership with a welfare portfolio.

Gaglardi has been the continuous target of journalists and opposition critics who felt his personal and political ethics did not square with his fundamentalist views. Among the charges: he continually hired members of his own Calvary Temple (a Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada church) for government projects, used government aircraft for meeting his personal preaching engagements, and billed the B.C. government for travel and hotels when he spoke at a Transport for Christ convention in the eastern United States last year. He has also been convicted of contempt of court in a case involving payment of funds to a contractor against court orders. He was fined $2,000.

Succeeding Gaglardi as the possible leader of the evangelical vote in the Social Credit party is Harvey Schroeder. 39, music director for evangelist Barry Moore and a former music minister at Calvary Temple in Denver, Colorado, where Charles Blair is minister. Schroeder won in Chilliwack, center of a heavy concentration of Mennonites and other evangelicals.

LESLIE K. TARR and LLOYD MACKEY

Whither The Shakers?

The Shakers are dying out, but are leaving the world plenty to remember them by.

In Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, for example, there are the newly restored remains of a charming Shaker community that flourished during the nineteenth century. This week, visitors are being treated to a special Thanksgiving observance at the site. Plays are being performed, along with programs of folk songs, ballads, and madrigals.

Don’t bother looking for any Shakers in Kentucky, though. The last one died in 1923. In fact, there are only fourteen Shakers left in all—and all are women. The youngest is in her forties, the oldest in her nineties. They live in Maine and New Hampshire.

Within the last year, a group of Christians have undertaken to develop one part of the Pleasant Hill community into a cultural and retreat area. The old West Family Wash House has been turned into an assembly hall, and nearby buildings are used to house guests. All the structures preserve their original flavor, with the addition only of modern conveniences. Yokefellows International recently began a succession of retreats there aimed at personal spiritual renewal.

Shaker theology apparently is doomed to extinction as a practiced faith, though there has been talk of a revival in recruitment in New England. There has reportedly been some controversy among the survivors whether new recruits should be admitted. Some young people have wanted to join, a development that would perpetuate Shakerism at least for a time. Theirs is a communal, celibate life-style.

The Shakers will leave an imprint not upon church history so much as upon, of all things, technology. They invented a number of products now in everyday usage such as clothespins, flat brooms, and circular saws. The highly functional furniture they designed is growing in popularity.

Shakers trace their origin to the latter part of the eighteenth century and the teachings of faith healer Ann Lee, who was regarded as the female counterpart of Jesus Christ, and the one in whom the Second Coming was fulfilled. They stressed hard work and a high degree of discipline. At their peak they had some 6,000 followers in eighteen communities, all in the Eastern United States. They were called Shakers because of their frenetic dances while singing.

HAROLD B. KUHN

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