Agape Atlanta: Urban Renewal

Atlanta may soon be the world’s most evangelized major city.

Nearly two months ago newspaper ads and billboards all over the city suddenly announced “I found it.” Buttons with the same message appeared on hundreds, maybe thousands, of lapels. Radio and television spots featured people telling how they had no peace until they “found it.”

Those who didn’t find out from the button wearers or others in the know what the “it” was had to wait only a week. Beginning in May, the ads, billboards, and spots described the “it” as “new life in Christ.” A call to a certain phone number would bring to one’s door a hand-delivered copy of a booklet, “Here’s how you can find it”—and a personal witness.

The four-week media splash was part of a well-coordinated evangelistic blitz known as Agape Atlanta. It is a pilot project in saturation evangelism by Campus Crusade for Christ. Crusade leaders say they will use Atlanta as a model in encouraging Christian leaders elsewhere to mount similar campaigns in their cities. It’s all part of Crusade’s church-centered “Here’s life, America” national strategy for reaching the land for Christ by 1980. A how-to conference is scheduled to be held at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, July 21–24.

Agape was launched in the spring of 1974. After a flashy start it nearly fizzled beneath financial problems and indifference or outright cold shouldering by churches. The executive committee, headed by businessman Jerry Nims, curbed expenses, axed the paid administrator, and recruited 1,000 women to maintain a twenty-four-hour prayer chain.

Nims insists that Agape is “a movement, not a program.” The idea is to get a pastor turned on to evangelism, then get him to disciple a core of leaders in his church, train his membership in evangelism, devise opportunities for the members to use their training, and involve them in ongoing outreach. As other churches catch the vision there can be cooperative outreach. Strong emphasis is also placed on the spiritual nurture of each member.

Agape didn’t really get off the ground until after the prayer chain started up, observes Nims. The backing of two influential pastors, Charles Stanley of First Baptist Church and Sam Coker of Grace United Methodist Church, did much to open other churches to the Agape concept (about 100 Atlanta churches are presently participating)

Church participation is the key, says Agape coordinator Bruce Cook. “Without ongoing movements of evangelism and discipleship in these churches, the mass media campaign would have had no one to follow up the people who wanted to know more about Christ.”

Among Agape’s cooperative endeavors:

• an evangelistic circus for 14,000 youths sponsored by the ecumenical Christian Council of Metro Atlanta, which has embraced Agape as part of its program;

• prison ministry led by Crusade staffer Harold Thompson, with hundreds of decisions for Christ recorded, and with Christian psychologist Henry Brandt witnessing to prison psychologists, psychiatrists, and other counselors;

• Bible study groups for 10,000 children in conjunction with Child Evangelism Fellowship and other groups;

• a campus witness at Atlanta’s twenty-three colleges and universities;

• a speaker-training program for women;

• a social-concerns witness;

• a Pro-Week, featuring professional athletes in high-school assemblies.

By the end of the year Agape leaders hope to see a major goal accomplished: every household in Atlanta personally contacted in Christian witness. Using a computer, the leaders have divided the city into 7,000 blocks of about fifty households each. Church workers assigned to these blocks are using telephone and door-to-door surveys to open the way for renewal of Atlanta’s urban masses.

LINDA RANEY WRIGHT and EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

LOOSE IN LAPLAND

In Lapland, owners of television sets and washing machines with windowed doors are the objects of a special brand of outreach by an obscure Lutheran sect described by Scandinavian news sources as extremist. Members of the growing sect, known as Laestadians (after their nineteenth-century Swedish founder), are embarked on a campaign to save people from hell by smashing their TV sets. Residents so visited have protested to authorities, but as of last month no charges had been made. One consolation: after wrecking a TV set, the faithful make full payment before leaving the owner’s home.

The group condemns peep-door washing machines because they permit people to view women’s undergarments.

Sleeper

Delegates to the annual meeting of the Presbyterian Synod of the Virginias, a body of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), spent a leisurely Memorial Day weekend in the hills above the Shenandoah Valley looking after mostly routine business matters. In moving down the agenda the moderator mentioned that some members of the Highlands, Virginia, presbytery were appealing a decision in an ordination case, and he asked for—and got—approval to set up a judicial commission to pass judgment in the matter. No details were given, no questions were asked, and the house went on with the next item of business.

Days after the delegates left for home the word filtered down: that ordination case they glossed over is similar to one causing a lot of unrest in the United Presbyterian Church (see June 6 issue, page 42), and it has the potential for sparking serious controversy throughout the Southern church, which is generally more conservative than the UPC.

The case concerns John Gess, 27, a graduate of the decidedly conservative Reformed Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, who was approved for ordination by the Highlands presbytery in January. He was ordained and installed as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Narrows, Virginia, the following month. But fifteen members of the presbytery filed a complaint against his ordination. Their complaint was based on his statement that for reasons of conscience he could not participate in the ordination of women as church officers. This, said the opposition, disqualifies Gess for ordination because it means he cannot fully subscribe to the government and discipline of the denomination.

If the judicial commission votes to overturn the presbytery’s decision (as occurred in the similar UPC Kenyon case), subsequent PCUS meetings will not be as leisurely as the one where it all started.

Segregation Stoppers

Church-related primary and secondary schools that refuse to admit students of any racial or ethnic group will lose their federal tax exemptions—even where religious beliefs are cited for racially exclusive policies—according to a new Internal Revenue Service ruling. The ruling has special implications for the so-called segregation academies operated by churches in the South and perhaps for schools of certain black religious groups.

The denial of exempt status means that contributors may not claim tax deductions for gifts to the schools. Denominations and churches will not be affected directly unless they operate schools that are not separately incorporated. If a school that is not separately incorporated persists in discrimination, says the IRS, the parent organization is subject to loss of its tax exemption.

In another landmark case, a federal judge in Miami ruled that a school run by a religious group has no right to refuse admission to black students on the ground that the Bible prohibits commingling of the races. The case involves the 1,700-student Dade Christian School in Miami, operated since 1962 by the New Testament Baptist Church, an independent Baptist body with some 4,000 members, all in south Florida.

Judge Joe Eaton said segregation was not a religious tenet but a “policy” of the church.

White Collar Crime

A Christian composer was pleased during his visit to a church in another city when the choir sang a song he had written. But his pleasure turned to mixed feelings of outrage and gloom when he discovered that only the organist had a published copy; the others all had photocopies produced by a machine on the premises.

For every music publication sold, approximately seventy-five to 100 illegal copies are made either for personal group use or for bootleg sale, claims Peter Kladder, Jr., president of the Zondervan publishing firm in Grand Rapids.

Kladder was elected president of the Church Music Publishers Association at its forty-ninth annual meeting, held in Key Biscayne, Florida. Delegates to the meeting restructured the organization in an effort to deal more effectively with the problem of copyright violations. Nearly fifty music publishers belong to the CMPA, and virtually all of them have been getting hurt to some degree as an ever increasing number of churches acquire photocopy machines.

PULLING THE PUPPETS

Puppets may have been in as interesting tools for teaching children in church schools, but they are now out, if certain educational leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church have their way.

“The hand-or string-manipulated figures of the entertainment world are highly amusing,” says executive Howard F. Rampton of the SDA Sabbath School Department, “but they do nothing to add dignity to religious themes. Rather they insinuate a certain degree of mockery. They relegate that which is holy and sacred to the realm of myths, fairy tales, ghosts, and goblins.”

Rampton said that the Church of England placed a ban on puppets during the Reformation and that the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent took similar action.

A study committee of Rampton’s department issued a statement last month disapproving the use of puppets. The denomination has appointed another committee to study the issue further.

Spring Housecleaning

In what has become an annual rite of spring, religious groups with holdings in major U. S. business firms introduced at a number of this year’s stockholder meetings a bevy of resolutions aimed at reforming corporate practices both at home and overseas. The resolutions, many of them coordinated by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), an affiliate of the National Council of Churches, dealt with such issues as strip mining, equal-employment opportunities and practices, and corporate policies in South Africa.

None of the church-backed measures won, but a few garnered enough votes to make management sit up and take notice—which is one of the purposes of ICCR efforts, according to spokesman Tim Smith.

The biggest cooperative effort handled by the ICCR this year was a move to make IBM stop selling computers to the South African government. Computers, alleged the ICCR, are used to aid white-minority rule there. The measure received only 2 per cent of the vote (3 per cent is needed to reintroduce the same resolution a succeeding year, though a different resolution on the same point may be introduced annually), but the South African matter dominated IBM’s meeting in Pittsburgh. Church representatives vowed to keep the heat on.

An agency of the United Church of Christ got a vote of 3.5 per cent on its resolution to ban importation of South African coal by the Southern Company. The measure complained of slave-labor conditions in South African mines and suggested that imports harm American business. Southern will not expand its import contract—“a very hopeful sign,” says Smith.

At Bristol-Myers, two orders of Catholic nuns mustered a 5.4 per cent vote for their resolution calling for disclosure of information about world marketing of baby formula. The nuns say they are concerned about nutritional and cultural aspects of bottle-feeding infants.

Church pressure is being felt by corporations in other lands, too. Archbishop Olof Sundby, representing the Church of Sweden (Lutheran) and the Swedish Covenant Church, showed up at the annual meeting of the giant Swedish electrical firm ASEA. Company directors, replying to Sundby’s discomforting inquiries on corporate policy in South Africa, conceded they were paying blacks less than whites for equal work but said they were trying to improve conditions. Sundby, implying he would also visit other firms, promised to stop by at next year’s meeting for another look.

Under heavy pressure from the Church of Denmark (Lutheran), the East Asiatic Company—Scandinavia’s largest multinational enterprise—last year raised wages and improved working conditions of its non-white workers in South Africa. However, the Program to Combat Racism (PCR) agency of the Danish Church says much more must be done to eliminate apartheid-related problems, including the establishment of educational programs and the recognition of black unions. The PCR formulated four resolutions for presentation at this year’s stockholders’ meeting, but management was able to forestall a vote on them.

Much of the overseas church action stems from a 1972 decision of the World Council of Churches, when the WCC’s Central Committee recommended that WCC member churches rid themselves of shares in companies with factories in South Africa. So far, the churches seem more inclined toward getting the corporate houses in order than toward moving out.

Bicentennial Project

The Bicentennial crescendo is rapidly building, and many religious leaders do not want to be left out, or worse, see religion made subservient to political ends. Project FORWARD ’76 (an acronymn for Freedom of Religion Will Advance Real Democracy) was launched late in 1973 by the Interchurch Center of New York City “to facilitate planning for strong spiritual and religious emphases in observances of the American Bicentennial.” R. H. Edwin Espy, former general secretary of the National Council of Churches, is the chairman, but the intention is to promote interest far beyond the traditional NCC constituency.

Last month in Washington, D. C., the project, together with the federal government’s American Revolution Bicentennial Administration, sponsored a consultation on “Religion and the American Experience.” Uncommonly for such gatherings, no resolutions, statements, or plans were formulated. Part of the consultation’s significance lay in the diversity of association of the approximately 175 participants, reflecting the nation’s kaleidoscopic religious heritage. Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Mormon, Unitarian, Buddhist, Muslim, and Jewish leaders joined with representatives of a variety of Protestant denominations to listen to a few speeches and, more importantly, to split into ten groups for more than five hours of discussion, each on a particular theme such as religious freedom, civil religion, and the meaning of the pursuit of happiness. Presumably, the participants will use what they learned to help their own groups draw up Bicentennial observances.

There was a certain irony in that tax funds were used to defray a small part of the expenses of a gathering that, to the extent that any consensus was detectable, was concerned to see that the religious themes of the Bicentennial celebration are not orchestrated to glorify Uncle Sam.

DONALD TINDER

Alive And Well

Mission officials privately expressed optimism over reports from Saigon early this month regarding the well-being of seven missionaries and a child who were interned in a highlands prison camp following the fall of South Viet Nam to communist forces. Some observers felt the release of the news reports meant the missionaries would soon be freed.

The names of the missionaries and four other foreigners with them were listed in the reports.* They were in good health, were being fed adequately, and—suffering from boredom—were anxious to get home. One unconfirmed report indicated they were being forced to attend propaganda classes. Another said they were spending part of their time reading their Bibles, which they had been permitted to keep.

A U. S. State Department official said the government had communicated its concern to communist authorities and considered the release and safe return of the nine imprisoned Americans, six of them missionaries, “a matter of urgent priority.”

A Saigon radio broadcast meanwhile said that while there is no ban on members of religious groups attending church services or religious ceremonies, these must all be held inside the respective churches and temples.

Practitioner President

Jules Cern of New York, a full-time Christian Science lecturer and practitioner for twenty-two years and a former Broadway actor, was named to a one-year term as president of the Christian Science church at its eightieth annual meeting in Boston. Some 12,000 persons attended the event. There are more than 3,000 Christian Science congregations in fifty-seven countries.

The Wendt Case: Guilty As Charged

A five-member judicial panel of the Episcopal diocese of Washington, D. C., this month by a 3–2 vote found rector William Wendt guilty of disobeying his bishop, William F. Creighton. In a twenty-page decision, the judges said that the central issue in Wendt’s recent ecclesiastical trial (see May 23 issue, page 55) was not the question of the ordination of women to the priesthood but whether Wendt disobeyed an admonition by Creighton. Against Creighton’s injunction, Wendt had invited a woman whose ordination had been ruled invalid by the Episcopal bishops to celebrate communion, a priestly act, in his Washington church.

The verdict of guilt could have meant a penalty ranging from a mild reprimand to expulsion from the ministry. The court opted for the former, recommending merely that Creighton admonish Wendt not to let it happen again. The ruling prevents the bishop from imposing a more severe sentence.

The jurists split along clergy-lay lines. The majority three are clergymen; the lay persons, one a woman, are both lawyers. In their decision, the panelists said they respected Wendt and believed he obeyed his conscience in disobeying the bishop.

Following the announcement of the ruling Wendt said he would probably appeal or ask for a retrial.

CHERYL FORBES

Reflections

Of the fifty-four TV programs entered from seven countries in the Fourth International Christian Television Festival at Brighton, England, two from Britain were prizewinners, along with one each from Norway, West Germany, and Zambia. A U. S. entry, “Reba,” a segment of a documentary series on religion produced by Philip Garvin for WGBH-TV in Boston, was given honorable mention in the “Man seeking God” category.

A number of evangelical students of communication were among the nearly 300 delegates from around the world. British evangelical leader Gordon Landreth said he saw the political stance of the World Council of Churches reflected in some of the programs. Evangelicals need to make increased and better use of TV as a communication medium, he commented.

The winning programs dealt with an overview of contemporary youth, the conflict in Northern Ireland, the problems faced by parents of a mongoloid child, Hindus in Nepal, and African culture.

Losing Ground

Has total membership in America’s religious bodies peaked?

That seems to be a valid conclusion, according to statistics in the new Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches 1975, published by Abingdon Press. The yearbook, based primarily on 1974 reports showing counts made during 1973 and the early part of 1974, indicates that for the first time total membership is down. The 1974 membership of the 221 religious bodies listed is 131.2 million, down by nearly 180,000.

The Catholic Church, listing 48.4 million members, barely held its own, recording only 5,011 additions.* In numerical increases, the 12.2-million member Southern Baptist Convention led the way with 230,067 new members, but this was only a 1.9 per cent rise. Most other large denominations lost ground, and numerous smaller bodies showed only minor gains or losses.

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