Dispute in Des Monies: Should Concivtions Be Left at Home?

To keep its presses rolling and profitable, the giant Meredith Corporation—publisher of the eight-million-circulation Better Homes and Gardens magazine—has a five-year contract with Penthouse International to print Penthouse and Viva, slick monthlies featuring pictures of women and men in various states of undress and sexual activity.

Many of the workers at the huge plant in Des Moines, Iowa, think the contract is not good for homes, families, the nation, or themselves. Five who refused to work on the nudie magazines now have plenty of time for their own homes and gardens: they were fired. Others have quit Meredith because they didn’t want to have any part in producing the skin journals, and some employees are said to be working under protest.

The five who were fired cited religious convictions and asked to be assigned to other publications. The company refused and suspended them for a “cooling off period.”

The suspensions lasted less than a month. On September 29, management told the five that if they had not changed their minds they were discharged as of the next day.

Corporate officials also told the three men and two women that if they later decide they will work on the Penthouse publications they can have their jobs back. But if they go back, according to an official, their seniority and benefits will be forfeited, and they will have to start at the bottom again, in accordance with company and union rules at the Des Moines plant.

The senior worker among the five is a twenty-four-year veteran with Meredith, engraver Bill E. Mackin, 50, a Baptist. He is vice-president of his union local and chairman of its executive board. As a labor representative, he has dealt with corporate officials over the years, presenting the grievances of other workers. He told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that management people, with whom he was on a first-name basis, often commended him for the way he presented labor’s concerns and for his “conservative” approach. When his own big grievance came up, though, he was not as “liberal” as Meredith’s management.

He said a top officer told him, “Bill, come back any time you want to, but leave your convictions at home.”

Donald L. Arnold, Meredith vice-president for employee and public relations, gave this explanation: “It’s our view that our discharge of these five employees for refusing to perform their jobs does not violate laws protecting religious freedom. We could not reasonably accommodate all the individuals in the printing plant who might conceivably claim the same privilege. Any attempt to do so would lead to chaotic personnel problems.”

In the first few days of the dispute Meredith did, indeed, “accommodate” him, Mackin said. Penthouse and Viva work was routed around him, and he was assigned other jobs. He conceded that the company might have a real problem if such objectionable material had to be sent only to employees who had no convictions about doing such work. He believes a large majority are unhappy about the contract and would rather not have any part in fulfilling it.

On the other hand, he rejects the company’s argument that it agreed to do the two magazines out of economic necessity. Meredith spokesmen have said the loss of printing contracts with the Conde Nast publishing firm (Vogue, House and Garden) left them with idle press time that had to be put to productive use. Mackin thinks that Meredith failed to work hard enough to keep the Condé Nast business and, in fact, refused to print one magazine on grounds that it was a non-standard size. He said Meredith then contracted with Penthouse to print one of its publications the same non-standard size. A company official claimed that size was only one factor in the discontinuance of the Conde Nast business.

At any rate, Mackin thinks Meredith could have found other jobs to keep its presses rolling and its workers busy. He says he believes the Lord has prospered the corporation over the years because of the large number of Christians working there because of the quality of its products.

In discussing the dispute, a Meredith spokesman emphasized that the company was only the printer, not the publisher, of Penthouse and Viva. The distinction made little difference to Mackin and the other objecting workers. The veteran engraver said the group didn’t want any part in “spewing forth [this] filth” across the nation.

The press run for Penthouse, aimed at a male audience, is estimated at five million. About one million copies of Viva, edited for women, are printed. Meredith actually began its fulfillment of the contract last year at its plant in Lynchburg, Virginia. Company officials confirmed that parts of both publications are still being produced there. They denied that any employees there quit or were fired over the matter of magazine content. There was much less publicity over the issue in Lynchburg, but one Christian is known to have left his job there.

According to Mackin, all the Des Moines workers independently reached the decision to refuse to work on the skin magazines. There has been little organized support, in fact. The long-time engraver and the other two men, Larry Latham and David Coldwell, are all Baptists, but they belong to different congregations. The women are Doris Boots and Virginia Zepeda. One belongs to a community church, and the other is a Jehovah’s Witness.

Mackin’s union presented a grievance over the question, but it was denied. The workers seeking unemployment compensation after their firings have been summoned to appear before a state board to explain their claims.

So far little help has come to them from any source. However, Mackin is confident that some good will come out of it all. At least, he says, the press coverage has brought him letters of encouragement and assurance of prayers from all over the nation and from as far away as Korea, where a soldier read an article about it in the Pacific Stars and Stripes.

It seems ironic, remarked Mackin, that one day a Des Moines paper reported in one column the firing of the Meredith employees who refused to work on the sex-oriented publications while in the adjacent column there was an article reporting a sheriff’s raid on a distributor of pornographic materials.

The Unsettling Case Of Unsettled Orphans

Adoption proceedings are usually held out of public view and attract little attention. A California doctor’s suit against an evangelical adoption agency has changed all that, though, in the case of twenty Cambodian orphans.

Richard S. Scott, a physician with the Los Angeles County Health Department, has won the first round in a legal fight to prohibit permanent adoption by the eighteen evangelical families approved by Family Ministries of Whittier. (Two other children who have not yet been placed in adoption homes but who are in California foster homes are affected by the suit.) In a “notice of intended decision,” Superior Court Judge Lester E. Olson ruled in Scott’s favor and prepared the way for some landmark decisions in higher courts.

Issues raised in the highly publicized trial went far beyond the usual questions of suitability of the proposed homes of the children. The judge’s decision, which was to be formally issued before the end of this month, touched on questions of tax exemption of churches and religious agencies, the right of such organizations to “discriminate” in selection of the people with whom they work, the role of the state in adoption, and the status of refugee orphans.

While Scott has won the first major legal test, Family Ministries, World Vision, and the couples who got the Cambodian children last spring have vowed that the fight is not over. Dennis B. Guernsey, executive director of Family Ministries, said his agency would challenge the Olson ruling in state appellate courts. World Vision president Stanley Mooneyham, who had the youngsters brought to the United States when Phnom Penh fell to the Communists, has announced plans to file a separate suit on constitutional issues. This action is expected to be taken in federal court. The parents who have received the orphans are also planning litigation.

At the center of the controversy is a fifteen-month-old Cambodian boy, Trop Ven. Scott was at Los Angeles International Airport in April when the youngster and others who had been evacuated from World Vision’s Phnom Penh nutrition center arrived. The physician contacted Family Ministries about the possibility of getting the boy, and the agency notified him of the steps involved in the process. He was cautioned, however, that if he filed an application he would be at the end of a line of 1,200 others seeking children.

According to Guernsey, Scott and his wife never formally applied for the boy and thus were never turned down. He explained that after the Scotts saw in Family Ministries literature that it required adoptive parents to be “active members in good standing of an evangelical Protestant church,” they “apparently concluded that because they were Episcopalians and not regular church participants they were disqualified as adoptive parents.”

After he made his own determination that he would not get Trop Ven from Family Ministries, Scott filed the suit that not only asked for the one boy but also challenged the procedures used in placement of all the refugee children. In the trial, he produced Roman Catholic and Jewish witnesses who said they had been denied children by the agency.

Family Ministries contended that it is a time-honored practice for Protestant agencies to place babies with Protestant families, Catholic agencies to place them with Catholics, Jewish agencies to place them with Jews. Mary Sullivan, chief of adoption services for the California Department of Health, said a state regulation required placement with “parents whose religious faith is the same” as the child’s or his parent’s. In the case of the Cambodian orphans, the religion of the parents was unknown, but World Vision was named substitute parent by Cambodia.

Not only did California Attorney General Evelle J. Younger file a brief stating that World Vision had legal custody of the children when Phnom Penh fell, but General Sak Sutsakahan, the last chief of state before the nation fell, was put on the witness stand to explain that his government recognized World Vision’s authority to place the orphans inside or outside Cambodia. Mooneyham testified that World Vision, as substitute parent, requested Family Ministries to find Christian homes for the children. Attorneys for Scott did not challenge the testimony of either the Cambodian or the World Vision leader. Neither was cross examined.

In his decision, the judge refused to accept the conclusion that the children had been relinquished to World Vision and that it could therefore decide the religion of adoptive parents.

The wider issue in the ruling is the finding by the judge that because agencies of government assisted with the process of evacuation and adoption at various stages, therefore no religious discrimination could be practiced in placing the orphans.

Scott had argued the tax exemption enjoyed by Family Ministries was a state subsidy and thus, in effect, it was a state-funded agency which could not legally discriminate. In his order, Judge Olson agreed that religious discrimination in this case was unconstitutional.

World Vision is expected to appeal to the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution in its suit. The complicated cases may take six months to a year or more to settle. Meanwhile, all of the authorities have agreed to let the children stay with the initial adoptive parents. Trop Ven is living with an Orange County couple who attend a Lutheran church.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

ON TARGET

Parishioners at St. Philip the Apostle Catholic Church in Columbus, Ohio, turned in their handguns, including their children’s toy guns, at a Sunday mass this month. The action was in response to an appeal by parish priest Richard Engle, who said the guns would be melted down into crosses. Engle, who handed over his own .22-caliber target pistol, said the appeal was prompted by the recent attempts on President Ford’s life. The priest and his people plan to send crosses manufactured from the firearms to Ohio’s congressional delegation as a protest “against the proliferation of handguns.”

Goodness And Mercy

Informal surveys of clergymen show that most agree it would be best to allow Karen Ann Quinlan to die. The 21-year-old New Jersey woman has been kept alive by mechanical means for five months, the victim of irreparable brain damage, and her Catholic parents have sought court approval to let her die “with dignity.”

Pastoral Pay

Recent studies show that average clergy salaries continue to lag behind those of comparable vocational categories. According to one major study, average pay to pastors in 1973 was $10,348 for salary and housing (an amount equivalent to $14,383 by next year under current inflationary patterns). The high ranged from an average of $12,250 for clergy of the Christian Reformed Church to $7,091 for Assemblies of God ministers. Specific salaries varied widely from the average.

Examples of other averages: Episcopal Church, $11,869; Lutheran Church in America, $11,328; United Methodist Church, $10,915; Christian Church (Disciples), $10,031; American Baptist Churches, $9,819; Evangelical Free Church, $9,714; Southern Baptist Convention, $9,688; the Wesleyan Church, $7,641.

The national average amount is simply too low to make ends meet for most pastors, laments Lutheran financial specialist Manfred Hoick, Jr. And when pay is low, he points out, the result is financial frustration for the pastor and his family—and impaired effectiveness in his ministry. In other words, everybody suffers, including the congregation.

Prison And Priorities

Church-state tensions in South Korea eased a bit last month when Presbyterian clergyman Kim Kwan Suk, general secretary of the Korean National Council of Churches, was paroled from prison. He and three other church leaders had been convicted in early September of misappropriating relief funds from overseas, diverting the money from slum work to political and legal defense activities (September 26 issue, page 48). Kim had been given a six-month sentence minus the 150 days he spent in jail before the trial. No information was immediately available about the status of the other three leaders.

In other recent developments, two major declarations were issued by groups of church leaders at meetings in Seoul. Top-level leaders of eighteen denominations, including all of South Korea’s major ones, signed a “Declaration of the Korean Churches.” It sets forth the “defense of our faith” and national security as “the primary task” of the churches. It reaffirms the churches’ “priestly and prophetic functions” amid the current church-state crisis but expresses the belief that such ministries can be carried out constructively and in the spirit of reconciliation. Nevertheless, the statement warns, “if and when the freedom of our faith and mission will be threatened by any pressures, we four million Christians firmly resolve to resist them at the risk of our lives.” The statement expressed regret that some church leaders who protested restrictive government policies had been imprisoned and that two missionaries had been deported.

The statement also says that South Korean churches welcome financial and personnel assistance from foreign mission agencies but only if it is “given without infringing upon our autonomy.”

The other document issued in Seoul, a “Declaration of Mission,” came out of a consultation attended by fifty delegates, representing evangelical missionaries and agencies in twelve Asian countries. Drafted by Asians, it calls for churches of the Third World to take their places as equal partners with the churches of the West in the task of world evangelization.

Mistakes of Western missions are emphasized but not without some self-criticism for the overdependence of Asian churches upon outside resources and their slowness in accepting missionary responsibility.

The statement’s sternest criticism is directed toward liberal ecumenists for their theologies of liberation and revolution and for their refusal “to take the Scriptures to be the Word of God.” Assert the Asian leaders; “We cannot accept, as a part of the Christian mission, any activity which challenges biblical authority.”

On another controversial topic, the declaration states:

To advocate a moratorium of the Christian mission in the face of the desolute reality of the mission field is erroneous human judgment destitute of the power of the Holy Spirit. We have to train new mission forces to succeed to the Western mission before we talk of the termination of it.

The declaration was presented publicly in a service at Seoul’s Central (Assemblies of God) Church, attended by 8,000.

Participants at the five-day consultation, which ended early last month, formed the Asia Missions Association (AMA) to promote cooperative missionary work and to sponsor a training center for missionary candidates (it has been set up in suburban Seoul). Christian and Missionary Alliance leader Philip Teng of Hong Kong was elected AMA president, and Presbyterian minister David Cho of Seoul was named general secretary.

TWO-WAY OFFERING

Pastor Howard Conatser of the 4,000-member Beverly Hills Baptist Church in Dallas recently preached a series of sermons on the types of offerings in Scripture. At one midweek prayer service he announced that a freewill offering would be received. Normally, collections are not a part of the church’s prayer meeting.

Conatser told his audience of 950 that the church didn’t really need the money. “We are already $100,000 over our budget for this year,” he said. “But you need to be blessed; you need to experience the grace of giving.”

After the offering was received the pastor directed the deacons to return to the congregation with the baskets, which contained more than $1,000. “It’s God’s money,” he explained. “If you need money and have asked God to help you get it, take what you need.” Only a few did but for them the collection in reverse was a godsend, observed reporter Helen Parmley of the Dallas Morning News.

One parishioner told of a clean but poorly dressed youth who took a couple of bills from the basket as it passed, then lifted his head and said softly, “Praise the Lord.”

Honduras: After The Hurricane

One year after Hurricane Fifi dealt destruction across northern Honduras, life appears to have returned to normal. Bridges and rail lines are back in service, and the banana fields are green again. But with damage estimated at more than half of the nation’s annual $900 million GNP, it will be a long time before the fragile economy fully recovers. Fifi destroyed 90 per cent of the crops in the prosperous Sula Valley—including the bananas that provide the bulk of the country’s foreign exchange; drowned 100,000 head of cattle; and washed away or damaged 25,000 houses, leaving an estimated 300,000 persons homeless. Estimates of the death toll vary from 5,000 to 10,000. No one really knows.

Response came quickly from a number of international Christian agencies. World Relief Commission (WRC), the relief arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, made an immediate grant of $35,000 to evangelical missions working in the disaster area and later added $135,000 more. A joint program by Food for the Hungry and Seattle’s King’s Garden produced 557,000 pounds of food, 32,000 pounds of clothing, and $55,000 worth of medicine. Their Mercy Airlift DC-3 flew fifty-eight missions within Honduras as well as ferrying supplies from New Orleans. Medical Assistance Programs (MAP) air-lifted over five tons of medicine and other goods. The Relief Air Force (RAF), a cooperative effort of WRC and Missionary Aviation Fellowship, worked with eight mission groups, providing food drops to isolated villages and other services. (JAARS, the air division of Wycliffe Bible Translators, recently joined the RAF, which will be used in future disasters.)

Much of the aid was channeled through CEDEN, the Evangelical Committee for National Emergency, established after the 1969 Honduras-El Salvador “Soccer War” and reactivated by Fifi.

Vast amounts of aid poured in from denominations and ecumenical agencies overseas. Church World Service, relief wing of the National Council of Churches, sent $360,000 in cash and $259,000 in material aid. Catholic Relief Services, the U. S. Catholic relief unit, sent $3.8 million in cash, goods, and services, $1.2 of it spent in reconstruction.

An unpublicized aspect of Fifi was the swift and generous response of Christians in Central America. Appeals by evangelical radio TGNA in neighboring Guatemala brought in twenty-five tons of food and clothing and more than $4,000 in cash, much of it given sacrificially. CEPAD, the Nicaraguan Evangelical Committee for Development, set up after the Managua earthquake, sent several truckloads of supplies as well as money. Goodwill Caravans of Costa Rica provided medical teams. One man from an unaffected area of Honduras traveled three days by foot, horseback, canoe, and bus to deliver an offering from his small church.

After the initial stage of emergency food and medical care, evangelical efforts focused on long-range development, primarily in housing. CEDEN is building at least 500 homes in several projects. It is also providing programs of family orientation, meals for children, and seeds and tools for home gardens. Mennonite, Baptist, and other groups have also been involved in housing projects.

Typical of long-term relief is the Central American Mission (CAM) project in El Progreso. The CAM church there took responsibility for its whole “barrio,” where some seventy homes have been rebuilt through a combination of U. S. funds, materials donated or given at cost by Honduran businesses, and local self-help labor. Through community effort and church funds a sewage line was put in and a swampy breeding ground for mosquitos filled in.

Results have extended beyond the material. A strong witness accompanying the relief program has more than doubled attendance at the CAM church and changed the whole atmosphere in the previously vice-ridden community.

“Fifi prepared hearts in an amazing way for the Gospel—in an area already considered responsive,” says CAM missionary Neil Livingston. Pastor Julio Marriaga, the CAM relief coordinator who told his congregation the Sunday after Fifi, “This is no time to sing hymns—this morning we’re going to get shovels and dig out the houses of our brethren who were flooded,” sees unprecedented opportunity for evangelism. Hundreds of professions of faith have been recorded by CAM alone in a series of campaigns that accompanied the relief and reconstruction program.

Some evangelicals have voiced concern over the close link between CEDEN and Church World Service. CWS has heavily supported CEPAD in Nicaragua, and one missionary was told by a CEPAD staffer that the agency wants to be the sole voice of Protestants to the Nicaraguan government. This could lead to a requirement that any missionary wishing to enter the country must have CEPAD approval.

Like CEPAD, CEDEN concentrates on social and physical need, leaving the spiritual aspect basically to the churches. However, “it’s important that people know why we do what we’re doing,” said Gustave Kuether, a United Church of Christ missionary who was a regional director of CEDAN for several months.

Economic recovery is not Honduras’s only problem. Peasant unrest continues after protest marches last summer against slowness in implementing agrarian reform. The marches were broken up by the army, and a dozen leaders were reportedly shot. An influential segment of the Roman Catholic Church has allied itself with the peasants. Two priests were murdered earlier this year, and according to a newspaper account, a wealthy landowner and two army officers were responsible for the slaying.

STEPHEN SYWULKA

SITTING OUT THE CELEBRATION

To most Mennonites, all wars are bad—including the American Revolutionary War. And while the majority of Americans see the Bicentennial as a celebration of the nation’s birth, some Mennonites view it as a celebration of war. Among them are leaders of the Lancaster (Pennsylvania) conference of the Mennonite Church, who have asked their 200 congregations with a membership of 16,000 not to participate in Bicentennial activities. Many of the activities seem “nationalistic and imperialistic—just contrary to our whole stand against war,” explains conference moderator David N. Thomas.

Religion In Transit

Congressional alert: The House Ways and Means Committee is scheduled to consider next month areas of proposed tax reform, including the matter of charitable contributions and the possibility of eliminating their tax-exempt status, according to Arizona congressman John B. Conlan. A proposed bill affecting charitable contributions died in December, and it’s doubtful that any bill undermining church giving could pass, but Conlan says he doesn’t want Christians to “be caught sleeping.”

Minutes before the film projectors were to begin, a tear gas cannister was set off near the stage inside the Beverly Theater in Beverly Hills, driving off the invitation-only audience at the world premiere of The Hiding Place. Among the celebrities routed were evangelist Billy Graham, whose organization produced the film, and Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch Christian on whose life the $1.7 million movie is based. Nazi sympathizers were blamed for the incident. The guests joined in a song service outside while firemen tried in vain to remove the fumes, then proceeded to a reception at a nearby hotel.

The two-year-old Manhattan Church of the Nazarene plans to air a five-hour, star-saturated television special on Channel 11 in New York City on October 26. Aimed at garnering support for the church’s urban ministries and at creating an awareness of the city’s spiritual needs, the show will be broadcast live from the Lambs Club, a Times Square-district landmark recently purchased by the church. The building’s 500-seat theater doubles as a sanctuary, the ballroom has been converted into a Christian supper club (complete with entertainment), and there are plans to open a Christian Institute for Arts and Media. Manhattan’s pastor is Paul Moore, formerly associated with a Jesus-movement revival in New Jersey involving 5,000 young converts.

Founder-president Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ called for reconciliation in a Sunday service last month at Melodyland Christian Center, a large charismatic church in Anaheim, California. From its beginning, Crusade has had a ban on tongues-speaking staffers, and no change is foreseen in the policy. But at Melodyland Bright said it was time to put aside the barriers that divide Christians. “I’ve never spoken in tongues; I don’t have that gift, but I love those who do,” he said. (Bright’s son Zachary is a student at LIFE Bible College, run by the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, and he attends the charismatic-oriented Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, California.)

Ever deepening rift: At the insistence of broadcaster Pat Robertson and evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman, Logos International canceled Bible teacher Bob Mumford (October 10 issue, page 52) as a speaker at next month’s big charismatic conference on the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem. Robertson and Miss Kuhlman, who disagree with Mumford’s teachings on discipleship, threatened to boycott the meeting if Logos failed to axe Mumford.

Minneapolis insuranceman Yernon M. Blikstad, a member of the Lutheran Church of the Brethren, was ousted from The Gideons International after twenty-nine years of membership in the 31,494-member Scripture-distribution organization. He was accused of violating Gideon policies (he says he inadvertently included 200 Gideon Bibles among other Bibles he was selling at cost at a Catholic charismatic conference, failing to get the necessary approval). Blikstad says he has sold or distributed some 500,000 Bibles or Bible portions in the last seven years, mostly the Revised Standard Version, the American Bible Society’s “Good News for Modern Man” translation, and the Living Bible paraphrase. The latter two have been rejected by the Gideons for distribution. Three years ago Blikstad was dropped by the Christian Business Men’s Committee because of his involvement in the charismatic movement.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed suit in Grand Rapids, Michigan, asking that two small school districts near the city be forbidden from handing out Bibles at commencement exercises. The districts have been offering graduates since 1893 a choice of Bibles, purchased with tax money.

Public schools in Oregon must not permit nativity scenes in school buildings while classes are being held, according to a ruling by Attorney General Lee Johnson.

Jehovah’s Witnesses reported nearly 300,00 baptisms throughout the world last year, a 34 per cent increase. It was a record harvest, say leaders of the sect, which claims two million members worldwide.

Personalia

Martha Edens, a former executive with the National Association of Mental Health and the wife of a Methodist minister, is the new general director of Church Women United in the U. S. A., the largest ecumenical body of church women.

Pastor Forrest D. Haggard of the 1,700-member Overland Park (Kansas) Christian Church was elected president of the World Convention of Churches of Christ (Disciples), a cooperative agency embracing Disciples groups in thirty-four countries.

Suffragan (assistant) bishop Scott F. Bailey will become bishop of the Episcopal diocese of West Texas. He has also been appointed to serve as the executive officer of the denomination’s triennial convention next year in Minneapolis.

Ian Moreland Hay, an executive of the Sudan Interior Mission, next month will succeed Raymond J. Davis as the SIM’s general director. Davis, 65, director since 1962, will head an SIM conference center in Florida. The SIM, founded in 1893 in Canada, has 800 missionaries, most of them serving in Africa.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.