Fighting Cults: The Tucson Tactic

Even though Pam Werner, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Sidney C. Werner of Scarsdale, New York, had been in the Unification Church for a number of months, she maintained periodic contact with her parents—an act discouraged by leaders of the controversial Korean-offshoot sect founded by Sun Myung Moon. When Moonie leaders in New York learned, however, that Pam, 28, had told her parents of her whereabouts, they changed her name and forbade further contact.

But Pam agreed last September 18 to meet her parents briefly at the Washington Monument while they were visiting the capital. At that meeting Pam’s mother persuaded her to meet for “shopping” in a nearby Maryland suburb the next day. What Pam didn’t know was that the parents were armed with a court order, a team of deprogrammers, and a body guard, ready to take her off for intensive “deprogramming” from the cult. The two young attorneys who head the Freedom of Thought Foundation, based in Tucson, Arizona, had been unable to get the usual “temporary conservatorship” (guardianship) order from a Washington judge, but they had secured one from a judge in nearby Maryland.

The next day, after six weeks of tailing the girl, the deprogrammers, plus local police, served the papers and whisked her off to a motel, then on to Ohio, where it took three days to “break” her from the rip of Moon doctrine.

After that, she spent thirty days in “rehabilitation” at the Freedom of Thought Foundation ranch, perched on a bluff on the outskirts of Tucson. Then she went home happily with her parents, who are of Unitarian background. They had spent at least $10,000 for the deprogramming.

Deprogrammings aren’t new; they’ve been going on at least since the San Diego-based patriarch of the art, Ted Patrick, started breaking the rigid “mind control” some sects are alleged to have over young converts who renounce past life-styles, parents, and friends for the austere discipline and often heretical theology of the so-called new religions. Patrick is now doing time in a California jail for falsely imprisoning and detaining cultists against their will (see August 27, 1976, issue, page 4). He has been granted work-release privileges, a ruling that evokes expressions of outrage from his foes.

But the Freedom of Thought Foundation (FTF) is unique—and inside the law, apparently—because the two attorneys, Michael Edward Trauscht, 28 and Wayne Howard, 29, have found the only legal means so far for parents to gain custody of their children for a thirty-day period. The temporary conservatorship or guardianship document is issued by a judge on the basis of testimony from psychologists, physicians, former cult members, and often the parents themselves.

Trauscht, a restless, energetic former county prosecutor, says his deprogramming team has already extricated more than seventy young persons from the cults since the foundation “went legal” just over a year ago. Trauscht, Howard, and Joe Alexander, 58, the chief deprogrammer, would like to make Tucson the anti-cult capital of the world—and they just may succeed if court challenges fail to squelch their method of getting young people to “think for themselves” again.

But the cults, supported by vast resources and (in the case of Moon’s Unification Church and the Hare Krishna movement, for example) far-flung empires, are fighting back with their own lawyers. And some religious groups, like the National Council of Churches, civil-rights leaders, and organizations like Americans United for Separation of Church and State, are raising questions about the legality, propriety, and permanency of deprogramming tactics.

An outspoken opponent, during a Los Angeles press conference called by the headquarters of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, called the FTF and the growing network of related deprogramming groups (nearly every major city now has one) “an outrageous nationwide conspiracy to deprive people of their civil and religious rights.”

Trauscht, in a hurried interview in Tucson between deprogramming forays, insisted that he agrees persons should be guaranteed freedom of religion, speech, and association. But, he added, “somewhere inherent in these rights is freedom of thought. We argue that the courts have a duty to see that those rights are not taken away.”

Senior deprogrammer Joe Alexander, a former auto dealer who claims to have deprogrammed about 600 persons in the past five years, his wife Esther, their son Joe, Jr., 25, and Trauscht and Howard opened the FTF rehabilitation center in Tucson with a $105,000 donation from the parents of a southern California young person deprogrammed from an Eastern religion.

Typically, a deprogram “rescue team” from the FTF operates like this: Trauscht acts as a legal consultant, Howard as a lawyer for the parents, the Alexanders and young ex-cult members as deprogrammers and as restrainers in case the subject tries to escape.

Tucson psychologist Kevin Gilmartin, 27, has frequently gone along to study the group or assist in counseling, though he says he never begins a counseling relationship unless hired by the parents with the subject’s approval.

“Prior to Trauscht’s legal precedent,” said Alexander, “we would snatch the kid on a street corner and hustle him to a motel room.” That kind of strong-arm approach is what landed Patrick in jail and precipitated criminal charges against an Arcadia, California, family several months ago for falsely imprisoning Madonna Slavin, a Krishna devotee. The Krishnas and the young woman also slapped a $2.5 million damage suit against her relatives and the deprogrammers (none was connected with the FTF).

Although the FTF approach, with the court order, is more sophisticated, the deprogramming target, after being watched during a stakeout for the appropriate moment for seizure, is still rushed to a motel room, usually within a short drive of where he is apprehended. There he is subjected to intense questioning, often for many hours spread over several days. The critical point is reached, deprogrammers say, when the subject suddenly “sees the light” and renounces his cultic faith.

“Look, I’m not here to take God out of your life,” Alexander told a young person under deprogramming recently. “I want you to realize that what you’re involved in is not of God.”

Not everyone on the receiving end of the deprogramming agrees, and some have returned to the religious group from which the FTF was trying to remove them.

One, Walter Robert Taylor, 22, a young monk taken from the Monastery of the Holy Protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Oklahoma City last July 15, returned to the monastery a few weeks later after being left unguarded in an Episcopal monastery in Phoenix. He recently told his story at press conferences, including one held at National Council of Churches headquarters in New York.

The son of a gynecologist in Richland, Washington, Taylor was raised an Episcopalian. He left college in 1972 to join the monastery, which is described as part of the Old Catholic church. Taylor’s parents claim the monastery was made up of Hindu followers at the time he joined. A Hindu group did occupy the Oklahoma City property at one time but left before the monks moved in.

(The Old Catholic movement grew out of protests against the Vatican in Europe many years ago. The only North American body officially recognized by the mainstream Old Catholic group is the Polish National Catholic Church of America, which claims 282,000 members in 162 congregations. The liberal ordination practices of several dissident Old Catholic bishops over the years has resulted in the formation of a number of small groups identifying themselves as Old Catholics. Many of their beliefs parallel traditional Catholic doctrine.)

In depositions in a case now pending before the Oklahoma Supreme Court, Taylor alleges that the guardianship proceeding was held without notice and in the absence of his attorney, that psychologist Gilmartin submitted a letter of professional opinion to the court “without ever having seen or examined me,” and that FTF deprogrammers abused him, kept him without sufficient food and sleep in a motel room presided over by a “goon squad,” and ripped off his monastic clothes while he was held down bodily by four persons. He was taken from Oklahoma City to a motel in Akron, Ohio, then to Howard’s home in Mesa, Arizona, where, alleges Taylor, Howard “discussed his sexual exploits and fornications and encouraged me to have sexual intercourse, which is contrary to my monastic practices and beliefs.” He says he was forced by Howard to sign legal papers to the effect that he didn’t want an attorney and that he would remain peacefully with the deprogrammers.

Next, he was taken to an Episcopal monastery in Phoenix “in an attempt to get me to change my monastic allegiance.” Left alone overnight, he telephoned his attorney, Charles Lane, also a member of Taylor’s Oklahoma City monastery, who sent him a plane ticket.

Meanwhile, the original guardianship order was voided by another judge a week after it was issued, and the case bogged down in legal hassles. At issue in the Oklahoma Supreme Court is whether Taylor’s parents can ever again institute guardianship proceedings.

The battle lines are forming. Lane says he wants to see the deprogrammers jailed as kidnappers. “This has gone completely beyond the borders of deprogramming members of cults,” declared United Methodist clergyman Dean Kelley, a church-state specialist with the NCC and the American Civil Liberties Union. Kelley believes the ACLU and church groups may mount a campaign to stop deprogramming. Andrew Gunn, executive director, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told reporters his group is studying the situation. He expressed concern “about the attitudes courts are taking” toward deprogramming. “The religious rights of everyone are imperiled if deprogramming is allowed to continue the way it has been,” he warned. Howard, however, says the claims are exaggerated and will not stand up in court.

Appearing in the New York press conferences with Taylor (known to his fellow monks as “Father Philaret”) was Deborah Dudgeon, 23, of Toronto. In 1974, she recounted, Ted Patrick and a team of Canadians attempted unsuccessfully to deprogram her after she converted to Roman Catholicism (she was raised a Protestant), dropped out of college in favor of pursuing social work, and joined a community of ten other young Catholics. Patrick was ordered to stay out of Canada by officials as a result of that case.

One of the most debatable aspects of deprogramming is whether or not physical force and abuse are inflicted by deprogrammers. Several former Moonies, interviewed at the sprawling ranch house used as the rehabilitation center, insisted that there was no physical harrassment during their deprogramming, though they were aware it would be futile to attempt escape during the first few days. They said Trauscht always tells a subject he will be free to go back to his cult after thirty days if he wants to.

According to Esther Alexander, who acts as a kind of “substitute mother” during the rehab period in the Tucson house, no one who has stayed the full month has returned to a sect. “We make friends with the kids first,” she said. “They are allowed to eat and sleep as much as they wish, play games, or work on crafts. Sometimes I take the girls into town for shopping.”

No effort is made to indoctrinate the deprogrammees with any specific religion during their stay at the ranch, say spokesmen, though nonsectarian prayers are said before meals. During the final week they are usually allowed to have Bibles in their possession; before that Bible reading is discouraged “because of the way it has been twisted and programmed in the convert’s mind,” according to Alexander, who was raised a Roman Catholic.

Gilmartin, the psychologist, says he wholeheartedly supports the FTF but is not a member of the team. The worst aspect of the “new religion” cults, he says, is “a lot of waste in potentially very creative people.” He believes “some kids have been helped by the cults—others devastated.” Those particularly susceptible, he believes, are young people “just entering adulthood, bright people who are abstractly related, often into things like painting and philosophy.”

Many former cultists, however, testify they were “psychologically kidnapped” by cult leaders who turned them into glassy-eyed “robots for God.”

An Oakland, California, attorney is going all out to break the chain of legal victories won by the FTF. Ralph Baker, representing a young man who rejoined the Moonies after an abortive deprogramming, says he is seeking a “test case” to challenge the constitutionality of the temporary conservatorship approach. He is convinced that it is a misuse of the law, which was originally designed to protect the elderly and senile from irrational acts such as giving away all their money.

The battle has begun to determine just what kind of coercion or “mind control” is involved, both in cult proselytism and in deprogramming, and the courts may well be the arena for the fray.

For frantic parents, the attempt to “rescue” a son or daughter from a cult is costly. Legal fees alone can run $3,000 to $5,000. With transportation expenses of the professional deprogrammers, motel rooms, meals, and other costs, the tab can easily reach $25,000.

Whatever the cost, business is brisk. “I’m getting twenty to fifty calls a day from worried families,” Trauscht said recently. “People are begging for help.”

Alexander, who said he gets ten requests to deprogram Moonies for every one to deprogram a follower of some other religious group, told of a man who pleaded for help for his 16-year-old daughter, who apparently was taken from a laundromat and was last seen on the West Coast with Moonies.

“You ask me how can I do this?” Alexander shrugged. “How can they do something like that?”

Scientology: Filing On

An “amicable settlement” was reportedly reached in a $1.5 million libel suit filed in Los Angeles in 1971 by the Church of Scientology against the publishers and author of the book, The Scandal of Scientology. Financial details were not disclosed. The church said it has agreed to withdraw the charges, and the author, Paulette Cooper of New York, has agreed to sign a statement of apology and admission of error.

Claims against Tower Publications, the publisher, were dropped in 1974 following a settlement in which Tower withdrew the paperback book from the market and paid a nominal cash settlement of $500, according to a Los Angeles Times report. Tower also issued an apology to the church. Officials of Tower said pursuing the matter was not worth the legal costs. Court records show that Tower won a ruling in 1973 that it had been improperly served with documents in the suit.

Last month Gregory Taylor, 26, a Church of Scientology member who was wrongly arrested in September in an apparent case of mistaken identity, filed a $750,000 suit against officials involved in the case, including agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service. The agents were allegedly seeking to serve an arrest warrant on a former member of the Church of Scientology on charges of using forged government identification in order to gain access to confidential records. The IRS acknowledged the error and apologized in a letter.

On another front, the Scientologists have been filing a number of requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to determine what the federal government has in its files on them. After a three-year legal struggle with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Scientologists recently obtained documents that “indicate the FBI employed illegal search and seizure against the church,” according to a Scientology release. The records allegedly show that the FBI in 1958 investigated a film the church was producing and “seized” the film from the manufacturer for private viewing.

In early 1975 the church appealed to President Ford to direct federal agencies to make available “to any religion or church, upon their request, any records or information collected on that religion and its activities, and to expunge from those files and records … any false, malicious, or defamatory information that can be proven to exist.” Months of hassling with White House personnel ensued, and not long ago Administration officials ended the discussion by expressing belief the federal agencies were abiding by the FOIA. They suggested that if abuses were suspected the Scientologists should go to court.

A number of other church groups are also seeking access to files under the FOIA, but they have had little success so far, according to news releases. The groups include the U.S. Jesuit Conference, the American Friends Service Committee, the United Church of Christ, the Mennonites, and the Mosque of Islam.

The Church of Scientology has also responded to attacks on it by General Secretary Philip Potter of the World Council of Churches. In a speech in North Carolina last fall, Potter likened Scientology to totalitarianism, saying it produced a “kind of religiosity, a certain kind of schizophrenia … a judgmental mind.” Criticizing it and the Unification Church, he said both movements can produce a “criminal personality,” are “quite frightening,” and prey on “sensitive spirits.”

In reply, Joyce Gaines, a Scientology public-affairs officer, called for the promotion and strengthening of dialogue between churches, not its destruction. Religions ought to join together “to bring about peace of mind and trust in one’s fellow man,” she commented.

Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and his family recently experienced personal tragedy. A young man who died under mysterious circumstances in Las Vegas in mid-November was identified weeks later as Hubbard’s eldest son, Geoffery Quentin McCaully Hubbard, 22, of Clearwater, Florida. He was found in a semi-comatose condition in his car near the Las Vegas airport, and he died a short time later in a hospital, where he was listed as a “John Doe.” Police and private investigators were looking into the death last month.

Brazil: Indian Fight

Interior Minister M. R. Reis of Brazil says his government will ban all Protestant and Catholic missionaries from work among the country’s indigenous Indian tribes next year unless they cooperate with official policy. The government has called for the rapid integration of Indians into modern society. Bilingual education will be ended; the Indians will be taught to read and write only Portuguese. They will be responsible for preserving their own culture, asserted Reis in published reports. He claimed he had never seen a religious mission help Indians make progress. One tribe, said he, lives in misery within six miles of settlers with modern conveniences.

Mission leaders, anthropologists, and even government Indian officials, however, contend that the policy will condemn the primitive tribes to cultural extinction and social disintegration. The missionaries insist that the social welfare of the Indians is a high-priority item in their work. They also criticize the rapid expansion of settlers into Amazonian lands, saying it has resulted in exploitation, social disintegration, and deadly disease among the Indians, along with the loss of traditional hunting grounds.

The Indians are believed to number between 100,000 and 200,000.

Graham on Drink: ‘Don’t’

Billy Graham said it again last month, but there are probably still people who believe he has failed to speak clearly enough on the beverage alcohol issue.

“It is my judgment that because of the devastating problem that alcohol has become in America,” the evangelist explained, “it is better for Christians to be teetotalers except for medicinal purposes.” He made the statement in a message prepared for delivery on his weekly “Hour of Decision” radio program. The date for airing the sermon, “The Abuse of Alcohol,” had not been announced by mid-January, however.

Meanwhile, Graham’s Minneapolis office printed the message in pamphlet form and used it to answer the inquiries about remarks attributed to him in news media around the nation. The subject came up initially in a Miami Herald interview. In the course of remarks about President Carter’s announced decision not to serve anything stronger than wine in the White House, Graham said that the wine of New Testament times was fermented and not simply grape juice, as some evangelicals contend. The evangelist said the paper’s article was accurate in its quotation “as far as it went.” However, when a news agency rewrote the Herald piece and circulated it widely it was distorted, he reported. People around the country wrote to him and to their local news media to object to his “new position,” and he then wrote the longer treatment of the issue. Among other things, Graham quoted biblical authorities as saying that wine of Bible times was a weaker variety than today’s.

“The creeping paralysis of alcoholism is sapping our morals, wrecking our homes, and luring people away from the church,” Graham declared in the message. While finding no foundation in the Bible for an absolute prohibition on drink, he appeals to the fourteenth chapter of Romans (the warning against causing a brother to stumble) as reason enough for Christians to abstain.

Deaths

Two well-known Christian figures died last month, both of heart attacks: Harry Willis Miller, 97, an American, and Bishop Hanns Lilje, 77, a German.

Miller spent twenty-five years in China as a medical missionary of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. A thyroid surgeon, he developed a process to make soybean milk to feed malnourished Chinese children. The product is now widely used among the 10 per cent of the world’s population allergic to regular milk. He founded several hospitals. Among his patients were Chou En-lai, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Sun Yat-sen, Alexander Graham Bell, and William Jennings Bryan. He also served in Trinidad, Taiwan, Japan, and Libya. He died on his way to a church service in Riverside, California.

Bishop Lilje, an international Lutheran and ecumenical leader, died in Hannover, West Germany. He helped guide the reforming of German Lutheranism after the fall of the Third Reich. In 1944 the Nazis jailed him for preaching “inner resistance.” Because of ties to a group that attempted to assassinate Adolph Hitler, he was sentenced to death. He was saved by the advancing Allies “and the grace of God,” Lilje told interviewers later. He said he refused to be an active member of the resistance movement but gave pastoral advice to its members, conceding that with the realities of Hitler “there may be a situation in which violence is the only way out.” At the same time, he ruled out church support for “sheer bloody revolution.”

A noted linguist and author, Lilje took a tolerant attitude toward committed Christian leaders in eastern Europe who must make difficult decisions regarding witness and church activity. “From my own experience under the Nazis, I know that the lines are not always clearly drawn,” he said. This approach led to a controversy with the late Bishop Otto Dibelius over the extent to which a believer owes allegiance to an anti-Christian state. Even a totalitarian state has its authority from God, maintained Lilje, although he allowed for Christian resistance when a state turns against “the divine order and forces citizens to do the same.…”

He was presiding bishop of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany (a federation of eight territorial Lutheran bodies) for fourteen years, president of the Lutheran World Federation for five years, and a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches since its formation in 1948 (he was a WCC president 1968–75). He retired from his administrative duties as bishop of Hannover in 1971.

Religion in Transit

Concern over excessive violence and sex on television is widespread. Chicago civil-rights figure Jesse Jackson, who now considers himself part of the evangelical camp, says he may attempt to mount a movement against it. A number of pastors across the nation are calling on their members to protest to sponsors; some churches plan boycotts. The Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) has announced a nationwide boycott of TV April 11 through 18 “as a symbol of our discontent” with “unwholesome” TV trends.

Nearly 100 persons identified with the anti-war movement last month made public an appeal they signed that was critical of Viet Nam’s human-rights record (see January 21 issue, page 47). It was made public after Dinh Ba Thi, the Vietnamese observer at the United Nations, rejected it. Two of the signers, Philip and Daniel Berrigan, now have second thoughts: they joined three non-signers (including Don Luce, president of Clergy and Laity Concerned) in complaining that the appeal was made public “in an irresponsible manner.” They say “new materials” from the Vietnamese show the human-rights problem is being worked on.

Bible Presbyterian minister Carl McIntire mortgaged his Faith Seminary property in Philadelphia for $425,000 to finance the purchase of radio station WXUR years ago. Then he spent $600,000, according to his calculations, in a losing battle to save the station when the Federal Communications Commission declined to renew its license. Now the mortgage company is demanding payment of the $202,000 balance on the seminary mortgage, and the beleaguered McIntire—fresh out of prospective lenders—warns that the school faces foreclosure. He placed some of his New Jersey shore properties on the market recently to help raise cash.

Campus Crusade for Christ recently hosted a “Campus Cults Summit Conference” attended by representatives of nine other Christian groups that work among college-age young people. The result, say spokesmen, will be a coordinated effort to reach cult members and “those who are subtly influenced by cult teachings.” A “campus cults resource kit” will be produced as part of the plan. Organizations discussed included Transcendental Meditation, the Unification Church, the Children of God, The Way, and the Local Church.

Editor Roger Dewey has announced the “temporary” termination of Inside, an evangelical social-issues magazine published by the Massachusetts-based Christians for Social Justice, in favor of a projected political newsletter.

In its first month of distribution, the American Bible Society’s “Good News Bible” sold one million copies—exceeding records set by other best-sellers. For example, evangelist Billy Graham’s book, Angels, God’s Secret Agents, the best-selling non-fiction book of 1975, sold 810,000 copies in its first three months, say ABS officials. They expect sales of ten million copies of the Bible during 1977.

The Washington National Cathedral (Episcopal) in the nation’s capital is in trouble. It has an operating deficit in excess of $2 million, according to news sources, and a total debt of more than $11 million. There have been reductions in staff, the cathedral will be open ninety minutes less each day to visitors and those wishing to pray, and other cutbacks have been initiated to reduce expenses by at least 25 per cent.

The two men Gary Mark Gilmore said he murdered last July had some things in common: both were descendents of Mormon pioneers, both were students at Brigham Young University, both had served as Mormon missionaries, and each left a wife and small child. Gilmore last month became the first person executed for a capital offense in the United States since 1967. A vigil of seventeen persons outside the prison was led by United Presbyterian executive William P. Thompson, president of the National Council of Churches. Other prominent clergy also participate.

President Paul Jacobs of the northern California, Nevada, and Hawaii district of the Luthern Church-Missouri Synod, has become the sixth LCMS district president to resign as a result of the doctrinal controversy in the Missouri Synod. He cited disagreement with LCMS leadership and policies. In a Dallas meeting, some middle-of-the-road district presidents laid down a five-point platform for the future direction of the LCMS. It speaks out strongly for maintaining inter-Lutheran unity, rights of local congregations, the validity of certain activities operating “independent of the official organization,” and a political process that is not “manipulated.”

There are perils to ministry in the inner city, as any urban worker knows. Last month Garnell Stuart Copeland, 35, the gifted organist and choirmaster at the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in downtown Washington, D.C., came home late one evening after a churce service. Three youths jumped him outside his home and stabbed him to death in an apparent robbery attempt. Months earlier the church’s rector, Edgar Romig, was attacked and seriously wounded (he lost an eye) in the neighborhood after driving Copeland home.

Personalia

Arthur McKay, 58, pastor of Knox Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, was named senior minister of the 1, 232-member New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., where Abraham Lincoln and other former Presidents worshiped. McKay is a former president of McCormick Seminary in Chicago and of the Rochester (New York) Center for Theological Studies. He was one of 254 candidates (including ten women) considered for the $31,835-a-year position, according to a WashingtonPost story. Among his predecessors was the late Peter Marshall.

Last year actress Ann B. Davis gave up her 25-year theater and acting career (“Schultzy” on the Robert Cummings TV show and “Alice” on “The Brady Bunch”) and sold her Los Angeles home to join a charismatic Christian community of twelve adults and six children at the Denver home of Episcopal bishop William C. Frey and his wife. The year since then has been “one of the best” of her life, she told a reporter. It all started three years ago with a quest for a deeper Christian experience and attendance at Bible-study and evangelism-training sessions in Hollywood (see October 10, 1975, issue, page 52). The Frey community is an attempt to live in the church and go to the world instead of the other way around, she said.

Stephen W. Nease was installed as fifth president of the thirty-two-year-old Nazarene Seminary in Kansas City. The school has 455 students, a 54 per cent increase in three years.

Pastor L. Doward McBain of First Baptist Church, Phoenix, Arizona, was named president of the American Baptist Seminary of the West in Berkeley, California.

Clayton L. (Mike) Berg, Jr., of the Latin America Mission has assumed the executive leadership of the mission, succeeding former general director Horace L. Fenton, Jr., who will represent LAM in an at-large ministry. LAM plans to move its headquarters from New Jersey to Miami.

World Scene

A new Protestant seminary in Yugoslavia has been accredited by the government and will be in a position to grant degrees at a university level upon completion of five years of work, according to a report published by the Lausanne Continuation Committee. The school, housed in a Lutheran church in Zagreb, has about thirty students. Leaders Vlado Deutsch of the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church and Josip Horak of the Baptist Union spearheaded the founding of the school as a result of their attending the 1974 Lausanne congress on evangelization. Of Yugoslavia’s 22 million population, 125,000 are Protestants. Large numbers are Orthodox (six million), Roman Catholic (five million), and Muslim (1.5 million).

All Southern Baptist Convention missionaries will be out of East Malaysia (on the north coast of Borneo) by mid-1977 because of unrenewed visas, according to SBC sources. It’s all part of the plan of the government of Sarawak state to “reduce drastically” the number of missionaries (others as well as Southern Baptists).

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