Reversal in Zaire

A recent announcement over government-owned Radio Zaire made it official: “The administration of public primary and secondary schools will be returned to the churches.”

Legal representatives of the Catholics, Protestants, and Kimbanguists (a semicultic independent church) have begun meeting with Department of Education officials in Kinshasa, the capital, to work out details of the decision, according to sources. That could take a long time. The transfer involves well over three million students, 80,000 teachers, and a budget that since 1965 has averaged about 20 per cent of the total national budget.

Since the first days of Belgian colonial rule, almost all education of the children was done in parochial schools. Even when the government nationalized the primary and secondary schools in 1974, fourteen years after independence, 80 per cent of the public schools were still administered by various church groups.

If the transfer of schools back to the religious sector is complicated for the government, it also causes complications for the churches. When the schools were taken over in 1974, some teachers threw off moral restraints and assumed a life-style impossible under a church-administered system, and in some areas persons antagonistic to the local churches were appointed school directors. The resulting question: What should the churches do with them?

While reaction among Zairian church leaders seems generally favorable to the transfer, some foresee a serious problem. The government take-over had resulted in some spiritual benefits that could be canceled out by the recent reversal of policy. An American Baptist Churches mission spokesman observed, “Overall, it was generally agreed that there were advantages in [the 1974 nationalization]. Church-appointed Zairian school directors and missionary educators remained at their posts, and it was a relief for them to be freed from the heavy burden of administrative responsibility for a school system which served hundreds of villages over a widespread geographical area. They felt a new sense of freedom and found that more of their time and energy could be devoted to programs of evangelism and Christian service. At the same time, opportunities for Christian witness in the classroom were as great as before nationalization, and in some cases, even greater.”

Resuming the responsibilities of school administration and its insatiable demands could drain from the churches that new sense of freedom and commitment to evangelism which has flourished since 1974, some leaders fear.

The recent decision clobbers the much-publicized goal of complete “Africanization” of the schools by 1980. Churches with mission ties will certainly appeal for expatriate help as they try to cope with administrative responsibilities for as many as 80,000 children in some jurisdictions.

The “Africanization” goal of the government had political as well as cultural implications. Some high officials claimed that as long as the children were educated in church-run schools, their loyalty would never belong totally to the state. The banning of religious instruction in the schools and the formation of all students into political cadres were part of the nationalization decree in 1974.

Where Two Or Three …

Zion United Methodist Church in Marissa, Illinois, may be the smallest church in America. With only three members, it has been kept open for fifty years by a brother and sister, Alex and Pearl Wildy, 83 and 87 respectively. It was their mother’s last wish that they maintain the church, founded in 1868. They place flowers on her grave before each service. Pastor R. David Reynolds, 28, is paid in cash each week by Alex Wildy, who also tends the church’s kerosene lamps and coal stove. Reynolds, who has been at Zion for four years, is also pastor of the nearby 148-member Marissa United Methodist Church.

This ban on religious instruction proved ineffectual, and it has been dropped. The commissioner of state for political affairs cautioned church leaders, however, that though the churches resumed administration of the schools, this did not necessarily mean that clergy and other religious personnel should take over the teaching posts.

Why did the government of President Mobutu Sese Seko turn the schools back to the churches? One missionary correspondent reported that there has been widespread moral regression under nationalization, and this has alarmed government leaders. But money may be the overriding factor. The government has learned that setting up an educational administration parallelling the already existing one of the churches is too costly and not nearly so effective. So, in this view, economic reality won over “Africanization.”

The transfer of schools is probably related to a larger austerity program forced upon the Zaire government by its creditors. The nation owes $2.9 billion in overseas debts and needs still more money. Manhattan’s Citibank and other creditor banks have agreed to a new $250 million loan, but first they imposed tough conditions that are pressuring the government to make humiliating about-faces, of which the school system is not the worst.

The government policy regarding foreign-owned companies, for example, has boomeranged to discredit the nation and hurt innocent Zairians. In 1973 Mobutu forced out many expatriate small businessmen and farmers and turned over their homes, assets, and businesses to selected Zairians. Now he is asking these expelled foreigners to return, while ordering the Zairians out of their houses and demanding full accountability of the “Africanized” properties.

In effect, the same sort of thing has happened in education.

Pneuma ’76: A Call For Unity

The sixth annual meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies convened in Atlanta last month to hear papers on “The Biblical Basis of the Pentecostal Faith.” This theme was chosen in part as a response to Nazarene Timothy Smith’s challenge in 1975 to deemphasize glossolalia in Pentecostal faith and practice. The papers presented by a dozen classical Pentecostal scholars did just the opposite, with John Swails III of Emmanuel College suggesting the occurrence of glossolalia in the Old Testament Jewish prophetic tradition. On the other hand, Professor Bill MacDonald of Gordon College questioned “messages in tongues” directed to congregations since glossolalia in his view is usually “God-directed” rather than “man-directed.”

Cecil B. Knight, General Overseer of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), gave the opening address. While recognizing the value of cultural and organizational diversity among Pentecostals, he called for them—the new charisismatics and old-line Pentecostals alike—to come together” in mutually beneficial ways. For example, he suggested, a joint Pentecostal seminary could be established. Citing the costs of maintaining several small struggling institutions, Knight suggested that a jointly operated institution using the “cluster concept” of denominational components with a shared faculty and central facilities might be the answer for the classical Pentecostal groups.

Graduate theological training is a recent development among American Pentecostal denominations. At present there are three in operation: the Assemblies of God Graduate School in Springfield, Missouri (founded in 1973); the Church of God Graduate School in Cleveland, Tennessee (1975), and C. H. Mason Seminary in Atlanta (1970), operated by the largest black Pentecostal body, the Church of God in Christ. It is one of several seminaries connected with Atlanta’s Interdenominational Theological Center. Melodyland School of Theology in Anaheim, California, is interdenominationally charismatic, and Oral Roberts University in Tulsa is making another attempt to have a graduate seminary program.

Also surfacing at the conference was the fact that Pentecostals are entering older seminaries in increasing numbers on both the faculty and student levels. For example, Russell Spittler of the Assemblies of God was recently made assistant dean at Fuller Theological Seminary where as many as one-third of the students come from Pentecostal backgrounds. New York City’s venerable Union Seminary now includes two Pentecostals on the faculty: James A. Forbes, Jr., a dynamic young black scholar and preacher of the United Holy Church who holds the chair of homiletics once held by Harry Emerson Fosdick, and Old Testament professor Jerry Shepherd of the Assemblies of God.

In the restaurants and corridors between sessions, the inerrancy question raised by Harold Lindsell’s book The Battle for the Bible held the center of attention. Practically all Pentecostals would give assent to the inerrancy teaching (even though the word “inerrancy” does not appear in most Pentecostal denominational statements of faith), but concern was expressed over the prospects of “heresy trials” that might divert attention from the advance of the Pentecostal and charismatic renewals that are sweeping the world. Knight, however, underlined the doctrine in his address as the “platform [on which] we can stand together as Pentecostals and as Christians.”

In business sessions, the SPS reacted favorably to the overture of the World Pentecostal Conference which in September designated the Society as an officially recognized “research agency.” Program chairman Horace Ward, Jr., of West Coast Bible College (Church of God, Cleveland) was elevated to the presidency, while Anthony Palma, dean of the Assemblies of God Graduate School was placed in charge of next year’s program.

VINSON SYNAN

The Pickpocket

Somewhere there’s a pickpocket who may be better for having committed one of his crimes—if he took what he stole to heart.

Southern Baptist mission pastor John Wallen was standing on a busy street corner in Neosho, Missouri, waiting for traffic to clear. Suddenly a stranger with a coat draped over his arm brushed by and disappeared. Wallen immediately checked his wallet. It was still there, but something else was missing from his coat pocket. The thief had stolen a packet of tracts on “How to Have a Full and Meaningful Life.”

Crucial Vote

Voting has begun in the sixty presbyteries (regional units) of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern) on the proposed change in its doctrinal stance. Included are new ordination vows, a book of confessions, and a new declaration of faith. Opponents of the package said in a full-page advertisement in the December Presbyterian Survey that the denomination is taking “the most crucial vote in decades.” Among the signers of the “Save Our Theology” appeal were former stated clerk James A. Millard, Jr., Mrs. Billy Graham, and former moderators C. Darby Fulton and J. McDowell Richards. Two other former moderators have also opposed an affirmative vote, but sixteen have said they favor the changes.

The first three presbyteries to vote on the package passed it with comfortable margins. Three-fourths of the regional units must approve if it is to go back to the General Assembly for a final constitutional vote. By the third week of next month three-fourths will have cast their ballots. If the contest is close, the outcome may not be known until the last of the presbyteries meet in April.

Absolution

Jackson, Tennessee, is not a place that generates much news of international interest. This overwhelmingly Protestant city of about 40,000 on the road from Memphis to Nashville is an especially unlikely site for important Roman Catholic developments.

But when Bishop Carroll Dozier came to Jackson from Memphis last month, so did reporters from the three major television networks, two wire services, and assorted other agencies. They dutifully recorded every detail of the second edition of a service he had conducted in Memphis a week earlier (most of them had missed it). Approximately 2,000 of the faithful attended the civic-center event in Jackson, while about six times that number had participated in the first edition at the Memphis Coliseum.

Why was all this newsworthy? Why did the Pope’s personal representative go to the trouble of issuing a statement saying he had not approved the program? Why did Catholic publications and prelates across the country “choose up sides” and commend or condemn the bishop of west Tennessee?

Dozier had touched a Catholic nerve by absolving divorced and remarried Catholics of their sins to the extent that they could partake of communion. To do this, he granted a “general absolution,” a rite usually reserved for soldiers going into battle or people in other emergency situations. The well-publicized services were attended by inactive Catholics from distant places as well as those from within the Memphis diocese.

The bishop instructed the communicants—many of whom had not been to mass for years—to go to confession within a year. This point, too, disturbed some of his colleagues. The president of the National Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin of Cincinnati, issued a statement specifying that confessing sin to a priest before communion is still the norm.

The Non-Conformists

A new Gallup Poll shows that about 12 per cent of American adults are engaged in non-traditional religious movements. Transcendental Meditation (TM) was found to be the most popular, supported by 4 per cent of the 1,553 adults surveyed (or six million of the nation’s population). Yoga was listed by 3 per cent, the charismatic movement and mysticism by 2 per cent each (or an estimated three million people each), and eastern religions by 1 per cent.

The followers of TM and yoga tend to be young adults under age 25, said the Gallup report. It also stated that most of the new religions tend to place great value on the inner self and the attainment of mental, psychic, or spiritual states of peace.

No Resurrection

New York City police are investigating a bizarre case involving a group of cult members who were found in an apartment praying over the decomposed body of a man who had died of cancer in early October. Oric Bovar, 59, and five of his followers, were exhorting the deceased, a 29-year-old graduate student from Greece, to rise from the dead, the police said. The prayer vigil apparently had lasted two months.

Bovar has been described as a writer, opera coach, and astrologist. It was as an astrologist living in Italy but frequently visiting the United States that he built up a following of perhaps as many as 1,000, including many young entertainers and professionals in both New York and Los Angeles. A number defected when he returned nineteen months ago from Italy changed in appearance and philosophy. For one thing, he indicated that he was Jesus Christ incarnate, say defectors, and he laid down a lot of rules: no drinking, no drugs, no doctors or medicine, no premarital sex, no meat-eating, and no dealing with anybody else in the psychic business. Disobedience would bring dire results, he warned.

The police went to the apartment after receiving a call from a woman identifying herself as Mary Magdalene, who described the vigil. The body was covered with a shroud and lying on a bed surrounded by the six praying men. One of the men said the six were not part of a cult but simply members of a prayer group motivated by a deeply shared “faith in Jesus Christ.”

Religion in Transit

Among the sixty-one floats in the nationally televised Pageant of Roses Parade on New Year’s Day in Pasadena, California, were entries by the Garden Grove (California) Community Church, the Lutheran Laymen’s League, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon). The Garden Grove float was the sole entry sponsored by a single congregation in the by-invitation-only event. Television preacher Robert Schuller is pastor of the church. The grand marshalls of the event were Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, well-known in evangelical circles for their witness and Christian books.

For the fifth time a proposal to ordain women to the ministry failed to gain the necessary two-thirds vote by classes (districts) of the Reformed Church in America. The denomination’s General Synod last June recommended the classes to vote affirmatively in order to permit the synod to vote on the issue this year.

The Missouri branch of the Church of Scientology lost its $2.5 million libel suit against the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and two of its reporters, James Adams and Elaine Viets. The case involved five articles on the sect and its recruiting practices published in 1974. It was balanced reporting that did not constitute malicious defamation, the state supreme-court justices indicated in a unanimous decision. Observers say Scientologists have developed a reputation for media confrontations, compounding their image-polishing problems.

Here Comes Santa

In cities across America the Salvation Army bell-ringers manning the Christmas kettles and the Volunteers of America Santa Clauses got some unexpected—and unwanted—competition. Members of the Hare Krishna sect stopped their chanting, donned Santa Claus outfits, and hit the streets to pass out literature and candy canes or flowers and to hustle donations in exchange for the freebies.

VOA leaders complained that the super-salesmen Krishna Santas had given a bad image to street Santas in general and that contributions to the VOA were down drastically.

In some locations competing Santas almost came to blows, and police ticketed a number of Krishna Santas who failed to move on when told. Authorities warned the alien Santas against misrepresentation.

The Krishna people say they didn’t want to confuse anybody. “When people see Santa, the contemporary emblem of Christmas, we want them to think of God,” explained one leader.

The United Church of Canada is trying to stop the Reed paper company from cutting down more than 16 million acres of timber in northern Ontario. A church research report says that the result would be “an ecological catastrophe” affecting Canadian Indians who, contrary to promises, have not been consulted.

The Christian Broadcasting Network of Portsmouth, Virginia, has ordered a satellite earth station that will give it the capability to broadcast simultaneously across the United States and around the world. The unit is valued at $500,000.

Atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair is still in the news. She announced the revival of the annual celebration of the Winter Solstice on December 21, which she claimed was stolen by Christians to celebrate the birth “of their mythical Christ.” She also declared Thursday to be the sabbath day of American atheists, and urged that employers arrange the work schedules of atheist employees accordingly. Meanwhile, her son William J. Murray, 30, has filed a $1 million suit against Gospel Tract Society of Independence, Missouri, for publishing a pamphlet allegedly describing him inaccurately as having forsaken his atheist convictions and become a Christian.

Dallas—Big D or Big Dud? A Bill Gaither “Praise Gathering” concert and a “World Thrust” conference sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ had to be cancelled recently due to lack of interest (from 5,000 to 10,000 registrants had been hoped for), and a national prayer congress expected to attract 10,000 drew fewer than 1,000. Nearly 100,000 thronged to the city less than five years ago for Campus Crusade’s Explo ’72. But Crusade’s “Here’s Life” effort, a roaring success in some cities, by comparison made only a dull thud in Big D last year.

Pastor Charles Blair of the bankrupt Calvary Temple church in Denver was sentenced last month to five years probation, fined $12, 750, and ordered to repay in full all victims of the financial collapse associated with Blair and the Temple. Blair was found guilty last August on seventeen counts of fraudulent sale of securities. He has vowed to repay “every cent” and is making progress toward that goal.

The National Council of Churches has raised about $70,000 since July for the legal defense of Leonard Crow Dog, 33, a Sioux medicine man serving prison sentences for convictions connected with the takeover of Wounded Knee by radicals in 1973. NCC direct-mail appeals portray him as “a victim of outrageous injustice.” The NCC contends that Crow Dog was performing religious and medical services and had nothing to do with the violence and theft for which he was jailed.

The National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., will provide an emergency backup loan program of up to $1 million for the ailing NAACP, says NBC president Joseph H. Jackson. A cash sum of $250,000 has been set aside for the purpose, the NBC will borrow a similar amount, and another $500,000 will be available from an unspecified source, according to Jackson.

The best tactic in combatting objectionable TV programming is to make it unprofitable for the sponsors. “Hit them in the billfold; you can’t get any closer to their hearts,” said Dallas advertising man William Hill in summing up the consensus of a Southern Baptist-sponsored hearing on television and morality.

Personalia

Evangelist Billy Graham made headlines in the National Enquirer with a statement expressing his belief that intelligent, ordinary-looking beings may exist in outer space and “have developed space vehicles capable of reaching Earth.” He said he believes they worship God, would visit Earth in peace if they came, and could hold the solution to many of Earth’s problems.

President David Allan Hubbard of Fuller Seminary was recently elected president of the Association of Theological Schools, an accrediting agency with nearly 200 Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish seminaries and theological schools as members.

Rebecca Ann Reid, 17, a member of Royal Haven Baptist Church in Dallas who was chosen Miss Teenage America of 1977 from among 20,000 entrants, says she intends to share her faith in Christ with as many as possible during her reign.

Graham Kerr, the former Galloping Gourmet of television, and his wife Treena are building a mountain retreat near Vail, Colorado, for couples with serious marital problems. “We are in a Christian war against divorce,” declares Kerr, whose own troubled marriage was rescued only after he and his wife professed Christ last year. They’ve named their ministry Rejoice Fellowship. Couples will be charged $24 per day for five days, including meals, but they will do their own cooking (from Kerr-packed kits and menus)—part of the Kerr therapy.

Methodist clergyman Richard Jones, 70, retired as president of the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews, which he organized in 1947. He initiated Brotherhood Week, an observance that has spread to every major city in Canada.

World Scene

A number of church relief agencies have sent clothing, tent, medicine, and other aid to help the survivors of the recent earthquake in northeastern Turkey that killed several thousand and left thousands of others homeless in sub-freezing weather. (The quake’s epicenter was underneath Mt. Ararat.) Of the nearly 40 million people in Turkey, fewer than three dozen are evangelical Christians, according to mission sources.

In a pre-Christmas attack on religion, the Communist Party in the Soviet Union urged the news media to save Soviet youth from “church traps” by a more forceful presentation of atheism. Pravda, the party’s paper, said letters from readers are complaining of a new “attitude of reconciliation toward religion” that is especially evident among the young.

Three Catholic missionaries from West Germany were slain last month by a terrorist in Rhodesia.

The Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland rejected the ordination of women, the third time advocates of it got a majority vote but not the required three-fourths majority. About 600 female theological graduates serve as unordained lectors, fulfilling many functions of pastors, but without approval to celebrate the eucharist.

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