News from the North American Scene: October 07, 1991

MEDIA

Christian Tv Exec Signs Off

The manager of a Minneapolis-St. Paul television station has left her job after being criticized for her outspoken faith. Linda Rios Brook left her position as station manager of NBC-affiliate station KARE last summer.

A brief statement by Ron Townsend, president of the Gannett Co., which owns the station, said Brook resigned “to pursue a different career challenge and other goals.” However, a column in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, quoted in the Twin Cities Christian, said, “The dispute [between Brook and Gannett] is over Brook’s high-profile religious evangelism,” adding, “According to sources close to the situation, Gannett has apparently told Brook to decide whether she wants to be a minister or the leader of a commercial (i.e., secular) television station.”

Brook’s resignation came shortly after the publication of an article in a local free-distribution newspaper in which fellow employees criticized her influence on the news department, which actually had enjoyed a resurgence in ratings since she took its reins in 1989.

About a week before leaving Gannett, Brook, who attends Vineyard of the Lake Church in Orono, Minnesota, told delegates at a charismatic Lutheran conference, “I know something about secular bias that suggests that someone who admits publicly to being a Christian must be a fanatic.”

PCUSA

Counting The Losses

After a final count, 81 churches with a total of about 25,500 members voted to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA) (PCUSA). Most departed for either the Presbyterian Church in America or the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

The exodus came under a plan worked out eight years ago to accommodate those opposed to the merger of the southern and northern Presbyterian branches. Thirteen left in 1991 before the June 10 deadline; the largest exit for one year was 22 departures in 1985, according to Fred Jenkins, director of constitutional services for the PCUSA, which still lists an estimated 11,500 churches on its rolls. Jenkins said the final numbers were higher than originally projected.

SOUTHERN BAPTISTS

Moderates Form Ethics Center

Moderate Southern Baptists continue to build the structures of what many observers label a new denomination, despite moderates’ avoidance of the term. Leaders announced the formation of the Baptist Center for Ethics, to be run by Robert Parham, who resigned September 1 as associate director of the Christian Life Commission of the conservative-dominated Southern Baptist Convention. On September 11, Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, opened for classes. Its first-year budget was financed mostly through the new Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, formed last summer as the alternative organization for Southern Baptist moderates (CT, June 24, 1991, p. 60).

Moderates have also started producing their own Sunday-school curricula and have formed their own missions program, the Cooperative Baptist Missions Program, and press agency, the Associated Baptist Press.

ABORTION

Doctors In Decline

Fewer doctors are willing to perform abortions today, in part because of a “professional stigma” attached to the job, according to a report released earlier by the National Abortion Federation (NAF). Only 17 percent of U.S. counties nationwide have abortion facilities, according to the report. The NAF report also expressed concern that young doctors are increasingly deciding against doing abortions.

“Young physicians in particular may be leery of the taint associated with abortion services, perceiving that involvement with abortion could adversely affect their careers,” the report states. The report also cites a 22 percent drop from 1976 to 1987 in the number of medical residency programs offering training in first-trimester abortion procedures.

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Briefly Noted

Awarded:$10 million in damages to evangelist Marvin Gorman, who claimed that televangelist Jimmy Swaggart and others spread rumors of extramarital affairs that defamed him and destroyed his ministry. The Assemblies of God, which defrocked Gorman, had earlier been named as a defendant, but was dropped from the suit before the decision. Swaggart said he will appeal.

Announced: By Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, the addition of a branch campus in Charlotte, North Carolina. Classes will be taught in the facilities of area churches.

Convicted:Hare Krishna leader Thomas Arthur Drescher, of killing an ex-member in 1986. Drescher, 43, was already serving time for the 1983 murder of another ex-Krishna.

Appointed:Kenneth Keeler, as president of Christian Service Brigade, after a two-year search. Keeler succeeds Samuel Gray, chief executive since 1970, who will remain in the organization as executive vice-president.

Ceased: after 28 years, publication of The Ecumenist, a bimonthly ecumenical journal circulated to about 5,500 intellectuals, which championed liberal views and ideas such as liberation theology.

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