News from the North American Scene: June 22, 1992

Documentary

Banned In The Usa

Conservative crusader Donald Wildmon has won the first round of a battle to keep a British documentary about censorship of obscene materials off the air in the U.S. The documentary prominently features Wildmon, who claims that broadcasting the film in the U.S. will hurt his reputation by association with the film’s sexually graphic elements.

According to the suit filed against the producers of Damned in the U.S.A., Wildmon granted an interview for the documentary upon condition that the producers give him control over the film’s distribution beyond England’s Channel 4.

Christian Colleges

Prof Fired

For 16 years, Walter Dunnett, 68, taught in the Bible department at Northwestern College, a conservative, nondenominational Bible college in Roseville, Minnesota. But Dunnett was recently informed that his contract would not be renewed.

Dunnett told a Pioneer Press reporter he was dismissed because he recently was ordained into the Episcopal priesthood. Dunnett said one school official told him, “We can’t tolerate that. What would people think?”

College officials say his dismissal was due to disagreement over basic doctrinal issues.

In Court

Quaker Taxes

Friends Journal, a Quaker magazine, has agreed to pay $31,343 in back taxes for its editor and manager, who had refused to pay them because some of the money might be used for military purposes.

Scientology Sues

A $416 million suit has been filed against Time magazine by the Church of Scientology, which charges that the magazine libeled the church in its May 6, 1991, cover story, “The Cult of Greed.”

Prolife Journalists Win

Two journalists who claimed they were fired because of their involvement in the prolife movement have settled out of court with their former newspaper, the Fairfield (Iowa) Ledger. The two recovered $35,000 in lost wages.

Paintings Okay

The Ottawa, Illinois, Jaycees can continue to hang a series of paintings depicting the life of Christ on public property during the Christmas season. The Seventh Federal Circuit Court of Appeals voted 11 to 0 to overturn a lower-court ruling that had said that hanging the 16 pictures even temporarily in a city-owned park was a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.

Operation Rescue

Wichita It Wasn’T

“You’re not in Kansas anymore,” read one of the signs that greeted Operation Rescue (OR) protesters who arrived in Buffalo in late April. By comparison with last year’s six-week “Summer of Mercy” campaign in Wichita, OR’s two-week stay in Buffalo passed with little effect. The “Spring of Life” campaign resulted in about 500 arrests, compared with 2,700 in Wichita. Rescuers failed to block access to any abortion clinics, though organizers proclaimed the campaign a success.

Abortion-rights advocates arrived in Buffalo ahead of Operation Rescue and matched OR person for person in the streets, as well as line for line in the news media. The antiabortion momentum was also slowed when the local Roman Catholic bishop refused to endorse OR’s efforts in the heavily Catholic city. The press noted visible signs of OR’s ineffectiveness. “Operation Rescue was outmaneuvered from the start,” said Time magazine of the opposition mounted by abortion-rights advocates.

“Few Buffalonians appear eager to have the kind of chaos Operation Rescue brought to Wichita,” read an editorial in the New York Times. It noted that a Buffalo Evening News poll revealed that “7 percent of Buffalonians welcomed Operation Rescue, 43 percent didn’t, and 50 percent welcomed it only if its members obeyed the law. Only Mayor James Griffin gave the group a big hello.”

Still, OR national leader Keith Tucci said the event “went really well.” He said OR registered 5,000 local attendants, and 1,000 from out of town. “[We] know for sure at least 15 abortion appointments were canceled,” he told CT.

Tucci said the strong opposition of abortion-rights advocates actually helped OR. “They were our best advertisements,” he said, adding that rescuers “took their insults, accusations, and pushing and shouting.”

Tucci said he expects similar opposition from abortion-rights advocates when OR arrives in Baton Rouge the week of July 7 and later this summer at the Republican party national convention.

Broadcasting

Tbn Suit Dismissed

A lawsuit filed against the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) and its president, Paul Crouch, has been dismissed by a California Superior Court. The suit by former TBN employees Ralph, Ruth, and Bruce Ward charged that they were fired because they complained of illegal practices in the broadcast ministry. The court ruled TBN had not violated any fundamental public policy. It had previously dismissed the Wards’ claims for punitive damages against TBN.

Crouch and the network have been named in two other unrelated lawsuits, one in connection with a drugs-for-sex scandal at a Crouch-owned drug rehabilitation ranch in Texas (CT, April 27, 1992, p.44). The other involves a challenge to Crouch’s ownership of several TV stations across the country. (CT, Aug. 19, 1991, p. 53).

Denominations

Elca Faces Bleak Future

The leader of the 5 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) says his denomination must consider “radical change” if it is to survive.

“We are in a critical juncture in our life together,” Bishop Herbert Chilstrom said during a report to the ELCA church council. “A realistic look into the future tells me we are looking forward to diminishing churchwide resources, staff cut after staff cut, and lower morale, unless we look radically at what are the core functions of the churchwide organization and take action.”

Chilstrom said the denomination should consider phasing out its nine ELCA regional offices or adjusting their mode of churchwide support; reducing the number of synods; reducing or phasing out grants to colleges; adjusting the support for seminaries; reducing the number of churchwide units; and providing new ways of fund raising.

In response, the ELCA church council authorized spending cuts of $3.4 million in the 1992 budget, reducing the operating budget to $76.6 million. The ELCA had income shortfalls of about $21 million in the first three years since its founding in 1987. Last year it ended with a $768,000 balance, but only after several rounds of cutbacks and layoffs, as well as the receiving of a special offering of $1.5 million.

Southern Baptist Notes

Lewis Drummond, retiring president of the ailing Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina, will become the first Billy Graham Professor of Evangelism and Church Growth at Samford University’s divinity school.

• Paige Patterson, who late last year was fired and then rehired as president of Criswell College in Dallas (CT, Dec. 16, 1991, p. 58), has been elected the next president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, replacing Lewis Drummond. Patterson, an architect of the SBC conservative movement, will start his new job July 1.

• The 85-member general board of the South Carolina Baptist Convention voted on May 15 to sever legal and financial ties with Furman University, where university trustees have been seeking more autonomy from the SBC (CT, Jan. 13,1992, p. 45). South Carolina Baptist churches are free, however, to send funds directly to the school.

• The North Carolina state Baptist Association has voted to remove from fellowship two churches that recently sanctioned homosexual practice. In April, Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church in Chapel Hill approved the ordination of a homosexual man to the ministry. Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh voted in March to permit its pastor to bless the union of two homosexuals (CT, April 6, 1992, p. 74).

“We all feel compassion and a sense of pain, but this was necessary,” said convention president Glen Holt.

Sexual Misconduct

Atlanta Pastor Steps Down

Don Paulk, who, together with his brother Bishop Earl Paulk, founded the 12,000-member Cathedral of the Holy Spirit near Atlanta, confessed in early May to adultery and has been relieved of his normal duties.

The Paulks lead a multiracial church with many community ministries, and they are nationally recognized leaders in the charismatic restoration movement (CT, May 18, 1992, p. 28). But recently the church has come under financial strain after building an $18.5 million, 7,000-seat cathedral. Several top leaders have resigned, citing complaints about the church’s leadership, according to newspaper reports.

Earl Paulk, the controversial leader of the church, did not return CT’s phone calls. He told the Atlanta Journal/Constitution that he was not sure how his brother would be handled but that “he will not be involved in ministry at the level he has been, for the time being.”

People And Events

Briefly Noted

Closed: Oral Roberts’s City of Faith medical complex. Roberts announced the 777-bed hospital and a 20-story research center will be sold to a group of investors who will sell it as commercial real estate.

Appointed: Judson Carlberg, as the seventh president of Gordon College. He will replace Richard Gross, who retires in August. Carlberg has been senior vice-president at Gordon.

John White, as the next president of Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. White, a former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, has been associate vice-president for religious services at the college.

Paul Ferris, as the next president of Prairie Bible Institute in Three Hills, Alberta, Canada. Current president Ted Rendall will leave that post to become chancellor. Ferris has been professor of Hebrew Bible and Semitics at Columbia Biblical Seminary.

Resigned: Dick Abel, as president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Abel will become the new director of military ministries for Campus Crusade for Christ.

Announced: The resignation and retirement of Richard Chase as the sixth president of Wheaton College, effective July 31, 1993.

Opening: New Heritage USA, on June 27, under the principle ownership of Yet-King Loy. In late 1990, evangelist Morris Cerullo, with financing by Loy and another Malaysian businessman, purchased the former headquarters of Jim Bakker’s PTL from bankruptcy court (CT, April 29, 1991, p. 40). Loy later bought out Cerullo’s interest in the park, which is now being billed as a full-service, for-profit family resort.

Named: Bruce Ryskamp, corporate vice-president and group executive of Zondervan Corporation, as president of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.

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