News from the North American Scene: September 13, 1993

INTERFAITH COUNCIL

Salem Clergy Welcome Witch

Salem has come full circle. Three centuries after 20 people suspected of witchcraft were executed in this Massachusetts town, the Salem Religious Leaders Association has officially welcomed a high priest witch into its ranks. Shawn Poirier, 27, leads a Wiccan coven, the Temple of the Black Rose, in Salem. Two hundred temple followers gather to “worship the raw forces of nature,” based on lunar cycles.

Randal Wilkinson, priest at Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church, says nobody in the interfaith clergy support group “could think of any compelling reason” to forbid Poirier from joining. The group has no admission guidelines.

“We are very sensitive to issues of religious intolerance,” Wilkinson told CT, citing the witchcraft hysteria of 1692. “We needed to make a positive statement about including people of different religions. These [witches] don’t mean any harm. We don’t discriminate based on creed.”

Ken Steigler, a United Methodist pastor, says the group should become more ecumenical by inviting Mormons, Buddhists, and Muslims to participate.

LITERACY CAMPAIGN

Robertson Helps Adults to Read

More than 72,000 adults have learned to read thanks to a literacy program launched in Mississippi five years ago by Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network.

Because of Robertson’s political profile and his promotion of the phonics method, which has been replaced in many school systems, the $3.2 million Heads Up Literacy Campaign initially met with skepticism. Now it is receiving praise.

“Lo and behold, he had something that was very good, and it was nonpartisan,” says Don Rahaim of the state literacy resource center.

“Before I started in these classes, I felt powerless,” says Sherrie Wright, a fifth-grade dropout who enrolled in the free program. “But there’s help available from people. I’m like a different person.”

Robertson hopes the program, which has now been turned over to a state corporate committee, will serve as a national example of how the private sector can help financially strapped state governments.

ASSEMBLIES OF GOD

Denomination Picks Leader

The new leader of the Assemblies of God says the denomination must emphasize its Pentecostal roots in order to keep growing.

Thomas E. Trask was elected general superintendent at the denomination’s August general council in Minneapolis. The Assemblies of God is the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States, with more than 2.2 million adherents. Worldwide, the Assemblies of God has 25 million followers. The denomination is in a “Decade of Harvest” program, with the goal of converting five million people and opening 5,000 churches by 2000.

Trask urged a return to tradition, noting that most were “Spirit-filled” in the early days of the church, founded in 1914. Today, he said, statistics show nearly half the members “may have not received the infilling of the Holy Spirit.”

“We may be Pentecostal in doctrine, but not in experience,” Trask said. The new chief executive has been in the ministry for 37 years, three as a general superintendent in Michigan. Trask succeeds G. Raymond Carlson, who had been general superintendent since 1986.

CRIME

One Father’s Faith—Under Fire

When Paul Keller was arrested last month for starting more than 76 fires and causing more than $16 million worth of damage in Washington State-making him the nation’s most notorious serial arsonist-he had no idea that the lead that arson investigators needed came from his own family.

Police and fire investigators, frustrated by the string of arsons, decided to release a psychological profile of the suspect to the public. But when George Keller, Paul’s father, read the profile in a local paper, he was shocked. “Every little detail in that profile pointed to Paul, right down to the car he was driving.”

As strong Christians, George Keller and his family knew what they had to do. They went to investigators, naming Paul. The elder Keller says, “The hard part was keeping what we did from Paul, until investigators compiled enough evidence to arrest him. We knew God would be there for all of us, including Paul, but we had to do the right thing-the Christian thing.”

As soon as police arrested Paul Keller, George went to work on his defense, lining up an attorney to represent him. “He’s our son,” he said, choking back tears, “and we will love, support, and pray for him. We will not desert him now.” Paul Keller was sentenced to 75 years in prison for the arsons, which included homes, businesses, and churches. “You’ve got to do what’s right,” George Keller says, “and sometimes, as Christians, what’s right isn’t necessarily comfortable.”

Last month, George Keller received $25,000-a major part of the reward offered for the arrest and conviction of the mystery arsonist. He gave the money to a Lutheran church destroyed by his son.

By Perrucci Ferraiuolo in Seattle.

PROMISE KEEPERS

Men’s Gathering Keeps Growing

More than 50,000 men converged on the University of Colorado-Boulder campus in July for encouragement at the Promise Keepers Christian men’s conference. The two-day event had attendees from all 50 states and 10 countries, up from 22,000 last year when the event went national.

Colorado football coach Bill McCartney, who founded Promise Keepers in 1990, has drawn criticism from groups who believe his views are narrow and bigoted, including 125 homosexuals who picketed this year’s event. “We’re calling men of God to war-we will retreat no more,” McCartney said. “We’re going to contest anything that sets itself up against the name of Jesus Christ.”

“We’ve been too proud to say we need help and to cry out to God,” declared Greg Laurie, pastor of the Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California.

Laurie and 20 other Christian leaders, including James Dobson, Jack Hayford, E. V. Hill, Howard Hendricks, and Gary Smalley, addressed the group.

“This weekend has given me the desire to have a daily relationship with God again,” said Alan Lennon of Fayetteville, North Carolina. Running throughout the weekend’s singing, praying, and preaching was the challenge for men to become more committed as husbands, fathers, and citizens.

By Ed Gilbreath in Boulder.

MEDIA

Actor Faults HBO for AIDS Film

Is a pay cable television movie on the AIDS epidemic making “politically correct” changes in order to present a more favorable depiction of homosexual lifestyles? That is what one of the film’s actors has charged.

And the Band Played On is a film debuting September 11 on HBO. The film is based on the book of the same name by homosexual journalist Randy Shilts, who has the AIDS virus.

The book was frank in its portrayal of homosexual promiscuity in bathhouses and sex clubs of San Francisco’s Castro Street district, but the movie is toning down those aspects at the author’s request.

Actor Matthew Modine, a star of the film, wrote a letter to HBO in June complaining that the film was engaging in revisionist history, which downplayed the promiscuity of the homosexual community and the resulting rapid spread of the disease.

The result is a film warmly received by the 17 major homosexual-rights groups that have seen advance screenings.

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

In Brief

Richard L. Hamm of Nashville received 92 percent of the vote in winning a six-year term as president of the Indianapolis-based Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) at the denomination’s general assembly in July. Hamm’s nomination had concerned some because of his liberal views on homosexual ordination. The Disciples of Christ also passed resolutions warning Colorado that it would pull its 1997 meeting out of Denver if the state refuses to protect homosexual rights, and urging the U.S. government to make the abortion drug RU 486 available.

For the first time, the Disciples of Christ held a general assembly in conjunction with the General Synod of the United Church of Christ. The UCC passed resolutions calling for the ethical treatment of animals, and backing federal civil rights and domestic partnership laws for same-sex couples.

• Washington, D.C., radio pastor Dale Crowley, Jr., has asked Congress to eliminate Antisemitism, a film running continuously at the new United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Crowley claims the film is a “taxpayer-financed assault against Christianity” because it asserts that Christians have persecuted Jews throughout history.

• The Kingston, New York-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is making up to $23 million available for interlaith volunteer caregiver projects in launching its “Faith in Action” program. In the next four years, Faith in Action will provide $25,000 start-up grants for more than 900 home-based volunteer service programs providing care to those with chronic health conditions.

• Lewis Nobles, 67, has resigned as president of the Southern Baptist-owned Mississippi College in Clinton after college officials accused him of embezzling $3 million in school funds during the past 15 years. Officials say Nobles had devised an elaborate scheme of phony bank accounts. Officials became suspicious when potential donors told them they already had made contributions directly to the college president.

• Regent University has selected filmmaker and professor Terrence R. Lindvall, 45, as its new president. Lindvall is a founding faculty member of the College of Communication and the Arts at Regent, which began in 1978. He has been executive producer on more than 30 projects, including films seen on HBO and Fox Television.

• William McElwee Miller, a Presbyterian medical missionary in Iran from 1919 to 1962, died July 7 in Philadelphia at age 100.

• The Zondervan Corporation sold Benson Music Group to Music Entertainment Group July 30. Benson, founded in 1902, is the second largest Christian record company and music publisher in the world.

• William H. Leslie, 61, died August 15 following a massive coronary. An outspoken advocate of urban church ministry, he pastored Chicago’s LaSalle Street Church for 28 years, during which time he developed many outreach programs. Under Leslie, LaSalle spawned six neighborhood ministries, including a legal-aid program, a counseling center, and single-mothers ministry.

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