* Kenneth Hemphill, 46-year-old director of the Southern Baptist Center for Church Growth, is the unanimous selection of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary search committee to become the next president of the Fort Worth-based school. Trustees of the largest seminary in the world fired president Russell Dilday by a 26 to 7 vote in March (CT, Apr. 4, 1994, p. 85).
* Jim Bakker is spending six months at a Salvation Army halfway house in Asheville, North Carolina, following his July 1 release from federal prison after four-and-a-half years for mail and wire fraud. Upon his release, Bakker said, “I want to humbly ask for forgiveness to those I have offended or hurt in any way by my sin and arrogant lifestyle.”
* The U.S. Supreme Court on June 30 upheld the legality of a 36-foot buffer zone around a Melbourne, Florida, abortion facility in the Madsen v. Women’s Health Center case (CT, June 20, 1994, p. 48). In a 6-to-3 decision, the Court ruled that judges may create protest-free zones “to ensure the health and well-being” of customers.
* Ballantine Publishing Group has created a new imprint, Moorings, which will eventually publish around 25 new Christian books per year. Bruce Barbour, former vice president of Thomas Nelson, Inc., will be publisher of the Nashville-based Moorings, and Timothy Jones, associate editor at CHRISTIANITY TODAY, will leave his CT post to become managing editor.
* Focus on the Family is launching a 32-page monthly magazine, “Single-Parent Family,” in September. “The ratio of single-parent families to two-parent families is now one to three,” says Focus vice president Dean Merrill. “It’s time to stop calling them ‘broken homes.’ “
* A federal district court jury in June convicted Tony Alamo, an evangelist with a ministry to drug abusers and the homeless, of understating his income for 1985 and failure to file tax returns from 1986 to 1988. Judge Jon McCalla of Memphis ordered Alamo jailed before sentencing August 26, saying he was at risk to flee. McCalla also cited unrelated charges that Alamo had married eight times since last year.
* At its annual convention in Anderson, Indiana, in June, the Church of God (Anderson) passed a resolution criticizing Freemasonry as a “Christless religion” that “uses bloody oaths.” The church relied on writings of James L. Holly, a Southern Baptist critic of Freemasonry (CT, May 17, 1993, p. 81).
* In a 3-to-0 ruling, the Virginia Court of Appeals on June 21 awarded custody of 2-year-old Tyler Doustou to his 24-year-old lesbian mother, Sharon Bottoms. Last September, Circuit Judge Buford Parsons had ruled the woman unfit because she is a lesbian, marking the first time a court had awarded custody to a third party (Bottoms’ mother) because of a parent’s homosexuality (CT, Oct. 25, 1993, p. 79). In the new ruling, Judge Samuel W. Coleman III wrote, “A parent’s private sexual conduct, even if illegal, does not create the presumption of unfitness.”
* Richard G. Champion, 63, who was editor of
“Pentecostal Evangel,”
died of a brain tumor in May. Champion was associated with the magazine for 32 years and once served as president of the Evangelical Press Association.Copyright © 1994 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
