* The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has placed sexual abstinence posters on New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston transit systems to counter condom ads sponsored by AIDS awareness groups. League operations director C. Joseph Doyle says Boston-subway condom ads emphasize "inconsistency, irresponsibility, and hypocrisy" of public schools preaching against smoking and drinking, yet responding to the AIDS crisis by distributing condoms. "Tax funds subsidizing such behavior is morally objectionable."
* Jim Bakker, released from prison in July after serving four-and-a-half years for mail and wire fraud, now faces a civil suit reinstated by a three-judge federal panel in Charlotte, North Carolina. The securities fraud suit was filed against the former Praise the Lord televangelist by six of the 150,000 people who bought $1,000 "lifetime partnerships" at the 2,300-acre Heritage USA resort that went bankrupt.
* A seven-year free-speech legal battle at Lindbergh (Wash.) High School is over, as U.S. District Court Judge Walter McGovern ordered the Renton school district to pay students $400,000 to cover their attorney fees. McGovern upheld a unanimous March 1993 federal appeals court decision, which said students must be allowed to hold Bible study and prayer in an empty classroom before school under the 1984 Equal Access Act.
* Lee College in Cleveland, Tennessee, dedicated Atkins-Ellis Hall September 23 to replace a dormitory destroyed by arson a year ago (CT, Dec. 13, 1993, p. 65). The 18 students hurt in the blaze have recovered, and four persons have been sentenced to prison in connection with the fire; the one convicted of lighting the match received a 19-year sentence. An insurance settlement covered about half of the $2 million construction cost.
* Evangelist Luis Palau set several U.S. records for his organization at a September crusade in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The event at Old Kent Park baseball field included 50 denominations and 565 churches, plus the largest number of Christian commitments in a single day for Palau, 2,062.
* Dale Hanson Bourke is the new publisher of Religious News Service, a 60-year-old organization recently purchased by Washington, D.C.-based Newhouse News Service (a publishing conglomerate that also owns "Vanity Fair" and "The New Yorker" magazines). Bourke has helped launch several magazines, including "Today's Christian Woman."
* The Colorado Supreme Court voted 6 to 1 on October 11 to uphold last December's ruling by Denver District Judge Jeffrey Bayless that Amendment 2 is unconstitutional (CT, Feb. 7, 1994, p. 44.). The high court declared Amendment 2, passed by 53 percent of voters in 1992, denies homosexuals "an effective voice in government affairs." The law had never been enforced because of legal challenges. State Attorney General Gale Norton is appealing the latest ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
* Dennis Worden has been appointed president of the Hollywood-based Haven of Rest Ministries. Worden has been in Christian radio broadcasting for more than 23 years, most recently as vice president of national programming and network development for Salem Communications.
* Three evangelical Protestant Chamula Indians from the southern Mexico state of Chiapas were murdered September 29. The three were among 584 Chamulas who had been exiled from their homeland almost a year ago because of their religious beliefs. They have been clashing with Caciques, local Catholic authorities, for 20 years. A group of 300 people raided homes of the Chamulas in Icalumtic after the evangelicals had been told it was safe to return.
* Responding to systematic religious persecution toward evangelicals, the Wheaton, Illinois-based World Evangelical Fellowship has designated November 20 as an international day of intercessory prayer for the church in Iran. In addition to the harassment and imprisonment of numerous Christians, three evangelical leaders have been murdered under mysterious circumstances this year (CT, Aug. 15, 1994, p. 54).
* Mary Ann Lundy, who was forced to resign July 1 as associate director for the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.'s (PCUSA) churchwide planning in the wake of last year's Re-Imagining conference (see p. 38), has been nominated as deputy general secretary of the World Council of Churches in Geneva. She had been PCUSA national representative on the Re-Imagining planning committee.
* In a move that could ease tensions between Catholic and Orthodox churches, Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who holds a position of primacy among Orthodox patriarchs, says he hopes to meet with Pope John Paul II in Rome next June. Relations between the two churches have worsened lately because of disputes over property confiscated under communism in eastern Europe.
* Mary Goforth Moynan, daughter of Canadian Presbyterian Church pioneer missionaries Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth, died July 16 at age 93. After a 57-year absence, Moynan returned to China in 1977 and introduced what turned out to be very popular books written by her parents about China. Her book "God Brought Us Through" was published ten days before her death.
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