Passages - Christianity Today

NamedMark Kuyper, current vice president for business development and marketing for CBA International (formerly the Christian Booksellers Association), has been appointed the new president and CEO of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.

DiedGleason Archer died April 27. Archer, 87, wrote the Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties and A Survey of Old Testament Introduction. He was a member of the steering committee of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. Jay Grimstead, an ICBI founder, called Archer one of the intellectual fathers of the inerrancy movement. ct executive editor Timothy George said, “Gleason Archer was a giant among tall oaks.”

MartyredGeorge Masih, 42, was shot and killed April 2 by Muslim intruders in his home near Lahore, Pakistan. Masih, the pastor of a small church, and his wife, Aniata, were watching the Jesus film at the time. The Voice of the Martyrs implicates a Muslim neighbor in the attack.

DiedF. Burton Nelson, a longtime Dietrich Bonhoeffer scholar and professor at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, died March 22 at the age of 79. Burton had been hospitalized for some time. Nelson coauthored the 2002 book, The Cost of Moral Leadership: The Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

AppointedIain R. Torrance, editor of the Scottish Journal of Theology, has been named the sixth president of Princeton Theological Seminary.

InauguratedDoug Fagerstrom has been inaugurated as the first president of Grand Rapids Theological Seminary of Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The seminary had been led by a series of academic deans and vice presidents since its founding in 1948.

Briefs

Cultural Genocide Chin and Kachin refugees in India, who are Christians, accuse authorities in their native Burma of a campaign of religious discrimination and cultural genocide. Representatives of Christian Solidarity Worldwide visited them in March. Among the charges: Christian children between the ages of 5 and 10 are being lured into Buddhist monasteries and never see their parents again. Mountaintop crosses have been destroyed, with villagers forced to build Buddhist pagodas instead. It has been a decade since Christians have received permission to build a church.

Worker Vindicated The U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado has ruled in favor of a Denver Christian who was fired from his job with AT&T Broadband for refusing in 2001 to sign a new employee handbook affirming homosexuality (CT, January, p. 26). Albert Buonanno, a member of a Baptist General Conference church, said the statements regarding homosexuality violated his sincerely held religious beliefs. The Rutherford Institute took up his case. Buonanno will receive back pay and lost matching contributions to a 401(k) retirement account.