Racial demonstrations in the South echoed religious overtones this month as leading clergymen voiced mixed reactions to integrationist methodology.
The incident which aroused the most sentiment was the expulsion from Vanderbilt University Divinity School of the Rev. James M. Lawson, 32, Negro Methodist minister who was arrested in Nashville on a charge of conspiring to disrupt commerce.
Lawson, a senior at the divinity school, had coordinated “sit-in” protests against “white only” lunch counters. He was released on $500 bail subscribed by the divinity school faculty. His expulsion by the university trustees’ executive committee was denounced in a statement signed by 15 of the theological faculty’s 16 members and 127 out of 180 faculty members of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences.
Vanderbilt was originally Methodist-related, but is now under independent operation. Its interdenominational divinity school retains a minimum of Methodist ties.
Following Lawson’s dismissal because of his “announced program of conducting a civil disobedience campaign,” the Boston University School of Theology, a Methodist institution, offered him a full-tuition scholarship. In the meantime, Vanderbilt University Chancellor Harvie Branscomb announced that Lawson’s status would be reviewed by the university’s Board of Trust at its regular spring meeting, scheduled for May.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Negro Baptist minister and a leading integrationist, said he was especially “disappointed” at the expulsion because it came from “a Christian institution.”
“It represented,” he said, “a degree of moral cowardice on the part of those who expelled him.”
He called on university officials to reconsider the decision.
King called Lawson “a very dedicated Christian” who was “simply teaching the method and philosophy of non-violent resistance.”
“If this is conspiracy, it’s certainly righteous conspiracy.”
King conceded implicitly that current demonstrations in the South alienate, to an extent, the very people with whom integrationists seek understanding.
“I don’t think this is a permanent alienation,” he observed. “When oppressed people rise up, the first reaction is always that of bitterness.”
The “real achievement” of current demonstrations has been “to dramatize the continued indignities and humiliation that Negroes confront under the system of segregation,” he added.
A poll of Southern clergy leaders by CHRISTIANITY TODAY found most of them outspoken, whether pro or con, in their sentiments toward integration demonstrations.
Dr. Ernest Trice Thompson, moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), said Negroes in the South “are making a courageous effort to end all discrimination based on race. In this effort they deserve the support of the Christian conscience generally throughout the nation.”
Thompson predicted that “old and untenable traditions will gradually yield and white and black will need to labor together to build a better region and a better nation.”
“To this end,” he added, “it is hoped that Negroes will continue to press their cause without hate and in such a way that mutual good will may finally be restored and strengthened.”
Sharply critical of the “sit-ins” was Dr. William R. Cannon, president of Candler School of Theology, part of Methodist-operated Emory University in Atlanta, who called the methods “the worst possible.”
“We appreciate,” said Cannon, “the desire of any people to have what it takes to be its rights and privileges as free citizens in a free land.” He asserted, however, that “integration cannot be achieved by coercion or force. The methods they are using are the worst possible because they create misunderstanding on the part of people with whom they are trying to seek understanding.”
Dr. Robert W. Burns, pastor of the Peachtree Christian Church in Atlanta, who calls himself a “moderate” in the racial issue, also challenged the propriety of protest methods.
“These are not good means,” Burns said. “I’m very sorry to see them used.”
Dr. W. A. Criswell, pastor of the 12,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas, largest in the Southern Baptist Convention, said he thought the question of property rights was involved.
“If a building is privately owned and run,” he observed, “I have assumed that one can do with it as he pleases.”
He declared that it is “one’s privilege to sell or not to sell to anybody. For us to try to violate that privilege is the same thing as the public confiscation of private property.”
The possibility that Communist sympathizers might be behind some demonstrations was raised by Dr. B.C. Good-pasture, editor of the weekly Gospel Advocate, leading Churches of Christ periodical.
“The races would get along fine if they were not subjected to alien influences,” he said.
Methodist Bishop Arthur J. Moore warned integrationist demonstrators to be careful to obey local ordinances.
“Some of these Southern demonstrations are violating state law,” he stated.
“If we’re going to preach obedience to the federal law, we must at the same time insist on obedience to state law.”
Applause for the demonstrators’ manners came from the Rev. A. T. Mollegen, professor of New Testament language and literature at the Protestant Episcopal Seminary, Alexandria, Virginia.
“The dignity, restraint, discipline, and lack of vindictiveness of the Negro students’ demonstrations have been impressive,” said Mollegen. “Their appeal for full human status has broken through the lamented social apathy of Eastern college students, and Vassar girls, for instance, were on a picket line for the first time in 20 years to express their solidarity with Southern Negro students. There is still great hope for America in our cold war with communism when our consciences respond to such efforts.”
‘Mais Non’ at Dijon
Premier Khrushchev’s tour of France was marked by a Church-State clash which provoked prompt reaction from U.S. Protestants, for it renewed the issue of hierarchical control of Roman Catholic public servants.
Felix Kir, 84-year-old Roman Catholic mayor who had been favorably disposed toward Khrushchev, was forbidden by his ecclesiastical superior to extend a welcome to the Soviet leader. Instead of presenting a laudatory welcoming speech he had prepared, Kir was whisked away “in the company of police and intelligence officials.” Overseer of Kir’s diocese is Pierre Cardinal Gerlier.
The fact that Kir was also a conservative independent deputy in the National Assembly heightened the significance of the action.
In Wisconsin, Senator John F. Kennedy, asked what he would have done under similar circumstances, said that if his Presidential duties included a meeting with Khrushchev, nothing would interfere with his carrying them out.
Dr. Daniel Poling, editor of Christian Herald, commented, “What Senator Kennedy now says he would do, were he Mayor of Dijon, is specifically what he declined to do as Congressman at the victory dinner for the Chapel of the Four Chaplains. This may indicate a definite and radical change, and if so is most commendable. It is essentially the same commitment made by Governor Alfred E. Smith in 1928. If correctly reported, Senator Kennedy repudiates the historic Roman Catholic view of church and state which the present mayor of Dijon respects.”
Protestant Panorama
• A “better spirit” at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville was noted by trustees in an annual meeting last month, according to Baptist Press. The trustees are reported to have cited “a new spirit of harmony and dedication among the seminary faculty, staff, and students.” The seminary’s prestige had suffered a severe blow in 1958 when 13 professors were dismissed.
• A Protestant “information center” will soon be established in Brussels. The idea for the center got its start at the Brussels World Fair, where cooperative church efforts made possible erection of the specially-designed Protestant Pavilion, since sold to the American Church at The Hague.
• Methodist Bishop Roy H. Short says that a wave of enthusiasm has flowed through Protestant churches in Cuba since Fidel Castro came to power. He observed on his return from a two-week evangelistic mission to Cuba last month that “many people in Cuba see hope for betterment in Castro’s regime.”
• A radio station sponsored by the Evangelical Covenant Church of America was dedicated in Nome, Alaska, last month. The 5,000-watt station is the only one in a radius of 500 miles.
• Charged with disobedience to the “order and discipline of the Church,” the Rev. Frank Hamblen, pastor of the High Street Evangelical United Brethren Church in Lima, Ohio, was suspended from his denomination’s list of ministers last month. Hamblen had already announced that he would withdraw voluntarily because of “extreme liberalism and unbelief in the basic principles of the Christian faith and the changing moral standards in our [EUB] institutions, seminaries and colleges.”
• Some 100 college-age young people from Southern California are touring Protestant mission churches in Hawaii this week. Directing the tour is the Rev. Roy Sapp, president of Southern California Christ’s Ambassadors, youth organization of the Assemblies of God.
• Dr. Arno Lehmann, noted authority on the history and theology of Lutheran missions, was refused an exit visa by the East German government last month. Lehmann had been scheduled to lecture at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.
• Drs. Irwin A. Moon and George E. Speake of Moody Institute of Science are beginning a two-year, round-the-world photographic expedition in a twin-engined private plane. Their objective: to gather film for an inclusive report on foreign missions.
• A weekly short-wave broadcast in the Russian language is being beamed weekly from radio station HCJB in Quito, Ecuador, to the Soviet Union. The program is sponsored by Mennonite Broadcasts, Inc.
• Italian authorities state they have given official recognition to Pentecostals. There are some 500 Pentecostal groups or communities throughout Italy, with a total baptized adult membership estimated at 60,000.
• Two U. S. missionary couples, each with three children, are reported to have survived the Agadir earth-quake without injury. They were identified as Mr. and Mrs. Walter Jackson and Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Cookman, all of whom had lived in the hard-hit industrial area of Agadir under sponsorship of the Southern Morocco Mission.
• A heavy snowfall collapsed the roof of an 8,000-seat tabernacle on the international campgrounds of the Church of God in Anderson, Indiana, last month. The building was subsequently condemned, which led officials to cancel the 1960 international convention of the Church of God. Convention sessions had been scheduled to be held in the tabernacle June 13–19.
• American Methodist missionaries and national ministers are teaming up in Pakistan for a “Christian commando” program proclaiming the Gospel in areas where it has never been heard before. One and two-day visits to Muslim villages highlight the program.
Mass Missions
A few scantily-clad tribesmen huddled about a gesturing white man have long typified the missionary enterprise. The traditional mass evangelism image, on the other hand, has been a vast arena wherein thousands hear the Gospel simultaneously. The two means have had a common goal, to win souls for Christ, their approach differing according to whether the pagans were civilized or uncivilized.
The first quarter of 1960, however, saw missionaries and evangelists join hands across the African continent in a blending of technique which heralded hope for a “mass missions” era to counter the Moslem tide.
How effective is mass evangelism on the mission field? The 17,000-mile tour of Africa by Billy Graham and his evangelistic team represented the stiffest test. Graham himself had been concerned because he knew that such things as scattered population, lack of transportation facilities, and the multiplicity of languages (some 700) had long been considered prohibitive of the mass meeting. Success of the crusade established the fact that Africa is now sufficiently advanced that the mass meeting can be effectively adapted to mission frontiers.
The African hunger for the Gospel was demonstrated remarkably, for an estimated three-fourths of those who attended Graham’s rallies had never before heard of him. Some paid a year’s salary for transportation to the rally site!
Graham was back in his Montreat, North Carolina, home this month, his face tanned and his heart warmed.
“I am thrilled over the way God blessed our efforts,” he said. Among specific answers to prayers of Christians around the world, he cited these:
Although in his 10 weeks overseas the evangelist had lost 10 pounds, neither he nor his team suffered anything more severe than a stomach upset. Moreover, Africa received him graciously; he was personally greeted by the head of state of every country in which he held meetings except Egypt (Nasser was visiting Syria at the time). Virtually all-out Protestant mobilization preceded each local campaign.
Most heartening, said Graham, was the enthusiastic response to the Gospel message. He gave the following statistics: 600,000 aggregate attendance, 40,000 inquirers. At 22 mass meetings in 16 African cities, the attendance averaged 15,000.
Nowhere in his meetings did the evangelist encounter emotional outbreaks. The well-mannered crowds, he observed, “were quieter than those in Madison Square Garden.” To avoid young curiosity seekers, he limited his invitation to those over 12.
Graham preached to the Africans simply, sometimes through two interpreters. He would often start with John 3:16, relating how he had learned the verse as a boy from his mother while she scrubbed him in the tub. Then he would outline the plan of salvation, stressing the cost of following Christ.
For an African, the cost of Christian conversion is great. Converts to Islam, by contrast, are required to give up little, which probably accounts for the estimate that for every three Africans who become Christians, seven choose to follow Mohammed. Certain Protestant missionaries in Africa are debating whether to abandon the monogamy requirements now placed upon converts to Christianity.
In his preaching, Graham also sought to counter what he feels is Africa’s most important challenge to Christianity: the unfortunate Caucasoid-Christian identification. Faces would light up and heads would nod approvingly when he declared that Christ was not a European, that he had been in Africa at the age of two, and that an African had borne his cross.
Graham urges Americans (1) to give special attention to African students studying here, (2) to sympathize with African nationalistic aims, (3) to inform them of this country’s distinctive Christian heritage, and (4) to intensify material and technical help.
Next the evangelist focuses his attention on Washington, D. C., where an eight-day meeting at Griffith Stadium in June shapes up as a “national crusade.”
Ecumenical Force
Billy Graham’s African crusade enhanced still further his stature as a prime spokesman for the churches of the world, according to Tom McMahan, religion editor of the Columbia (South Carolina) State and Christianity Today news correspondent.
McMahan accompanied Graham throughout Africa and dispatched special reports which have been appearing in these pages for the last five issues.
“The virtually complete mobilization of the Protestant community,” McMahan said, “once again proved the most powerful ecumenical force.”
Highlights …
These were the three meetings which Graham said impressed him the most during his crusade in Africa:
—A Sunday morning service at Moshi under a cloudless sky with famous, snowcapped Mt. Kilimanjaro in full view (“I never felt the spirit of the Lord more.”)
—A rally at Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, where a school holiday was declared so that students could attend the crusade.
—A tent meeting in Cairo before a crowd estimated conservatively to number about 6,000. (“This was the most electric meeting I’ve ever had.… There is the beginning of a great religious revival in Egypt.”)
… and Sidelights
Three witch doctors tried to fix a curse on Billy Graham during a rally he held on the shore of Lake Victoria. After the service Graham witnessed to them personally. They stared blankly.
These were other sidelights of the campaigns in Africa and the Holy Land:
—The plane carrying the Graham team began to trail thick, oily smoke while approaching Roberts Field, Liberia. It landed safely.
—An extremist Moslem leader challenged Graham to a healing competition. The evangelist refused, citing scriptural injunctions against tempting God. “God has not given me the power of healing,” he remarked, with disarming humility.
—Sponsors of a rally in Tel Aviv were refused use of an auditorium. Graham spoke in an Anglican church in the twin city of Jaffa. The incident aroused wide controversy. One Israeli newspaper asked, “Would we raise a hue and cry if a Jewish rabbi were refused a hall in New York or London?” Graham also held meetings in an Anglican church in the old city of Jerusalem and in a YMCA on the Israeli side. Rallies in Nazareth and Haifa drew the largest crowds, about 2,000 each.
—Protestant missionaries had prayed and planned for months for the single scheduled meeting with Graham at Kumasi, Ghana, only to cancel the service when a tropical downpour hit shortly before starting time.
—The Sudanese government barred a scheduled crusade meeting in Khartoum. No official reason was given.
—Clergymen from South Africa invited Graham to hold a crusade there. He stipulated that meetings would have to be multi-racial. They predicted this would be possible within three years.
Georgian ‘Northerners’
Highland Park Baptist Church of Augusta, Georgia, holds the distinction of being the first in the state to affiliate with the American Baptist Convention. Comprising 150 members, the church was begun three years ago by the Rev. C. Gordon Blanchard, who still serves as pastor.
Although Blanchard is a minister of the Southern Baptist Convention, his church has never been affiliated.
Leaving Nashville?
The Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee and three of its agencies may desert offices in Nashville because of a dispute with the city over taxation.
The dispute centers on a building owned by the Baptist Sunday School Board. The city says the Baptists must pay $131,400 in taxes on the edifice, which the board had planned to give over to the executive committee and several agencies. A study commission is trying to determine whether the taxes would be required once the building is turned over. If so, a wholesale exodus might result.
Dr. J. W. Storer, executive secretary of the Southern Baptist Foundation, says that the foundation’s trust funds totaling nearly $5,000,000 are deposited in Nashville banks and that a large amount of that is invested in local mortgages. If the foundation leaves Nashville, he said, so might the funds.
The city has ruled that certain properties held by religious, educational, and fraternal groups do not fall into the tax-exempt, non-profit categories.
Sectarian Statue
Plans to erect a large statue of Christ on public land in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota are drawing criticism because of Church-State implications.
Dr. C. Stanley Lowell, associate director of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, suggests that the private, non-profit corporation which has launched a fund drive for the “Christ of the Mount” statue ought to offer to buy the land instead of seeking it as a gift from tax-payers.
Republican Senator Francis Case of South Dakota, a leader of the project, has emphasized that no government funds are involved, but that the most desirable location is on the government-owned forest reservation.
While the group seeking to erect the statue on public land is not a “church,” Lowell said in a letter to Case, “its function and goal are of a distinctly religious character.”
“It is, therefore,” he contended, “in a true sense a religious organization which is erecting a religious shrine or symbol on government-owned property.”
“A satisfactory solution,” Lowell suggested, “and a course of action which would put it beyond any question would be to have the corporation pay for the land on which the proposed statue is to be erected.”
Lowell is former pastor of Wesley Methodist Church in Washington, which Case now attends.
Fair Practice
Protestants and Other Americans United, critical of Roman Catholic policy in the past, has denounced as “fallacious and hysterical” three pieces of anti-Catholic literature circulated in the Wisconsin primary and elsewhere. The three items were an alleged autobiography of Maria Monk in a Montreal convent, a pamphlet on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and a fraudulent oath of the Knights of Columbus.
Federal Church
The Virgin Islands legislature is asking the U. S. Congress to pass a special bill whereby the Federal government would relinquish title to three churches and two parsonages. One of them is the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Christiansted (pictured at left), which was erected in 1830 by the Danish State Lutheran Church in the West Indies and owned by the Crown at the time the United States purchased the islands from Denmark in 1917. Parishioners recently discovered that the U. S. government still owned the property because the treaty of annexation made no provision for a transfer of title.
Polish Compromise
The Roman Catholic hierarchy in Poland is reported to have reached a compromise with the government on long-standing differences.
The compromise is said to involve reciprocal concessions in Church-State matters. Discussion on such crucial issues as abortion and birth control was postponed, however, the report said.
The compromise is described as having assured the government of the clergy’s support in an attempt to overcome the public’s apathy and disrespect for state property and state-owned enterprises.
The regime was also reported to have been assured of the hierarchy’s support in the government’s efforts to curb a current wave of immorality.
Roman Catholic leaders, in turn, were said to have received assurances that religious instruction could be continued in public schools.
Communist Scourge
Peiping Radio announced last month that American-born Bishop James E. Walsh, last remaining foreign Roman Catholic prelate in Communist China, has been sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment for allegedly attempting to overthrow the Red regime.
The announcement came shortly after the New China News Agency in Peiping reported that Bishop Ignatius Kung Pinmei of Shanghai had been sentenced to life imprisonment and 12 Chinese Catholics given prison terms ranging from 5 to 20 years for alleged treason.
The U. S. State Department promptly filed a protest with the Chinese Red government via diplomatic channels in Warsaw. Warsaw Radio subsequently broadcast a statement by Wang Ping-nan, Chinese ambassador to Poland, formally rejecting the protest. Wang said Walsh was “sentenced according to law for his espionage activities in China and attempts to subvert the Chinese government.”
The original Peiping Radio broadcast described Walsh as “an American spy of long standing.” It said that as early as 1940 and 1941 he made two trips to Japan to participate in secret American-Japanese talks at which he submitted a proposal for “splitting up China between American and Japanese imperialism.”
Hodge-podge Hindrance
Dr. Lin Yutang, noted Chinese Christian philosopher and author, says “theological hodge-podge” and “accretions and additions to the simple teaching of Jesus—love God and love thy neighbor”—are keeping intellectuals from joining the Church.
The remarks were addressed to an institute in “Christian Perspectives in Contemporary Culture” last month at Hanover College (United Presbyterian) in Indiana. Dr. Yutang is the son of a Presbyterian minister and author of 36 books, one of which, From Pagan to Christian, tells of his recent conversion.
“Any man of unbiased mind who will read of Jesus Christ cannot help but realize that here is the revelation of God,” he said. “Jesus Christ is enough.”
“Theological hodge-podge kept me away from the Church for 30 years,” Dr. Yutang declared, adding that even though he has become a Presbyterian he has “little use” for denominational differences.
He dismissed as “non-essentials” such tenets of faith as baptism, the Virgin Birth, and original sin. “I am not a good Christian but a man who tries to think for himself.”
“The Virgin Birth,” he said, “is one of the problems that stops the thinking man” and declared the tenet as “not essential to the teachings of Jesus Christ” and “of no consequence whatever.”
He contended that there is “an inordinate emphasis on sin and condemnation in the ordinary Christian church” and pictured preachers as “shouting and ranting like village barkers, ‘Come and be saved or go to eternal damnation.’ ”
Subsidies for Islam
Cairo Radio said last month that the United Arab Republic is “prepared to pay a regular salary to every Moslem who propagates the Islamic religion in this country after having been graduated from the Al-Azhar University.”
The government will set up Moslem liaison offices in all Islamic countries to supply them with religious literature, the broadcast added.
Rejected Regulation
The Indian Parliament in Nagpur rejected last month a bill which would have “regulated” conversions from Hinduism to “non-Indian” religions.
B. N. Datar, minister of state for home affairs, had told the lower house of Parliament, where the measure was being considered, that it was unconstitutional and that there had been “no mass conversions as alleged by the mover of the bill.”
The proposed legislation had been introduced by an individual sponsor, with no party or government support.
‘Wedding Palaces’
The Soviet government is building special “palaces” to provide “worthy settings” for Communist weddings. The move is seen as an attempt to dissuade young couples from getting married in a church.
Insult or Criticism?
An Italian appeals court acquitted an 80-year-old Baptist elder last month of charges that he had insulted the Roman Catholic religion.
Donato Cretarolo had been given a 15-day jail term a year ago after he posted placards claiming that Protestants were more faithful to Christian principles than Catholics. Cretarolo acted after a local priest allegedly had publicly criticized a parishioner for allowing her daughter to marry a Baptist. The mother was refused the sacraments.
A court at Avezzano sentenced Cretarolo under a law which forbids anyone to “insult the religion of the state.”
The appeals court, however, dismissed the case, explaining that Protestants may criticize the Catholic church publicly provided they do not insult it.
Patriarchal First
His Holiness Mar Ignatus Yacob, III, Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, arrived in New York last month. He is the first Patriarch of Antioch ever to visit the United States.
The church which he heads has a world-wide constituency of about 2,000,000 members. Its largest membership is in India, although there is some representation through the Americas.
Orthodox Cooperation
Leaders of Eastern Orthodox churches in the United States are studying the possibility of forming a standing conference of bishops. Top-ranking prelates of nine churches are participating in the move following a call from Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America.
Concern for Calves
An Alberta cattle farmer was fined $50 last month because he refused to submit his calves to vaccination. John Van Hierden of Coalhurst claimed that vaccination of any kind is contrary to his religious faith. He was charged with refusing to comply with regulations aimed at control of brucellosis.
Teens and Conversion
Less than 10 per cent of young people who responded to a Youth for Christ Magazine survey attributed their decision to become Christians to parental influence.
Most of the 2,000 questioned in local YFC rallies gave “friends” or “the sermon” as the key factors.
When asked what they considered to be their parents’ biggest mistakes with teens, the youth gave these answers, according to a survey report: “They treat us like babies!” “They don’t understand us or take time to see things through our eyes.” “They fail to give us spiritual help.”
At least three-fourths of the young people said they “witness for Christ occasionally” and half claimed they have been instrumental in leading another person into the Christian life.
“Interestingly enough,” said the survey report, “63 per cent of the teens who say they have never won another person to Christ state they are willing to become full-time missionaries! Apparently they don’t realize that missionary work begins at home!”
“Temptation” was given as ranking problems among teen-agers, choosing a career second. “Sex problems were named by only 21 per cent,” the report said.
Worth Quoting
“Young people today are … heirs to the greatest fund of knowledge and the most opulent store of material advantages any generation ever received. The high school student has vastly more information at his command than any of the early settlers of this land. He lives longer and more comfortably than did medieval royalty, and moves about in an environment increasingly devoted to his convenience and enjoyment. Yet we know that these things are not the essence of civilization. For civilization is a matter of spirit; of conviction and belief; of self-reliance and acceptance of responsibility; of happiness in constructive work and service; of devotion to valued tradition. It is a religious faith; it is a shared attitude toward life and living which is felt and practiced by a whole people, into which each generation is born—and nurtured through childhood to maturity.”—President Eisenhower, in his address to the Golden Anniversary White House Conference on Children and Youth.
[CHRISTIANITY TODAY will carry a detailed report of the conference in the April 25 issue.—ED.]
People: Words And Events
Death: Mrs. Sharif Thakur Das, 62, wife of the African secretary of the United Presbyterian Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations, in New York.
Appointments: As professor of Christian worship at Wesley Theological Seminary, retiring Methodist Bishop W. Earl Ledden … as editor of the Rocky Mountain Baptist, J. Kelly Simmons.
Retirement: As episcopal leader of the Methodist Church’s Kansas area, at the General Conference, April 27–May 7, Bishop Dana Dawson.
Election: As chairman of the National Christian Council of Korea, the Rev. Lee Nam Kyu … as Anglican Bishop of Barbados, Edward Lewis Evans … as president of the New England Fellowship of the National Association of Evangelicals, Arthur Chamberlain, Jr.
Resignations: As executive secretary of The Methodist Church’s eight-state South Central Jurisdiction, Dr. Paid D. Womeldorf … as director of the Mexican Indian Mission, Dr. James G. Dale … as German news editor of the Lutheran World Federation, Dr. Johannes Lehmann.
