ON THE SCREEN—Scheduled for release early next year by United Artists is a film chronicling the life of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale. Don Murray will play the leading role in the movie, based on the biography of Peale, Minister to Millions. Producer Frank Ross promises to “cast new light upon the ministry as a profession.”
PROTESTANT PANORAMA—A total of 22,214 decisions for Christ were recorded during a five-week Japan Baptist New Life Movement, according to crusade leaders. Joint sponsors were the evangelism division of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, the Southern Baptist Convention Foreign Mission Board, and the Japan Baptist Convention.
Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod is stepping up its program of religious education for the mentally retarded. A new bulletin will be published and study conferences scheduled to stimulate interest and provide exchanges of information.
Christian leaders of the Ami tribe in Formosa made history by organizing their own presbytery. The Ami tribe, one of eleven aboriginal tribes on the island, is now the largest with a population of 50,000. There are some 100 churches.
Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) will conduct their first lay school of theology this summer. Fifty men and women will participate in the six-day study at Texas Christian University.
Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany plans a Protestant “repentance church” on the grounds of the notorious Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, near Munich, Germany.
United Presbyterian General Assembly authorized development of a National Presbyterian Center in Washington, D. C., and construction of a new church building by the National Presbyterian Church.
MISCELLANY—American Bible Society will erect a new world headquarters building near New York’s Lincoln Center. Scripture distribution last year reached a new high of 31,509,821 copies of Bibles, testaments, and other selections. The ABS has now published at least one book of the Bible in more than 1,200 languages.
The shared-time program of public-parochial education began to gain momentum in Congress. A House committee will hold hearings this month. In the Senate a bill was introduced which would enable public financing of shared-time arrangements if a general aid to education bill were passed.
The crisis in Haiti prompted evacuation of a number of foreign missionary personnel, particularly women and children.
The Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas approved a study aimed at more uniformity in the worship and administrative procedures of its eleven member bodies.
Concise, a bimonthly edited by Glendon E. Harris, is the latest effort to introduce a mass-appeal Protestant periodical to the nation’s newstands. First issue for June includes an inspirational article by actress Donna Reed.
Police in Grand Rapids, Michigan, said a fire which caused $110,000 damage to the Eerdmans printing plant was set by a disgruntled employee. The man was also charged with setting a fire in his own home the same day. Eerdmans is one of the nation’s largest publishers of religious books.
The organization which operates a shrine for the war dead at Yasukuni, Japan, says it will dissolve its religious incorporation and create a non-religious framework to make itself eligible for government subsidy.
Catholic University of America will establish a Division of Space Sciences and Applied Physics, the first on any U.S. campus.
Bob Jones University purchased an AM and FM radio station in Atlanta-Decatur, Georgia, from the Great Commission Gospel Association.
House of Representatives passed two bills giving District of Columbia school principals and teachers greater power to discipline unruly pupils. One allows the use of “reasonable force”; the other grants authority to suspend or dismiss from school. (See “Order in the Schoolroom,” p. 47.) The hills have been referred to the Senate District of Columbia Committee.
Religion in American Life organization chose Salt Lake City as “Community of the Year” for conducting the best worship attendance program in 1962 among some 500 cities and towns.
Joseph Cardinal Ritter, Archbishop of St. Louis, was invited to address the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the fall of 1964. There was no immediate indication whether he would accept the invitation.
Members of the First Baptist Church of Raleigh, North Carolina, voted 367 to 147 against accepting the membership application of a young Jamaican Negro. A secret ballot supported the board of deacons, which had voted 42 to 19 against acceptance.
PERSONALIA—The Venerable Ian White-Thomson, Anglican Archdeacon of Northumberland, named to succeed Dr. Hewlett Johnson as Dean of Canterbury.
Dr. Eugene Carson Blake reelected to a five-year term as stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. The Rev. Silas G. Kessler elected moderator.
Dr. Raymond M. Olson, director of stewardship of The American Lutheran Church, appointed president of California Lutheran College.
The Rev. James Scott Sessions appointed chaplain of the Drew University College of Liberal Arts.
The Rev. Paul J. Emery named president of Northeast Bible Institute.
Walter L. Seaman named executive vice-president of the Methodist Publishing House.
Dr. Maynard P. Turner, Jr., resigned as president of the American Baptist Theological Seminary, Nashville.
Anglican Archbishop A. H. O’Neil of Fredericton, New Brunswick, installed as Metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of Canada.
The Rev. L. E. Deens of Belfast elected president of the Baptist Union of Ireland.
Stewart M. Doss, religion writer for the Dallas Times-Herald, awarded the Religious Newswriters Association’s James O. Supple Award for 1963 for the “greatest degree of excellence in religious reporting in the secular press” in 1962.
Douglas Tomlinson, founder and board chairman of the All-Church Press, the nation’s largest publisher of local church newspapers, honored with a bronze medallion by Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Neil Mellblom named Protestant editor for Religious News Service.
Jack Thomas fired from his job as head football coach at Hardin-Simmons University for failing “to follow administrative directives in the conduct of the athletic program.” The nature of the neglected directives was not disclosed. The Baptist school’s footballers won one game and lost nine last season. The single victory broke a 27-game losing streak, longest in the school’s history.
WORTH QUOTING—“We take it as an axiom that totalitarianism stifles creative genius, and we disapprove of the Roman Catholic Index, yet we countenance arbitrarily fixed patterns in Protestant publishing which are governed by artificial taboos.”—Grace Irwin, novelist.
“The churches have failed and we must turn away from them.”—Dick Gregory, Negro comedian, at an integrationist “freedom rally” in Chicago.
Deaths
THE VERY REV. GEORGE DOREY, 79, former president of the Canadian Council of Churches and moderator of the United Church of Canada’s General Council; in Toronto.
DR. A. W. TOZER, 66, editor of The Alliance Witness, official organ of the Christian and Missionary Alliance; in Toronto.
THE REV. PIERRE BENIGNUS, 51, a director of the Paris Mission Society; one of fifty-four killed in an airliner crash at Douala, Cameroun.
