The churches’ retreat to the suburbs seems to have reached its extremity in the United States, and alert congregations are studying the prospects for new approaches in urban centers. A number are taking advantage of urban redevelopment projects by establishing new churches where slums have been cleared away. The Alvarado Church of Christ in Los Angeles is projecting an even more daring move: it hopes to relocate in a new twenty-two-story office building to be erected near the city’s downtown civic center.
Spokesmen for the church say it will follow somewhat the plan of Chicago Temple, which houses the First Methodist Church of Chicago and many professional offices. A chapel will be located on the top floor of the $13.5 million building. The main sanctuary will be adjacent to the office building on a landscaped mall.
The church has engaged a prominent Los Angeles analyst firm to conduct economic feasibility surveys.
In nearby Santa Ana, meanwhile, an ambitious Christian builder has proposed a sixty-acre “Sky Sites for Christ” project costing some $100 million. William Todd, a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary, wants to build the big commercial and residential project in a way to attract churches and convention centers, Christian schools, and other religious agencies. Todd owns ten acres of the proposed site and is “working for options” on the remainder. The parcel now is an orange grove.
Initial plans call for two twelve-story buildings and a single-story shopping mall. Eventually Todd wants to erect a large arena seating about 20,000 persons to serve religious gatherings.
Todd, who also teaches real estate at Santa Ana College and is pastor of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ at Lakewood, California, hopes to get started by early 1965. Local authorities are balking at zoning changes that will be necessary for the new development, but Todd appears confident of eventual success.
The proposed site is just south of the Santa Ana Freeway-Garden Grove Freeway interchange and is within commuting distance of Los Angeles.
Protestant Panorama
Canadian Lutherans are planning a new coordinating agency to parallel a similar agency being proposed in the United States. The “Lutheran Council in Canada” would embrace 98.5 per cent of Canada’s 290,000 Lutherans and would succeed the present Canadian Lutheran Council, which represents only two denominations.
Swedish Lutheran bishops turned aside demands that the editor of a semi-official church weekly be dismissed for advocating premarital sexual relations. The editor, Carl Gustaf Boethius, has suggested that the church’s position against premarital relations should be “liberalized.”
Methodists in Indonesia broke off organic ties with the parent church in the United States and declared themselves an autonomous, self-governing body.
Miscellany
An agreement between the Vatican and Communist Hungary is expected to ease restrictions against the country’s practicing Roman Catholics. Vatican sources say, however, that there are no plans for establishing official diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Budapest.
The Internal Revenue Service ruled that unordained staff members of churches and agencies in the Southern Baptist Convention cannot qualify for income-tax-free housing allowances.
A “Committee of Concern” was organized to help recently burned Negro churches in Mississippi by twenty-three of the state’s churchmen. The committee includes Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish representation, with both white and Negro leaders participating.
Anglicans on the Caribbean island of Barbados climaxed an eight-month stewardship campaign with a 2½-hour Eucharistic service attended by some 23,000. The open-air event was described as the largest church service ever held in the eastern Caribbean.
The National Council of Churches’ Broadcasting and Film Commission is inaugurating a program of annual awards for American-made motion pictures. The first awards will be given to films released during 1964.
African Challenge, evangelically oriented mass-circulation monthly of the Sudan Interior Mission, is launching a “Don’t Smoke” campaign. The magazine says that “as sales go down overseas, manufacturers try to find new buyers in Africa.”
Fuller Theological Seminary will establish a new mental health center near its campus in Pasadena, California. The Pasadena Community Counseling Center, due to open October 15, is the first phase of a plan aimed at initiating a Ph.D.-level graduate program in clinical psychology at the seminary.
Roman Catholic Archbishop Michael Gonzi lifted an interdict against Labor party leaders in Malta. Roman Catholics still are prohibited from joining the party.
Personalia
Dr. V. Raymond Edman was named first chancellor of Wheaton College. He is being succeeded as college president by Dr. Hudson Armerding.
J. Eugene White was named managing editor of Church and State.
