The U. S. Supreme Court will soon rule on two important church-state disputes.
In one case, the issue is the extent to which churches must pay real-estate taxes on income-producing property. The Central Baptist Church in Miami is contesting the right of local authorities to demand a levy on its parking lot. But the court’s decision could affect as well the future of church suppers, bazaars, book sales, and even the widespread custom among synagogues of “renting” seats at High Holiday services.
Arguments were heard by the court in December, and a decision can be expected within several months.
The justices also listened to arguments on whether Amish parents must send their children to school beyond the eighth grade; a ruling is promised before long (see also editorial, page 26).
The Miami church insists that its parking lot is as essential as its roof. When the Roman Catholic lawyer-priest defending the church made this point, Justice Thurgood Marshall interjected: “I know churches without a parking lot, but none without a roof. I wonder if you aren’t pushing necessity a little far?”
Arguing for the church was Father Charles M. Whelan, a Fordham University professor and an associate editor of the Jesuit weekly America. Whelan wore lay clothes for the occasion, believed to be the first time a Roman Catholic priest has ever orally presented a case before the nation’s highest tribunal.
Religious News Service reported that the brief for the church was prepared in part by William R. Consedine, General Counsel for the U. S. Catholic Conference. “The Miami appeal is seen as pivotal in the entire church tax-exemption debate,” said an RNS dispatch.
In this as well as the Amish case, there has been considerable crossing of ecclesiastical lines. Whelan serves on the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union and has challenged a number of ACLU officials who favor curtailment of church tax exemptions. The plaintiffs in the case are two Miami taxpayers, Florence Diffenderfer and Nishan Paul, who have been represented by the Miami branch of the ACLU.
The Central Baptist Church, on the other hand, is a member of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which has filed an amicus curiae brief in the case taking a stand against the church. Americans United has consistently campaigned against tax exemptions for church-owned commercial enterprises.
The case has been hotly contested in Florida. Some say it lies behind the state’s sweeping new tax law that seeks to reduce substantially the tax-exempt rolls. The furor reportedly began in 1967 when a Florida lawmaker looked out his window on the fourteenth floor of the DuPont Plaza building in Miami. He saw car owners paying parking fees to the church, and he determined then and there to make the congregation pay a tax on the lot. The church parks 290 cars on the lot; churchgoers use it evenings and Sundays and paying customers park there on weekdays.
Important cases have also been shaping up in Tennessee and Minnesota, where local authorities are trying to collect real-estate taxes from religious publishing houses. Property-tax exemptions for churches per se were upheld by the U. S. Supreme Court in the 1970 Walz case (see May 22, 1970, issue, page 32). But the federal government has begun to collect income taxes from church-owned businesses, and a growing number of communities see profit-making religious enterprises as a prime target for property-tax assessments.
Last month, the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled that any property of the Methodist Publishing House in Nashville used simultaneously for religious and non-religious activities must be taxed. Moreover, the judges expressed doubt “that any property used in printing, sales or distribution can be shown to be exclusively associated with sectarian religious objectives.…” The ruling, unless eventually overturned at a higher level, can have a substantial effect because a number of religious groups—denominational as well as independent—do their printing in Nashville.
The Minneapolis tax assessor wants the Augsburg Publishing House of the American Lutheran Church to begin paying regular taxes on its real estate and equipment. The denomination, which has its headquarters and publishing house in downtown Minneapolis, has been giving the city $10,000 annually in lieu of taxes. But the assessor says Augsburg is a competitive, profit-making entity and should pay a full share. That would come to more than $115,000 a year. But Albert E. Anderson, Augsburg general manager, contends:
“The basic issue is, does the state have the power to define for the church how it disseminates the Gospel? If it does, it will limit the church merely to its worship function. This is contrary to all of American history.”
The Amish case, while not of great significance directly, nonetheless could lay down new precedents for government recognition of parochial education.1The case originated in Wisconsin, where the state legislature has not yet acceded to concerted efforts to enact parochaid. A noted Catholic lawyer (a layman) argued eloquently for the Amish before the U. S. Supreme Court, and a number of religious groups filed amicus curiae briefs on behalf of the Amish. The defense is being financed by the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom, an interfaith group whose chairman, the Reverend William C. Lindholm, is pastor of a Lutheran church in a Detroit suburb.
“We are hoping and praying,” he says, “that the Supreme Court will stop the suffering of these people and their tender children who have been fined, harassed, chased, and frightened too long by those who don’t understand.”
Black Power Struggle
Disinterest and disunity are dogging the steps of black leaders these days. In November the five-year-old, 1,000-member National Committee of Black Churchmen (NCBC) attracted fewer than 200 registrants—a considerably smaller number than in previous years—to its annual meeting in Chicago. And last month a deep rift opened between leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), resulting in permanent cleavage.
A hint of the long-simmering SCLC feud may have been dropped at the NCBC meeting when SCLC’s Chicago leader Jesse L. Jackson, 30, was forced to cancel his NCBC speech. SCLC’s aging head, Ralph David Abernathy, according to NCBC sources, ordered Jackson to Florida on SCLC business and addressed the NCBC himself.
Last month Abernathy announced a sixty-day suspension of Jackson from his post as national director of SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket in Chicago. Abernathy cited “administrative impropriety”: Jackson had set up a separate corporation to run this year’s Black Expo trade fair in Chicago in October, normally the SCLC’s biggest money-making event. Abernathy said the SCLC national office had not received its customary percentage of Black Expo income, despite profits listed at $176,141—a figure Newsweek said “seemed low in view of the teeming crowds that Expo drew.”
Jackson in turn resigned, along with Operation Breadbasket’s directors and most of SCLC’s Chicago board members, and announced to 2,000 cheering supporters he would form a new organization intended to wield political and economic clout. The SCLC rejected his resignation, apparently not wanting to see the “bread” spill out of the basket.
The rift may run deeper. It’s no secret that many in the SCLC preferred the dashing, charismatic Jackson as a successor to Martin Luther King rather than the plodding, uneloquent Abernathy. Some observers predict that Jackson’s new organization will supplant the SCLC as the nation’s leading civil-rights group, and that Jackson himself will emerge in the forefront of black political leadership.
Meanwhile, the NCBC was also in disarray, but for different reasons. Officials announced that the NCBC was “broke.” Since its origin the NCBC has received more than $500,000, mostly from predominantly white denominations, but income this year fell sharply.
NCBC executive Metz Rollins blamed the financial crisis in part on denominational backlash over the Angela Davis fund, competition from denominational black caucuses, and sagging NCBC membership. Indeed, many luminaries formerly more active in the NCBC are now top-echelon administrators in their denominations. Thus, in a sense, by achieving its goal of asserting black power in the mainline denominations, the NCBC may have sealed its own demise.
Canadian Union Drive: Down Shifting?
The drive for union of the Anglican, United, and Christian (Disciples) Churches in Canada has undergone a “shift in emphasis” that outside observers regard as a sharp setback for union enthusiasts. Anglican opposition and United Church indifference toward the merger are causing serious second thoughts in both churches.
The previous stress on implementation of the Plan of Union had led to some optimistic forecasts of union by 1973. The General Commission on Church Union, charged with laying the groundwork for the merger, held its ninth meeting in Windsor last month. It concurred with the Anglican resolution to “place greater emphasis upon processes which would enable the churches to grow together, rather than focusing almost total emphasis upon the preparation of a plan.”
The commission contended that the new emphasis “need in no way compromise the final decisions regarding organic union.”
The Reverend D. R. G. Owen, provost of Trinity College (Anglican), expressed his concern in a public letter to commission members and called for an abandonment of the Plan of Union. He described the plan as “a lifeless, depressing, and heart-chilling document” that “represents an ineffective, unacceptable, and … obsolete method of dealing with the problem.”
Owen called on the three churches to recognize one another’s ministries and sacraments. “Having done this,” he added, “let us devote our time, energies, and money to the real problem—the renewal of the Church of Christ in worship, life, and action.”
One faint ray of ecumenical light in what must be Canada’s longest-running news story—since 1943—came at the end of the Windsor meetings: a unanimously adopted resolution that the three churches recognize one another’s ministries and authorize intercommunion.
LESLIE K. TARR
Film Firm Faces Financial Failure
Court-appointed administrators are trying to untangle a web of high finance that recently collapsed into a jumble of financial confusion—and one of the biggest bankruptcy actions in evangelical history. The case involves the Dick Ross and Associates (DRA) firm and its two motion pictures: The Cross and the Switchblade (see October 10, 1969, issue, page 52, and June 19, 1970, issue, page 34) and The Late Liz (see October 22 issue, page 34).
It also involves, according to a court-appointed official, a thirty-page list of creditors and investors worried about more than $2 million they say is due them.
Two years ago film producer-promoter Ross garnered an investment combine to make evangelist David Wilkerson’s best-selling book (more than eight million in circulation) The Cross and the Switchblade into a motion picture. Major investors in the partnership included evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman, who put up $100,000, a Grand Rapids group headed by dentist Robert Plekker ($100,000), the American Baptist Convention ($100,000), private sources within the ABC ($200,000), and others, with a grand total of investments in excess of $1 million. The American Baptist Funds were channeled through a unit set up within the ABC, the American Baptist Communication Corporation (ABCC).
Production and distribution costs were about $600,000 each, according to ABCC spokesman Dean Goodwin.
The film was released in mid-1970 and became a box-office success, grossing $5.49 million through August of 1971, according to a report issued by the DRA firm. Variety highlighted its Chicago stand, where it led all other movies in town at the same time in gross receipts. In one week, reports a Chicago advertising executive, the Wilkerson movie grossed $65,000, while the nearest secular competition grossed $17,000.
By agreement, a major percentage of gross receipts went to the theaters. Even so, says Goodwin, the picture netted about $2.5 million for DRA. Contributing to the success was a well-financed, highly polished promotion campaign among churches by DRA staffers working out of regional offices throughout the nation.
Meanwhile, production proceeded on The Late Liz, and it was officially released in September. It was produced largely on credit, says Ross; creditors were lenient in light of the first film’s success. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, for one, provided $100,000 worth of goods and services, according to an ABC source.
Disputes among principals and pressure from creditors, however, mounted during the year.
Ross says he bought film rights to Wilkerson’s book from the copyright owner, Bernard Geis Associates of New York City, for $100,000 (half went to Geis, the other half went to Wilkerson and John Sherrill, who did the actual writing of Wilkerson’s book) to cover a five-month “limited engagement” period. Beyond that, during the following “general release” period, Ross said he agreed to pay royalties of 10 per cent, with the authors receiving three-fourths of that amount and Geis the remainder.
When Ross extended the limited-engagement period another six months—without increasing the rights fee or paying royalties—the Wilkerson camp objected. A Wilkerson aide insisted last month that the DRA owed Wilkerson and Sherrill “at least $200,000.”
(In a related sidelight, Wilkerson pressed both Geis and Pyramid Publications—a paperback publisher under contract to Geis—for payment of royalties past due. Pyramid, says the Wilkerson spokesman, sent $17,000 to Geis to be forwarded, but Geis kept the funds and filed bankruptcy last month. As a result Wilkerson now owns the copyright to his book. Pyramid meanwhile issued a report in November stating it had sold only 600,000 copies of the 1.3 million distributed to outlets, causing raised eyebrows in some publishing circles—and at Wilkerson’s headquarters in Dallas.)
A major crisis arose in August, Ross says, when his “bank guarantor”—film and shipping magnate Spiros Skouros—died. “I ran out of time trying to replace him,” he explains.
Pedaling Politics
A Catholic priest and a Communist carpenter who live in the same Italian village kept getting into political arguments. Many clamorous debates failed to settle anything.
But Father Erlado Armosino and Communist Peopoldo Trichero decided on a Don Camillo type of solution: a four-mile bicycle race. The loser had to promise not to mention politics to the winner for a full year.
Some 1,300 churchmen turned out to spur their priest to a two-minute victory over his Red opponent.
JAN J. VAN CAPELLEVEEN
A month’s payroll checks for the DRA bounced, he says. Creditors clamored to be paid and investors asked for their money. MGM slapped a lien on The Late Liz. The Internal Revenue Service and the state of California demanded payment of payroll and other taxes withheld from DRA salaries but not sent in. Ross and ABCC officials confirmed these developments in interviews last month.
In October, Ross says, he signed the DRA partnership over to the ABCC, and he now contends he has no personal responsibility. Goodwin, however, insists that Ross’s claim of transfer is “technically incorrect, because the ABCC board never voted to accept it.” He does concede that Ross could have left the ABC’s Valley Forge headquarters thinking in good faith that the transaction had been completed.
A few days later the IRS seized the DRA’s Hollywood headquarters and auctioned furnishings and equipment. At that, confided an American Baptist executive in an interview, “the IRS netted only $1,600 against an outstanding payroll tax bill of $60,000.” Ross claims the IRS “lost” a DRA payment of $11,000 in a computer and later found it, and that only $20,000 is outstanding.
In the face of gathering legal storms and threats to ownership of the two films, American Baptist officials filed under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Act on behalf of the DRA, and a Los Angeles court concurred.
The action grants the ABCC the authority to reorganize the venture, along with time and freedom from legal hassles to get the movies moving again in an attempt to regain solvency. The ABCC in turn last month appointed a five-member panel to administer the project.
Goodwin admits the way will be difficult, especially since there are no funds at present for promotion of The Late Liz, which has been shown in only a handful of theaters so far. As for the Wilkerson film, he and other ABCC members believe it still has a long and useful life ahead. “It has been shown in less than 400 theaters,” one of them points out. “There are many more that want it, and it has 170 bookings through February.”
Ross attributes his troubles to “being undercapitalized in a tight-money market; thus I could be guilty of management error.”
Meanwhile he continues to run Dick Ross Productions (no relationship to Dick Ross and Associates), handling such accounts as the Kathryn Kuhlman and Oral Roberts telecasts.
EDWARD E. PLOWMAN
Spanish Radio: ‘The Friendly Voice’
For the first time, Spanish Protestants will have a nationwide evangelistic radio program, produced and transmitted within their own country. “La Voz Amiga” (“The Friendly Voice”) will be broadcast simultaneously on eighteen Spanish commercial and ten FM stations.
The announcement was made in late November after a Barcelona meeting of the directors of Eurovangelism, a Swiss-based European missionary service organization, and Spain’s own interdenominational Evangelism-in-Action. An initial six-month contract was signed; it is expected this will be extended indefinitely if funds are available. The first program was scheduled for mid-December.
“This gives complete coverage of the country,” explained Juan Gili, who will be in charge of production. “It will communicate with many areas where there is no evangelical church.”
Spain has made considerable progress in the past few years. Successful economic plans have resulted in a yearly growth rate averaging 6.4 per cent over the past four years (forecast to rise to 7 per cent). In the past ten years Spain has had the fastest growth rate of per capita income (from $290 to $900) in Western Europe.
By 1980, Spaniards will have double their present income, three times as many automobiles, six times as many television sets, more schools and universities, cleaner air, and less unemployment, according to a New York Times Madrid correspondent.
On the religious scene, the Protestant minority (30,000 in a total population of 34 million) has been enjoying a steady increase of eased restrictions since the Second Vatican Council. No longer denied the outward expression of their faith, they have opened Christian bookstores, rented auditoriums for evangelistic meetings, and taken over theaters for the showing of Billy Graham films. Literature distribution is now possible, and hundreds are signing up for Bible-study correspondence courses.
(Meanwhile, a major shakeup in the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Spain was announced in Madrid and at the Vatican. The changes, favoring moderates and progressives, have been the subject of secret negotiations between the Vatican and Generalissimo Franco’s regime, the Washington Post reported.
(The emerging reformists’ movement in the Catholic Church in Spain received strong papal backing with the appointment of Vicente Cardinal Enrique y Tarancon to direct the nation’s largest archdiocese, Madrid-Alcala. He is regarded as an outspoken champion of church and state separation.
(The new appointments, sources said, reflect the Franco regime’s desire to improve its sagging relations with the Vatican and the progressives in the Spanish church.)
Limited, localized radio outreach has been possible for Spanish evangelicals in the past two years. Evangelism-in-Action sponsored six fifteen-minute broadcasts on Radio Barcelona in 1970; these were stopped when Spanish authorities feared the limited concession could encourage further requests and petitions from various denominations. Recent authorization for the same organization to have nationwide coverage reflects a recognition of its broad interdenominational representation.
DAVE FOSTER
British Baptists Divided
Although British Baptists have held aloof from the controversy that unity negotiations have brought to other churches, the denomination is currently involved in a domestic crisis on a doctrinal issue.
Principal Michael Taylor of Northern Baptist College, a graduate of Union Seminary, New York, gave an address at last summer’s annual assembly, and was promptly criticized by many for throwing doubt on the full deity of Christ. When attempts failed to obtain official dissociation from Taylor’s position, numerous letters of protest poured into the church’s London headquarters.
Eminent evangelical scholar Dr. G. R. Beasley-Murray, principal of historic Spurgeon’s College, has announced his resignation from the chairmanship of the Baptist Union Council because of that body’s handling of the affair. It should, he said, have repudiated Taylor’s views as contrary to New Testament teaching and to his denomination’s own Declaration of Principle. Following a further protest from the Baptist Revival Fellowship, it was suggested that up to thirty ministers may resign from the union’s accredited list. The Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland (the latter regarded ecclesiastically as undivided) has a membership of about 275,000.
J. D. DOUGLAS
Impersonal Giving
Agencies that encourage people to sponsor individual under-privileged children overseas were described as “cruel and un-Christian” by an official of the World Council of Churches. The Reverend Alan Brash, director of the council’s commission on inter-church aid, refugees, and world service, made the charge at the annual meeting of the Canadian Council of Churches Central Committee meeting in Kitchener, Ontario.
The sponsorship of individual children overseas only contributes to dividing families, he contended. He said Canadians should give their money to local churches that will pass it on to national or world councils of churches for equitable distribution to family units.
And Still It Rankles
The Church of England is an “affluent, middle class church,” but its members gave to it an average of less than seventy-five cents each per week—much less than other churches in Britain. So said the Right Reverend Basil Guy, bishop of Gloucester, at last month’s general synod meeting at Westminster, when it was disclosed that the average incumbent earns no more than $3,600 a year basic stipend (a figure substantially augmented, however, by various fees and by the Easter offering, which goes entirely to him).
The synod by a vote of 199 to 143 rejected a motion expressing regret at World Council of Churches grants “to groups openly committed to violence.” Perhaps surprisingly because of his known strong views, the archbishop of Canterbury abstained from voting. Two weeks earlier the British Council of Churches, while commending the WCC appeal for funds for the same purpose, was left in no doubt that the issue had been embarrassing and divisive in some member churches.
J. D. DOUGLAS
A Church In Kabul
Afghanistan, a country the size of Texas that until 1947 had been closed to the Gospel for 100 years, now has a church. The Community Christian Church of Kabul, begun after permission was obtained in 1965 by the late former President Eisenhower, is just now finished. Seventy tons of steel for the A-frame edifice were brought through the Khyber Pass; the turquoise steel roof came from San Francisco.
A week after the dedication of the building on May 17, 1970, work was temporarily suspended because of government intervention. There are ten to fifteen million persons in Afghanistan, which has 1,000 miles of common border with the Soviet Union. Leaders of the church say Christ himself is the cornerstone of the stone-walled building because “the prayers of God’s people opened the door a crack into this country” and made possible the completion of this strategic outpost.
Meanwhile, Jesus people have taken over the top two stories of the mediocre Ulfat Hotel is downtown Kabul. The top floor has been made into a well-equipped pad known as the “Way Out” where free tea and snacks are served to addicts and wanderers who congregate there to rap or “crash” for the night. The floor below has rooms for as little as twelve cents’ rent a night.
As many as 4,000 travelers, hippies, and freaks may be found cruising through Afghanistan during any of the warm summer months. Many are on a spiritual quest. Jesus leaders at the Way Out report conversions as they preach the Gospel to those nearing the dead end of hard drugs.
Radical Departure
A simmering dispute over three allegedly radical, independent but church-related agencies within the Canadian Christian Reformed Church constituency has contributed to plans of a Toronto congregation to withdraw from the denomination.
The Reverend J. J. Byker, pastor of Second Christian Reformed Church in suburban Rexdale, charged that the activities of the Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship, the Institute for Christian Studies, and the Christian Labor Association2The Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship engages in various activities, including sponsorship of the Institute for Christian Studies, a graduate-level institution with ninety students located in an old mansion near the University of Toronto. The Christian Labor Association acts as a labor union for about 3,500 members. There is personnel overlap between all three agencies and an estimated 80 per cent of the total constituency belongs to the Canadian Christian Reformed Church. were “not in harmony with the historic traditions of the Christian Reformed Church.”
Members of the three agencies have called themselves “radical Christians.” Byker and his church charge that the organizations seek to “change the world before they change men’s hearts.” He claims the majority of his congregation is on his side and has announced that the church will withdraw from the denomination.
The Toronto pastor announced his move after the Toronto Classis of the denomination suspended him and his consistory of elders and deacons from leadership in the congregation. The classis (area council) said Byker had consistently refused to submit the difference to arbitration.
LESLIE K. TARR
Conscientious Exemption
Four Ontario workers successfully applied to the Ontario Labor Relations Board for exemption from supporting a union with whose secular aims and objectives they disagree. The three men and one woman maintain that their Christian faith kept them from joining or contributing dues to the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), one of the country’s largest unions.
Twenty-one other workers had presented a similar case by mid-December and were awaiting the labor board’s decision.
Infuriated CUPE president Stanley Little charged that the Christian Labor Association of Canada, which has loomed large in the legislation and the labor-board hearings, was “a right-wing reactionary association which, if permitted, will destroy industrial unions in Canada.” And, for good measure, he added that the CLAC had links with “the racist apartheid movement in South Africa.” (Presumably the South Africa mention was prompted by the fact that the four who successfully appealed are members of Christian Reformed or Canadian Reformed churches, and Little confused those churches with the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa.)
The real issue, according to CLAC executive secretary Gerald Vandezande, is freedom. “No union should lord it over a bargaining unit,” he contends, “but the worker should be free to identify himself with the labor movement that best reflects his view of man, life, labor, work-community, business, income, responsibility, authority, and justice.”
The Christian Labor Association of Canada intends to step up its campaign to acquaint Ontario workers with their right to opt out of secular unions on conscientious grounds.
LESLIE K. TARR
Religion In Transit
Representatives of forty national educational and religious bodies voted unanimously to form the National Council on Religion and Public Education last month to coordinate efforts to encourage study about religion in the classroom.
Eighty religious or quasi-religious groups were among the nearly 350 organizations having an interest in the problems of the elderly at the White House Conference on Aging last month.
Family Stations has bought a sixth station for its Christian Family Radio Network: WXTC (FM), Annapolis, Maryland. The station, to be assigned new call letters this month, will serve the Baltimore-Washington area.
Morris Cerullo World Evangelism, a charismatic renewal ministry headquartered in San Diego, has been named to membership in the National Association of Evangelicals.
The Presbyterian Layman, produced by the conservative Presbyterian Lay Committee, will be circulated free, beginning this month, to United Presbyterians and others; circulation is now 279,000 on a paid basis … Prospects look dim for the Southern Presbyterian publication This Week, designed to get fast news and sympathetic agency interpretations to local leaders. In its early weeks, 5,000 copies sent free to ministers and others netted only 287 subscribers.
Oral Roberts has great faith in God’s healing power—and in his Tulsa university’s basketball team. The ORU Titans beat Hofstra 83–74 in a Madison Square Garden game before 7,800 fans. Roberts says his team—hitting the big leagues last month after only six seasons—will be competing for the NCAA national championship by 1975.
Congress has passed a bill to extend for seventy-five years the copyright of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures (see editorial, December 17 issue, page 23); in mid-December the bill awaited presidential approval. Senators sponsoring the controversial bill (its constitutionality has been questioned by the New York City Bar Association) included Mark O. Hatfield (R.) of Oregon.
Personalia
Billy Graham, special ambassador and grand marshal, will receive two honors this year: he was appointed a member of the U. S. delegation to the inauguration of Liberian president William R. Tolbert, Jr., this month, and he will lead the forty-fifth Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival in Winchester, Virginia, May 5 and 6.
Mrs. James D. Wyker of Berea, Kentucky, last month became the first woman to open the U. S. House of Representatives with an invocation. She is a Christian Church (Disciples) minister.
The Reverend Earl Albert Neil, 35, black rector of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California, has been quietly elected to the Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of California, the denomination’s highest governing board in the state. Neil is known as the “Black Panther pastor” and attracted national attention as the spiritual advisor of Huey Newton and the officiant at the funeral of George Jackson, according to syndicated religion columnist Lester Kinsolving.
Assembly of God clergyman John Gordon of San Jose, California, clambered into the bell tower of his church and vowed he wouldn’t come down until 1,000 people were at services below. Only 500 attended at last count so Gordon was living high with electric blanket, TV, and food by basket.
The Reverend David J. Draewell was inaugurated the ninth president of the North American Baptist Seminary in Sioux Falls, South Dakota … Stanley E. McCafferty, president of the San Francisco Bay Area Council and former vice-president of the University of California, has been named president of United Methodist-related University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.
Church of God (Seventh-day) pastor and public-school teacher Terril D. Littrell of Nevada, Missouri, has been elected to a two-year term as president of the undenominational Bible Sabbath Association, with headquarters in Fair-view, Oklahoma.
Representative William P. Curlin (D.-Ky.), a Presbyterian, has replaced U. S. congressman John C. Watts, a Christian (Disciples of Christ), who died in office in September, 1971.
Veteran Southern Baptist journalist Theo E. Sommerkamp, Jr., formerly director of the European Baptist Press Service in Switzerland, is now associate director of public relations for the Southern Baptist Annuity Board in Dallas.
World Scene
Twenty-one traveling Baptist evangelists died in tidal waves that swept Onissa State in India, according to news from the Baptist World Alliance. The men, who had permits to distribute tracts but not to preach on the streets, were working with the Seventh-day Baptist Conference of India. Some 30,000 persons perished in the disaster.
A sociological survey of English-speaking Roman Catholic priests in Canada revealed that 91 per cent would give confessional absolution to a person who, “with a responsibly formed conscience,” was taking birth-control pills.
Trans World Radio’s Cantonese broadcast to the Chinese people of Europe now includes Mandarin … Radio Ceylon reports heavy demands for time from religious groups; it has opened up time for religious broadcasters in the Hindi, Tamil, and Telegu tongues for its India and Pakistan coverage.
A special offering to assist East Pakistan refugees fleeing into India will be received January 9 throughout the 10.5-million-member United Methodist Church. The minimum goal is $1 million.
All members of the American Lutheran Church have been asked to engage in special prayer concerning the new relationships between the United States and the people of China.
The cornerstone of a new Armenian church atop Mount Zion (just outside the southern wall of old Jerusalem) was consecrated by Patriarch Elisha II in special rites.
Why Do You Have A Poor Memory?
A noted publisher in Chicago reports there is a simple technique for acquiring a powerful memory which can pay you real dividends in both business and social advancement and works like magic to give you added poise, necessary self-confidence and greater popularity.
According to this publisher, many people do not realize how much they could influence others simply by remembering accurately everything they see, hear, or read. Whether in business, at social functions or even in casual conversations with new acquaintances, there are ways in which you can dominate every situation by your ability to remember.
To acquaint the readers of this publication with the easy-to-follow rules for developing skill in remembering anything you choose to remember, the publishers have printed full details of their self-training method in a new booklet, “Adventures in Memory,” which will be mailed free to anyone who requests it. No obligation. Send your name, address, and zip code to: Memory Studies, 555 E. Lange Street, Dept. F401, Mundelein, Ill. 60060. A postcard will do.
