There’s a new emphasis within evangelical Methodists’ “Good News” group. And last month’s third annual Convocation of United Methodists for Evangelical Christianity, held in St. Louis, reflected the change.
The 1,100 delegates heard a potpourri of speakers at morning and evening sessions of the three-day conference with the theme “Above All—Christ.” A charismatic, a counter-culture minister, a black, and a fair share of traditional evangelists shared the speaker’s podium. Between speakers the audience listened to Jesus love songs, black soul (gospel), and Hawaiian-style “sweet Jesus” music. Delegates also got to sing some of those simple songs of the faith.
Delegates had a choice of six training sessions and thirteen seminars to attend in the afternoons; each was repeated four times, with such topics as racism, the charismatic movement, and “frankly, political” “Strategies for Influencing the Annual Conference.”
At last spring’s international United Methodist General Conference, the 200 known evangelical delegates were unorganized, admitted Robert G. Mayfield, a member of the Good News steering committee. Mayfield, who opened the convocation, explained to the delegates just what happened and once again advocated economic pressure to change United Methodism. He would like Good News to become a much more active lobby group within the denomination, rather than remain merely a movement. He charged the denomination’s various boards with “misappropriation of funds,” though he admitted at a news conference that he could cite no examples.
This year’s Good News meeting turned out to be a kind of target for another lobbying effort. Unlike last year, when there was much discussion of the evangelical’s responsibility in the social arena, the poverty and race seminars were neglected. In fact, at some sections no one showed up. And last year there had been no mention of the gifts of the Spirit (particularly tongues); this year the two seminars on the Holy Spirit were filled.
C. Philip Hinerman, vice-chairman of the Good News steering committee, was disappointed that the social-action seminars were empty but maintained that there is “a great social edge to the conference.” Other speakers urged evangelicals to get involved.
The only black speaker on the program, W. Maurice King, preached a soft-sell sermon against racial hypocrisy. When he told delegates and visitors, “We can’t fight busing during the week and then bus our children to church on Sunday,” few said “amen.” But when King declared, “Man, to be black is to be evangelical,” the crowd applauded enthusiastically.
The real concern, however, wasn’t social issues (one delegate said they’re “oversaturated with social concern” in their home churches). The big news in Good News is the charismatic movement.
Mrs. Reeve Betts, a former missionary to India, spoke for nearly an hour and a half on her experiences with pain—she suffered from blinding headaches for thirty years—healing, and tongues. She begged the audience to seek the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and defended tongues-speaking as nondivisive.
Good News founder Charles Keysor joined Mrs. Betts in leading a seminar on “The Evangelical and the Charismatic Movement.” Keysor styled himself a “sympathetic critic” of glossolalia. While a majority of the participants were avowed non-tongues-speakers, some said they had had the experience.
A woman from Kansas who a year ago was ready to leave the United Methodist Church said she found new life among the evangelicals in her church and neighborhood, most of whom are charismatics. Mrs. Mary Simpson explained that she speaks in tongues only during private prayer and that she can distinguish linguistically between sounds. “One name,” she said, “sounds different from another name.” Later she told a fellow delegate about two healings she experienced—one of acute hepatitis (“The doctor said it was a miracle”) and the other of a 50 per cent hearing loss.
Another woman was concerned that she hadn’t had a charismatic experience, even after much prayer about it. And this is the problem some have with the movement. Keysor and Dave Seamands, who led the seminar on “The Gifts of the Spirit,” warned that tongues could be divisive. “No one,” said Keysor, “wants to be called a second-class citizen in God’s Kingdom just because he hasn’t spoken in tongues.”
But all speakers called for the filling of the Spirit. Bishop Kenneth W. Copeland, considered by mainline Methodists the most evangelical of the church’s bishops, said that the delegates better get “tuned in to the Holy Spirit.”
While the number of delegates as a whole decreased, the number of youth participants increased. This is the first year Good News had a planned youth program, and about 150 high-school and college-age kids attended the convocation. Fred Kunkel of Lamesa, Texas, one of the most active young people there, hopes that 600 or 700 will attend next year. (Good News plans to hold next year’s meeting at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, July 30 to August 2.)
Each evening after the general sessions ended the young people held special “youthspirations.” Christian World Liberation Front founder Jack Sparks told the young people about his work in Berkeley among the counter-culture radicals. He suggested that rather than meeting in the hotel the kids should be witnessing in some park. And the next day about sixty young people and fifteen adults took his advice.
After a short briefing the group went to the St. Louis Zoo to witness. All who went were also required to attend the “Personal Evangelism” seminar. A security officer looked nervous when they entered, reported one of the leaders, but later commented, “As soon as I saw the Bibles, I knew we weren’t going to have any trouble.” The group sang and witnessed for over two hours, and seven people professed faith in Christ.
At the final session evangelist Edmund Robb invited all those who wanted the Spirit’s filling to come forward and kneel near the stage. But the area was too small for the crowd; people all over the auditorium knelt by chairs with arms raised in prayer and praise.
Although no one spoke in tongues—audibly, at any rate—this convocation seemed little different from other recent charismatic meetings. Methodists, like so many other mainline denominations, are getting the Spirit.
Mid-America Baptist
To the six Southern Baptist seminaries (Golden Gate, Midwestern, New Orleans, Southeastern, Southern, and Southwestern), a seventh has been added, but with a significant difference in organization. Mid-America, which began in Little Rock, Arkansas, this month, has an independent board instead of being owned and operated by the Convention as a whole. The school stresses, however, that all its trustees and teachers are members of cooperating congregations of the denomination. The Bible is recognized as “the verbally inspired Word of God, wholly without error.…”
The president is Gray Allison, holder of a Th.D. from New Orleans Seminary, where he taught for twelve years. Director of development is H. D. Bruce, president-emeritus of East Texas Baptist College. Former SBC president R. G. Lee and the head of the Arkansas state convention were among the Baptist leaders participating in the founding ceremonies.
Hensley’S Golden State
Million-minister-maker Kirby J. Hensley and his mail-order D.D. degree mill are grinding again in the nation’s most populous state.
The “bishop” of the Universal Life Church, Incorporated—which got its start in a Modesto, California, garage in 1962—has ridden out a temporary injunction that forbade him from issuing doctor of divinity degrees in the state for three years (see March 14, 1969, issue, page 34).
And the semi-literate onetime Baptist has realized his hope that the U. S. Supreme Court would hear his case. Hensley is presently under a stay from a year’s imprisonment in Santa Clara County while the high court considers his appeal. He was convicted in San Jose in 1969 for mailing out honorary degrees with a $20 set of lessons on how to set up a do-it-yourself church.
Hensley achieved national notoriety when he ordained by mail several animals, including a dog and a bird. He claims to have ordained 1.2 million ministers—most of them human beings—through his free mailaway scheme. The courts have said his church and ordination mill are legal, but the California attorney general blew the whistle on the D.D.s, saying Hensley has no accredited institution.
Dismissal was granted by San Joaquin County superior judge Bill Dozier last month without opposition from the attorney general. The injunction had expired.
Hensley, 60, whose ministers are free to believe anything—or nothing—says he’s “going to start issuing religious degrees exactly the same as I was.”
Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, since California clamped down on his non-curricular activities. Hensley said after his Stockton, California, court appearance: “I won’t move my stuff back.… I’ll simply begin mailing them out here from Arizona.”
His choice may be auspicious: Arizona’s motto is Ditat Deus—God enriches.
RUSSELL CHANDLER
Paoc Preaching Points
Canada’s largest Pentecostal body officially endorsed participation in Key 73 Canadian efforts at its annual convention last month in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The 150,000-member Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada also agreed to grant special preaching licenses to native Indian and Eskimo laymen who fail to meet PAOC ordination requirements.
Delegates to the denomination’s twenty-eighth biennial General Conference heard American Pentecostal leader Thomas Zimmerman, Assemblies of God general superintendent, urge participation in the continent-wide Key 73 thrust. (In Canada, a separate committee is planning a nation-wide effort along the lines of the Key 73 effort in the United States. PAOC leaders and ministers are already participating in the plans, but full endorsement by the conference was needed.)
The 400 delegates agreed to do away with college and seminary requirements for native lay preachers, accepting the argument that a man can be called to preach and yet have little formal education. One official estimated that in Manitoba alone more than fifteen Indian laymen were eligible for the special licenses (renewable annually). Others across the western provinces and North West Territories are also eligible. The church has 130 Indian churches or preaching points and two Eskimo congregations throughout the Canadian north. The denomination is generally regarded as having the second-largest church group (behind the Anglicans) working with Canada’s native peoples.
The PAOC mission budget, meanwhile, was boosted by $165,000 during a special nation-wide telephone hookup in which churches and congregations phoned mission offerings to a special Sunday-night conference session.
International Congress On World Evangelization
Another major strategy session on evangelism is scheduled for 1974, this one specifically aimed at proclaiming the Gospel throughout the globe within the current generation. After a meeting last month with church leaders from all six continents, evangelist Billy Graham announced that 3,000 people would be invited to what is being called an International Congress on World Evangelization. The emphasis will be on delegate participation. Location and specific dates are still under study.
Graham said he believed “God will use this congress to focus our attention on the strategy for total world evangelization in our time.” He told newsmen in Los Angeles that since the World Congress on Evangelism in 1966 many church leaders—pastors, evangelists, and missionaries—have urged a second such gathering.
Anglican bishop A. Jack Dain of Australia is to be executive chairman, heading up a twenty-five-member planning committee formed out of a 150-member convening committee. Dr. Donald E. Hoke, veteran American missionary in Japan, has been appointed coordinator.
The 1966 meeting in Berlin was held under the auspices of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. It touched off a series of regional evangelism congresses and has been credited with helping to spark a new interest and participation around the world.
Religion In Transit
Campus Crusade for Christ will hold a second evangelism Explo in Korea, 1974, according to CCC president Bill Bright. Attendance goal is 300,000—triple the Dallas Explo goal.
Filming of the off-Broadway musical Godspell has begun in New York City. The movie, updated and set in contemporary New York, uses tourist sites for many of its scenes.
Divorce is increasing among clergymen and their wives, notes marriage counselor Donald Moore of Wake Forest, North Carolina. He cites unfaithfulness—“emotional as well as physical”—as a leading cause, rooted in emotional immaturity and unwholesome experiences with parents.
The Roman Catholic Church must join the World Council of Churches at the next WCC assembly (1975) if the conciliatory spirit of the 1960s is to be continued, warned Douglas Roche, editor of the Canadian newspaper Western Catholic Reporter.
The United Church of Canada faces a serious pastoral shortage and, despite mergers of some congregations, will be in need of 175 pastors by 1974, warned General Council secretary Ernest E. Long, who recently retired.
Seattle’s Metropolitan Community Church, ministering primarily to homosexuals, has received a charter as a member of the homosexual-oriented Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Churches, founded by Troy Perry of Los Angeles.
Contributions to major Protestant churches are increasing despite continually dropping memberships, according to a National Council of Churches study.
A national day of prayer has been set for March 2, 1973, by the National Association of Evangelicals. The NAE plans to emphasize “spiritual renewal” through the year, though it decided not to participate in Key 73.
Rex Humbard is reopening Mackinac College as a Christian university. Humbard bought the Moral Rearmament structure on Mackinac Island, Michigan, for $3 million and has been using it as a winter-summer resort.
Personalia
Singer Pat Boone and his family became “Boonies” in bunny-land last month when they entertained at a Playboy Club-Hotel in McAfee, New Jersey. Boone disagreed with the Playboy philosophy but said he welcomed the chance to spread his own Jesus-people thoughts.
Evangelist Billy Graham will visit Nagaland, India, in November as part of the state’s 100th anniversary celebrations of the arrival of the first Baptist missionary. Most of the area’s inhabitants are Baptists.
British pop singer Cliff Richard and his five-man backup group have been banned from a Singapore performance this month. Under government regulations for foreign entertainers, their hair is too long.
The Reverend Ira Gallaway, of Fort Worth, Texas, known as a staunch evangelical, was elected general secretary of the United Methodist Church’s evangelism board.
A Dutch Reformed Church tribunal has ruled invalid the election of WCC staffer Albert H. van den Heuvel as general secretary of the denomination, because only one candidate was proposed. Van den Heuvel, who obtained a 28–20 majority, will be renominated at an extraordinary session of the synod this month.
Arthur H. Matthews, assistant editor of the Presbyterian Journal, was named press aide for evangelist Billy Graham.
President Nixon appointed Dr. Harry L. Evans, president of Trinity College and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, to a five-man commission studying volunteerism across the country. The commission will work with the National Center for Volunteer Action.
Dr. Davie Napier will be inaugurated as the seventh president of Pacific School of Religion at the school next month.
A black priest was appointed Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop of Johannesburg, capital of the apartheid state of South Africa. The Reverend Pietro Butelezi was serving as a diocesan administrator in Natal, South Africa.
World Scene
Four French Roman Catholic priests, captured by the North Vietnamese during heavy fighting in South Viet Nam in April, were freed unharmed last month. The North Vietnamese still hold five Protestant missionaries.
Yugoslavian radio broadcasts indicate government concern over religious activity in Vojvodina, an autonomous region. The Roman Catholic and Serbian Orthodox churches were singled out, but the state radio said the activity was legal.
A joint Anglican-Lutheran committee recommended full acceptance of each other’s ministries. The two-year study also suggested intercommunion as a first step to acceptance.
The British Methodist Church, with slightly more than 600,000 members, reported a loss of 50,000 for the past three years.
A Texas-born missionary is bishop-elect of the new Anglican diocese of Botswana in South Africa. Shannon Mallory will be a white prelate in a black-dominated area. He was chosen by the provincial assembly of the Church of Central Africa.
Communists in Lithuania who antagonize believers with crudeness in anti-religious attacks were warned by a party newspaper that a religious backlash could occur in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation.
Jesus Christ Superstar, a super hit in the United States, received lukewarm to hostile reviews when it opened in London last month. One critic told newspaper readers there was a “false” assumption that the musical had something to do with Christianity. Another called it a “child’s view” of the New Testament.
Miniskirts at the Vatican will now be covered with long black monks’ robes. The Vatican formerly refused entry to women wearing the short skirts. The robes qualify as proper attire for Vatican visitors.
Southern Baptist missionaries in Israel have agreed to document their opposition to anti-Semitism. A resolution passed by the Baptist Convention in Israel calls anti-Semitism a “sin against Christ” and a denial of Jesus’ teaching.
