Catholic charismatics held two all-night prayer vigils for the election of a new pope at their annual weekend national conference at the University of Notre Dame. Gathered in a campus church last month, many of the 16,000 registrants prayed with charismatic leader Ralph Martin that the new pope be “not just a good and holy man, but one who has a clear and burning grasp of the whole message of Jesus Christ.”
Their prayers may have been effective since the leaders of this growing charismatic renewal movement of the Roman Catholic Church seem pleased with the outcome. Leo Cardinal Suenens of Belgium, the highest-ranking Catholic in the charismatic movement and the late Pope Paul’s overseer of it, said he was “very enthusiastic” about the election of John Paul I.
Suenens and other charismatics presumably prefer John Paul to a traditionalist from the Vatican hierarchy. Many Roman Catholics feared the possible election of a reactionary who would stifle the fresh breezes that have circulated through the church since the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).
That Catholic charismatics might endorse the efforts of the new pope would be no small asset for John Paul I. The charismatic movement has increasing influence within the Roman Catholic Church and has grown since its beginning.
The roots of the movement are buried in a 1967 student-faculty retreat at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. The retreat had been preceded by a deep concern of a few people over personal spiritual stagnation and powerlessness; many participants had been impressed by the influence of Protestant charismatics who had led retreat leader Ralph Kiefer into the Pentecostal experience known as the baptism in the Spirit. Included among the thirty participants were students with training from Campus Crusade for Christ and from the Navigators. During the weekend, a Pentecostal-style revival—complete with speaking in tongues—took place.
News of the retreat spread to Notre Dame, where students and faculty members launched a similar group with the aid of local Protestant charismatics. From Notre Dame, the revival movement spread quickly to other colleges, parishes, convents, and monasteries.
Traditional Catholic beliefs are often blended with evangelical theology. Tongues is not a requisite of being filled with the Spirit, contrary to mainstream Protestant Pentecostal teaching. Bible study is emphasized, and in recent years evangelism has become a major concern.
At the recent Notre Dame conference, Dominican priest and theologian Francis MacNutt declared, “Philosophy cannot convert. It’s the touch of Jesus Christ that can convert.”
MacNutt addressed more than 22,000 persons at the closing Sunday afternoon mass in the football stadium. The event was conducted by five bishops and 350 priests. The Christian Broadcasting Network and the PTL Network provided live television coverage of the mass to more than 200 stations.
An evangelist who specializes in an international healing ministry, MacNutt pointed out a group of two dozen barefoot men and women from the slums of Juarez, Mexico, who had been brought to the conference by an El Paso priest. MacNutt said Christ’s apostles probably looked more like the poor of Juarez than “the well-dressed preachers and church leaders of today.” The Juarez visitors later gave personal testimonies of their healings and of how God had saved them from a sinful past.
The main message of the conference was given by Martin, one of the movement’s founders and director of the International Communication Office. The Brussels-based agency oversees the global spread of the movement. Martin warned against diluting the Gospel. He said, “It is not true that the Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim religions are equally good paths to God. Jesus Christ is the only door to God.” Martin also said that false views of the Gospel have hurt evangelistic and missionary work.
A similar evangelistic tone characterized another summer conference of Catholic charismatics. Approximately 20,000 persons from eighty countries met in mid-June in Dublin, Ireland, for a four-day international conference.
Cardinal Suenens led seventeen bishops and about 1,500 priests in celebrating the final mass, which was carried live on Irish television. Speakers included Basil Cardinal Hume of Westminster (Klondon), England, Eduardo Bonnin, leader of a Spanish charismatic renewal movement, and Martin, who gave an address similar to the one at Notre Dame.
Larry Kelly of Belfast said that the growing charismatic movement in Northern Ireland has 5,000 Catholics and 2,000 Protestants actively involved. Kelly said these charismatics often meet together, and this unity offers hope for peace in the strife-torn nation.
Just prior to the Dublin meeting, about 600 priests responded to an invitation for the baptism of the Spirit, according to a spokesmen. They were part of the 3,300 participants that attended a three-day leadership meeting. The emphasis at Dublin was summed up by coordinator Tom Flynn: “This whole conference is designed to help us be better witnesses, better evangelists.”
A Stand With Substance
Members of a Georgia Baptist church have placed their $200,000 church building on the side of escaped convict Mosie Harriell, and law officials don’t know how to react. The Oakhurst Baptist Church of Decatur, Georgia, voted unanimously to offer their church building as security to cover a $30,000 bond for the recaptured Harriell, whose situation had aroused the 250 active members’ sympathy.
Harriell escaped from an Indiana prison ten years ago, after having served twenty-five years of a life term for the 1943 slaying of a Wabash, Indiana, policeman. Since that time, he had lived peacefully while working for a Conley, Georgia, construction firm. Harriell, who suffers from diabetes and heart problems, has married and lived under an assumed name since his escape.
Associate pastor Myron Weaver commented in an Associated Press story: “Looking at his [Harriell’s] situation, we feel that rehabilitation has worked in his case.… He’s been a good citizen for ten years. If he goes back, he’s likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.”
In a telephone interview, Weaver said that the response of the church to Harriell’s plight was “uniquely Christian,” rather than just “a humanitarian gesture with personality.” After hearing a sermon on “blessed are the merciful” the congregation donated $400, which will be used to pay Harriell’s bond in case DeKalb county officials don’t accept the bond security offer of the church. They are bothered by the question: Could the county foreclose on a church if Harriell should break bail?
Oakhurst has a history of controversy. It was one of the first integrated Baptist congregations in the South during the late 1960s—a costly move in a way, since active membership prior to that time was about 700 members, as compared to the current 200-to 250-member total.
The church has also encouraged a response to world hunger, and it is one of the few Southern Baptist churches to have ordained women.
Doctor Turns Dean
Dr. Sydney A. Garett was named dean of the Oral Roberts University Medical School last month, filling a gap left when Dr. Charles B. McCall resigned from the post after less than a year’s service, casting a cloud over the school’s projected fall opening. McCall cited differences of “administrative policy matters” as the reason for his departure. Although university officials described the parting as amicable, no explanation was offered on what those “policy differences” were. Garrett, a Pickens, South Carolina, native, was most recently a faculty member at Eastern Tennessee State University College of Medicine in Johnson City.
Pot Proof
A proof text for smoking pot? Arrested in Olathe, Kansas, for possession of the drug, Herb Overton based his defense on Genesis 1:29: “And God said, ‘I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of the earth.…’ ”
Judge Earl Jones doubted Overton’s hermeneutics, however. According to a Chicago Tribune account, the judge told the Bible-quoting defendant: “As a mere mortal, I’m going to find you guilty of possession of marijuana. If you want to appeal to a higher authority, that’s fine with me.”
Billy in Mid-America
Billy Graham’s Mid-America crusade in Kansas City earlier this month was a first for black participation. John W. Williams, pastor of St. Stephen Baptist Church, was the first black chairman of a Graham crusade. He also serves on the board of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
During the planning stages of the crusade, Williams’s fellow black ministers in the city held a special prayer meeting for Williams and his wife. Other blacks held key leadership positions, including chairmanships of the counselors’ committee, the laymens’ committee, and the ministers’ prayer committee.
Kansas City has over 1,000 area churches, which gives it a strong religious base. And it attracts many large conventions. A poll taken in the city about a year ago showed that 96 per cent of those interviewed believed in God; another 45 per cent professed to a born-again experience. The city also claims some of the nation’s largest evangelical churches, Sunday schools, and bus ministries; it seemed a natural for the Billy Graham crusade. Yet, the attendance was less than expected. The first eight meetings of the nine-day crusade were held in Kemper Arena, which has a capacity of about 17,000. The final meeting was held at the Kansas City Royals baseball stadium, which holds about 40,000.
When Graham held a ten-day crusade here in 1967, the average nightly attendance was 36,000 in the old Municipal Stadium (53,000 showing up on the final night). Cumulative attendance then was about 364,000, and more than 11,000 persons made commitments.
Crusade planners thought Kemper would be bursting at the seams. But overflow seating set up at the nearby Exposition Hall was never used. About 16,000 persons attended. By the third night, attendance had dropped to 11,000; attendance gradually increased during the week, though, reaching Kemper’s 17,260 capacity on the eighth and final night. Midway, the crusade was $100,000 in the red.
Questioned about finances and attendance, Graham said he was confident that before the crusade was over there would be a surplus. The local crusade committee originally had set the budget at $457,000, but this was cut back to $353,000 when the money came in slowly. Several reasons were given—among them, a late start by the finance committee and incomplete canvassing of churches and businesses.
Graham said that the week before Labor Day is a bad time for a crusade; this was only the second time in his career that he had held a crusade that week. Another detriment to high attendance, he said, was the presence of the winning Royals, which had a home stand starting about the same time as the crusade. “I’m a baseball fan,” he commented. “We went past the stadium the other night and it was a great temptation … to stop for at least one inning.”
Sterling Huston, director of all of Graham’s crusades in North America, also deplored the timing, but said, “We were not able to get Kansas City dates after Labor Day due to Graham’s international schedule [Scandinavia and Poland]. But Kansas City had been waiting for another crusade for a long time, and the leaders wanted it in 1978 even if they had to take less than optimum dates.”
John Corts, a member of the Graham team who served as crusade director, said that financial support from churches was very good and moderate from area businesses. He said that funds are raised mostly through donations, with the nightly offerings providing a secondary resource.
At the end of the crusade, as Graham had predicted, the budget had been met. The offerings from the final service helped pay for producing the meetings for television. Cumulative attendance for the nine days was about 143,500, and the total number of commitments was about 3,000.
About 29,000 persons attended the closing service on Labor Day; many persons arriving from out of town said that the holiday had made it possible for them to come.
A tragic sidenote: A bus from a local Baptist church carrying forty persons to the crusade apparently lost its brakes on a freeway exit ramp. The bus flipped over after crashing into a grassy embankment. Thirty-three persons were injured, some seriously. Witnesses at the scene said that it was a miracle that no one was killed.
HELEN T. GRAY
Just in Time
Last-minute donations rolled in just prior to an early September deadline, enabling the U.S. Center for World Mission to win full control of the seventeen-acre former campus of Pasadena College in suburban Los Angeles. The school received the final $650,000 needed to close out a $1.5 million downpayment on the property (it was still about $300,000 short just one week before the deadline).
Headed by evangelical missiologist and former Fuller seminary professor Ralph Winter, the Center is a research and development agency for Christian mission work to the world’s 2.4 billion “unreached peoples”—those not in contact with an indigenous church. The center’s academic arm on the campus, William Carey International University, which offers a unique one-semester program primarily to secular college students, gives a liberal arts and spiritual view of the Third World nations where most unevangelized people live.
Religion in Transit
None of the 170 delegates at a “Consultation on Presbyterian Union” held last month at Louisville Presbyterian seminary opposed union of the 2.6-million-member United Presbyterian Church and the 875,000-member Presbyterian Church in the United States. However, the delegates—handpicked by leaders of both churches for their differing viewpoints on the proposed merger—couldn’t decide how best to consummate the union. That didn’t matter since conference leaders said the three-day session was not designed to “produce anything” but to “foster a sharing of ideas and lively discussion.” Talks toward merger of the two churches, split since the Civil War, first began in 1969.
Financial problems plaguing the PTL Television Network have stopped construction of its $100 million Total Living Center near Charlotte, North Carolina. The general contractor of the 1,400-acre community housing project ordered a work halt until PTL pays more than $500,000 in delinquent bills.
Youth suicides have tripled since 1955, Public Health Service figures show. The suicide rate for 15 to 24 year olds has risen from 4 per 100,000 people in 1955 to almost 12 per 100,000 in 1975. An estimated 5,000 young persons commit suicide each year—the third leading cause of death for that age group.
Viet Nam War pacifist George McGovern startled many last month when he called for international military intervention in Cambodia to stop “a clear case of genocide.” Senator McGovern told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee that up to 2.5 of the nation’s 7.7 million people have died of starvation, disease, and execution since the Communist takeover in 1975.
Sunday school enrollments have dropped more than 60 per cent since 1962 within the United Church of Canada, officials of the 2.1-million-member denomination report. United Church seminary principal William Fennell says the decline is reflected by incoming seminary students who often “are hopelessly ignorant of the Bible.”
The American Lutheran Church suspended from membership last month the Central Lutheran Church of Tacoma, Washington, which has appealed the decision. The grounds for the action: Two Central pastors, contrary to ALC bylaws, are not from the ALC clergy roster. Senior pastor Reuben Redal is president of Lutherans Alert, a conservative group that has charged the ALC with departing from “the historic Lutheran confessional position.”
