The 250 members of the independent Church of Christian Liberty in the Chicago suburb of Prospect Heights mean it when they sing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Their pastor, conservative Paul Lindstrom, recently dispatched an armed fighting unit to eastern Rhodesia. Its immediate goal is to reopen mission stations that have been closed by attacks from Robert Maguabe’s guerrilla troops who operate from neighboring Mozambique. The venture was prompted by the murder last June of twelve Britons at a mission station in Umtali, which is run by the Elim Pentecostal Church.
Giles Pace, a 34-year-old former Green Beret who Lindstrom calls a “born again believer,” leads the fighting unit, which will eventually number 300. Pace told reporters in Rhodesia recently that he was “not interested in dialogue or detente. We will shoot the bastards [black guerrillas] on sight.”
Lindstrom makes no apologies for Pace’s comments, saying that the guerrillas, according to Hebrews chapter 12, are illegitimate in God’s eyes. They are “not unsavable,” Lindstrom says, but they are “unregenerate murderers of missionaries and self-declared enemies of the work of Christ.” Suspicious persons seen carrying guns within the borders of mission stations controlled by the church-financed troops will be met with force, says Lindstrom—“not out of retaliation, but according to righteousness and justice.”
Lindstrom’s policy of mixing bullets with the Bible did not begin with his most recent venture. He once threatened to send mercenary troops into Viet Nam to rescue American prisoners of war.
The Prospect Heights minister gained national recognition as head of the Remember the Pueblo Committee. He actively fought for the release of the eighty-three American soldiers held captive in North Korea, and he frequently scooped the government announcements regarding the status of the men with the help of sympathetic sources inside the Defense Department. Lindstrom even beat the official announcement of their release by several hours.
Lindstrom, who describes his thirteen-year-old church as having “evangelical and Calvinistic-reformed persuasions,” says the Rhodesian venture is for “missionary purposes.” His army is not composed of mercenaries, but of “Christian young men with military experience in Viet Nam.” The Trinity seminary graduate defends his commander-type role: “Though God says ‘Vengeance is mine,’ the Lord uses men to fulfill his purpose.”
David Eyling, director of Elim Pentecostal Church missionary activities, washes his hands of the Lindstrom venture. Leslie Wigglesworth, who was mission director at Umtali at the time of the massacre, has speculated that Lindstrom’s army will be “taken up by the Rhodesian Army. I don’t think the government will allow a private military force to operate.”
Not so, in Lindstrom’s view. He says the Rhodesian government is sympathetic and will send help if any major conflict breaks out at the mission stations. Lindstrom says his church is in direct communication with the Salisbury government. Indeed, for several months, he has tried to bring the four-man transitional government to speak at his church on the future of Christian missions there.
Lindstrom apparently has been successful. The U.S. State Department granted the four men entry visas earlier this month. Prime Minister Ian Smith and Ndabaningi Sithole, a black clergyman, were expected to arrive in America first, to be followed shortly thereafter by the remaining members of the four-man interim government, Chief Jeremiah Chirau and Bishop Abel Muzorewa. Lindstrom renewed his invitation to the men, and expected them to visit his church sometime during their stay.
Lindstrom, who has John Birch Society ties and is frequently in demand as a speaker, also is head master of his church’s Christian Liberty Academy. About 150 students attend the school, which is adjacent to his $250,000 church. Another 1,400 students learn Lindstrom’s brand of conservative back-to-the-basics education by correspondence. Lindstrom’s church has fought legal battles in Nebraska and Minnesota for parents of children who take the course; the states have held the parents in violation of compulsory school attendance laws.
Lindstrom’s military defense of the Gospel may continue, if for no other reason than that financial donations from sympathetic persons around the country keep rolling in. Lindstrom says his fighting unit has received no financial support from the Rhodesian government.
Integrated Belief
The 25,000 delegates in the Louisiana Superdome stood to signal their unanimous selection of Joseph H. Jackson as president of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A. (NBC). Another man might have been awed, but probably not the 74-year-old Jackson. Jackson’s election last month was his twenty-sixth in a row as head of the largest black denomination—6.5 million members—in this country.
Often called the “incorporated body,” to distinguish it from the smaller 2.5-million-member National Baptist Convention of America that split from it in 1915, the NBC in recent years has emphasized racial integration. The election of Jackson, pastor of the 2,000-member Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago, insures that policy.
Jackson thinks that his steady push for “civil rights within the constitution” has kept him in office. He has always advocated black equality through working within the system. In his annual address at the New Orleans convention, Jackson said, “All of us must work for the correction and the cleansing of our country, but not for its destruction.”
Jackson’s establishment approach has angered black activists in the past, yet he has steadily pursued equal rights. He has been at odds with fellow Chicagoan Jesse Jackson (no relation), magnetic leader of the nationally known People United to Save Humanity (PUSH) program. The NBC president says Jesse Jackson has abandoned integration as a priority to emphasize black self-reliance and black pride.
Reacting against what they saw as Jesse Jackson’s betrayal of the push for equal rights, NBC convention delegates in 1975 issued a call to continue working for racial integration. This year the convention delegates reaffirmed that call.
NAACP executive director Benjamin Hooks explained at a convention gathering for young people, “Blacks still have a long, long way to go.” He added, “We’re not asking white folks to come down but merely to move over and make room for us.”
Convention delegates discussed more items than equal rights during the six-day convention. They passed a proposal giving teachers the right to strike—but only when it “was subordinate to the responsibility of teaching children.” NBC leaders asked support for black colleges, and a $10,000 endowment was established at each of three schools: two predominately white Baptist seminaries, Southern in Louisville and Colgate-Rochester in Rochester, and a black Bible college, American Baptist in Nashville.
The Commission on Evangelism met during the convention, and Jackson said it preaches the “power of Jesus Christ to be saved.” In his view, that means “winning people to Christ through social salvation”—that the church should preach Christ in the context of a person’s place of business and apply Christian principles to everyday problems.
As Jackson plans his twenty-sixth term in office, another black leader, Thomas Kilgore, will look for other work within the Progressive National Baptist Convention (PNBC). Kilgore stepped down as president of the predominately black PNBC, church of Martin Luther King, Sr., Jesse Jackson, and Ralph Abernathy. He had served two single-year terms—the maximum allowed under church bylaws. Selected to replace him at the PNBC convention in Los Angeles in August was Brooklyn pastor William A. Jones.
The denomination split as a reform movement from the NBC seventeen years ago, and its members acted quickly to insure a limited term for president. Progressive Baptists generally oppose what some call the “hip pocket” style of leadership in the other two large black Baptist denominations—the NBC and the unincorporated National Baptists, who again elected long-time president James C. Sams of Jacksonville, Florida, at their September convention.
The Progressive Baptists wanted to distribute the power throughout the church and gain a more streamlined organization. In fact, Kilgore’s goal as president of the PNBC was getting more accurate statistical data from PNBC churches that often regard their membership statistics as their business alone, says PNBC general secretary Sloan Hodges. Church officials also differ as to who belongs to the denomination. Kilgore’s 1,900-member Los Angeles Second Baptist Church, for example, also holds membership in the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., a mostly white group. (For a time, Kilgore was president of the latter group—making him possibly the only person ever to preside over two denominations at the same time.)
In any case, PNBC national membership ranges anywhere from Kilgore’s estimate of 450,000 to the 750,000 figure given by secretary Hodges. (A denominational news release claimed one million.) Kilgore says it will take several more years for the PNBC to get an accurate figure.
The 5,000 delegates attending the recent PNBC convention greeted a parade of eminent guests: California governor Jerry Brown, United Nations ambassador Andrew Young, and evangelist Ruth Carter Stapleton. They heard outgoing president Kilgore’s call to support black businessmen. Kilgore, 65, estimated that 90 per cent of the money earned by blacks leaves the community. Kilgore also asked for stronger leadership from black pastors; he criticized clergymen who don’t get involved and who hide behind “bogus degrees.”
All three major black Baptist denominations are active in the National and World Councils of Churches. Joseph Jackson has been active in the WCC hierarchy. Each denomination has liberal and conservative theologians in its membership, with most members falling somewhere in between.
Another gathering of black churchmen was held last month, but this conference involved black pastors within the predominately white United Methodist Church. The 200 pastors who met at Garrett seminary in Evanston worried about a declining black membership in the denomination, which they blamed on increasing affluence and secularization among blacks. Black membership in the United Methodist Church has dropped by 20,000 from 1967 and by one million from 1958.
The pastors said they had difficulty relating to inner city blacks, many of whom talk a “different language.” Also, the more affluent pastors lack experience in dealing with poverty.
The black Catholic clergy in this country have noted a similar evangelism problem. Bishop Joseph Houwze, a black from Biloxi, Mississippi, said evangelizing the black unchurched was “not unlike mission work in foreign countries,” a reference to the Catholic church’s outreach in black, non-Catholic urban areas.
Earlier this month, the church again set aside two days to focus on black needs and raise funds for the National Office for Black Catholics. An estimated one million blacks are members of the American Catholic church, about 4 per cent of the black population.
DEATHS
GAINES S. DOBBINS, 92, pioneer Southern Baptist educator on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary faculty for thirty-six years and prolific writer, who was the first Southern Baptist to teach Christian journalism; at his home in Birmingham, of an apparent heart attack.
ROBERT W. FRANK, 88, United Presbyterian minister and former president of McCormick Theological Seminary; in Denver, after a sudden illness in his home.
MERVEL S. LUNN, SR., 91, for thirty-eight years the head of Nazarene Publishing House and former treasurer of the International Church of the Nazarene; in Bethany, Oklahoma, after a short illness.
VALERIAN GRACIAS, 77, the first native Roman Catholic cardinal of India and patriot who rallied Indian Catholics to defend their homeland during a 1962 Communist Chinese invasion; in Bombay, of cancer.
F. EPPLING REINARTZ, 77, leader in the United Lutheran Church in America before its 1962 merger with the Lutheran Church in America, former president of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, and an organizer of Lutheran World Action; in Columbia, South Carolina, after an extended illness.
Mad At Jimmy
Prolife groups are fuming about President Jimmy Carter’s appointment of an abortion rights leader, Sarah Weddington, as his top adviser on women’s issues. “I think it’s a total insult to any evangelical—this is the crassest example of Carter’s inconsistency with his expressed commitment to biblical principles,” said Curtis Young, executive director of the Christian Action Council (CAC).
One of the most vocal Protestant prolife groups (there are about 3,000 assorted antiabortion groups around the country), the CAC vainly tried to get Carter to reconsider the appointment. The CAC, in fact, was born as an evangelical response after an event in which Weddington played a leading role. She argued for and won the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade, which overturned nearly all state laws restricting abortion.
Young was among signers of a letter of protest to President Carter soon after Weddington’s appointment. Other signers included Jean Gartan, head of the recently formed Lutherans for Life, Robert Holbrook, national coordinator of Baptists for Life, and Presbyterian pastor James M. Boice. The White House acknowledged the letter indirectly through a Carter staff member.
Reacting to church criticism, Weddington, who is the daughter of a United Methodist clergyman, has restated her position on abortion. She said she is not “proabortion,” but “prochoice.” “Nobody I know is for abortion,” she said. “What they are for is the right of the individual woman to have a choice.”
Weddington gained national recognition after showing her judicial skills in Roe vs. Wade, and women’s rights groups embraced the Texas native as one of their own. She was elected president of the National Abortion Rights Action League, a group whose purpose is to secure a woman’s right to have an abortion. Weddington believes a woman should have the right to an abortion without her husband’s consent, and that a girl should have the right to an abortion without her parents’ consent.
Known for her skill as a speaker, Weddington is working for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment—her first priority right now. She says her liberal views on abortion won’t affect her relationship with President Carter, who opposes federally funded abortions except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger or when the pregnancy results from rape or incest.
But then, several evangelical leaders assert that Carter’s views on abortion don’t differ much from those of Weddington anyway. Harold O. J. Brown, Trinity seminary professor and founding member of the CAC, says Carter’s past record of appointments indicates a more proabortion stance than is commonly believed. Only HEW secretary Joseph Califano among Carter staff members has taken a strong antiabortion stance, says Brown.
Propositioned California
What Howard Jarvis was for the California tax revolt and Proposition 13, state senator John Briggs is to a proposal that is just as controversial now on the November 7 ballot in California. The Briggs bill, Proposition 6, would require that school boards fire teachers and other education employees who publicly advocate homosexual acts.
California church groups are split in their opinion of the bill. Some say it would start a “witch hunt,” and others, like Briggs, assert that it would eliminate practicing homosexuals, persons “unfit to teach,” from the school system.
Briggs, now a Catholic, describes himself as a “born again Christian” from a “fundamental, Pentecostal” background. He is canvassing mostly fundamentalist churches throughout California to get support for his cause.
Briggs and Ray Batema, pastor of the 7,000-member Pomona Central Baptist Church, last June formed a fund-raising group, the Citizens for Decency and Morality. They hope to pay for the needed publicity and television promotions. Briggs says he still owes $500,000 “just from getting the bill on the ballot.”
Recently, Briggs and Batema met with the influential and nationally known pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, Jerry Falwell, who enthusiastically supports Proposition 6. Falwell sent letters to 1,400 churches in California in support of the bill, and he promised to hold a rally for the bill in Orange County this month.
Briggs discounts claims that Proposition 6 could encourage McCarthy-type hunts for homosexuals. He said a similar bill in California that was repealed three years ago was not abused.
But other California churches don’t agree. The Presbytery of San Diego, which includes thirty-six churches, recently branded the bill “unnecessary and potentially dangerous.” Also on record against Proposition 6 are the board of directors of the Southern California Council of Churches (which includes membership from thirteen denominations), the 136-church Southern California Conference of the Church of Christ, and a council of Jewish congregations.
Ironically, some of the strongest opposition has come from Presbyterian groups. Last May, the national governing body of the church met in San Diego and rejected a study committee’s recommendation that practicing, self-admitted homosexuals be ordained to the ministry.
World Scene
A Nigerian evangelistic outreach program, “Operation Good News,” has been launched to present the Gospel clearly to all 65 million Nigerians. Approved by the Second National Congress on Evangelization, the program will be implemented, starting next month, by nineteen state committees under general coordinator Yemi Lapido, who also directs Campus Crusade in Nigeria.
Luis Palau and members of his team have launched the Luis Palau Evangelistic Team as a distinct organization. The Argentine born evangelist was until recently the executive director of Overseas Crusades. The separation was amicable. Dick Hillis of Overseas Crusades is on the board of Palau’s new organization, and Palau continues on the Overseas Crusades board.
Gangs of Muslim fanatics are terrorizing Coptic Christians in rural areas of Egypt. Members of the banned but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood are behind many of the attacks, which have increased over the last two years, according to Shawky F. Karas, president of the American Coptic Association. He cited a recent incident in the Upper Nile village of Tawfikia in which a Coptic priest and his two sons were killed and his wife attacked. The attackers, Karas said, were punishing the priest for persuading one of his flock “not to adopt the Islamic religion.”
Israeli ambassador Simcha Dinitz told Baptist leaders in a one-and-a-half-hour meeting late last month that he would “put all his weight” behind efforts to stop harassment of Christians in Israel who might be adversely affected by the new antiproselyte law. The law, passed by the Israeli Knesset last April, makes it a criminal action to offer “material benefit” to a person in Israel to “induce him to change his religion.” Baptists and other Christians worry that local Israeli officials will interpret the law in ways that will harm Israeli Christians and Christian ministries.
Five oriental Orthodox churches endorsed the idea of reuniting with the Roman Catholic Church at a meeting in Vienna last month. They concluded that most major doctrinal issues could be settled but have not resolved differences over the role of the pope. The churches split from Rome and the rest of Eastern Orthodoxy when they rejected parts of the creed of the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451. The churches are the Coptic in Egypt, the Armenian, the Ethiopian, the Syrian Jacobite, and a Syrian church in south India.
The new Spanish constitution would guarantee religious liberty and disestablish the Roman Catholic Church as the state church. Still in draft form, the constitution does specify that the state “will maintain cooperative relations with the Catholic Church and the other confessions.” The draft is now being finalized by the Cortēs (lower house), but then must be approved by the Spanish Senate and by a national referendum before being proclaimed into law by King Juan Carlos.
Religion In Transit
The thirteen-member governmental Ethics Advisory Board began public hearings last month to study the moral issues involved in government funding for research of “in vitro fertilization”—the technique that gave birth to “test tube baby” Louise Brown. The board—which includes lawyers, doctors, businessmen, a medical ethicist, and a Catholic priest—is gathering testimony on the subject, and will decide early next year whether funds should be released for “test tube baby” research (banned since 1973). A Harris poll of 1,500 American women taken shortly after Miss Brown’s birth showed 85 per cent approval of test tube procedures for women who can’t conceive normally.
A coalition of the American Indian Movement and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference may be in the offing. SCLC president and United Methodist minister Joseph Lowery visited AIM activist leader Russell Means in his Sioux Falls, South Dakota, jail cell, and said afterwards, “We discussed how black and Indian leadership might work together for a common objective—legislation and programs that fight poverty in our respective communities.”
About 800,000 orders are being filled for the newly published Lutheran Book of Worship, but controversy surrounding the hymnal hasn’t died. Paul Peterson, LCMS pastor in St. Paul, Minnesota, who helped develop the book while serving on the LCMS Commission on Worship, was upset when the LCMS rejected the hymnal for containing false doctrine and hymns “not compatible with Lutheran Theology.” Last month he left the synod, noting his “deep feeling of frustration” with the LCMS, to become associate pastor of a Lutheran Church in America congregation, also in St. Paul.
Corrie Ten Boom, 86, is resting in her Placentia, California, home after hospital treatment for a stroke she suffered in August. The popular author and lecturer has almost completely recovered, though therapists are still working to help her overcome some speech difficulties.
About 1,000 Spanish-speaking Catholics held a rally in San Bernardino, California, last month to protest the selection of an Anglo, Philip Straling, as bishop-designate of the new Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino. Sixty-five per cent of 235,000 Catholics in the diocese are Hispanic. Rally supporters hope that their regional demonstration would be the first of many around the country to encourage more appointments of Spanish-speaking bishops. Leaders estimate that from one-fourth to one-half of the baptized Catholics in this country are Hispanic, but note that only eight of the 350 bishops are Hispanic.
CBS Television has dropped its long-running “Lamp Unto My Feet” and “Look Up and Live” Sunday morning programs in favor of a weekly ninety-minute news program, “Sunday Morning.” Network spokesmen say that religious news will be a regular feature of the show (scheduled to begin in mid-January) and that it will often be pre-empted for religious specials.
A rabbi and four women, who describe themselves as a Quaker, a Unitarian, a mother, and a “non-believer,” have obtained a court order blocking implementation of Kentucky’s “Ten Commandments law.” A Franklin County judge upheld their complaint that the law showed religious preference. Just days before, the attorney general of Kentucky had reaffirmed the constitutionality of the law, which was passed last June. It would require the display of framed copies of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, provided the copies are paid for by private donations.
The Regent College board of directors has elected James M. Houston as the first chancellor of the Vancouver school. Prior to his appointment, Houston had been the principal. Old Testament professor (and CHRISTIANITY TODAY editor-at-large) Carl E. Armerding was named acting principal to fill Houston’s vacated slot.
Personalia
The international headquarters of Nicky Cruz Outreach has been moved from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Colorado Springs. One hundred fifty acres of mountain property outside the city was given to him. He plans to train Christian parents to take troubled children into their homes.
Carl W. Tiller has been named director of the Interchurch Center, the building in Manhattan that houses Protestant, Jewish, and Roman Catholic agencies. Tiller had been associate secretary for the Baptist World Alliance since 1972.
As the announced U.S. national chairman for the global Here’s Life evangelism effort sponsored by Campus Crusade, Edward L. Johnson will seek funding to meet the one billion dollar goal set for the project. Johnson now is head of a holding company for eleven California savings and loan asociations.
