In December 1982, the San Francisco—based organization Jews for Jesus launched the most ambitious evangelistic campaign in its nine-year history. It placed full-page ads highlighting the word Y’shua, the Hebrew name for Jesus, in 25 major metropolitan daily newspapers.
Had no one responded, the campaign would have been worth the effort, said Sue Perlman, the organization’s information director. “The ad is a self-contained statement of the gospel,” she said. But some 12,000 people did answer the ad, wanting to know more about Christianity. Almost 50 percent of the respondents were Jewish.
In 1983, Jews for Jesus constituents donated nearly half a million dollars for the second Y’shua campaign. The ad received greater exposure, running in nearly 100 metropolitan dailies—including nine of the nation’s ten largest—during the Hanukkah season. It appeared nationally in the Wall Street Journal and in U.S.A. Today. A magazine version appeared in Time and Newsweek.
A few publications, however, were hesitant about running the ad. And U.S. News and World Report rejected it altogether. In a letter to Jews for Jesus, publisher William G. Dunn said the ad was not acceptable for publication. Dunn would not discuss the matter further in a telephone interview except to say, “The ad was rejected because I rejected it.”
U.S. News & World Report does not, however, reject all advertising from religious organizations. The magazine published an ad sponsored by the Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation that offered free Christian literature. And it ran an ad featuring Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of Transcendental Meditation.
The Y’shua ad hit rough waters at other publications. Newsweek at first informed Perlman that the ad was “not appropriate.” However, after passing the advertising deadline for its December 12 issue, the magazine reconsidered. Newsweek persuaded another advertiser to drop out, and the magazine ran the ad a week after it appeared in Time.
Newspapers offered only minor resistance. After running the ad in 1982, the Chicago Sun-Times received letters of protest from the Chicago-based Jews for Judaism, which alleges that Jews for Jesus is a cult. A Sun-Times advertising acceptance committee examined the ad and researched the sponsoring organization. The committee determined that Jews for Jesus is reputable and “has a right to buy advertising space to portray its views,” a Sun-Times spokesman said.
The ad is clearly targeted for a Jewish audience. It contains such statements as “He [Y’shua] is very Jewish, you know. After all, where do you think he spent Hanukkah, in Rome?” and “He can brighten our lives more than any Hanukkah menorah or Christmas tree.”
When Jews for Jesus encounters friction, the organization turns the matter over to its legal counsel, Jay Sekulow. But Sekulow said little can be done to investigate the possibility of religious discrimination when the ad is refused. He said publications have the legal right to reject any advertisement without giving a reason.
At Last, Nestlé Satisfies Some Of Its Church Critics
The Switzerland-based Nestlé Corporation makes candy bars, baby foods, instant tea and coffee, powdered chocolate, wines, cheeses, cosmetics, and lots more. Nestlé is also the world’s biggest producer of infant formula, a product that has given it corporate headaches for nearly a decade.
Since 1977, Nestlé has been the target of an international boycott. Church and health organizations charge that its aggressive marketing of infant formula causes mothers in the Third World to abandon breast-feeding, at some risk to infant health.
Recently, three major American marketers of infant formula—Ross (Abbott) Laboratories, Mead Johnson (Bristol Meyers), and Wyeth Laboratories (American Home Products)—announced their intentions to comply with the World Health Organization’s 1981 code of ethics for the marketing of breast-milk substitutes. Nestlé announced in 1982 it would comply, but the boycott continues.
While infant formula has saved lives in some instances, breast-feeding is almost always desirable. Critics say Nestlé has increased artificially the market for the formula. They paint a picture of an ignorant Third World mother “hooked” on the expensive formula. To make it last longer, she dilutes it, sometimes with unsanitary water. Her baby contracts diarrhea and dehydrates. They cite UNICEF’s estimate that at least a million deaths per year are directly attributable to bottle feeding.
Moderates regard this sequence of events as a caricature, and such newsletter headlines as “Nestlé Kills Babies” as misleading. But they maintain the problem is real.
The boycott was initiated by the Infant Formula Action Coalition (INFACT), which in 1977 consisted of 20 people with a $500 budget. Today the movement is spearheaded by the International Nestlé Boycott Committee (INBC). It is endorsed by 85 national organizations in the U.S. (including the National Council of Churches) and has roots in nine foreign countries.
Whether the boycott has hurt Nestlé financially is arguable. Nestlé sales have grown, but not as much as projected.
Rafael Pagan is president of the Nestlé Coordination Center for Nutrition, the office Nestlé set up to deal with the boycott. He says Nestlé had begun to address questionable marketing procedures before the boycott. But he describes the advice of church groups, especially a task force of the United Methodist Church, as “very necessary and very helpful” in expediting the reforms. “Nestlé has introduced refinements that are very much along the lines of what the WHO code calls for,” Pagan says.
Boycotters acknowledge that Nestlé has made some substantial changes. Mass-media advertising has ceased, as has direct contact between sales personnel and mothers. Formula labels now contain clearer warnings on the potential dangers of misuse. Such marketing tactics as baby pageants, in which the winners received a six-month supply of formula free, have been discontinued.
As a result, some boycotters have reconsidered. Wesley Seminary’s J. Philip Wogaman, who supported the boycott as chairman of the UM task force, now believes it should be ended. “We carried out our discussions in good faith,” Wogaman says. “Nestlé has done an about-face. If we don’t acknowledge that, there’s a question of good faith on our part.” American Baptist Churches are expected to review their position at the church’s biennial meeting next June. The Church of the Brethren already has pulled out of the boycott.
But staunch boycotters are not likely to relax behind a cold glass of Nestlé’s Quik in the foreseeable future. “We congratulate Nestlé on the changes they’ve made,” says Doug Clement, INFACT’s international director, “but we feel they have a long way to go.”
The INBC, chaired by Roman Catholic Sister Regina Murphy, has the authority to end the boycott. “We are waiting to see if and how Nestlé’s new policies will be implemented,” Murphy says. And, like Clement, she is not satisfied that Nestlé has gone far enough. She notes that Nestlé, in violation of the code, still plans to provide hospitals with free samples of the formula.
Wogaman concedes that Nestlé’s response is “not perfect,” but he fears that not to acknowledge Nestlé’s response will weaken the witness of the church and that Nestlé will lose its incentive to respond to public sensitivities.
But boycotters are determined to follow through. Their goal is to get Nestlé to comply fully with the WHO code. “As long as the boycott continues to be a menace to them,” says Clement, “Nestlé will continue to make changes in the right direction.”
RANDY FRAME
Eternity Magazine Hires Its New Executive Editor From National Public Radio
Thirty-year-old Ken Myers has been named executive editor of Eternity magazine. He succeeds Stephen Board, now the director of youth/adult publications at David C. Cook Publishing Company in Elgin, Illinois. Since 1975, Myers has held a number of positions with National Public Radio, a system of some 290 noncommercial radio stations. Most recently, he edited “The Sunday Show,” a five-hour weekly program on the performing arts. Before that he helped produce the 90-minute nightly news program “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition,” a two-hour news show.
Eternity editor William J. Petersen said it was unusual for the magazine to hire someone with a background primarily in broadcasting. But except for a lack of print journalism experience, Petersen said, Myers met all the qualifications. “He has experience in interviewing, reporting, and editing, and in putting programs together,” Petersen said. “He also has managerial background and a broad theological education.”
Myers earned a master’s degree in religion at the nondenominational Westminster Theological Seminary in suburban Philadelphia. Eternity is an evangelical monthly with a circulation of about 45,000.
Personalia
James Powell has succeeded Youngve Kindberg as president of the International Bible Society (IBS). Powell came to IBS in 1982 after five years as executive secretary of the Christian Bible Society in Nashville, Tennessee, which merged with IBS in 1982. Kindberg leaves IBS after 21 years as chief executive officer.
The Board of Trustees of Washington Bible College and its graduate school, Capital Bible Seminary, in Lanham, Maryland, has announced the appointment of Harry E. Fletcher as president. Fletcher, senior pastor of York Gospel Center in York, Pennsylvania, will assume presidential duties May 20. Meanwhile, William Shoemaker has just completed his first semester as president of William Tyndale College (formerly Detroit Bible College) in suburban Detroit. Shoemaker came to William Tyndale after serving as the first director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton (Ill.) College.
Starting in June, Tetsunao Yamamori will assume the presidency of Food for the Hungry, an international Christian relief agency with U.S. headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. For several months, Yamamori has shared the leadership role with Larry Ward, founder of Food for the Hungry. Yamamori is best known for his work in the area of church growth.
Carl Horn III, a U.S. Justice Department lawyer and former counsel at Wheaton (Ill.) College, will run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives this year. He will compete in North Carolina’s ninth congressional district, which includes his home town of Charlotte. Horn is a special assistant to the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, William Bradford Reynolds.
Eugene Stockwell, a former United Methodist missionary and mission executive, has been named director of the World Council of Churches Commission on World Mission and Evangelism. Stockwell, who has directed the Division of Overseas Ministry of the National Council of Churches since 1972, succeeds Uruguayan Methodist Emilio Castro.
Theologians From North, South, And Central America Gather In Mexico
North American theologians journeyed to Cuernavaca, Mexico, late last November to meet with their South American counterparts and grapple with knotty issues surrounding liberation theology. They also discussed relationships between North and South, and the Latin Christians expressed complaints about attitudes of the North American church.
Five themes dominated the discussion.
First was the fact that abstract intellectual issues and degree requirements seem to dominate the church, at the expense of proven ability and “life-oriented ministry.”
Second, the Latin Americans attempted to describe the dangers of a “middle-class” gospel being exported by middle-class North American missionaries. Pedro Savage, of Monterrey, Mexico, listed specific concerns: American missionaries who control the purse strings and so control key decisions on the field; Latin voices not heard well enough because they do not have sufficient formal training; Latin books that are not published because they do not contain the right evangelical “code words”; Latins often deemed less efficient than North Americans and as a result often excluded from executive positions; and the fact that relatively large salaries of North American missionaries allow them to live on a much higher plane than the poor to whom they minister.
Three other topics were dealt with as well: gender and equality in ministry; the dominance of Western epistemology that inhibits foreign cultures in their patterns of expression; and the lack of love for alienated and oppressed people that is sometimes exhibited by their “liberators.”
The conference was organized by the Latin American Theological Fraternity and the Theological Students Fellowship, an affiliate of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.
GRANT OSBORNEin Mexico
Churchgoers Opposed To U.S. Policy Hold ‘Peace Vigils’ In Nicaragua
Teams of American churchgoers who disagree with U.S. government policy in Central America are staging peace vigils on the border of Nicaragua and Honduras.
Their presence there, during two-week stints between Advent and Easter, is less important than the impressions of war they plan to bring home and share. Swaying opinion and eventually changing U.S. policy is their goal.
Among the organizers of the “Witness for Peace” is Sojourners editor Jim Wallis. He visited Nicaragua with the first team of “vigilers” before Christmas, and reports finding “a country under siege.” He objects strongly to U.S. military backing of the counterrevolutionaries, or “contras,” who oppose Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.
Participants in the peace vigil find themselves walking a fine line, however, because they do not want to appear to endorse the Sandinistas. The first team of vigil holders had to fend off efforts by the revolutionary government to escort them everywhere.
The Sandinistas face serious opposition from the Reagan administration, which is concerned that Cuba or the Soviet Union may gain a foothold as Marxist ideology catches on. Wallis and others involved in Witness for Peace discount a Communist threat, and prefer to give the government there the benefit of any doubt.
“There simply is not the kind of [Communist] presence that our government alleges,” Wallis says. “Our government is the outside power fomenting a war against Nicaragua.”
The visitors stayed in Jalapa, a town near the border where the impact of guerrilla fighting has been great. Young teenagers tote rifles as part of a civilian militia developed by the government.
Members of the Witness for Peace advisory committee include Vernon Grounds, president emeritus of Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary, and Ronald Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action.
Church members who make the trip are responsible for raising their own financial support. The first group of 14 included four Roman Catholics, three Presbyterians, two Quakers, two members of the Sojourners Community, one Mennonite, one Episcopal priest, and one Southern Baptist.
