SMITHSONIAN
Mennonite Exhibit in Limbo
Within a week of tragedies in Waco, Texas, and at New York’s World Trade Center, the Smithsonian Institution canceled a planned exhibit developed by a Kansas Mennonite group. The exhibit is based on a series of panels depicting the imprisonment, torture, and murder of medieval Anabaptists, predecessors of the Mennonites.
Exhibit curator Robert Kreider, professor emeritus at Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas, says Smithsonian officials originally informed him that the Waco and World Trade Center events were the reasons for cancellation of the Mennonite exhibit on religious nonconformism. However, he notes that museum officials soon offered him various reasons, including bureaucratic bungling and questions on the exhibit’s appropriateness for children.
The exhibit was called off one month before its scheduled April 1 opening. Smithsonian Institution spokesperson Madeleine Jacobs denies the timing of the exhibit affected its cancellation. She says the exhibit was “suspended pending review.”
The exhibit is on display at the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society headquarters in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
PRISON MINISTRY
ACLU Opposes Texas ‘God Pod’
A Texas prison may be put on trial for teaching inmates about Christianity. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit last month against Tarrant County Jail officials in Fort Worth over a Christian-education program that houses participating inmates in a separate cellblock. The ACLU claims the arrangement violates the Constitution.
Van Thompson, assistant district attorney, says no one is excluded from the “God Pod” because of religion. The program, which involves 50 inmates in the 1,448-bed facility, is voluntary. However, ACLU Fort Worth chapter president Don Jackson says “precisely the same benefits” must be made available to other inmates.
The program—administered by volunteer seminary professors and pastors from local churches—involves five hours of daily instruction and homework assignments.
County officials praised the program for its effect on inmate behavior and morale. Says Thompson, “These are the quietest cats in the jail. We’ve never had a fight.” Chris Athey, the chaplain who spearheaded the effort, said that of the 100 inmates who have completed the program, only 2 have returned to prison.
By Joe Loconte.
CHRISTIAN REFORMED
Ordination of Women Revived
For the second time in three years, the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) has opened the door to women’s ordination, a move some predict will prompt more defections from the denomination.
Delegates to the annual synod in Grand Rapids in June voted 95 to 88 to give “councils and churches the option to nominate, elect, call and ordain qualified women to the offices of elder, minister and evangelist.” While the CRC now permits women to serve only as deacons, some congregations also have ordained women as elders.
The vote was greeted with applause by advocates of women’s ordination. But conservatives said the ruling will cause more defections (7,000 individuals already have left).
Last year, the CRC did not ratify a similar decision made in 1990 to allow women to serve in all church offices. Instead, adopting language many found ambiguous, the synod voted to allow women to “expound the Word of God.” This year’s ruling came as a revision to that decision. In accordance with CRC guidelines, the decision whether to ratify the ruling will be made next year.
That has some women’s ordination advocates concerned. “[Ratification] is a two-step dance,” Joan Flikkema, executive secretary of the Committee for Women of the Christian Reformed Church, told CT. “We’ve done it once, we’ve done it twice, we may have to do it again.”
PRISON FELLOWSHIP
New Aid Offered to Crime Victims
Prison Fellowship is encouraging churches to emulate the Good Samaritan—the man who stopped to help a crime victim. The effort, Neighbors Who Care (NWC), seeks to organize church and community coalitions to address the needs of crime victims.
The program, headed by Lisa Barnes, will recruit volunteers from churches to provide help with emergency food and clothing, property repair, relocation, emotional and spiritual support, and other aid.
NWC is one part of the reorganized Prison Fellowship Ministry, along with Prison Fellowship U.S.A. and Justice Fellowship. Prison Fellowship Ministry will remain as an umbrella group over the other three units.
The revamping is expected to help attract supporters interested in certain segments of the ministry but not all it has to offer.
CHARISMATICS
Kansas City Feud Declared Dead
A three-year feud between two large Kansas City-area charismatic ministries is over—just as the instigator has resigned because of divorce. Ernie Gruen resigned May 21 as apostle of Full Faith Church of Love, which he founded 26 years ago. Gruen said he was “committing divorce.”
Earlier in the month, Gruen and Metro Vineyard Fellowship (MVF) senior pastor Mike Bickle issued a joint statement announcing they had “forgiven each other of all offenses.”
In 1990, Gruen mailed tapes to Christian leaders throughout the world, accusing Bickle’s church of bad ethics and of teaching cultic doctrines. Bickle admits to allowing “mystical and stupid” prophecies in the church but says that had been corrected by 1984.
“Ernie’s decision to leave and to divorce have come as a complete surprise to his wife, the people, and leadership of Full Faith,” says Nick M. Jordon, senior pastor of the ministry, which includes four congregations totaling 5,500 members. Bickle believes the divorce precipitated Gruen’s move to reconcile with MVF, which has five congregations totaling 3,000 people.
PEOPLE AND EVENTS
Briefly Noted
Charles R. Swindoll will become the fourth president of Dallas Theological Seminary in July 1994, while continuing as senior pastor of the First Evangelical Free Church in Fullerton, California, and host of the “Insight for Living” radio ministry. John H. Sailhamer, currently a teacher at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, will become provost of Dallas Theological Seminary in July 1994 and oversee day-to-day responsibilities.
• Kenneth Hodder will become national commander of the Salvation Army-USA August 1. Hodder and his wife, Marjorie, who have been officers since 1958, have been in charge of Salvation Army activities in the USA Southern Territory.
• The Massachusetts State Board of Education has become the first such educational body in the nation to endorse proposals designed to advocate acceptance of homosexuals. Despite widespread opposition (CT, May 17, 1993, p. 70), the panel on May 18 approved sensitivity training for teachers on the subject of homosexuality.
• In the midst of all the hubbub over graduation prayer (CT, June 21, 1993, p. 45), the Tennessee House and Senate both overwhelmingly approved a bill allowing student-initiated prayer at public-school non-compulsory events. The bill became law in early June, but a challenge is expected from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Lawmakers passed the bill in response to requests from school districts that had been threatened with ACLU suits if prayer was allowed.
• More than 20 years after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, Mississippi on June 3 became the first state with both a working parental consent or notice law as well as a woman’s right-to-know law on abortion. On May 26, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth District upheld the constitutionality of Mississippi’s two-parent consent law, with judicial bypass.
• The Atlanta Police Department has agreed to train officers on the rights of prolife demonstrators as part of a $37,500 settlement with 19 protesters who prayed silently outside an Atlanta abortion facility in 1990. The demonstrators, who knelt on a curb outside Feminist Women’s Health Center, sued police after being acquitted of disorderly conduct charges. A consent order requires officers “to allow absolutely the greatest tolerance for political or religious expression as exercised by a citizen.”
• Jesus Was His Name, a multimedia stage event touring 30 cities (CT, April 5, 1993, p. 74), has been changed following complaints from religious leaders about fostering anti-Semitism. Characters depicting the Sanhedrin no longer wear black robes and death masks.
• A United Methodist Church commission planning the quadrennial meeting of the church’s top legislative body voted unanimously on June 5 to keep the 1996 general conference in Denver. Commissioners had been pressured to change the location as a protest. Colorado voters last November approved Amendment 2, which bars local governments from passing special laws protecting homosexuals.
• Roland Kenneth Harrison, 72, professor emeritus of Old Testament studies at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, died May 2. Harrison, author of 14 books on biblical studies, participated in the translation of the New International Version of the Bible.
• Atheist Rob Sherman of Buffalo Grove, Illinois, lost a five-year battle June 1 when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his Pledge of Allegiance lawsuit. The justices rejected Sherman’s claim that his son’s constitutional rights had been violated by daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools.
• Correction: Westminster Seminary in Escondido, California, is an independent school, not affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church, as reported in the June 14 issue.
