SOUTHERN BAPTISTS
Women’s Parley Too ‘Radical’
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, has pulled out of sponsoring a joint conference on women because the program looked too “radical.”
The seminary earlier had agreed to sponsor “Towards Solidarity: A Conference on Women and the Church” in March along with four other regional seminaries. But Albert Mohler, new president of the seminary, says that “the scope and nature of the program was slanted in a very radical direction and was not at all sensitive to the concerns of evangelicals.”
Keynote speakers at the conference will be Yale Divinity School’s Letty Russell, an advocate of lesbian rights in the church, and women’s rights activist Mercy Oduyoye of Ghana.
Mohler says the conference is “clearly directed toward issues of feminist theology and ideological concerns.”
ECUMENICAL EFFORT
Anti-Gambling Coalition Forms
Religious leaders from 32 states met recently in Jackson, Mississippi, to form the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, a network opposed to all forms of gambling on theological and philosophical grounds.
“The problem is exacerbating,” says Mississippi Baptist Christian Action Commission executive director Paul G. Jones.
Jones notes that there was little gambling beyond Nevada’s casinos and bingo games 30 years ago. Now, only a few of the 50 states have not authorized some sort of legalized betting.
According to Jones, Christians should oppose gambling based on moral concerns of greed, covetousness, and abuse of God’s resources. So should state officials. “It is not a legitimate function of government to make losers of its citizens or to promote what is deceptive,” Jones says.
“The principles in the Word of God are very clear. Any time a person is hurt by what the state is attempting to legitimize, it is a moral issue.”
CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS
Accord Reached in Book Lawsuit
The Christian Science Church will receive $53 million from a proposed settlement last month in Los Angeles Superior Court.
The money will come from a bequest left by Bella Mabury and Eloise Mabury Knapp. The two sisters had promised to leave the church $100 million upon publication of The Destiny of the Mother Church, by Knapp’s late husband, Bliss.
Initially, the Boston-based church balked because the book contained references to founder Mary Baker Eddy as an equal to Jesus, “invested with deific power” (CT, April 26, 1993, p. 54). But in a controversial move, the Christian Science Church published the book in 1991.
Stanford University and the Los Angeles County Museum filed suit, claiming the church had not displayed the book in “substantially all” of its 2,600 libraries and bookstores as required by the will. Under the agreement, the church will receive 53 percent of the bequest, and the other two parties will split the rest.
The money will help Christian Scientists reduce internal indebtedness, which stands at $83 million due to borrowing from endowment and employee pension funds.
SEX STUDIES
Adultery Still Exception, Not Rule
The sexual revolution notwithstanding, nearly all married couples are monogamous, two new sex surveys say. A University of Washington, Seattle, study in October’s American Journal of Public Health found 94 percent of married couples had one partner in the previous year.
Likewise, a survey by the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago determined that only about 4 percent of married people had sexual partners other than their spouse during a one-year span. Overall, infidelity has been practiced by only 21 percent of men and 13 percent of women, according to the survey.
The studies dispute data by such investigators as the Kinsey Institute of Sex Research and author Shere Hite, who have suggested anywhere from one-third to three-fourths of married couples cheat on their mates.
“There probably are more scientifically worthless ‘facts’ on extramarital relations than any other facet of human behavior,” says Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion Research Center. Smith says adultery is more prevalent among younger people, urban dwellers, the unchurched, and the previously divorced.
LUTHERANS
Draft Affirms Homosexual Unions
The first draft of a 21-page Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) human sexuality statement in the works the past four years proposes “open affirmation of gay and lesbian persons and their mutually loving, just, committed relationship of fidelity.”
The document, drafted by a 17-member task force on human sexuality, was mailed to 19,000 ELCA leaders last month. The church will consider a final draft in 1995. While the document stresses traditional support for marriage and abstinence for single people, it says it is inappropriate to use biblical references to homosexuality alone as the basis for opposing modern same-sex relationships.
The draft says “responsible biblical interpretation” is to “tolerate, perhaps even support mutually loving, committed gay and lesbian relationships.” Prohibiting such relationships is incompatible with the teachings of Jesus and has a harmful effect on homosexuals, the report states.
The 67-member ELCA Conference of Bishops in October issued a statement rejecting the sanctioning of homosexual marriage.
“There is basis neither in Scripture nor tradition for the establishment of an official ceremony by this church for the blessing of a homosexual relationship.”
MILWAUKEE SCHOOLS
Families File Voucher Lawsuit
A conservative public-interest law firm filed suit in September to include religious schools in Milwaukee’s voucher program. The suit, filed on behalf of several low-income Milwaukee families, charges that exclusion of religious schools violates the families’ free-exercise and equal-protection rights.
Parents should decide how to use government benefits, says Mark Bredemeier, general counsel for the Landmark Legal Foundation, the Missouri-based group behind the suit. “Where the government does provide a benefit, it has to be offered in a nondiscriminatory way in the area of religion. It can’t make viewpoint-based restrictions.”
Milwaukee’s three-year-old choice program offers vouchers for 1,000 low-in-come families. Bredemeier is awaiting a response to his suit from the Wisconsin education department, which operates the voucher program.
GIRL SCOUTS
Is God Who You Want Him to Be?
In an effort to attract more non-Christian members, leaders of the Girl Scouts have approved allowing substitute words for God in the Girl Scout pledge. The change retains the promise’s official wording, but allows scouts to substitute for God words appropriate to their own faith, such as Allah, a vague Creator, or nothing.
The promise states: “On my honor, I will try to serve God and my country, to help people at all times, and to live by the Girl Scout law.” The change was approved October 23 at the organization’s national convention in Minneapolis.
PEOPLE AND EVENTS
In Brief
The Supreme Court of Canada last month affirmed a law prohibiting physician-assisted suicide in a case brought by a woman with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The court ruled that “in order to protect life and those who are vulnerable in society effectively, a prohibition without exception on the giving of assistance to commit suicide is the best approach.”
• Michael Little, 45, took over October 1 as president and chief operating officer of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). He replaces Pat Robertson, who founded CBN in 1960. Robertson, 63, will remain chief executive officer and chairman of the board but is relinquishing day-to-day oversight because of a heavy workload. Little has been with CBN for 21 years.
• Arie R. Brouwer, general secretary of the National Council of Churches (NCC) from 1985 to 1989, died of colon cancer October 7 at his Teaneck, New Jersey, home. The 58-year-old Reformed Church in America minister led the NCC during a time of reorganization and downsizing due to financial problems.
• The U.S. Supreme Court last month rejected a request to hear an equal-access case involving Lindbergh High School in Renton, Washington, putting an end to the school’s nine-year quest to prohibit a Bible club from meeting in an empty classroom before the school day. The Court let stand a March ruling from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said federal law requires equal access for all school groups, including religious ones.
• Beaumont, Texas, physician Larry Holly has mailed letters to several Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders, asking them to reconsider a June convention vote (CT, May 17, 1993, p. 81) urging Freemasonry membership be a matter of personal conscience. Holly says the SBC Home Mission Board “published a report which they knew was not true.” HMB president Larry Lewis says the denomination should “stop devoting time and energy to this issue.”
• New Life Ministries founder Neil C. Macaulay, 74, died August 21 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He held crusades in all 50 states and 40 countries and served as Boca Raton Bible Conference concert and program director in Florida from 1957 to 1970.
• Three crosses hanging from a skylight at Ferguson Memorial Chapel at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway have been moved to behind an altar because a student complained the chapel was not accessible to non-Christians. President Winfred Thompson, citing separation of church and state concerns, also ordered curtains installed that can cover the crosses, allowing the chapel to be “accessible to persons of all faiths.”
• Dennis Dease, president of the University of Saint Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, refused to remove a poster of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger from the Catholic school’s library lounge despite a protest from Auxiliary Bishop Robert J. Carlson. Carlson called Sanger a “strong racist” and compared allowing the American Library Association “Great Minds” poster of Sanger to championing Hitler as a model leader.
