Southern Baptists: An Election Probe

Charges of “ballot stuffing” at the last two Southern Baptist Convention annual meetings are likely to be a major topic of discussion for the SBC Executive Committee this month.

SBC leaders are said to be deeply concerned over broad accusations leveled by Dr. Joe W. Burton, convention registration secretary. Burton, also Sunday school publication editor, says “confidential reports” have convinced him that ballot-stuffing took place in Atlantic City last spring and also the previous year in Kansas City.

At least one member of the Executive Committee has indicated he will bring up the matter when the group meets in Nashville September 23 and 24.

Burton made the charges in a letter to editors of Baptist state papers. “My point has no reference to which side of any issue anyone may have supported,” he said, “but has only to do with reported actions aimed at causing one vote to count more than another’s.…”

Dr. Wayne Dehoney, who was elected president of SBC in May on a second-ballot 4,024–3,223 vote, branded Burton’s charges as “impulsive and irresponsible.” He made a counter-charge that Burton conducted elections at SBC meetings of the past two years in “an irresponsible manner.”

While denying that there is “evidence from any source” giving basis to the registration secretary’s charges, the SBC president commented:

“It is conceivable, however, that an isolated incident may have occurred as there were over 13,000 messengers [delegates] attending the convention. Anyone could have entered the building off the boardwalk.”

Protestant Panorama

A Minnesota district convention of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod will ask the parent denomination to declare a new translation of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism unacceptable. The translation was a joint project of the three major U. S. Lutheran bodies.

The Assemblies of God plan to establish a “depository of Pentecostal theology” in the Springfield, Missouri, headquarters. The project will seek to assist researchers in connection with the current interest in glossolalia.

Miscellany

Roman Catholic bishops in California issued a document condemning racial discrimination last month. It made no specific reference, however, to a controversial proposal on which Californians will vote in November. If passed, the proposal would abolish a law against discrimination in housing transactions and permanently bar the legislature from considering “fair housing” legislation.

The new Complete Protestant Bible, a revised version of Luther’s translation, will go to print this fall as the first book to be published jointly in both East and West Germany since the erection of the Communist Wall and the subsequent enclosure of East Germany.

Twelve U. S. Senators introduced last month a proposed constitutional amendment that would add the words “under God” to the Preamble to the Constitution.

Protracted negotiations over the disposition of Russian church properties in Israel were climaxed with an agreement providing for purchase of virtually all the properties by Israel at a cost of $4,500,000. Originally donated by members of the Czarist imperial family to the Russian Orthodox Palestine Society, the properties include pilgrims’ hostels and large buildings in Jerusalem and Nazareth, and valuable real estate in Tel Aviv and Haifa.

New church construction took a surprisingly sharp upturn during the summer, according to the U. S. Department of Commerce. Estimated July construction was $91,000,000, $2,000,000 ahead of the same month of 1963, the first month this year that church construction has been ahead of the 1963 level.

Alice Lanshina, head of the Lumpa religious cult whose rampage in the remote bush country of Northern Rhodesia cost more than 500 lives, surrendered last month and called on her followers to end their “holy war.”

An American archaeological expedition led by Professor Ernest Wright of Harvard University has unearthed the Old Testament city of Shechem, the first Palestinian site mentioned in the book of Genesis. The expedition unearthed layers of the ancient city from Islamic, Christian, Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and Canaanite periods.

Protestant leaders in New South Wales, Australia, are protesting a new syllabus for state-operated primary schools which, in separating general religious teaching from social studies, emphasizes that Christian religious beliefs must be discussed only as part of the study of general religious philosophical beliefs.