Page 5645 – Christianity Today (2024)

“One-third of all children born in the world today will die before they reach five years of age” (letter from a relief agency).

“ ‘All the architectural glories of Christendom are not worth the life of one child.’ So wrote the distinguished Methodist leader Colin Morris in 1968 in his prophetic Include Me Out, a tract provoked by the discovery outside his home in Zambia of a young boy who had died of starvation” (Christian Century).

A company in Tarzana, California, announces a line of “beautiful caskets for animals.” Prices range from $49 to $145, depending on size of pet, casket line, and so forth.

A Christian TV talk-show M.C. appeals for contributions to a $100 million university building project.

The “Christian embassy” in Washington, D.C., purchased two or three years ago for $500,000, has been sold to a small Muslim oil-producing nation for $1.5 million.

A letter from a radio missionary in Marseille, France, asks for help. “Compared to the same month last year, letter response from [Muslim] North Africa was up by 30 per cent in January, 120 per cent in April, 350 per cent in July (a record increase). With this kind of encouragement, we are reluctant to give up.… There is a money crisis such as we haven’t had for years. If we play some of our best songs again [because of the lack of money even to buy new records], listeners are going to start calling us ‘the merry-go-round.’ Forward ‘like a mighty army’? I think we often look and sound like a rag-tag band. Yet God is with us.”

How long will God be with us?

EUTYCHUS VIII

Question for A Question

I read with interest the two articles under the title, “Does His Christianity Count?”, asking myself the question, count for what? Why are we linking an individual’s faith with the quality of the job being performed? Do we ask that kind of question of college presidents, business executives, janitors, or even magazine editors? While none of us is above criticism for the way we perform or do not perform at our jobs, I question the value of linking that performance to the individual’s faith.… John Anderson is a politician and a good one, one whom I respect from our state. I believe CHRISTIANITY TODAY did him no favor by asking him to comment on Jimmy Carter’s leadership abilities by linking them to his character or his faith. The result is that John Anderson reflects a tone of scorn regarding the moral qualities of a fellow Christian. I did not appreciate that tone. Politics and religion make strange bedfellows. When one uses a religious platform for political criticism or a political platform for religious criticism, more is said of the critic than the person being criticized.

DAVID J. FRENCHAK

Chicago, Ill.

I think it hardly an accident that your November 3 issue with Jimmy Carter’s picture on the front and long article about his “fine” Christianity should reach me shortly before the election. Mind you, this is not written because of any partisan politics; but solely because such a definitely political article has no place in a religious magazine. However, the fact that it was published by you does definitely illustrate how very lightly spiritual matters are considered today.

J. DELMAR CRAWFORD

Pittsburgh, Pa.

President Carter’s Christianity, like his policies, is difficult to understand. He says he opposes abortion, yet he has refused to lift a finger to support the prolife movement. He and his wife make an ostentatious show of not serving hard liquor at White House functions, yet he has tolerated his staff using hard drugs. While publicly stressing his “born again” style of Christianity, Carter has filled his administration with McGovern-type liberals who at best are indifferent and at worst are openly contemptuous of the basic morality of Middle America. What does it matter if the president teaches Sunday school if under his administration the vast powers of the federal government are used to push programs that strike at the basic tenets of Christianity? Is the man a fool or a hypocrite?

THOMAS J. MULLEN, JR.

Whitehouse Station, N.J.

The two articles about President Carter’s moral leadership in the November 3 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY require a response concerning Congressman John B. Anderson’s evaluation. The article could have been prepared for a Republican Party rally. Congressman Anderson is over halfway through his article of destructive criticism before he arrives at President Carter’s induction into office, when his leadership began.

MAUDE F. DUNAGAN

Bellingham, Wash.

Strategy As a Tool

It is unfortunate that Dr. White equated all Christian communicators who use audience analysis with the segment who do so in order to sell Christian “stars” (Books, “How Can I Get Them to Listen?”, Nov. 3). I am sure that he was not thinking of those of us who are missionary broadcasters. I am sure that he realizes that we are not out to sell anything nor are we “in the business” of making money. Careful attention to the programs from HCJB (Quito, Ecuador) will immediately assure the listener that doctrine, truth, and theology are neither thin nor less persuasive because of our use of audience analysis. We believe with all of our hearts that the entrance of God’s Word gives light, but as radio broadcasters we also realize that there will be no entrance if there is no audience. Therefore, it is our desire to use all proper means available to insure the fact that we do have a listening audience. Knowledge of who is listening, why they listen, when they listen, in what language they listen, and what is their understanding or lack of understanding concerning scriptural truth, enables us to produce programs that will capture our listeners’ attention and provide just one of many means for the Holy Spirit to minister to the needs of those who are tuned to HCJB. In this way, we use marketing strategy only as a tool, which, when properly implemented, can bring men and women to a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

KAY LANDERS

HCJB

Quito, Ecuador

Christian College Service

Your efforts in the continuing discussion about the value of Christian liberal arts education are appreciated. Yet in all [that’s written] about the Christian college, from Arthur Holmes’s The Idea of a Christian College to your November 3 articles by Glenn Arnold and J. Edward Hakes, something is lacking. We need to confront directly the question of allegiance. To be in allegiance to a human institution, in this case the Christian college, and to Christ and his church generates a personal dilemma.… To create opportunities for student (and faculty) growth is appropriately the college’s (any college’s) mission. As Hakes indicates, there are several needs that the Christian college can meet. But it cannot escape the tensions inherent in its being. Our culture uniquely has promoted the idea. There may well come a time, as once was the case, in which the idea of a Christian college is culturally irrelevant. I trust that we will be sensitive enough to such possible contingencies as to understand that our allegiance to such institutions can be at best only provisional. To continue in Christ’s service under these implications is not easy, and we should not pretend that it is otherwise. I remain, by God’s rich gift of grace, in his service, even at a Christian college! May God continue to bless your ministry in this excellent publishing endeavor.

NELSON HART

Associate Professor of Sociology and Religion

Spring Arbor College

Spring Arbor, Mich.

Mixed Emotions

I have never written a letter to the editor before but I must congratulate you on your October 6 issue dealing with the Mideast conflict. Not only were the lead articles timely and provocative, but the entire issue was so consistently well written that I consider it the single best issue of any periodical that I have received. However, I was greatly disappointed by the November 3 issue. I was excited to see that the lead articles would deal with President Carter’s leadership as a Christian. But when I noted the authors I was stunned to see that the negative assessment was written by Representative John Anderson; not only a Republican, but also a presidential hopeful (as you yourselves reported in the Oct. 6 issue). Do you consider that fair? Is your periodical a political tool to increase a congressman’s exposure? I am not opposed to a negative assessment, but I must protest your selection of authors.

GARY SNELLER

Des Moines, Iowa

CORRECTION

We regret that we omitted giving a credit for the December 1 cover to Ideals Publishing. The artwork appears in The Christmas Miracle© 1978.

Christmas reminds us anew that God has not forgotten us. He loves us—loves us so much that he sought out our lonely planet wandering on its stray path through the universe and visited us. He entered our human race, and for our salvation lived and died and rose again. He still loves us. By his spirit he now woos us to repent of our sin and to place our trust in the strong hands of the Saviour. And in Christ we have everything that brings ultimate meaning to human existence.

It is well that Christmas marks the end of the old year for the passing of it is also a time of annual reckoning. The bottom line, honestly drawn, cuts sharply across our human pride. Excuses fall away. We stand alone and naked before our Maker.

Yet Christmas reminds us once again that divine grace triumphs over human sin and sorrow. With Isaac Watts we sing: “Joy to the World! The Lord is Come; Let earth receive her king. Let every heart prepare Him room, And heaven and nature sing.”

Had a good holiday?” asked my neighbors when I returned last weekend after a two-month working stint abroad. The same bright question had greeted me not long ago after a longer sojourn in Asia. Nothing will convince them that traveling 33,000 miles over fourteen countries, sleeping in planes and in twenty-five different beds, losing ten pounds in weight, being jostled at countless airports and hotels, is anything but a joyful junket.

They tell me and each other how lucky I am to have had all that Oriental sun, and please would I not forget the church jumble sale tomorrow. Seldom do they ask questions about the places I visit or the purpose of my work: perhaps they have experienced too many tedious sessions of holiday slides. I leave them to the only world most of them have known. I feel dismayed and a little superior at their insularity, yet envy them their innocence. I know that when Christian Aid or the Seventh-day Adventists collect for relief work and medical missions, the generous hearts of my neighbors will shame me.

Should I try to tell them of the leprosy clinic and resettlement villages that so impressed me in Korea? Of my embarrassment in Indonesia when the poor workers building their own church, with whom I had prayed in their little hut, insisted on driving me back in their ancient van to my expensive hotel? Of those eager, likeable theological students in Burma who hailed my Saturday afternoon arrival as “providential” because “the elders” who usually monopolized Western visitors were for once out of town? Of another country that now has no Christian church building, but in which the Christian presence is making effective impact through medical work? Of another sensitive area in which the Body of Christ has suffered because of lightning visits by brethren with more zeal than wisdom, who have distributed Christian literature without consulting local believers who knew that approach to be imprudent?

The wandering journalist soon finds himself confronted by a cruel dilemma. Some Asian countries lend themselves to spectacular stories, but they cannot be told simply because Christians have to go on living there. Let me illustrate this with a cautionary tale.

A British girl felt called to serve in one such Asian land. She gave her testimony at the valedictory meeting in her own rural church. The story was picked up by a local newspaper. This, in turn, caught the attention of the efficient press clipping agency used by the country in question. Word reached the Asian capital via the London embassy. That girl’s visa was canceled, and the whole thing was made to reflect on Christians in that country. It reminded me of my old church history professor who, on the first day of lectures, said, “Gentlemen, learn reticence.” Communist countries particularly have an ongoing testimony that could be jeopardized by visiting believers who have not “done their homework.”

During that Asian tour I received much kindness. Many people went to enormous trouble on my behalf, especially when I spurned the “establishment tour” and turned up unexpectedly in some remoter area. A little enterprise on our part means so much to witnesses in lonely places. And the usual prudent precautions about food and water are somehow divinely waived when refreshment is brought in love. (A clumsy sentence but wanderers will understand.)

I mentioned reticence, but let me be un-reticent about some bewildering experiences in three countries.

1. In one I called on the general secretary of the national council of churches. Having made an appointment the previous day, I arrived hot, dusty, and thirsty after trying to find his office in the noonday sun. He sent someone out to ask what I wanted, but eventually I was admitted to a frigid welcome, no glass of cold water (which the national hospitality prescribed), and a two-cigarette-long interview of monological tendencies. Then I found what was bugging him: He’d been saving up Western journalistic misdemeanors for the next of that breed to drop by—and there I was answerable for all the gaffes of my fellows. My restraint was all of grace, and we parted with some degree of cordiality. I did miss that glass of water, though.

2. In a second country I called a missionary society and asked if I could see one of its workers two days later. The spokesman was abrupt. Mr. X was out of town. I persisted. Was there someone else who saw visitors? I mentioned Mr. Y, whom I knew. Was he there? He was, but the spokesman could not presume to make an appointment for a busy man. Finally I got a date with a third officer. The busyness I appreciated, and the problem posed by unexpected callers. What depressed me was the unfriendly attitude I had encountered. I wanted to say, “Dear missionary friend, if ever you are 9,000 miles from home and hear my voice at the end of a telephone line, 1 promise I won’t make you feel a nuisance, even though you are obviously no angel unawares.” I didn’t. More grace. Let me add that I was subsequently given a warm welcome at the office of the missionary society, and an apology that there had been some misunderstanding about my identity. For some vague reason that explanation made me feel a little uncomfortable.

3. In India I had a very different reception from that given in either of the two Christian sources cited above. This was in New Delhi, at the hands of a Hindu who had never heard of Hebrews 13:2. We got into casual conversation. He turned out to be an air force captain, due to be married shortly. I inquired about his girl. He told me her name, and added ruefully, “But I never get to see her. Sometimes I telephone and we talk for a little, but if her mother answers I just say hello-how-are you and hang up.” Hindu arranged marriages not infrequently throw up situations like that.

My Hindu friend took me sightseeing. Perched on the back of his scooter I had my first introduction to the Indian capital—and my first outing in ten weeks. He spoke of his country’s history, tactfully omitting any direct reference to British imperialism, and of his hopes for its future. He took me for a meal, and next day insisted on making the trip to the airport to see me off. He asked what a Protestant was, and why the Reformation. He was interested in the kind of things I wrote about. “Will you do me a great favor?” he said as finally we shook hands, “will you send me some of your articles?”

Waving to that stocky uniformed figure as I walked out to the plane, two questions haunted me. What had I ever written that would speak to the condition of a sophisticated young Hindu? And if he were converted, would he become as insufferable as some Christians I know?

Of course it’s unfair to compare the good in one with the bad in another. Of course I ought to ponder how much worse one would be if he were not a Christian, how much better a Hindu would be if he were. But there lingers an uneasy (and dubiously sound) feeling that perhaps discussion with those of other faiths should not be as onesided as I had thought.

J. D. Douglas is an author and journalist living in St. Andrews, Scotland.

Two leading evangelicals are currently helping draft a new constitution for the fifteen million people of Peru. They form part of a Constitutional Assembly of 100 elected delegates, chosen from 1,200 candidates.

The evangelicals are Pedro Arana and Arnaldo Alvarado. Arana, better known outside Peru, is the secretary of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (the umbrella organization for groups such as Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship) for western South America. He is also an elder in the Presbyterian Church of Pueblo Libre (Lima), having studied theology in Edinburgh, Scotland. Alvarado is a former race car driver and member of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church of Lima.

Alvarado has long been a participant in the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance political party (APRA), which won the majority of seats in the Assembly. Arana also ran under APRA sponsorship, although he has not yet joined the party in spite of receiving the fourth highest total of votes for any APRA candidate. Arana believes it was the evangelical balloting that elected him, even though evangelicals total only about 2 per cent of the population of Peru.

A third evangelical candidate, however, Luciano Wise, was eliminated.

The task before the Assembly, which was convened last July, is to write a new constitution that will incorporate the socialist changes brought to the country during eleven years of military rule. If the Assembly fails to do this, several generals have warned that its work will be annulled. Upon completion of an acceptable document, elections are to be called immediately for a civilian government. The Assembly has until July 28, 1979, to finish its assignment.

Arana is participating in a study group on state and church, whose findings will help delineate this aspect of the constitution. A former evangelical senator, José Ferreira (IEP), and lawyer Carlos García (Baptist) meet frequently with Arana to counsel him.

This is the highest that evangelicals have risen in Peruvian affairs since General San Martín invited British Bible Society missionary James Thompson to Lima to create an educational system based on the Scriptures (1821). Shortly after, repressive measures by the Roman Catholic Church seriously curtailed evangelical work.

In 1967, laws that prohibited the public proclamation of evangelical beliefs were repealed. When General Juan Velasco seized power in 1968, free exercise of religious faith became legal. Velasco’s aim was to establish a “pluralistic social democracy dedicated to Christian and human values.” Before the end of his eight-year tenure, however, ominous rumblings sounded in his speeches about politically organizing “basic structure groups”—churches, clubs, charities. “Christian” was heard less frequently, and “socialist” grew more common. Many Roman Catholic bishops became restive.

General Morales Bermúdez, who took the presidency from Velasco, said publicly he would continue in the socialist pattern, but sought warmer relations with the Catholic hierarchy. Some Protestant leaders feared a crack-down on their activities. But several local observers think the current difficulty in acquiring visas for Protestant missionaries has nothing to do with Roman Catholic opposition, but rather is a vestige of the vociferous anti-Americanism of the Velasco regime.

The ideas and values of Protestants are well known throughout Peru. Their churches and pastors are theological conservatives. Yet despite the freedom to preach and practice faith in God publicly and privately, the evangelical movement has not progressed as well as in some South American nations. This is largely because of painful historic divisions. The National Evangelical Council is seeking to remedy denominational mistrust but sometimes gets caught in crossfire between national churches and missionary organizations.

The Peruvian Roman Catholic Church is not united either, and has at least four visible groups. Scores of North American priests, many of them Maryknollers, are militant progressives who want greater social involvement for the church. A theology of liberation movement has been strong among younger clerics, but may be losing its appeal. Official power still rests with the conservatives, led by Cardinal Juan Landázuri.

Charismatics are the growing segment of the Catholic Church in Peru. Being very few in number ten years ago, they now meet in scores of large meetings in many cities. Wycliffe missionary Al Shannon conducts a weekly Bible class for 600 Roman Catholic charismatics in Lima. Last January at a retreat, sixty priests received a spiritual blessing that, in the words of one, “is the same as what you evangelicals call the new birth.” Sources high in the Catholic hierarchy believe the charismatic movement offers more hope than the theology of liberation, “which has caused us nothing but trouble.”

Evangelicals Arana and Alvarado recognize that they are few among 100 delegates. But they expressed their motivation in a pre-election statement: “It is through a personal encounter with Jesus Christ that the new man is born—the man that Peru so desperately needs in order to achieve the positive transformation our people desire. This is an opportunity to fulfill our function of salt and light.”

Religion In Transit

Their meetings lacked the blessings of either the Vatican or the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. But the 2,000 delegates attending the Second Conference on the Ordination of Roman Catholic Women last month in Baltimore weren’t bothered and perhaps yelled a little louder. They want women priests and full rights for women within the church. Until that happens, the Catholic lay women and nuns (and about 150 sympathetic priests and laymen) at the conference will consider such as-yet-to-be-approved recommendations as a national boycott of church collections and a nationwide boycott next April 29 of all masses in which a male priest presides.

The Annual Council of the Seventh-day Adventist Church has voted down a request for formation of a separate administrative structure for black members. Blacks make up one-fifth of the half-million-member body, and most belong to predominately black churches.

Personalia

Already serving a one-year term in a Soviet labor camp for “parasitism,” dissident Baptist Peter Vins was threatened with an additional seven years’ imprisonment for allegedly distributing anti-Soviet propaganda in the camp. Vins, 22, the son of imprisoned Baptist pastor Georgi Vins, has declared a hunger strike.

Robert P. Dugan has become director of the National Association of Evangelicals’ office of public affairs in Washington. An immediate past president of the Conservative Baptist Association of America, Dugan will team with Floyd Robertson, now the associate director.

G. Douglas Young, 70, founder of the 31-year-old American Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem, has retired as president, but will continue to teach Judeo-Christian studies there. His successor is George Giacumakis, 41, history professor at California State University at Fullerton.

DEATHS

ROBIN E. NIXON, 47, principal of St. John’s College in Nottingham, England, an Anglican evangelical who specialized in New Testament studies and edited The Churchman: in Nottingham, of a heart attack.

M. SEARLE BATES, 81, internationally-known China expert and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) missionary there for 30 years, who was writing a history of twentieth century Christianity in China; on October 28, of a heart attack.

World Scene

Two Southern Baptist Home Mission Board officials in October visited Cuba for the first time in seventeen years. They found that the West Cuba Baptist Convention had increased from 100 to 105 churches, with five in formation.

The Church of England voted to bar women from the priesthood at its General Synod in London last month, despite the pleas of Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan and a majority in the House of Bishops and the House of Laity. Women’s ordination was opposed by a majority in the House of Clergy, however (approval by all three was needed), who argued that the step would harm Christian unity, particularly with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Synod rules bar broaching of the issue again for five years.

Soviet authorities have granted permission for the importation of 25,000 Russian Bibles—the largest shipment of Bibles ever made to the Soviet Union. The import permit, which also allows shipment of two thousand Russian concordances, was granted to the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptist. The supplier is the United Bible Societies. Russian Baptists have obtained about 10,000 Bibles, printed during the last few years by the Orthodox Press in Moscow, but the demand for Scriptures considerably exceeded the supply.

The nine largest denominations in Ethiopia—including Orthodox and Catholic, as well as Protestant—have founded a Council for Cooperation of Churches in Ethiopia. Its main purpose: joint efforts at improving “the welfare of needy people” in Ethiopia. Ethiopia faces what may be its worst drought and famine. More than four million persons are near starvation in north-central Tigre Province and the Wollo region of central Ethiopia.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has closed its Middle East college in Beirut, Lebanon. The school had been occupied of late by Christian militia forces involved in that nation’s civil war. The denomination’s Afro-Mideast Division plans to reestablish the school near Nairobi in Nandy Hills, Kenya.

Muslim Arabs living in Israel were allowed to participate in the Hajj—the pilgrimage to Mecca—last month for the first time since Israel was created thirty years ago.

Church leaders in Burma have at last been given government permission to participate in international church gatherings. Ending a fifteen-year ban on travel, Burma Council of Churches general secretary U Aung Khin was granted permission to attend a World Council of Churches regional meeting in Singapore in October.

“Bolivia is in the throes of an awakening,” said evangelist Luis Palau at the close of a two-week crusade in Bolivia last October. An estimated 180,000 persons attended the meetings, which were held in three principle Bolivian cities: La Paz, Santa Cruz, and Cochabamba. And a remarkable 19,000 Bolivians, representing every strata of society, publicly professed Christ, 93 per cent of whom were Roman Catholics making first-time commitments. “The ratio of response to attendance” in Bolivia, Palau pointed out, “was over 10 per cent, the greatest in twelve years of crusade ministry.”

National attention focused on a presidential prayer breakfast held during the Palau crusade. Bolivian general and new president Juan Pereda Asbún was the guest of honor. Eight cabinet members and twenty-five high-ranking military personnel attended the breakfast held at a military club in La Paz—directly across the square from the presidential palace.

As Palau spoke from Deuteronomy 28:1–14, a minister of state was heard to make an exclamation at verse 12. It reads in part, “You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.” Bolivia is in the process of renegotiating a loan with the International Monetary Fund.

“Positive benefits result for a country that obeys the voice of God” Palau asserted. President Pereda responded to that challenge by emphasizing the importance of “taking time out to set personal and national spiritual priorities.” He further stated, “This crusade is of national interest and we commend it to all our people.” Later that day Palau met privately with the president.

Each night in Cerrado Stadium, Palau was speaking to audiences of 13,000 people in this capital city 12,000 feet above sea level—so high that “planes don’t land, they just move up and park.”

On three nights in La Paz, police were forced to close the gates against overflow crowds. Two services were held on Saturday and Sunday, with lines of those waiting to get in stretching for three or four blocks. David Linas, La Paz dentist and crusade committee chairman remarked, “It’s great to see people lining up to hear the Gospel instead of to see ‘Saturday Night Fever,’ the current movie rage in La Paz.”

The La Paz daily El Diario carried in its Sunday edition a color youth supplement featuring Palau. Thousands of Bolivians hear Palau’s daily radio broadcasts and watch his television specials: His name is a household word.

A national television station carried the popular live “Luis Palau Responds” program, in which he answers telephone calls from viewers. (Comments Palau, “It’s like planting a microphone in a priest’s confessional. People open up in an unbelievable way.”) Six secular La Paz stations carried the crusade messages nightly. The Canadian Baptist-sponsored station Cruz del Sur broadcast them nationwide.

In such high Andes mining towns as Oruro, Huanuni, and Siglo XX, local churches placed TV and radio sets in their chapels. The messages relayed from La Paz drew crowds to hear Palau.

The combination of the stadium meetings and the broadcast media, observers believe, exposed most Bolivians to the Gospel. “The Gospel was preached to a minimum of 90 per cent of the people living in the three cities, which have a combined population of 1.5 million,” stated veteran Brethren missionary Wes Steffan.

Bible societies reported the distribution of more than one million Scripture portions in connection with the campaign. Every Home Crusade provided 500,000 Palau tracts, which were hand-delivered to homes before the crusades. Twenty thousand Emmaus Bible correspondence courses were given to converts, along with 20,000 Living New Testaments donated by World Home Bible League. Teas for women held in each city attracted a total of 1,200 mostly upper-class women, more than a third of whom indicated their desire to know the Saviour.

Family counseling centers, now a trademark of the Palau crusades, drew “more people for in-depth biblical counseling than any previous crusade,” stated counseling director Jim Williams.

The Aymara radio station carried Palau’s message with voice-over translation. The indigenous Aymaras make up 7 per cent of the Bolivian population and live on the Altiplano (the high plateau around Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world).

For the past eight years, there have been many reports of extraordinary church growth among the Aymaras. According to Assemblies of God missionary Bruno Frigoli, a new local church is planted every week among the Aymaras. Frigoli says, “The world does not realize that a revival has struck the Aymara people. Catholic churches have closed their doors in many villages, whereas thriving congregations among the Evangelical Friends, Baptists, Nazarenes, and Assemblies of God draw enormous numbers.”

Many observers think that the cooperation between Spanish and Aymara churches constituted a revival in itself. “Spanish and Aymara church leaders in La Paz have repeatedly claimed that unity between them was impossible because of ethno-cultural and linguistic differences,” stated Ruben Proietti, crusade coordinator. “Yet it was thrilling to observe leaders and laymen alike embracing and shedding tears as they watched cholas (Aymara women) confessing Christ side by side with fashionably dressed city women.”

Follow-up committees worked into the early morning after each meeting to register decisions and distribute cards to churches for prompt initiation of a series of six follow-up visits.

The biggest concern of evangelical church leaders in Bolivia now is to retain a large percentage of these converts.

“Bolivia has been in the midst of a revival,” commented Proietti, “and now not only the Aymara section but the entire country has become involved.”

Choir members from Calvary Baptist Church of Jamaica, New York, swayed as they sang black gospel hymns prior to the installation of M. William Howard, Jr., as new president of the National Council of Churches (NCC).

And perhaps that was appropriate. As the youngest person and the second black president of the NCC, Howard may do some moving and shaking of his own within traditionalist elements of the largest ecumenical body in the nation. It’s thirty-two-member Protestant and Eastern Orthodox denominations claim some 41 million people on their rolls.

Howard, 32, grew up in Americus, Georgia, a place he calls “one of the toughest anti-civil rights towns in the nation.” He attended a segregated high school, took part in black demonstrations during the turbulent 1960s, and became a disciple of the late Martin Luther King, Jr.,—killed during Howard’s senior year at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

Howard came through these experiences without forming a hatred for whites. Instead, he says that he developed an “openness to people.” Tall and thin, polished in speech and manner, Howard graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and became the pastor of First Baptist Church of Princeton, New Jersey. He was named director of a leadership training program for black pastors and laymen within the Reformed Church in America.

But Howard hasn’t forgotten his upbringing. “If I were to say that picking cotton in the hot sun in southwest Georgia, and hearing grandmothers being referred to as ‘girl’ by teen-age, white men has not informed my ministry, I would be telling you a lie.”

Indeed, the American Baptist clergyman has become a specialist in racial justice while serving in several leadership capacities within the NCC and the World Council of Churches (WCC). Before his election as NCC president, Howard was moderator of the controversial Program to Combat Racism—the WCC agency that gave $85,000 to the Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), which is fighting the bi-racial, interim government in Rhodesia. Howard asserts the monies were for humanitarian purposes only and that he supports the grant “fully.” (He was not with the WCC when the grant was issued.)

As with several other black leaders, Howard has said there are “political prisoners” in the United States—men who, he says, often commit criminal acts against property: “They are driven by some of the limitations imposed upon them by structural injustice.” Howard is a close friend and supporter of Ben Chavis, the imprisoned United Church of Christ official who was convicted along with the so-called Wilmington Ten in a firebombing incident during racial disturbances in 1971 in that North Carolina city.

As leader of the council for the next three years, Howard promises to strengthen existing NCC racial and social justice programs. At the same time, he will pursue the “biblical mandate for unity.” Howard was pleased when the NCC governing board members held a Bible study at their meetings last spring—a first for the NCC.

He is disturbed by criticism of the NCC as a “monolith.” “It is encouraging,” Howard says, “to see liberals and conservatives debate and struggle with the issues on the assembly floor, then affirm each other on a personal level off the floor.” He says many church people who come to NCC meetings with pre-conceived notions about its secularism or liberalism are “literally shocked when they find out how members of this body really struggle to be faithful to their understanding of the Gospel.”

But many evangelicals may feel uncomfortable right now with Howard, not knowing what exactly to expect. Howard notes his commitment to evangelism but says he is not part of the evangelical movement. He has a “tremendous respect” for liberation theologians.

“In many ways the church can’t speak with its mouth if it’s not speaking with ministry to people where they hurt,” Howard said in an interview. “I come from a tradition where words and action are synonymous.”

There was a revolving door last month when governing board members of the National Council of Churches (NCC) met in New York. The board elected new leaders for the 1979–1981 triennium, including president M. William Howard. (See box.) But at the same time, it watched the hasty exit of council official Lucius Walker—fired as head of the Division of Church and Society.

The NCC executive committee voted to dismiss Walker on grounds of “fiscal mismanagement”; Walker’s division was $228,000 in the hole at the time of the firing and council financial reserves had to be drawn upon heavily to cover the deficit.

Committee action against Walker took place in a closed-door, three-hour session prior to the governing board meetings, but it touched off a minor controversy and promoted tighter NCC control of agencies’ finances.

Walker had been warned nine months earlier to straighten his financial house; ten division staff members were abruptly dismissed two months ago in a budgetary cutback. At that time Walker, 48, blamed his problems on “belt tightening” by the denominations that fund his programs.

Walker’s explanation had expanded by convention time; he stayed around for the three-day conference and held court with reporters. A black American Baptist pastor with experience in the civil rights movement, Walker said the council had underfunded his division and was guilty of a marked “shift to the right.” Sympathizers said the council was abandoning its concern for racial and justice programs when it dismissed Walker.

Outgoing NCC president William P. Thompson flatly denied those charges in a press conference. “His [Walker’s] problem was in raising adequate funds,” Thompson said. The stated clerk (executive director) of the United Presbyterian Church said Walker “implemented certain programs for which funding was not assured.”

In the past, leaders of NCC agencies have functioned almost autonomously of NCC control. They have raised funding for their own divisional programs from church denominations and federal grants. But in a move to prevent future embarrassments, the NCC executive committee voted to take greater control over member-agency funding.

At the suggestion of general secretary Claire Randall, the committee voted to appoint a fiscal controller: Stephen Feke, now the assistant general secretary of finance. Scheduled to begin his duties January 1, Feke will make sure that division leaders have pledges to cover the costs of their budgeted programs. Any NCC agency with a history of budget problems will have to get Feke’s approval for any expenditure over $500.

The NCC will operate on a $25 million budget next year, one-third of which is supplied by member denominations (the rest comes from regional and local ecumenical groups, from foundations, and from corporate and individual donors).

In debate on the floor at the conference, energy (rather than financial) reserves attracted the most interest. The 165 governing board members who showed up (out of 252 total) delayed action on a proposed energy policy statement. The statement, which condemned nuclear energy production as risky, was too controversial for some board members.

Others were confused by the statement because of its length. By definition, policy statements are to be “concise.” Holding the forty-three-page document labeled “The Ethical Implications of Energy Production and Use” during a working group session, one board member asked energy committee chairman Joel Thompson: “What exactly does this say so I can know how to vote on it?”

Lutheran Church in America president James Crumley suggested, and the board approved, reducing of the statement to a “study document” to be sent back to the denominations for further study. The document will be shortened by energy committee members, and acted upon in San Antonio, Texas, at the spring semiannual meeting.

One member of the energy committee (one of the projects costing the financially troubled Division of Church and Society large sums of money) said the delay was “another example of the church’s dodging the issues.” The nuclear industry had been concerned by the statement; reporters of at least four industry publications covered the conference. Some NCC officials said they had been lobbied by industry representatives who asked them to oppose the statement.

Debate on other issues was less heated. One Lutheran Church in America board member complained, “There doesn’t seem to be the spirit here like there was in the sixties.” As has been the custom in past triennium meetings, the board members approved without opposition the entire slate of officers given them by the nominating committee.

Among those elected was Claire Randall, reelected to another term as general secretary. Elected as third vice-president was Bishop Maximos of Diokleia, chief ecumenical officer of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America. Nominating committee members wanted to get more Orthodox members into the NCC hierarchy. (Voted into membership was the small American branch of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church, bringing the total membership to thirty-two denominations.)

Human rights was the category under which most other governing board actions fell. Martin Ennals, general secretary of Amnesty International, addressed a banquet gathering as did Ben Chavis, one of the imprisoned so-called Wilmington Ten, speaking in absentia through a media presentation.

Resolutions were passed in support of Haitian refugees who are being deported from the United States and in condemnation of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua. The board condemned human rights violations in Kampuchea (Cambodia), and called for a boycott of all Nestle products, saying the company promotes its baby formula in Third World countries as a substitute, rather than a supplement, to breast feeding, causing infant malnutrition.

Other NCC board action:

• Passed an open meetings amendment that gives the public access to most NCC meetings. NCC officials must give advance notice of all meetings. NCC information officer Warren Day praised the bill “for its teeth” and lobbied for its passage when opposition began forming against it prior to the conference.

• Asked member denominations to make available upon the request of donors copies of their financial audits.

• Asked that the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., be declared a national holiday.

• Adopted a policy statement that backs the right of religious groups to buy broadcast time from stations and networks. The NCC formerly endorsed a single position that religious groups should receive free time as a public service.

• Approved a policy statement affirming the sovereignty and human rights of American Indians, noting the American churches’ “sinful complicity” in the destruction of Indian economies and Indian natural and human resources.

• Endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment and approved the NCC’s policy of not holding board meetings in states that have not approved the amendment.

Can a denomination or its fiscal agency be held liable for damages and debts sustained by, say, a local church or a college related to the denomination but not controlled by it?

The answer to that question may emerge from a monumental legal struggle in California that involves the United Methodist Church (UMC). And a preliminary sounding of the U.S. Supreme Court has worried leaders of many denominations.

Problems for the UMC began last year with the bankruptcy of Pacific Homes—a network of fourteen retirement and health care facilities in California, Arizona, and Hawaii, headquartered in California. Before a court-appointed trustee took over management in November, 1977, Pacific Homes was related to the UMC’s Pacific and Southwest Conference, a link that had existed for sixty-five years.

Several lawsuits totaling more than $400 million were filed by the trustee and by residents and bondholders of Pacific Homes. The suits named the regional conference, the UMC itself, and the UMC’s central funding agency—the General Council on Finance and Administration (GCFA), based in Evanston, Illinois—and alleged a breach of contract, fraud, negligence, mismanagement, and the like.

Judge Ross G. Tharp of San Diego Superior Court handed down a ruling last March that exempted the UMC from a $266 million class action lawsuit filed by about 160 of the 1,800 residents of Pacific Homes. Curiously, though, he ruled that the GCFA should stand trial. If the UMC could be sued in the case, said Tharp, the action could “effectively destroy Methodism in this country.”

The reason? Judge Tharp apparently foresaw the possibility of individual church members being held liable for any judgment against the denomination. By retaining the GCFA as defendant, Tharp in effect made it possible for judgment to be brought against the UMC but without jeopardizing its members. (A state appeals court would later remove the judge from further litigation in the case, citing his alleged bias against the GCFA as revealed in a letter by Tharp to attorneys. However, Tharp’s decision naming the GCFA as a defendant was not affected by his removal.)

The GCFA then appealed its case to the United States Supreme Court. In its brief, the GCFA argued that under Methodism’s “connectional” system of church government, neither the denomination nor any of its agencies can be held liable for organizations not under its control. A contrary ruling, it implied, would alter the church’s system of government and interrelationships, thereby raising “serious constitutional questions of religious freedom” reaching far beyond the UMC.

No GCFA employees, offices, or other property are located in California, and the GCFA has never had any involvement with Pacific Homes, the brief insisted. The GCFA brief warned of the “chilling effect upon the free conduct of religious activities” that would result from opening the door to litigations against “international religious systems and their major boards and agencies” when “the alleged acts or omissions had their inception in a peculiarly local setting, like a parish church, a home, a college, hospital, or other institution bearing a denominational name.”

The San Diego court, in its brief, had declared that the GCFA does business in Caifornia as the central treasury and fiscal agency of the church. It had declared the policy of the UMC “irrelevant.”

In a one-line response in mid-October, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal—in effect, leaving intact the lower court decision but without necessarily indicating agreement with it.

If convicted, the GCFA could enter a new appeal that could reach Washington and force the high court to deal definitively with the issues involved. Still, a number of religious leaders are alarmed about the implications of permitting the GCFA to be brought to trial in the first place.

Meanwhile, the amount of the suit has been amended upward by $100 million. The residents who brought the suit have appealed the decision that omits the UMC as a defendant.

Of more immediate concern is the financial crisis confronting the 477-congregation UMC Pacific and Southwest Conference: It spent $1.2 million last year trying to keep Pacific Homes afloat. The conference is the guarantor for more than $12 million borrowed by Pacific Homes, and its legal defense costs are running close to $1 million. The end is nowhere in sight.

An academic power struggle began last month at Melodyland School of Theology in Anaheim, California. In a written declaration to Chancellor Ralph Wilkerson, the school faculty asked for a major reorganization of the school and that it be given a separate identity from the church pastored by Wilkerson.

According to sources at the school (who asked that their names be withheld), the faculty and school president J. Rodman Williams have been laboring over reorganizational issues and proposals for some time.

On Monday, October 31, a four-point program was laid before Wilkerson that had been signed by nineteen professors and staff members. The strongly-worded document requests that the office of chancellor be eliminated and that the authority of chief executive be transferred to the president.

While expressing gratitude to Wilkerson for his leadership in starting the school, the proposal in the first place effectively eliminates his control over it. Secondly, the reorganizational plan requires that finances of the school be separated from those of Wilkerson’s church, Melodyland Christian Center.

Thirdly, the faculty proposal calls for a new board that would retain only president Williams—an apparent attempt by the faculty to bring worldwide representation to the board of directors. The proposal also would require substantial fund-raising and publicizing activities on the part of prospective members. The four-point program concludes with the request that the name of the school be changed.

The faculty also signed a statement showing an intent to form a corporation, tentatively called the Charismatic Theological Center. Spokesmen point out, however, that “a separate identity does not necessarily mean separation.”

After receiving the proposal, Wilkerson and the board of directors suspended classes for one week and gave the faculty members two days to decide whether they wanted to resign and start a new school or return to Melodyland.

On Tuesday of the same week, approximately 400 students and faculty attended a meeting during which president Williams explained the four-point reorganization program. His comments spawned a number of impromptu speeches—both pro and con.

By Friday afternoon, however, a spirit of prayer and reconciliation replaced much of the strife of the four previous days. Students held prayer meetings, and the faculty and administration sought guidance and wisdom.

In addition, Wilkerson sent a telegram to each faculty member, extending the contract of each to the end of the current school year. The faculty members then agreed to return to class and expressed willingness to negotiate the four-point program with Wilkerson. As a result, the school reopened Monday, November 6—exactly one week after the controversy began.

Despite the apparent reconciliation, a spokesman for the faculty said, “We have the full intention of completing the rest of the academic year based on evidence of ongoing implementation of these points (the four-point proposal) initiated by good-faith negotiations and a continuing open dialogue.”

Wilkerson apparently has begun an effort toward dialogue. He said that he spent twenty-five hours in student and faculty discussions during the week of controversy.

It is still unclear how much Wilkerson intends to negotiate on the four points, however. Corporate by-laws limit his ability to act in some instances, he said. And on other points he is unwilling to negotiate at all. Wilkerson stressed that the school corporation and school finances already were separate from the church. “Each has its own CPAs and books,” he said.

If faculty members remain discontent after the current school year, they can resign, Wilkerson said. He hinted that not every teacher’s contract will be renewed for the 1979 school term.

Wilkerson is fond of recounting the prophecy of a church elder seven years ago, to “build a school and build it now.” So began the Melodyland School of Theology. Wilkerson said that Melodyland church had poured over $5 million into the school. The school has grown from 120 students in the fall of 1973 to its present 500-student enrollment. It operates on a one-million-dollar annual budget and has an international student body in both bachelor’s and master’s degree programs.

But according to president Williams, it was this growth and impact of the school on the international charismatic movement that prompted the reorganizational demand.

Another problem, Williams said is the school’s accreditation status. The school has candidacy status with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, and an associate membership with the Association of Theological Schools. Those groups, according to Williams, have much concern about “too close a relationship between the church and the school.”

The school of theology is draining his church financially, Wilkerson said. “We’ve (the church) contributed half a million dollars to the school budget this year alone. I’ve mortgaged my home and contributed $50,000.” Construction was halted recently on a half-completed, 90,000-square-foot classroom building. But the Melodyland complex is valued at $9.5 million by Wilkerson’s estimate, considerably more than its debts.

For this very reason, faculty members say the burden for the school’s financing should be lifted from Wilkerson’s shoulders: They say the school should be allowed to raise its own funds.

As the leader of his discontented faculty, president Williams affirmed that problems at the school are not theological in nature. “The school affirms the full infalibility of the Scriptures,” he said. “I know this faculty very well, and I take full responsibility for its theological stance—I believe it’s solid.”

“The real issue,” Williams said, “is an organizational structure that is too restrictive for a vision embracing the whole world. I view the confrontation as a healthy sign, and I have faith in the processes of negotiation and dialogue. Greatness is born of travail and of dreams.”

His forehead sweating under television floodlamps during a pre-election debate, California state senator John V. Briggs declared: “We have the people, we have God, we have right, and we’re going to win it.”

As sponsor of the so-called Proposition 6 referendum, Briggs may have been right on the first three counts. But his last statement proved wrong. His bill—which would have given California school boards the power to fire teachers and other school employees who practice or advocate hom*osexuality—lost by one million votes.

Proposition 6 was only one of several November election referendums that attracted church interest. In many cases, individuals and groups carried the name of God and church into the campaign fray. In scattered cases, some evangelical candidates for political office were supported on the basis of their Christian identity.

Potent election issues—including abortion, hom*osexuality, gambling, and p*rnography—sometimes divided church groups. In Seattle, Washington, for example, separate church associations took opposite views on a hom*osexual rights bill. Each brought out financial artillery for the election battle.

In many cases, the issues made the candidate. Anti-abortionists in Iowa, for instance, were partially credited for the defeat of liberal Democratic senator Dick Clark, a United Methodist, by Republican Roger Jepson—a Lutheran who took a strong campaign stand against abortion.

Parting Over The Issues

Campaigning may have been fiercest in California, both for and against Proposition 6. Supporters and opponents of the bill each spent over $1 million.

Senator Briggs, a self-described “born-again” Christian, claimed the support of about 500 mostly fundamentalist California churches. Several Baptist denominations and the Assemblies of God supported the bill.

But leaders of Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, and Jewish groups advised against the bill—saying either that it infringed on hom*osexual rights, that it unfairly singled out certain sins, or that existing California laws already protected children against hom*osexual teachers.

Reflecting on the loss of Proposition 6, Briggs’s campaign manager Steven Bailey said church support was needed sooner: “They [the churches] don’t understand that campaigns have to be put together in July and August, not in October.

The Church Council of Greater Seattle, representing twenty-two mostly mainline denominations, successfully opposed a bill that would have removed gay rights from housing and employment ordinances. It sponsored a pray-in at a Seattle park, hired a staff person to lead “education programs” in member churches, and conducted media campaigns saying the bill would take away rights of hom*osexuals.

The smaller Seattle Association of Evangelicals supported the bill, as did Alexander Burghard, pastor of Judson Baptist Church, who rallied about 300 churches under the name Church Leaders for Community Standards. But this support came too late for the bill, which lost by a 2 to 1 vote margin.

Dade County (Miami area), Florida voters rejected a broadened version of the hom*osexual rights ordinance that they had rejected seventeen months earlier. Again, singer Anita Bryant led the opposition. This time, though, the campaign on both sides was more low key, and campaign expenditures were down 90 per cent.

The defeat of a parimutuel betting referendum in Virginia was significant because church leaders brought in political pros to fight beside them. Richard Hobson, state legislator and Episcopal layman from Alexandria, organized lawmakers, law officers, and church leaders into the “Virginians Opposing Pari-Mutuel Betting”—a group that hired veteran political strategist Dennis Peterson to conduct a media and voter mobilization campaign. The Sunday before the election, pastors in 8,500 pulpits called for the defeat of betting on racehorses. Television evangelist Jerry Falwell raised about $50,000, bought media spots, took out full-page newspaper ads, and mailed letters to 100,000 Virginians in opposition to the bill.

Outgoing Florida governor Ruben Askew, a ruling elder in a Pensacola Presbyterian church, rallied Florida voters to defeat by 2 to 1 a proposition to legalize casino gambling. Askew said gambling would encourage organized crime “the way blood attracts sharks.” Casino backers spent over $2 million in the campaign.

Other election issues included:

• Drinking: Michigan voters raised the legal drinking age from 18 to 21, as did Montana voters to age 19.

• p*rnography: By a 3 to 1 margin, South Dakota voters rejected an antip*rnography bill, which opponents (many of them Protestant church leaders) criticized as having too harsh penalties, questionable due process in the courts, and vague and obscure wording.

• Abortion: Oregon voters refused to cut off state funds to finance abortions for women on welfare.

• Women’s rights: A Roman Catholic bishop and Mormon church officials helped defeat a measure asking the Nevada state legislature to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Florida voters nixed an equal rights amendment to their state constitution.

Choosing Between Believers

Anti-abortionists figured in the collapse of Minnesota’s liberal Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Republican Rudy Boschwitz (Jewish) and David Durenberger (Catholic) won Senate seats, and Albert Quie, a twenty-year-veteran House member, took the governor’s chair. All came out against abortion.

Quie, a Lutheran active in Washington’s prayer breakfast movement (he offered to serve Charles Colson’s prison sentence in the Watergate aftermath), campaigned vigorously on the issue. His supporters distributed 250,000 leaflets to churchgoers throughout the state on the Sunday before election day, and they made 200,000 election-day telephone contacts to get out the vote, according to campaign sources.

The fledgling Right to Life Party in New York rang up 120,000 mostly church-inspired votes for its gubernatorial candidate, Mary Jane Tobin, a Catholic. As a result, the party has qualified to list candidates for all offices on the state ballot for the next four years.

Some campaigns pitted believer against believer. In the North Carolina Senate race, incumbent Republican Jesse Helms—a Southern Baptist well known for his born-again views—survived a bruising challenge by Democrat John Ingram, a United Methodist. Both candidates appeared on the “PTL Club” television show. On the Sunday before the election, Helms—who spent a record $7 million on his campaign—attended a dedication service at the 1,300-member Calvary Church (independent Presbyterian) in Charlotte, where evangelist Billy Graham gave the main address. Graham publicly acknowledged Helms’s presence but later told reporters that he didn’t mean to imply an endorsem*nt. “In fact,” he said, “I saw Mr. Ingram just the other day. He came up to my home [in Montreat] and we had a long talk and drank tea together.” Religion cropped up throughout the bitter campaign, with Ingram’s supporters angrily insisting that their man was just as much a Christian as Helms.

In Oregon, Republican officeholders created their own campaign organization after ex-Four Square preacher Walter Huss, a rightist, captured the chairmanship of the state’s Republican Party. Among other things, Huss said he preferred that candidates be Christians, a remark that alarmed the state’s sizable Jewish community and embarrassed party regulars. He was openly critical of the political stance of well-known evangelical Mark Hatfield, who had trounced him in the 1966 Senate primary.

In Virginia, Republican John W. Warner and Democrat Andrew Miller openly courted the church vote in their bid for a Senate seat. They campaigned among black church leaders, and both showed up for a service at the big Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, where Jerry Falwell introduced them to his television audience. In the end, Episcopalian Warner won.

In another development, New Hampshire governor Meldrim Thomson, Jr., a Republican and Conservative Baptist who mixed religion with politics (he ordered state flags to be flown at half-mast on Good Friday, for example), was defeated in his bid for reelection.

A Religious Analysis of the 96th Congress

The Ninety-sixth Congress will be more conservative, more youthful, and more Republican than its predecessor, according to analyses of last month’s elections.

It will not be any more Catholic, though, CHRISTIANITY TODAY has found, in its biannual religious census of Congress. Roman Catholic representation remained the same for a total of 129, equalling last year’s record high (up from ten years ago).

Although 20 per cent of both House and Senate seats will have new occupants, no major shifts occurred in religious-affiliation listings. Episcopalians show an increase of five, Lutherans three, and Baptists two. The Jewish contingent on Capitol Hill is stronger by three persons, matching a similar gain in the 1976 elections. Presbyterians, who lost eighteen seats in the last two elections, this time managed to hold their own with sixty. United Methodists, however, lost six seats, and there are five fewer members of the United Church of Christ.

(Because of the difficulties encountered in trying to pinpoint the exact Baptist, Presbyterian, and Lutheran denominations cited in affiliations, these groups have been listed generically in the census, compiled by special Washington correspondent Douglas Crow.)

Another clergyman was elected to Congress: Democrat William H. Gray III, pastor of the 3,000-member Bright Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia. He joins several ordained congressional incumbents who were reelected to the House: Catholic priest Robert F. Drinan of Massachusetts, United Methodist Robert W. Edgar of Pennsylvania, John Buchanan of Alabama (Southern Baptist), and delegate Walter Fauntroy of Washington, D.C. (Progressive National Baptist). Buchanan is a Republican; the others are Democrats. In Wisconsin, Catholic priest Robert J. Cornell was ousted from his House seat by Republican challenger Toby Roth—a Catholic layman. The only ordained minister in the Senate is John Danforth of Missouri, an Episcopalian whose seat was not up for grabs this year.

In the census, which follows, Senators are listed first in bold face, then House members; an asterisk (*) denotes an apparent winner:

BAPTIST (57)

Byrd (D-W.Va.)

Cochran (R-Miss.)

Ford (D-Ky.)

Hatfield (R-Oreg.)

Helms (R-N.C.)

Humphrey (R-N.H.)

Johnston, Jr. (D-La.)

Morgan (D-N.C.)

Talmadge (D-Ga.)

Thurmond (R-S.C.)

Ashbrook (R-Ohio)

Andrews (D-N.C.)

Barnard (D-Ga.)

Bevill (D-Ala.)

Bowen (D-Miss.)

Brinkley (D-Ga.)

Broyhill (R-N.C.)

Buchanan (R-Ala.)

Burlison (D-Mo.)

Carr (D-Mich.)

Carter (R-Ky.)

Collins (D-Ill.)

Collins (R-Texas)

Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.)

Daniel (D-Va.)

Deckard (R-Ind.)

Diggs (D-Mich.)

Fauntroy (D-D.C.)

Ford (D-Tenn.)

Gingrich (R-Ga.)

Ginn (D-Ga.)

Gore (D-Tenn.)

Grassley (R-Iowa)

Gray, III (D-Pa.)

Hance (D-Texas)

Hefner (D-N.C.)

Hightower (D-Texas)

Hinson (R-Miss.)

Hubbard, Jr. (D-Ky.)

Hutto (D-Fla.)

Ichord (D-Mo.)

Jenkins (D-Ga.)

Jones (D-N.C.)

Long (D-La.)

Lott (R-Miss.)

Lowry (D-Wash.)

Mathis (D-Ga.)

Mattox (D-Texas)

Mollohan (D-W.Va.)

Natcher (D-Ky.)

Pepper (D-Fla.)

Perkins (D-Ky.)

Runnels (D-N.M.)

Thomas (R-Calif.)

Thorsness (R-S.D.)*

Wilson (R-Calif.)

Whitley (D-N.C.)

CHRISTIAN CHURCH

(DISCIPLES) (6)

Bafalis (R-Fla.)

Bennett (D-Fla.)

Evans (D-Ga.)

Skelton (D-Mo.)

Whittaker (R-Kans.)

Winn, Jr. (R-Kans.)

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE (3)

Percy (R-Ill.)

McClory (R-Ill.)

Rousselot (R-Calif.)

CHURCHES OF CHRIST (4)

Flippo (D-Ala.)

Hall (D-Tex.)

Latta (R-Ohio)

Williams (R-Ohio)

EASTERN ORTHODOX (5)

Sarbanes (D-Md.)

Tsongas (D-Mass.)

Mavroules (D-Mass.)

Snowe (R-Maine)

Yatron (D-Pa.)

EPISCOPAL (70)

Byrd (I-Va.)

Chafee (R-R.I.)

Danforth (R-Mo.)

Exon (D-Neb.)

Goldwater (R-Ariz.)

Heinz, III (R-Pa.)

Kassebaum (R-Kans.)

Mathias (R-Md.)

Matsunaga (D-Hawaii)

Pell (D-R.I.)

Proxmire (D-Wisc.)

Roth (R-Del.)

Simpson (R-Wyo.)

Stevens (R-Alaska)

Wallop (R-Wyo.)

Warner (R-Va.)

Weicker, Jr. (R-Conn.)

Alexander (D-Ark.)

Andrews (R-N.D.)

Anderson (D-Calif.)

Anthony (D-Ark.)

Ashley (D-Ohio)

Aspin (D-Wisc.)

Bolling (D-Mo.)

Butler (R-Va.)

Byron (D-Md.)

Campbell, Jr. (R-S.C.)

Coughlin (R-Pa.)

Daniel, Jr. (R-Va.)

Davis (R-Mo.)

Derrick (D-S.C.)

Dixon (D-Calif.)

Edwards (R-Okla.)

Evans (R-Del.)

Fazio (D-Calif.)

Fish (R-N.Y.)

Goldwater, Jr. (R-Calif.)

Gramm (D-Tex.)

Hughes (D-N.J.)

Ireland (D-Fla.)

Kastemayer (D-Pa.)

Leach (R-Iowa)

Leach (R-La.)

Livingston (R-La.)

Lloyd (D-Calif.)

McKinney (R-Conn.)

Mitchell (D-Md.)

Montgomery (D-Miss.)

Moore, III (R-La.)

Moorhead (D-Pa.)

Myers (R-Ind.)

Neal (D-N.C.)

Nelson (D-Fla.)

Paul (R-Tex.)

Peyser (D-N.Y.)

Regula (R-Ohio)

Reuss (D-Wisc.)

Satterfield (D-Va.)

Sawyer (R-Mich.)

Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wisc.)

Steiger (R-Wisc.)

Synar (D-Okla.)

Traxler (D-Mich.)

Trible (R-Va.)

White (D-Tex.)

Young (R-Alaska)

VanDeerlin (D-Calif.)

Wirth (D-Colo.)

Wydler (R-N.Y.)

Zeferetti (D-N.Y.)

JEWISH (30)

Boschwitz (R-Minn.)

Javits (R-N.Y.)

Levin (D-Mich.)

Metzenbaum (D-Ohio)

Ribicoff (D-Conn.)

Stone (D-Fla.)

Zorinsky (D-Neb.)

Beilenson (D-Calif.)

Frost (D-Texas)

Gilman (R-N.Y.)

Glickman (D-Kans.)

Gradison (R-Ohio)

Green (R-N.Y.)

Holtzman (D-N.Y.)

Kramer (R-Colo.)

Lehman (D-Fla.)

Levitas (D-Ga.)

Marks (R-Pa.)

Mikva (D-Ill.)

Ottinger (D-N.Y.)

Richmond (D-N.Y.)

Rosenthal (D-N.Y.)

Scheuer (D-N.Y.)

Spellman (D-Md.)

Solarz (D-N.Y.)

Waxman (D-Calif.)

Weiss (D-N.Y.)

Wolff (D-N.Y.)

Wolpe (D-Mich.)

Yates (D-Ill.)

LATTER-DAY SAINTS (10)

Cannon (D-Nev.)

Garn (R-Utah)

Hatch (R-Utah)

Burgener (R-Calif.)

Hansen (R-Idaho)

Heftel (D-Hawaii)

Marriott (R-Utah)

McKay (D-Utah)

Shumway (R-Calif.)

Udall (D-Ariz.)

LUTHERAN (19)

Armstrong (R-Colo.)

Hollings (D-S.C.)

Jepsen (R-Iowa)

Magnuson (D-Wash.)

Badham (R-Calif.)

Bereuter (R-Neb.)

Clausen (R-Calif.)

Dannemayer (R-Calif.)

Dicks (D-Wash.)

Erdahl (D-Minn.)

Hagedorn (R-Minn.)

Loeffler (R-Tex.)

Marlenee (R-Mont.)

Sabo (D-Minn.)

Simon (D-Ill.)

Snyder (R-Ky.)

Spence (R-S.C.)

Stenholm (D-Tex.)

Strangeland (R-Minn.)

PRESBYTERIAN (60)

Baker (R-Tenn.)

Bellmon (R-Okla.)

Bentson (D-Tex.)

Chiles (D-Fla.)

Church (D-Idaho)

Culver (D-Iowa)

Glenn (D-Ohio)

Jackson (D-Wash.)

Pryor (D-Ark.)

Stennis (D-Miss.)

Williams, Jr. (D-N.J.)

Applegate (D-Ohio)

Brown (R-Ohio)

Broomfield (R-Mich.)

Clinger (R-Pa.)

Duncan (R-Tenn.)

Eckhardt (D-Tex.)

Edwards (R-Alaska)

Fountain (D-N.C.)

Fowler (D-Ga.)

Fuqua (D-Fla.)

Gibbons (D-Fla.)

Hall (D-Ohio)

Hammerschmidt (R-Ark.)

Harsha (R-Ohio)

Hillis (R-Ind.)

Holt (R-Md.)

Horton (R-N.Y.)

Jeffries (R-Kans.)

Johnson (D-Calif.)

Johnson (R-Colo.)

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ROMAN CATHOLIC (129)

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A FORD IN THE HOUSE

The new chaplain of the House of Representatives will be Lutheran James Ford, CHRISTIANITY TODAY has learned. Ford, 49, who has served for the past fourteen years as Chaplain of the United States Military Academy at West Point, will replace United Methodist Edward G. Latch, who is retiring after twelve years. A search committee of three congressmen will present Ford’s name at a caucus in early December, all but guaranteeing his election.

UNITARIAN-UNIVERSALIST (12)

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“CHRISTIAN” OR “PROTESTANT” (19)

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UNAFFILIATED (6)

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A VERY PRESENT HELP

When the Kelley Barnes dam collapsed at Toccoa Falls (Georgia) Bible College a year ago, thirty-nine persons drowned and property damage totaled $1.5 million. But survivors there are in better mental health than victims of similar disasters, says Boston College researcher Ronald Nuttall.

Nuttall studied the psychological reactions of victims of similar disasters in five other states, and he said “The people at Toccoa came out very well.” He credited their mental well-being to their religious faith that helped them understand the tragedy, and to “the great outpouring of assistance” that helped them regain lost jobs and possessions.

“Because of Toccoa,” Nuttall said, “we had to change our theory about psychological reaction to disaster to include cultural values.”