Page 4854 – Christianity Today (2024)

African-American evangelicals, gathering in Atlanta in late December, were urged to become “protectors” of poor people, to work against drug abuse among children, and to spread “hope through Christ.”

At Atlanta ’92, a student conference sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF), about 150 people gathered for three days of meetings, the first nation-wide conference for African-Americans held by IVCF since 1981.

The conference helped IVCF staff and members stay focused. Chicago IVCF urban specialist Brenda Salter-McNeil said after the conference, “I think [the conference] was a unifying and vision-strengthening time for black staff.” James McGee, campus staff worker in Atlanta, said, “The conference legitimized our relationship with Christianity as being special and indigenous, and that we really did contribute to Christianity in the world and America. African-American students are searching for their heritage. African-American Christian students are concerned about whether they have a [Christian] heritage.”

Keynote speaker Clarence Walker called on the conferees to understand the biblical role that people of African descent often played in the Bible. Walker said, “A people who are not aware of their spiritual heritage can never be aware of their spiritual destiny.”

Citing biblical characters of African descent who served as protectors in the Bible, Walker called on African-Americans to serve as protectors of drug-addicted children, senior citizens, and others. “God has chosen you as a people to lead this last-day revival,” Walker noted. “God is getting ready to send a revival like fire. Our hope is in looking up … and briefly looking back.”

Conferees included undergraduate students, seminarians, and IVCF staff, some coming from as far away as Kenya. Daily expositions from Exodus were provided by Carl Ellis, an associate pastor and author of Beyond Liberation. Ellis challenged conferees to remember that God’s message to Israel was that God’s blessings to them came because of “his grace” and not because of “their race.” He likened some of the struggles of Israel to the oppression faced by African-Americans today.

The message of hope was repeated by other speakers. Following her sermon, “Called to Be a People of Hope,” Vashti McKenzie gave an altar call, and many people responded. McKenzie had stressed the need for a person to have a relationship with Christ in order to tackle the serious issues facing African-Americans today.

By Felicia Anderson in Atlanta.

Nationally known pastor and teacher David Hocking has been permanently expelled from his former congregation, Calvary Church, Santa Ana, California, following a dispute with the church’s leadership regarding his restoration after “moral failure.” The exceptional removal blocks Hocking from membership in the church, as well as sanctioned fellowship with the congregation, and is the latest blow against the pastor and author, whose publisher, Harvest House, canceled his latest book, dealing with strengthening marriages.

Less than three months ago, Hocking, 51, resigned from the 6,000 +-member church amid the disturbing revelation of sexual scandal after church elders heard of his admission of “sexual sin” with a married woman from his congregation.

Hocking’s reaction was one of shock and dismay, according to a report in the Orange County Register. “I feel blind-sided,” said the former radio Bible teacher, whose “Biola Hour” and “Rock Radio” were broadcast on more than 170 stations nationwide. “It’s not enough that I’ve been publicly humiliated, but now I’m being dragged through the dirt.”

Many feel Hocking’s ouster is due to his plans to join Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel staff this year.

Chuck Smith, who shepherded the “Jesus Movement” explosion of the seventies, and is pastor of the 12,000-member Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, says he is confounded at the action taken by Calvary Church, and he hired Hocking in spite of the controversy. “This man is a gifted Bible teacher,” says Smith. “And, if he doesn’t resume his teaching, I’m afraid he’ll be literally and totally destroyed.”

Smith’s hiring of Hocking has stirred much controversy, and, since Smith has voluntarily taken over Hocking’s restoration to proper Christian fellowship by agreement of both churches, officials at Calvary Church are looking at the move as “surprising and shocking.”

“We told Dr. Hocking that he couldn’t serve in the ministry again. We told him he would never serve again, at this church,” asserts Calvary Church’s executive pastor, John Crandall. “Dr. Hocking was to go through a restoration process, encompassing family and friends, but he has chosen to ignore our guidelines and follow his own.”

Further, Crandall mentioned that he and the board of elders did not feel Hocking should be welcomed back into any ministerial position at this time, saying that “he has not shown visible fruits and proof of his repentance for his sexual sin.”

Hocking says, “I just want to preach and teach God’s Word. I really don’t know what they [Calvary Church] want of me. I’ve repented. I don’t commit that sin anymore. You know, Jesus said, ‘Let him who is without sin among you, cast the first stone.’ I feel like sending a basket of rocks over to them.”

By Perucci Ferraiuolo.

Braving wintry weather, Bosnian war refugees dodge sniper bullets, gather wood.

The causes of the former Yugoslavia’s year-long civil war are confusing. The international media tend to portray the war as religious and ethnic, with the Serbs as perpetrators. Diplomatic and foreign-service workers who have lived in that region, however, say it is unfair to blame all Serbs or to view this as an Orthodox (Serbian) versus Muslim (Bosnian) religious war.

Last month’s assassination of Bosnia’s deputy prime minister has damaged hopes for a swift settlement to the fighting. Since the conflict began, more than 17,000 people have been killed. There are one million refugees.

Journalist Lyn Cryderman recently traveled to the former Yugoslavia with Mercy Corps International, an ecumenical relief-and-development agency headquartered in Portland, Oregon. He filed this exclusive report:

I have been to refugee camps, but none like Gasinci in western Croatia. Winter has arrived, and at least half the camp’s population is living in crude, military tents.

There are no floors; no water—except a well a half-kilometer away; rats as big as small cats. With temperatures dropping, the race to cut and store wood consumes every able body. Despite meager resources and a daily influx of Bosnian refugees, Croatia’s arms stretch wide to receive them. If the United States had the same proportion of refugees as Croatia, there would be 17 million to care for. Those refugees not massacred—mostly old men and women, and children—escape to camps such as Gasinci. The younger girls are forced to serve the Serbian soldiers in “rape camps,” while men and intellectuals of soldier age are simply killed.

There is nothing clean or neat about ethnic cleansing.

A crowd gathers in the camp because the imam has arrived. He strides up to Peter Kuzmic, dean of nearby Evangelical Theological Seminary, who has just come from a meeting with the Catholic bishop of Dakovo.

They embrace and talk earnestly about the spiritual needs of the refugees. Somehow, ecumenism seems less threatening with an invading army ten kilometers away.

Three children follow me everywhere. One reaches for my hand whenever I am not taking pictures. Later, an interpreter tells me I remind them of their father. He was dragged from their house in a Bosnian village and shot in front of his wife and children. Their mother was dragged away by teenage soldiers smelling of sljivoic, the potent brandy passed around each morning to keep the troops from thinking too much about their deeds.

It is time to leave. And as I bend to receive my gift of two slender arms hugging my neck, I think of my own little Molly, wondering why one child should sleep in down and cotton, another child in a tent with rats.

As I head for my car, I meet a young man from Atlanta. I ask him the obvious question, and he tells me his church has sent him and a group of other teenagers to this camp to minister. They have vowed to keep a presence here throughout the war. I think of my own teenage son hoping to go to Key Largo with his youth group for some sun.

Into Sarajevo

Over breakfast at the Dubrovnik Hotel in Zagreb, my traveling companion, Landrum Bolling, and I decide we cannot continue on our tour of “the former Yugoslavia” without trying to reach Sarajevo. He, at 78, a career diplomat, and I, at 43, a journalist and book editor, are an odd-looking pair of travelers. We talk our way onto a United Nations relief flight. Before we know it, we are hustling to catch the next C-130 carrying the day’s first load of flour and canned goods into the city that once was the jewel of the Winter Olympic Games.

En route, I ask a British diplomat: “Are the Serbs as bad as the press has portrayed them to be?”

He replies: “If you’re counting the past fifty weeks, yes. But if you’re counting the last fifty years, it’s simply their turn. At the end of World War II, the Bosnians, one of Hitler’s rump armies, unleashed their fury against the Serbs.”

We land without incident, although we hear shelling and small-arms fire the minute we hit the tarmac. We jump into a Land Rover driven by a young French-Canadian who oversees the distribution of any food that gets in.

“Have you read about Sniper’s Alley?” he asks, turning up the volume on his cassette player.

Before I can answer, he announces, “We’re in it.”

We arrive at the back door of the Sarajevo Holiday Inn. The front entrance faces a known sniper outpost. Inside, it is a dark room with boarded-up windows and no electricity. After finding my room—shattered window, no heat—I head back downstairs to take a walk.

On the streets

I head across the street behind the hotel. Every building shows the effects of direct, heavy-artillery hits, and small-arms fire punctuates the air. I am very scared. Two women walk past me and I rush to keep up with them.

“Do you live here?” is my first stupid question.

“Yes, about three kilometers from here.”

“Isn’t it dangerous to walk home?”

The first woman says it isn’t, but the second corrects her. “Yes, it is very dangerous, but we can’t think about it. If we did, we would never leave our homes. We are trying to live normal lives, but it is very difficult.”

I ask her if she is Muslim.

“No, I am Christian, but I am Bosnian. The chetniks [a derisive term for the Serbian irregulars] won’t ask. They will kill all of us.”

“But we hear that the Serbs want to remove only the Muslims.”

“They want Sarajevo. And Banja Luka. And Vukovich. They want everything.”

We are about five blocks from the hotel and seem to be closer to the gunfire I had heard earlier. I feel like a wimp because I do not want to go any farther. When I stop, they stop too.

“It is not good to stand still,” one of them remarks.

“I think I will go back to the hotel,” I respond.

“You are an American?”

I nod.

A mournful song

Back at the hotel, Landrum is talking with the headwaiter, who says he hates the war, worries about his teenage sons, and struggles with the Big Question: “Why have my neighbors—Bosnian Serbs—turned against me?”

Next to us, a woman sings a mournful song. She is with five other friends. One of them, a man who has had too much to drink, leans over and in broken English tells us the song is a famous Serbian ballad.

“Why is your friend singing a Serbian song when the Serbs are outside shooting at us?” I ask.

It was the cue he has waited for to make his speech. He gestures at his companions and says, “She is Serb. He is Croatian. I am Bosnian. He is Catholic. She is Muslim. He is Orthodox. We are all friends. We have grown up together. My own wife is Serbian. This is how it has been in Sarajevo. This is how it should be.”

Shots, screams—silence

I climb the stairs to my room to try to sleep, but under cover of darkness, the fighting escalates outside my window. I wear my clothes and flak jacket, just in case. Sleep is impossible. I hear shots, then screams, then silence. More shots, then screams, then silence.

I imagine families huddled in their bedrooms as soldiers break down the doors, drag a father out into the street, and shoot him in front of his wife and children. Each scream stabs the night air more deeply than the gunfire, and finally I give in and head down to the dining room to talk with other journalists and Sarajevans.

By morning we have seen enough. Last night was one of the bloodiest in the war. A relief plane was hit. There is talk that all flights will be suspended. We hitch a ride to the airport in an armored personnel carrier and scramble aboard a German plane and learn the next day that relief flights have been canceled. Sarajevo would receive no food or medical supplies for three weeks.

A church on fire

Before flying home, I have one last stop: Skopje, Macedonia. I attend a Wednesday-night prayer meeting in a Methodist church. Except for the language, it could have been a prayer meeting I attended as a kid, complete with hymns, prayer, crying babies, and a sermon that ran a bit long. In countries like Croatia, Macedonia, and Hungary, evangelical churches are what we used to call “on fire,” and it is a beautiful thing to see.

Their love for the gospel motivates them to want to do something to help war victims, but most churches are small, poor, and unfamiliar with “social ministry” because they have been refused that privilege when ruled by Communists. These churches cannot do it without our help—but what an opportunity it is to put our shared faith where the whole world can see it! All they need is money, clothing, food, medicine, and people, most of which we have in abundance. Western-based Christian ministries are on site, effective, and respected by their host governments. They work alongside Christians in this region.

Difficult questions

I am in my home in a small town in Michigan. It is almost time to go to church. My wife and I have been awake all night, first to get caught up on things, then to talk about my trip, then to wrestle with a question that has vexed us and others for ages: How can otherwise decent people do such horrible things to one another?

It occurs to me that how we respond to this crisis—one that may be repeated throughout the former Soviet bloc—is as important as any of the many fine programs targeting the world for evangelization by the year 2000.

Seminary dean Peter Kuzmic told me that the gospel is more appealing in his native land now than it has ever been. For more than 50 years, the people were under the influence of an atheistic, antireligious government.

Is it too much to imagine that God can make use of a war to drive people back to the Christian faith? And will we let the stream of horrifying photos and news coverage cause us to pray for a great rekindling of Christian compassion?

Lyn Cryderman, a departmental editor for CHRISTIANITY TODAY, is senior acquisitions editor at Zondervan Publishing House in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Two neighboring evangelical Christian colleges in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota, have resolved unrelated disputes with two professors they fired.

Neither professor—Kenneth Gowdy, who taught at Bethel College in Arden Hills, nor Walter M. Dunnett, who taught at Northwestern College in Roseville—will be returning to his former position. The provisions of each severance agreement are to be kept confidential, parties involved in the two unrelated cases have agreed.

Gowdy, 56, an associate professor of sociology who was on the Bethel faculty for 21 years, was terminated because of his views on hom*osexuality.

Dunnett, 68, who was professor of Bible and theology at Northwestern for 16 years, was dismissed because he was ordained an Episcopal priest.

The agreement involving Gowdy and Bethel, which is operated by the Baptist General Conference, was reached through use of the college’s grievance procedure.

The settlement involving Dunnett came after he filed a lawsuit in Ramsey County District Court against Northwestern, a nondenominational college, and a Northwestern pastor, Kyle Wilson, accusing them of religious discrimination.

A statement signed jointly by Bethel president George Brushaber and Gowdy said the issue in Gowdy’s termination “pertained to Gowdy’s belief that monogamous hom*osexual relationships are in some circ*mstances appropriate for Christians—a belief that the college administration held inappropriate and impermissible for a faculty member.”

In the end, the joint statement said the committee concluded that “the past cannot be undone or replayed as if nothing had happened. It is instead a matter of attempting to bring to closure a tragic and unfortunate episode.”

Dunnett’s complaint

In the Dunnett case, his court complaint charged that Northwestern, “by discharging Dunnett because of his status as an Episcopalian and/or as an Episcopal priest, engaged in an intentional unlawful employment practice,” violating state and federal laws.

Wilson, the college pastor, was named a defendant in the suit because of an open letter he wrote to Dunnett in January 1992. In it, he said:

“There is no way you can sign a priest’s ordination vows in the Episcopal Church and also sign the Doctrinal Statement of Northwestern College and be honest before God and these separate organizations.” He said the doctrinal differences are substantial.

Dunnett’s suit asked for reinstatement to his former position, back pay, and damages. He currently is serving as priest-associate-in-charge at Messiah Episcopal Church, St. Paul. Gowdy belongs to that church, as do the attorneys who represented the two men in their disputes. Northwestern College was once headed by Billy Graham as president. It was then located in Minneapolis.

By Willmar Thorkelson in Minneapolis.

Lynn Madden, music director at Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, the home church of President Bill Clinton, has nothing but praise for the musical abilities of his notable choir member and saxophonist. But other Southern Baptist leaders say Clinton is out of tune with them in dealing with a number of important social issues.

While congratulating him on his election victory, many Baptist leaders are quick to point out their disagreements and call for a change of heart in the former Arkansas governor.

Conservatives object

One week after Clinton’s victory at the polls, Richard Land, executive director of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Christian Life Commission (CLC), sent an open letter to the then Presidentelect. In it, Land promised the prayers of fellow Southern Baptists that God would bless Clinton with safety, health, and spiritual blessings. “We will both pray for you and exhort you to apply biblical principles and values as you make policy decisions.”

Land voiced support for the new administration’s backing of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and required health warnings on alcohol advertising. He praised the efforts of Tipper Gore, wife of Vice-president Al Gore, to warn consumers about the lyrics of some rock songs, and the support Hillary Clinton has offered to a recent antip*rnography campaign. But he went on to urge the President to reconsider his stated positions on abortion, hom*osexual rights, and public funding of art considered by some as blasphemous or obscene.

That letter apparently set the tone for resolutions from a dozen state Baptist conventions, including those in Arkansas and Gore’s home state of Tennessee, which echoed Land’s two-track message of prayer and policy.

Arkansas Baptists also took issue with Clinton’s support for the distribution of condoms in public schools. Meeting just one week after the election, the state convention debated and eventually added an amendment to its resolution, stating that, in spite of Clinton’s church membership, “he does not represent our views on these issues.”

Other conservative Baptist leaders express similar mixed emotions about the new man in the White House. Convention president Ed Young says Southern Baptists “will support [Clinton] in every way possible, but by the same token, as Baptist people we would disagree on many moral issues, and we must take the position we believe to be in accordance with the Word of God.”

Protests in Little Rock

Throughout the campaign, Clinton’s home church in Little Rock was the scene of regular protests by the fundamentalist God Said Ministries. Its leader, W. N. Ortwell, demanded that the 4,300-member church discipline Clinton for his positions on abortion, hom*osexual rights, and other issues.

At the same time, conservative Southern Baptists, as well as moderates, are pleased with the new administration’s stands on a number of issues. Clinton and Gore’s backing of RFRA draws praise from Land and from the Baptist Joint Committee (BJC).

Two years ago the SBC withdrew its funding of the BJC when conservatives in control of the convention grew dissatisfied with the BJC’s positions and activities on a number of issues. But both Land and BJC director James Dunn are excited by the prospects for RFRA’s passage under the Clinton administration, an action they see as essential to protecting religious freedoms. The bill, left among other unfinished business by an election-year Congress, would, in effect, override the 1990 Supreme Court decision in Oregon v. Smith. That decision opened the door for government to limit the free exercise of religion.

End Vatican ties?

The CLC is also being joined by other Protestant groups in urging Clinton to end formal diplomatic ties with the Vatican. In 1984, President Reagan appointed an ambassador to the Vatican for the first time in U.S. history. At that time, a broad coalition of religious groups opposed the action, arguing that it breached church-state separation. They now feel Clinton may offer the last chance to change the policy before it becomes entrenched.

For the most part, Baptists appear more comfortable with Clinton’s more strict understanding of church-state separation. The SBC has opposed any direct government aid to parochial schools, though it has not taken a public-policy position on vouchers.

So far, the exact shape of the Clinton administration’s relationship with religious groups remains to be seen. The White House has yet to name anyone to a role of liaison to any religious community. Robert Maddox, former head of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, now pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., aided the Clinton transition team. He believes the President’s approach to the religious community, as to other groups, will be characterized primarily by inclusiveness.

“Absence or presence [in the White House] will not be a political payoff,” Maddox says. “They will listen broadly and carefully.” The “hard Right” may not want to come in, he believes, but other conservatives will have a place.

In similar fashion, Land also thinks conservative religious groups like the CLC will have access to the new administration. Those who viewed the Religious Right, and the CLC in particular, as comfortably tucked into the former President’s hip pocket—and therefore now out of the White House—were wrong, he says. “We were openly critical of the President [Bush] when we felt he was wrong on an issue.”

Conservative Southern Baptist leaders are heartened, however, by the fact that the nation’s two highest offices are now occupied by fellow Baptists, and that they are active church members. “Consequently, they understand Southern Baptists. They understand the social and political life in a major region of the country,” Land says, something that was lacking in the Bush and Reagan era.

By Ken Sidey, with Baptist Press reports.

The steady flow of new immigrants and refugees into Germany has brought simmering racial tensions to the boiling point.

Young adults and teenagers have been drawn into racial confrontations in a big way. Today Germany boasts at least 50 fascist-oriented rock groups. A recording of the group Bösen Onkelz, though declared illegal, has nevertheless been a top seller. Another group, CPG, is harmonizing with this text: “A flamethrower is the only weapon with which I can win. Eliminate every gypsy, adult, and child.”

The growth of violent assaults, urban vandalism, and desecrations of Jewish memorials has deeply alarmed German Christians. At its recent annual meeting, the board of the German Evangelical Alliance, representing 1.3 million evangelicals, urged Christians to speak out against xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and abortion. Hartmut Steeb, the alliance’s general secretary, said Christians should expand their sense of political responsibility.

Rudi Pahnke, a Lutheran official and former East German dissident, believes the rightist world view has given many people a sense of stability without a moral orientation, and past guilt is being ignored.

Political issues, however, do not seem to be the driving force for discontent among disadvantaged young adults in German cities. Herbert Weimer, a charismatic evangelical youth leader based in Oranienburg near Berlin, said, “Their frustration is not primarily aimed at society. It rather is directed toward those adult superiors with whom they deal daily.”

Johannes Rosemann, a Baptist pastor in the formerly East German city of Plauen, recognizes a clear preference for authoritarian structures among the so-called skinheads, who find friendship, solidarity, clear structures, and ready answers in extremist groups.

Most skinheads with whom Weimer has contact have a criminal record. He is more worried about an increase in crime than about an increase in fascism.

Weimer said the time has come to “roll up our sleeves and begin acting.” Legions of discussion groups on the topic of fascism have changed little.

Uwe Siemon-Netto recently wrote in the Idea news service, “If the evangelical church wants to understand its godly mandate properly, then it must now evangelize aggressively among the least desirable Germans. Jesus did not self-righteously distance himself from the haters; instead, he mixed in with them.”

Dietmar Seiler, a Lutheran pastor active among neofascists in south Germany’s Sindelfingen, said, “We talk too much about others instead of [talking] with them.”

Getting behind the mask

Weimer reports that some young people enter the Oranienburg youth center and inform the workers they are leftists or “hooligans.”

“But we cut them short and say, ‘No, you’re just regular, decent kids.’ We need to get behind their masks.” He adds that a number of so-called fascists have dropped their façade in private and have wept during counseling.

“They also need to know that we do not fear them. It’s okay if they come in high boots and butch haircuts; we just take their weapons from them at the door.

“My wife always does that; she’s just a little thing. We give the weapons back when they leave. They sit here in full regalia and drink yogurt milk.”

Michael Hainisch, a church-sponsored social worker, has helped radical Right youths to rent and restore an apartment house in Berlin-Lichtenberg. Hainisch and others stress the need to differentiate between the endangered and the hard core, between the “show-offs” and the truly militant. Weimer reports that he “prefers to work with those on the [fascist] fringe.”

“One can still achieve something with such persons.”

Ironically, Hainisch is being attacked by militants on both fronts. In November, he was beaten up by militant leftists who saw him as a Neo-Nazi.

Graham’s trip in March

Pahnke and Weimer are concerned about whether the Billy Graham crusade in March will lead to lasting change. Pahnke concedes: “Many persons may come forward and confess their sins and then want to join a congregation. But if the churches don’t open themselves, the bubble will burst.” Weimer hopes for an awakening among those who are already Christians. “Christians need to wake up and learn how to evangelize.”

Uwe Dammann, a Baptist pastor in Berlin, says, “We are viewing social developments with great fear, surprise, and distance. We have become middle class, and the rightist movement stems from the working class.”

The evangelical Christian leaders of Germany realize they cannot solve the problem alone: The silent majority will need to be activated. In September, a Jewish museum barracks was destroyed by neo-Nazi arsonists at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Oranienburg. During a street protest, Weimer’s group of activists knotted a German and Jewish flag together to symbolize their strong support.

By Wilhelm Jotter in Berlin.

AUSTRALIA

80 Anglican Women Ordained

Since the Anglican Church of Australia lifted its ban on female ordination in November of last year, dozens of women have joined the priesthood—80 in the first weeks of December alone.

Ten women had already been ordained the previous March by Bishop Peter Carnley of Perth, who acted under the authority of diocesan legislation, in advance of General Synod approval.

The Church of England also voted in November to allow women to be ordained to the priesthood (CT, Dec. 14, 1992, p. 52); many of that country’s 1,400 women deacons are expected to seek ordination. But unlike the Australian church’s decision, England’s ordination measure must have approval from Parliament and royal assent before it can become law.

It could be July 1994 before the first women are ordained as priests in England. Australia and England are among the 14 (out of a total of 30) provinces in the Anglican communion that have approved legislation allowing women to be ordained as priests.

SAUDI ARABIA

Quick Action Spares Filipinos

Western human-rights groups say a quick mobilization of their international networks may have saved the lives of two Filipino Christian leaders imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. Just days before Christmas, reliable sources within the human-rights community reported that lay pastor Wally Oswaldo Magdangal was scheduled to be executed on Christmas day.

Magdangal and a second Christian, Renato Posedio, were arrested in October and charged with violating kingdom law by preaching Christianity.

The two had apparently been in hiding since January 1991 when an international Christian service they led in a private home was raided by Saudi religious police.

Reports of the scheduled execution prompted a flurry of international inquiries and protests, including a harshly worded appeal to King Fahd from Philippines President Fidel Ramos. After some apparent confusion, Saudi officials in the United States denied that the two Christians were condemned to die. The two were deported and have reportedly returned safely to the Philippines.

EVANGELISM

Opportunities in China Abound

Policies in mainland China will change soon, and doors to the vast country will be opened wide to evangelism. That was the prediction made by several speakers at Chinese Mission 92. Yet they warned that the church may not be ready to make the most of the opportunity.

Chinese Mission 92, the fourth triennial Urbana-style missions conference for Chinese Christians, attracted a record 1,300 registrants, up 70 percent from 1989. The four-day event, held in December in Washington, D.C., was sponsored by Ambassadors for Christ, a Chinese-American mission based in Paradise, Pennsylvania.

The vast majority of registrants were of Chinese descent, and well over half were university students or recent graduates. Speakers included Thomas Wang of the AD 2000 movement, and mission leader James Hudson Taylor III, great-grandson of J. Hudson Taylor, the pioneer missionary to China who died in 1905.

Nearly two-thirds of the participants stood to signify their availability for Christian service. Some who volunteered for full-time missionary work said during interviews that it will be especially difficult to explain their decision to their tightly knit family circles.

Several workshops focused on ways to reach the nearly 50,000 mainland Chinese scholars studying in the United States, while others dealt with the current religious situation in China.

Hard-Knock Life—And Death—For Kids

United States: One out of every five children lived in poverty in 1991; 2.7 million were reported abused or neglected.

Brazil: Four homeless children were reported killed each day in 1992—up from three a day in 1990; an estimated 2 million children between the ages of 10 and 15 years have been forced into prostitution.

Thailand: There are a reported 800,000 female prostitutes between the ages of 12 and 15.

There are 100 million children living on the streets of the world’s cities.

Africa, Latin America: 13 million children worldwide, most of them in Africa and Latin America, died last year from malnutrition and from pneumonia, measles, and diarrhea; wars in the 1980s killed 1.5 million children, disabled 4 million, and left 12 million homeless.

SOURCES: Brazilian National Movement of Street Children. Center for Protection of Children’s Rights. Children’s Defense Fund, Jubilee Campaign. and the United Nations International Children’s Educational Fund.

Alabama’s Primitive Baptist governor has been charged with the theft of $200,000 following an investigation prompted by his use of a state airplane to fly to out-of-state preaching engagements.

Gov. Guy Hunt, a two-term Republican who serves two congregations as part-time pastor, has denied charges that he looted a private fund established to pay for his 1987 inauguration.

“I have never stolen anything in my entire life,” Hunt said in a formal statement following the indictment. “I will fight this indictment and I will win.” Hunt’s troubles began when the Alabama Ethics Commission ruled he may have violated a state ethics law by accepting almost $10,000 in “love offerings” during 17 trips taken aboard his official plane. The law prohibits public officials from using their positions for personal, financial gain.

Alabama Attorney General Jimmy Evans, a Democrat, said his office’s investigation of that case uncovered evidence the governor had “plundered” his inaugural fund. A state grand jury returned the indictment after Evans presented the evidence.

After news media first reported the preaching trips, but before the Ethics Commission issued its ruling, Hunt wrote two checks to the state equaling the amount he received in offerings. However, he denied his accepting the money had violated the law.

Christian response mixed

Across the state, Christian response to the indictment has been mixed.

Some, especially Primitive Baptists, have denounced the charges as politically motivated. On the Sunday following the indictment, Hunt preached at a Primitive Baptist church in Birmingham and was warmly received.

Nevertheless, others in this Bible Belt state have hesitated to rally to the governor’s side, perhaps due to some unusual coincidences related to the case:

• The foreman of the grand jury that indicted Hunt is a former pastor who serves as director of evangelism for the state’s 1.1 million Southern Baptists. Another jury member is pastor of the largest Presbyterian church in the capital city of Montgomery.

• The attorney general who pursued the investigation was elected in 1990 with the support of several profamily groups. As a district attorney, he had prosecuted and shut down a New York television movie channel that was broadcasting X-rated films into Alabama via satellite.

• The Alabama Ethics Commission, which handled the initial complaint and referred the case to the attorney general, is headed by a Southern Baptist deacon who has written for denominational publications.

If Hunt is convicted of theft, state law requires him to be removed from office upon sentencing. But even if he is not convicted, he may not be out of trouble. Attorney General Evans said the grand jury asked to remain impaneled so that it may continue deliberating the legality of his preaching trips.

By David Reid in Montgomery, Alabama.

Individual church members, congregations, and the National Missions Board of the Open Bible Standard Churches have lost an undetermined amount of money in a $5.2 million fraudulent investment scheme controlled in part by a former pastor and a former deacon of Open Bible congregations, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The investors probably will never recover the thousands of dollars they put into the fraudulent investment offering of World Fidelity Bank, Ltd. (WFB), according to the Justice Department. Court records state, “At present, no funds appear to exist to reimburse these investors.”

Open Bible denomination president Ray Smith said in an interview that he has no plans to warn member congregations of the problem in spite of the probable financial losses and the FBI’s investigation of the alleged scheme. “Let’s let this thing run its course,” Smith said, “and see what the rulings are and see what happens.” The 350-congregation, 46,000-member Pentecostal denomination has headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa.

Guilty pleas

In November, two of the five defendants in the case, Willard Thrash and Philip Black, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud. They are awaiting sentencing, according to the Justice Department. Black is a former deacon in the Casper, Wyoming, Open Bible church called Sonlight Ministries, according to its pastor, Paul Parker.

The other three, including former South Dakota Open Bible pastor E. LaVay McKinley, were charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud, and the laundering of the money collected from investors who invested funds in WFB, according to Richard Stacy, U.S. attorney for the District of Wyoming.

“Additionally, McKinley was charged with substantive counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering,” Stacy said. The defendants’ trial is set for March 1, either in Cheyenne or Casper, Wyoming.

If convicted, McKinley faces a maximum prison term of 20 years and a maximum fine of $500,000. The other two defendants, George Jim Conway and Steve Emery, could each face prison terms of five years and $250,000 in fines.

According to the indictment, McKinley and the others began the scheme in April 1990 when they incorporated World Fidelity Bank on the island of Grenada in the West Indies. But WFB was never authorized to conduct banking business either in Grenada or anywhere in the United States, according to the indictment.

Also, the bank had no offices in Grenada or anywhere else except possibly in one of two residences in Florida, according to the indictment.

McKinley and the others then contacted potential investors, often through church relationships.

They promised investors that between 35 percent and 80 percent of the money invested in the CDs would be invested in AA-rated or better corporate or major national bonds.

Also, McKinley and the others told investors that they could expect to earn a return on their investments at rates between 38 percent and 48 percent, the indictment states.

For example, Sonlight Ministries invested $50,000 in a two-year 8 percent CD with World Fidelity Bank in April 1991, according to a letter Parker wrote to the congregation last spring. “The [church’s] board entered into the CD on the basis of my twelve-year acquaintance with the director and the investment track record he has had with fellow pastors and our Open Bible International Missions Board.”

He wrote that the denomination’s National Missions Boards had invested an undisclosed amount with the bank. “The results have been very positive including giving our missions board the financial ability to hire a much needed administrative assistant.”

A Ponzi scheme?

The bank, the indictment states, “made virtually no real investments with money obtained from certificates of deposit holders and, in fact, used such money to make interest or principal repayments to other investors in typical ‘Ponzi’ scheme fashion, or to fund the personal living expenses of the defendants.”

The investigation of World Fidelity Bank began in December 1991 when Wyoming securities division officials received a letter from Debra Bollinger, director of the securities division in South Dakota. Bollinger told Wyoming officials that a Casper resident had been selling unregistered securities by WFB, and that such sales were prohibited in South Dakota.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission spokesperson John Heine said the alleged scheme is an “affinity fraud” in which one person gains the trust of others because they share the same religion, race, ethnicity, or other characteristic, and then deceives the others in some kind of transaction. “They have some sort of common tie. That’s the affinity.”

The trust that develops between the victims and the scam artists ensures that the fraud continues without anybody reporting it to authorities until it is too late to recover funds.

By Tom Morton in Casper, Wyoming.

RELIEF WORK

Feed the Children Questioned

The Christian relief organization Feed the Children may not be as efficient as it says it is, and it may be exaggerating the scope of its charitable work, says a story in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. But president and founder Larry Jones says his ministry is “not doing anything wrong.”

Among the claims made in the journal’s December 15 story: Feed the Children has failed to disclose to public and state regulators details of large amounts of donated commodities; many of its programs seem to have little religious content—though it is organized as a religious charity; and, while the ministry meets the standards of the Better Business Bureau and the Ethics and Financial Integrity Commission of the National Religious Broadcasters, it has failed to meet the standards of two other watchdog groups.

Jones defended his accounting procedure, saying it “meets the standards that the law and my auditors say are necessary.” And as for the religious content of his programming, he said, “You can hear a sermon on TV or radio any hour of the day. But how many people are addressing the problem of hungry and dying children?”

Will he begin to do anything differently? Jones said his ministry will very likely change the way it values relief commodities donated by other organizations.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Among the controversies that emerged when copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls were first made widely accessible in the fall of 1991 were questions over the documents’ authorship.

Robert Eisenman of California State University at Long Beach is one of the authors who challenges the prevailing view that the documents represent the views of a small Jewish sect, the Essenes.

The book in which he expounds that view, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, coauthored by Michael O. Wise of the University of Chicago, was the center of controversy at a December meeting of Dead Sea Scrolls scholars in New York City.

During the conference, critics of the book issued a statement that said the authors made inaccurate statements and failed to give other authors proper credit. But they later retracted their statement and “all that it implies.”

Wise said he was sorry “the documentation for certain portions of the book … was incomplete, and that [he] did not more fully express indebtedness to colleagues” whose work he consulted.

The critics’ unsigned retraction also reaffirmed “the authors’ right and that of all scholars to publish Qumran [the Dead Sea region where the scrolls were discovered] texts and to make properly acknowledged use of the work of others.” It concluded with a pledge to forge ahead in studies of Dead Sea Scrolls “in the spirit of collegial friendship.”

While the controversy raised at the conference seems to have been resolved, the debate over the documents’ authorship remains. Wise, an evangelical, told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that though he was coauthor, he did not agree with all of Eisenman’s conclusions. “I was responsible for transcription and translation—not analysis.”

According to Eisenman, the scrolls describe a messianic movement that in its later stages was virtually indistinguishable from the rise of Christianity.

The upshot of that view is that “the Gospels reflect a Gentile, Pauline version of Christianity rather than a Jewish Christianity based on the writings of James,” Wise explained. “I don’t think the scrolls are as closely related to early Christianity as he does.”

ETHICS

Religious Broadcasters to Join ECFA

As of this month, the Ethics and Financial Integrity Commission (EFICOM), the ethics arm of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), will “cease to exist,” according to a letter sent last month from NRB president David Clark to EFICOM members.

By terms of an agreement between the NRB and the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), all tax-exempt members of NRB with income and/or expenses in excess of $500,000 annually will be required to become members of ECFA. Smaller groups will be monitored by an expanded NRB ethics committee.

At press time, the proposed change was due to be incorporated into the revised NRB constitution and bylaws at the group’s annual convention being held this month.

NRB executive director E. Brandt Gustavson told CHRISTIANITY TODAY the move will allow NRB to do better “what it is called to do—to proclaim the gospel message and to improve the quality of religious broadcasting.”

NRB established EFICOM in January 1989 in an effort to police the financial and ethical practices of its tax-exempt organizations.

LEGISLATION

Church Exemption Upheld

Churches in New Jersey will be exempt from provisions of a state civil-rights law protecting hom*osexuals against discrimination, said the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. But that exemption may not apply if the church cannot prove its beliefs are “sincerely held,” said Thomas Neuberger, a Rutherford Institute lawyer.

The Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) had sought an injunction prohibiting the state from enforcing the law. While the court rejected that request, it said in its ruling that attorneys from the state’s Division of Civil Rights had agreed to an exemption for churches with sincerely held beliefs against hom*osexuality.

Tanya Domi, civil-rights project director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, says exemptions for churches are now being included in much antidiscrimination legislation.

But exemptions, when particularly worded, may not go far enough in protecting some churches, says Neuberger, one of the two attorneys representing the church. “We consider this a victory for churches like the OPC or the Catholic church,” he told CHRISTIANITY TODAY. “But what about smaller, more independent churches? The law should say it applies to no church.”

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Briefly Noted

Hoping to present news to both Christian and secular audiences in an objective, balanced way, Pat Robertson launched his own agency, Standard News, last month. In its startup phase, through an arrangement with Reuters, the agency’s crew of 15 reporters will rewrite Reuters’ international newspaper reports and transmit them to radio stations via computers. A reported 600 stations (about 6 percent of the market) have already signed on.

• Wheaton College has announced its new president. A. Duane Litfin, scholar, theologian, and churchman, will succeed J. Richard Chase, who has held the post since 1982 and will retire at the end of July. Litfin currently serves as senior pastor of the 1,400-member First Evangelical Church in Memphis, Tennessee.

• Gordon MacDonald, nationally known author and pastor, has accepted a call to return as senior pastor at Grace Chapel, Lexington, Massachusetts. He left the church in 1984 and later publicly admitted to an extramarital relationship, which was followed by a lengthy process of “discipline and restoration.” He has been senior pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Manhattan. MacDonald may be back in the Grace pulpit as early as March.

• Southern Baptist Theological Seminary officials are unhappy with what a seminary ethics professor, Paul Simmons, thinks about abortion and hom*osexuality. They voted against a settlement that would have paid Simmons up to $362,000 to leave his tenured post, but they may now draft heresy charges and initiate firing procedures.

• J. Robert Williams, an avowed hom*osexual ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1989 by Bishop John S. Spong, head of the Newark Diocese, died in Boston in December of an AIDS-related pulmonary infection. Williams, who wrote Just As I Am: A Practical Guide to Being Out, Proud and Christian, left the Episcopal Church to join the Western Orthodox Catholic Church in America, a small, independent denomination.