Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 30, 1994 TAG: 9405020136
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: from staff and wire reports
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A national conference on hunger - touted as a way to show that the Southern Baptist Convention's conservative leadership is concerned about that issue - has been postponed for lack of interest.
Though the organizers mailed out more than 100,000 brochures on the event and it was publicized in Baptist Press and other denominational materials, only about a dozen people were registered this week for the May 13 conference. It was to have been held in North Carolina.
Louis Moore, director of media for the Christian Life Commission, said the event was not targeted specifically to conservatives and that he was puzzled by the lack of response.
John Cheyne, who recently retired as the the human-needs coordinator for the Foreign Mission Board, said he believes the denomination's track record on hunger is as commendable as any denomination's but that there is a focus now on "problems within the convention."
Baptist 'damage control'
Several big names in the Southern Baptist Convention's conservative leadership met in Atlanta on April 21 to discuss "damage control" in the wake of the firing of the popular president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary last month, according to Associated Baptist Press.
The meeting included at least four former presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention: Adrian Rogers, Charles Stanley, Bailey Smith and Jerry Vines. It also included the two men generally credited with initiating the conservative rise to power in the denomination: Texan Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson, now president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina.
The men reportedly discussed the late candidacy of Florida pastor Jim Henry to challenge Alabama preacher Fred Wolfe, who has the backing of the high-profile conservative leadership. Henry is considered as theologically conservative as Wolfe, but was described as representative of "a growing sentiment among less strident conservatives that the movement's leaders have held the reins too tightly and at times operated too heavy-handedly."
Homecoming Sunday
Homecoming will be held Sunday at White Memorial United Methodist Church, Shawsville.
Speaker will be the Rev. Carl Haley, son of the church's first pastor, the Rev. James H. Haley. The homecoming service commemorates the congregation's 90th anniversary.
Haley, 81, is a former pastor at Belmont United Methodist Church in Roanoke and former superintendent of the Portsmouth District of the denomination. He will speak at the 11 a.m. service. That will be followed by a potluck luncheon and special music.
Against persecution
Congress recently passed another resolution condemning Iranian persecution of Baha'is in that country.
The resolution blasts the the policy of "genocide by attrition" and the trampling of Baha'is human rights.
Baha'i leaders credit the passage of such resolutions with tempering the actions of Iranian authorities, and report only one Iranian Baha'i execution since 1988. During the first half of the 1980s, more than 100 Baha'is were executed there and thousands of others imprisoned because of their religious beliefs.
Help for Sudan
Members of Churches of the Brethren and Episcopalians have responded ``in overwhelming numbers'' in a mission project to help people in the war-torn African country of the Sudan. Jeannette Patterson, a staff member of the Virlina District office of the Brethren, said no count has been kept of kits donated by members of churches in the district and in the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, ``but they fill up most of a room here.'' A rough guess, said Patterson, would be several thousand.
The kits contain a carton of iodized salt and four bars of toilet soap wrapped and tied in a bath towel. When the project was promoted during Lent, it was noted that even the string tying the bundle is useful to impoverished people, that the salt provides needed nutrients, the towel has several uses and the soap promotes personal hygiene.
Patterson said response to the project has been so good that the drive has been extended from today to June 15. Kits may be brought to the Virlina District office at 330 Hershberger Road N.W. A shipment is being made in May by the ecumenical relief agency, Church World Service, in New Windsor, Md., and another will follow in the summer following the Church of the Brethren's annual convention in early July.
The Brethren publicized the needs when a former missionary wrote of the Sudanese in a national church magazine. The Episcopalians, who have a companion relationship with the Southern Sudan, voted at their annual diocesan meeting in January to join the Brethren in sending the kits.
Meanwhile, many Southern Baptist congregations have for the second year sent packets of vegetable seeds to Croatia and the African countries of Mozambique and Angola. The Rev. Kirk Lashley, coordinator for churches in the Roanoke Valley Association, said 70,000 packets of seeds were sent to the Balkan country last year, the first of the project. No count is available for this season and may not be even later since experience last year showed that small packages mailed by individuals or congregations reached the needy with less cost, Lashley said.
by CNB