DATE: Saturday, August 16, 1997             TAG: 9708150107

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

                                            LENGTH:   68 lines

RELIGION NEWS AND NOTES

Baptist ministers

name new officers

The Tidewater Metro Baptist Ministers' Conference will install its new officers, including president-elect the Rev. L.P. Watson, on Sunday.

Several area mayors and other dignitaries are expected to attend the ceremony. The program will begin at 6 p.m. in Mount Zion Baptist Church, 900 Middlesex Street, Norfolk.

Reception to honor

Norfolk missionary

The Norfolk Baptist Association is holding a reception Aug. 31 to honor Anna Keelin, a home missionary in Norfolk for 31 years.

Keelin, 64, is retiring as director of weekday activities and ministries in East Ocean View. In that time, she has distributed food and clothing to the needy, run Bible study programs, and organized several clubs for young people, among many other services.

East Ocean View Baptist Church, 9609 9th Bay St., will host the reception, starting at 12:30 p.m. Several other churches also have held receptions honoring Keelin.

Netanyahu overrules

Orthodox adviser

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took over the powers of his religious affairs adviser last week to appoint a Reform Jew to a local religious council, previously an exclusively Orthodox body.

Netanyahu appointed Joyce Brenner to a religious council in the city of Netanya after his religious affairs minister, Eli Suissa of the Orthodox Shas party, refused to do so.

Local councils provide religious services to residents of a locality. In the past, all councils have been made up solely of Orthodox Jews, the most theologically stringent of Judaism's main denominations and movements.

The Reform and Conservative movements, which make up the majority of Jews outside Israel but are a minority within the Jewish state, have been in a long legal struggle to break the Orthodox religious monopoly in Israel.

The Reform movement had filed suit to force the Brenner appointment and last week the Israeli high court ruled that authorities had to give Brenner a seat on the council.

``Prime Minister Netanyahu appointed himself religious affairs minister and published a notice in the official gazette about Dr. Brenner's appointment to the Netanya religious council in line with the high court ruling,'' the prime minister's office said in a statement.

One Orthodox lawmaker said he was considering resigning over the issue.

``It's not even necessary to explain the damage this will cause to the whole issue of Judaism and the Jewish state,'' said Moshe Gafni of the Torah Judaism party.

William and Mary

professor writes book

Thomas M. Finn, a professor of religion at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, argues in a new study that religious conversion in ancient times was far more complex than it is today.

In ``From Death to Rebirth,'' Finn says that conversions were ``a long, complex, and ritual-based process that might extend for months, even years. .

Until the last few centuries, conversion required a long process of study and initiation, Finn said. The Reformation, begun by Martin Luther in the 16th century, introduced a new emphasis on the personal aspects of religion, and that has helped lead to the brief, intense experience of conversion frequently described today.

Finn's book was published by Paulist Press in New Jersey.

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