c. 1999 Religion News Service
Eds: Deliriou5? is cq in graph listing Group of the Year nominations.
dc Talk’s Toby McKeehan receives 11 Dove Awards nominations
(RNS) Toby McKeehan, a member of the popular Christian rock group dc Talk, has received the most nominations _ 11 _ for the Gospel Music Association’s Dove Awards.
McKeehan’s group was the headlining concert act during a youth rally featuring Pope John Paul II on Tuesday (Jan. 26). The nominations, announced Wednesday in Nashville, featured seven for his group and four additional ones for McKeehan, including Songwriter and Producer of the Year.
The 30th annual presentation of the Dove Awards will be held on March 24 at the Nashville Arena in Tennessee.
Close behind in the nominations was Michael W. Smith, who received 10 nominations in categories including Artist, Songwriter, Male Vocalist and Producer of the Year. His”Live the Life”album is cited in the Pop/Contemporary Album of the Year category.
Bill Gaither, a well-known influence on Southern gospel and inspirational music, and Fred Hammond, a pioneer of urban praise and worship, each received eight nominations. Most of Gaither’s nominations related to his roles as songwriter and producer, but three of them were for his work as a member of the Gaither Vocal Band. Hammond’s nominations in the contemporary gospel music categories recognize his work as an artist and songwriter.
Relative newcomers to the field also stacked up a number of nominations. Avalon, a Christian pop group that won New Artist of the Year in 1998, has six nominations. First-time nominee Jennifer Knapp, a Christian rock performer, also earned six nominations.
Nominations include:
Artist of the Year: Avalon, dc Talk, Point of Grace, Michael W. Smith, Jaci Velasquez.
Female Vocalist of the Year: Jennifer Knapp, Crystal Lewis, Rebecca St. James, Kathy Troccoli, Jaci Velasquez.
Male Vocalist of the Year: Bob Carlisle, Steven Curtis Chapman, Jonathan Pierce, Chris Rice, Michael W. Smith.
Group of the Year: Avalon, dc Talk, Deliriou5?, Newsboys, Point of Grace.
New Artist of the Year: All Star United, Burlap to Cashmere, Jennifer Knapp, Nichole Nordeman, Michelle Tumes.
Song of the Year:”Adonai,””Deeper,””Entertaining Angels,””God So Loved,””I Believe in Christ,””Live the Life,””Mercy Said No,””My Deliverer,””Testify to Love,””Undo Me,””We Fall Down.” Songwriter of the Year: Joel Lindsey, Toby McKeehan, Cindy Morgan, Rich Mullins, Michael W. Smith.
Riots in Indonesia destroy one of Southeast Asia’s oldest churches
(RNS) Villagers and police in Indonesia said Thursday (Jan. 28) that rioters burned down one of Southeast Asia’s oldest churches last week in the latest incident in a recent wave of violent clashes between Muslims and Christians.
Constructed in 1780 by Roman Catholic Portuguese colonizers, the Gereja Tua _ or Old Church _ was located on Ambon Island, in the province of Maluku, 1,400 miles northeast of Jakarta.
A Catholic priest was among at least eight people who were killed in the religious riot which erupted in the twin villages of Hila-Kaitetu on Jan. 21.
The village is home to about 3,000 Muslims, some of whom reported that all 500 of their Protestant and Catholic neighbors had fled in fear, Associated Press reported.
Ambon was the hardest hit in the week-long violence which also erupted in four nearby islands _ once known as the Spice Islands _ in the Maluku province. Police and military officials said that 56 people were killed, but some groups believe the death toll is closer to double that number. Total destruction included seven mosques, nine churches and 570 buildings.
Authorities said that at the height of the riots, about 20,000 people found refuge in military bases, police barracks, churches and mosques.
Violence slowed over the weekend and many people returned home. Food and transportation remains difficult.
Last week’s unrest was the worst since former President Suharto was forced out of office by riots and protests after 32 years of rule. Since then, riots and violent demonstrations have crippled Indonesia, already struggling economically since Suharto’s resignation.
Riots broke out in areas with large Christian populations. Indonesia’s population is 90 percent Muslim, giving it the distinction of being the world’s most populous Islamic country.
Lutheran pastor missing for three days shows up
(RNS) A Lutheran pastor who vanished from his family and congregation Sunday (Jan. 24) was found unharmed and far from home Wednesday, after police in San Diego said he spent three nights sleeping under bushes in a snow-covered forest.
Rev. Ronald Dybvig, 55, an ordained minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and founding pastor of the 10-year-old Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Santa Paula north of Los Angeles, showed up Wednesday _ 200 miles south at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, 35 miles east of San Diego. San Diego County sheriff’s deputies told reporters the veteran 30-year pastor said he disappeared because”he wanted to go out and get his head straight. He wasn’t quite sure where he was going or what his intentions really were.” Dybvig showed up the morning after some 50 people from his 100-member church held a Tuesday prayer vigil for him.”Our key words for this day are simply, `thanks Lord, for bringing him back and that he’s alive,'”said Rev. Rick Swanson, a fellow Lutheran pastor in Santa Paula.
Family members last saw Dybvig Sunday, leaving home to conduct the service, but he never showed up at church. Police said he left his glasses and wallet at his Ventura, Calif., home. Dybvig then apparently drove south to the state park. He hiked into the forest and got so cold he slept under bushes for three days.
Police said they found the car late Tuesday, when blizzard conditions canceled their search. On Wednesday, after hiking for two hours, Dybvig walked into an elementary school near the forest. He was later treated at a local hospital for some hypothermia-like conditions, but overall was unharmed.
Leon C. Roberts, Catholic composer and musician, dies
(RNS) Leon C. Roberts, a composer and musician who helped integrate African-American gospel music into Roman Catholic liturgy, died Jan. 22. He was 48.
Roberts had stomach cancer and died at a hospital in Washington, D.C.
He was an initiator and contributor to”Lead Me, Guide Me,”an African-American Catholic hymnal, The Washington Post reported. He also was the founder of”Rejoice!,”a conference on black Catholic liturgy.
Early in his career, Roberts performed in Baptist churches. He became a Roman Catholic in 1977 and directed liturgical music at St. Augustine Catholic Church, a prominent African-American parish in Washington, from 1977 to 1994. At the time of his death, he was music director of the Union Theological Seminary Gospel Choir in Manhattan and artist-in-residence at Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn.
The Coatesville, Pa., native directed the St. Augustine Combined Choir at a special audience with Pope John Paul II. He also received the Black History Month Award from Cardinal John O’Connor of New York in 1998 for his contributions to Catholic liturgy.
New Testament scholar Oscar Cullmann dead at 96
(RNS) Oscar Cullmann _ New Testament scholar, Protestant theologian and one of the century’s ecumenical pioneers _ died Jan. 16 in Chamonix, France. He was 96.”Cullman leaves an impressive body of theological work: studies on the New Testament, on early church history and, running like a red thread through all of this, his many writings on ecumenical subjects,”said Lukas Vischer, a former director of the World Council of Churches’ unit on Faith and Order and a longtime friend of Cullmann’s.
Born in 1902 in Strasbourg, France, the Lutheran Cullmann was educated in Strasbourg and Paris before becoming a professor at the University of Basle, a bastion of Reformed thought, where he taught from 1938 to 1972.
He is perhaps best known for his book”Peter _ Disciple, Apostle, Martyr”(1952),”which many considered a pathbreaking and sensitive discussion of the role of Peter, the fountainhead of the Roman papacy in the church and a source of division among the Christian confessions.
At a time when high level Protestant-Catholic contacts were minimal, Cullmann was received by three popes _ Pius XII, John XXIII and Paul VI.
Indeed, Vischer recalled that Cullmann’s friend and colleague Karl Barth used to say teasingly,”Oscar, on your gravestone it will say `Here lies the adviser to three popes.'”Cullmann was personally invited by the Vatican to be an observer to the Second Vatican Council.
His conversations with Paul VI gave rise to the establishment Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem, an international, intercultural institute for Christian scholars and teachers.
In 1986 he published his major ecumenical work,”Unity through Diversity,”which has helped shape much of the current ecumenical effort to establish a church unity structured enough to allow for common witness while leaving plenty of room for diversity.”Those of us who came from an environment different from his were also challenged by him,”said the Rev. Ishmael Noko, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation.”The ripples he produced reached the shores of many continents, including my own, Africa.”
Quote of the Day: Michael R. Stick, an Oklahoma Baptist pastor
(RNS)”We can hope that Mrs. O’Hair read this little Bible, but we’ll never know this side of eternity the full effect of their evangelistic effort.” _ Michael R. Stick, pastor of Winnetka Heights Baptist Church in Tulsa, Okla., quoted about the recently-auctioned Bible sent to atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair in 1968 by a Sunday school class of 12-year-olds from his Southern Baptist church. The comment appeared in the Jan. 27 report of Baptist Press, the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.
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