c. 1999 Religion News Service
Campus Crusade adopts amended SBC statement on marriage
(RNS) Campus Crusade for Christ, a prominent evangelical ministry, has adopted as a statement of belief an amended version of the Southern Baptist Convention’s 1998 resolution that calls on wives to “submit … graciously” to their husbands.
More than 5,000 staff members learned of the new statement Wednesday (July 28) at their biannual meeting at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo.
Just as the SBC resolution did, the statement affirms marriage as”God’s unique gift,”says that husbands and wives are of”equal worth before God”and calls children a blessing”from the moment of conception.” It also repeats the SBC’s affirmation of the role of the husband as provider and leader of the family.”A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ,”the Campus Crusade statement reads.
Bill Bright, who co-founded the ministry with his wife of more than 50 years, Vonette, said the statement is an in-house document that he hopes will be noticed and adopted by others.”We have become increasingly convinced that all of us who believe should be more aggressive in expressing our concerns because the homes are disintegrating by the millions because they do not follow a biblical pattern,”Bright told Religion News Service.
Campus Crusade’s statement adds a new paragraph that reads:”In a marriage lived according to these truths, the love between husband and wife will show itself in listening to each other’s viewpoints, valuing each other’s gifts, wisdom, and desires, honoring one another in public and in private, and always seeking to bring benefit, not harm, to one another.” Bright said of the amended paragraph:”We feel that we needed … to explain that men are not to be dictators.” The adoption of the statement was announced by Dennis Rainey, executive director of the ministry’s FamilyLife division, who last year gathered signatures of dozens of evangelical Christian leaders who affirmed the SBC statement. Bill and Vonette Bright were among the signatories.”I think the Christian community is tired of divorce, broken families, and of weakness in our homes,”Rainey said.”I would predict that other denominations and other parachurch organizations will do something similar because marriage and families are so valuable to their missions.” Wayne Grudem, president of the Libertyville, Ill.-based Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, said of the new statement:”I’m delighted to see that they’ve taken such a clear biblical stand.” Mimi Haddad, executive director of the Minneapolis-based Christians for Biblical Equality, said she appreciated the paragraph that amends the SBC statement, but said her organization”would disagree with their biblical interpretation of passages with respect to relationships and marriage.”
Christian students sue Miami school over literature distribution
(RNS) Five Florida students filed suit against Miami-Dade Community College Wednesday (July 28) after school security stopped and threatened them with arrest for handing out religious literature.
The students were handing out business cards imprinted with a telephone number and the words,”The call you will never forget.”Callers hear a recorded message on God and salvation.
The students, ranging in age from 19 to 30, are all Christians who attend a nondenominational church. They charge that school authorities stopped them and asked them to leave on two different occasions.
The lawsuit charges that the school’s literature-distribution policy violates freedom of speech because it requires students to clear the documents with school officials, The Washington Times reported. The suit also contends that the policy violates the U.S. Constitution’s ban on excessive government entanglement with religion.
All of the students say they fear the incident will damage their academic record, said their attorney, Mathew D. Staver. The lawsuit demands the school drop its literature-distribution policy that grants school officials”unfettered discretion”to carry out”a licensing scheme on free speech.” One student is also seeking unspecified damages because the confrontation reportedly left him emotionally shaken.”Of all the places, a college campus is supposed to be a place where you can express a marketplace of ideas,”said Staver, who heads Liberty Counsel, a civil liberties and legal defense group based in Orlando, Fla.”Requiring speech to be preapproved essentially silences the speaker,”Staver said.”To be effective, speech must be spontaneous.” One college administrator said this is the first complaint she has received about the policy in her nine and a half years at the college.”The college has no desire to violate any rights of students, and we’re committed to fostering an academic atmosphere that encourages the free exchange of ideas,”said Carol Zeiner, Miami-Dade’s associate vice president for legal affairs.”These are rights we take very seriously.”
Several Lutheran leaders urge adoption of agreement with Episcopalians
(RNS) Five leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are among those calling for the adoption of a proposal for full communion with the Episcopal Church at an upcoming denominational meeting.
Statements supporting the move were sent to voting members of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, which meets Aug. 16-22 in Denver. Full communion would link the two denominations’ ministries and sacraments.
The proposed agreement,”Called to a Common Mission,”represents a reworking of an earlier attempt toward full communion. That effort failed in 1997 when it did not receive the two-thirds majority of votes needed for approval.
The recent backers of”Called to a Common Mission”include two church bishops and a Lutheran seminary president. Supporters said they hoped their statement would counter efforts made by groups opposed to full communion.”Many members of the ELCA have expressed concern that the positive rationale for favoring CCM has not been presented,”said the five leaders in a statement. They called for delegates to the assembly to adopt the proposal with a”strong majority”to help foster ecumenical relations.
Opponents of Lutheran-Episcopal full communion met earlier this year in Mahtomedi, Minn. Contending that the proposal is unnecessary and unbalanced, the opposing group developed a resolution criticizing the effort. Since then the group has distributed arguments against the proposal and encouraged others to sign the resolution.
The five leaders who came out in support of the upcoming proposal are the Rev. Dennis A. Anderson, the president of Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio; the Rev. E. Roy Riley Jr., the bishop of the church’s New Jersey Synod; the Rev. Steven L. Ullestad, bishop of the church’s Northeastern Iowa Synod; the Rev. Joseph M. Wagner, executive director of the church’s Division for Ministry in Chicago; and the Rev. Richard L. Jeske, pastor of Immanuel Lutheran Church in San Jose, Calif.
Former priest and author Malachi Martin dead at 78
(RNS) Former Jesuit priest and Vatican scholar Malachi Brendan Martin, who went on to write best-selling thrillers about the Roman Catholic Church, died Thursday (July 29) in a Manhattan hospital. He was 78.
The Irish-born author and close associate of Pope John XXIII died of a head injury caused by a fall, a companion told The New York Times.
As a clergyman, Martin witnessed firsthand the turbulent era of the Second Vatican Council. But Martin, an unwavering traditionalist, became disillusioned by the church’s push toward more liberal policies during the early 1960s.
Martin moved to New York in 1965, after asking to be released from his vows. He briefly worked there as a cab driver and a dishwasher before settling full-time on writing.
Once described as a”lapsed Irish Catholic half in love and half in hate with God,”Martin’s books ranged from sacred to suspense. In 1970, Martin wrote”The Encounter,”a study of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Six years later, he published the best-selling”Hostage to the Devil.”Written in lurid detail, that book was billed as the true-life account of possessions and exorcisms of five people.
Quote of the day: Author Ronald Rolheiser
(RNS)”Spirituality is not something on the fringes, an option for those with a particular bent. None of us has a choice. Everyone has to have a spirituality and everyone does have one, either a life-giving one or a destructive one.” _ Author Ronald Rolheiser, writing in his new book,”The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality”(Doubleday).
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