c. 2008 Religion News Service

New leader named for United House of Prayer for All People

(RNS) An Augusta, Ga., pastor has been chosen as the new bishop of the United House of Prayer for All People.

Apostle C.M. Bailey succeeds Bishop S.C. “Sweet Daddy” Madison, who served as bishop for 17 years, The Washington Post reported. Madison died April 5 at age 86.

Bailey, who served as the church’s senior minister, is the fourth leader of the 1.5 million-member church.

He received the majority of votes _ more than 500 of about 550 _ during the church’s General Assembly on Friday (May 23).

The church, which has 150 branches in 25 states, was founded by Charles M. Grace and has been based in Washington since the 1920s.

_ Adelle M. Banks

UpDATE: Calvin professor leaves, in part over membership rules

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (RNS) A Calvin College professor who was denied an exemption from school policy that requires faculty to belong to the Christian Reformed Church said she is leaving for a teaching position in California.

Calvin officials said a deal was in the works that would have allowed Denise Isom to stay at the university and maintain dual membership in her Baptist church and a CRC congregation.

“I think we made a reasonable proposal that would have worked for both of us,” Calvin President Gaylen Byker said. “I wish she had accepted that. If she makes another decision, that’s her right.”

After being denied an exemption last fall, Isom said she reviewed a draft of the proposal in January but had reservations. While she was considering it, she received and accepted an offer from California Polytechnic State University, she said.

She said she had misgivings about staying at Calvin, and the proposed agreement did not reassure her.

“I was very disappointed and in some ways alarmed by what was being suggested I do,” said Isom, an assistant professor who specialized in race and education. “There was an awful lot being asked of me.”

The agreement called for her to meet regularly with a CRC pastor about the Reformed tradition, and for a CRC pastor and her pastor at Messiah Missionary Baptist Church to report to Calvin on her progress, Isom said. She felt there would be “someone watching my presence (in church) and reporting on it,” she added.

“In many ways it reaffirmed in me the idea that it would be difficult to return to Calvin and simply be another faculty member,” Isom said.

Calvin Provost Claudia Beversluis said the meetings with a CRC liaison were meant to promote “mutual learning” and “a genuine relationship with both churches.” Talks between the pastors simply would have addressed how well the arrangement was working, she said.

_ Charles Honey

Pastor turns pulpit over to wife to focus on Atlanta church

NEW ORLEANS (RNS) Bishop Paul S. Morton, the leader of what’s probably the largest church in New Orleans, has turned over his pulpit to his wife so he can spend more time building a post-Katrina satellite branch in the Atlanta area.

After the change, Debra Morton, 53, will take lead responsibility for the care of Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church with the title of senior pastor. Paul Morton, 57, will assume her old title of co-pastor.

Paul Morton will devote most of his energy to building an offshoot of Greater St. Stephen he planted in Decatur, Ga., a few weeks after the storm.

The Georgia congregation now numbers about 6,000. It plans to relocate to 67 acres of land near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Paul Morton said.

Meanwhile, Greater St. Stephen in New Orleans now numbers about 5,000 people worshipping at two locations; a third location in eastern New Orleans was destroyed by Katrina.

Before the storm, Greater St. Stephen enrolled an estimated 20,000 people at three locations, making it the largest church in the city by a wide margin.

Since Katrina, the Mortons, married 31 years, has maintained residences in Atlanta and New Orleans.

For nearly three years the Mortons have regularly shuttled back and forth between cities, often on separate schedules, to keep preaching schedules in Atlanta and New Orleans. With their new duties they will be together about 31/2 days of each week, they said.

The transition does not involve a large cultural adjustment for church members in New Orleans. Debra Morton became co-pastor 15 years ago; for years she shared a full preaching schedule with Paul Morton at home and on the road and also ran some major church ministries.

“As a girl I never heard of a woman preacher, certainly not a woman co-pastor,” said Debra Morton, whose grandmother was one of St. Stephen’s founding members. “I never dreamed of it. Certainly never desired it.”

_ Bruce Nolan

Quote of the Day: Malika El Aroud of Brussels, Belgium

(RNS) “It’s not my role to set off bombs _ that’s ridiculous. I have a weapon. It’s to write. It’s to speak out. That’s my jihad. You can do many things with words. Writing is also a bomb.”

_ Malika El Aroud, who writes online under the name Oum Obedya, on her crusade as a self-described female holy warrior for al-Qaida. She was quoted by The New York Times.

KRE/PH END RNS