News Brief
Episcopal News Service. August 9, 1979 [29254]
Robert D. Jordan, head of the promotion (now communication) office at the national headquarters of the Episcopal Church from 1944 to 1954, died here recently in Mount Auburn Hospital at the age of 77. He later directed for 11 years the Episcopal Church Foundation, an independent national organization which supports through loans and grants a variety of church projects. Before going into church work he had been an executive with rubber and oil companies. A native of Palestine, Tex., Mr. Jordan was an alumnus of Shattuck School in Faribault, Minn., where he later taught French and Latin. He also attended the University of Virginia. He is survived by his wife, Frances, a daughter, Mary Cox of Cambridge, and a granddaughter.
The Rev. Robert Greene, director of the Episcopal Church's Resource Center for Small Churches, Luling, Tex., is one of the speakers at the 34th annual Town and Country Church Conference here, Oct. 4-5. The conference theme is, "New Towns in Old Communities: The Conversion of Rural Texas." Father Greene's topic will be, "Conflicts Between 'New' and 'Old' Community Members. " Among the subjects for discussion is: "Impacts of the Gasoline Shortage on Rural Areas." Information may be obtained from David C. Ruesink, Agriculture Bldg., Texas A & M University, College Station, Tex. 77843.
Following the execution of John Spenkelink in Florida on May 25, the Episcopal Peace Fellowship plans to ask the Episcopal Church's General Convention -- which meets in Denver Sept. 8-20 -- to renew its opposition to the death penalty. More than 500 men and women have been sentenced to death and are waiting for executions in death rows across the country, according to the Peace Fellowship's national coordinator, Andrew Lang. Spenkelink's chaplain, the Rev. Thomas Feamster of Paris, Tenn., an Episcopalian, has been a member of the Fellowship's executive committee.
The Rev. Sherrill Scales, Jr., executive vice president of the Episcopal Church Building Fund, with an office at the Episcopal Church Center, has been elected president of the National Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture. The purpose of this organization is to preserve historical appreciation and to achieve excellence in new design of art and architecture. The national membership is composed of architects, artists, craftsmen, clergy and those interested in the arts.
A Church of England rector in northwest England who has already once defied the Church's law by inviting a woman priest of the Episcopal Church to officiate in his church, has now announced his defiance of the General Synod's recent rejection of a proposal to allow women priests from overseas to officiate in England. The Rev. Alfred Willetts of the Church of the Apostles in Manchester and his late wife, Deaconess Phoebe, caused a church storm in 1977 by inviting the Rev. Alison Palmer of Washington, D. C., to celebrate the Eucharist at a parish altar in England. He has now asked other Church of England clergy to affirm an offer of hospitality in their parish churches to "any woman priest ordained in any province of the Anglican Communion to exercise her priesthood in partnership in Christ." He said he is "prepared to take the consequences" for any possible defiance of canon law.
The question of the recognition of the validity of Anglican orders by the Roman Catholic Church should not be affected by the ordination of women, said the theologians who are members of the Anglican/Roman Catholic International Commission. They recognize, however, that ordination of women in the U. S. Episcopal Church and other branches of the Anglican Communion has created "a new and grave obstacle to the reconciliation" between Anglicans and Roman Catholics, but, they added," objections, however substantial, to the ordination of women are of a different kind from objections raised in the past against the validity of Anglican Orders in general." The commission, established in 1971, has petitioned the Holy See to "reappraise" non-recognition by the Roman Catholic Church of Anglican priestly orders.