News Briefs
Episcopal News Service. July 29, 1976 [76251]
The Diocesan Advance Fund of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire has given $10,000 to the Cuttington College Crossroads Fund. The gift was presented at the diocesan convention to the Rev. Canon Emmanuel Johnson, president of the Episcopal-related Liberian College. The fund drive for the college -- which is the only four-year liberal arts college in the west Sub Sahara region of Africa -- has the support of the Executive Council and has been the focus of a number of drives around the U.S. Church.
Three chapels of historic Trinity Parish have become independent parishes in services on Trinity Sunday, culminating a reorganization that began six years ago. The three new Episcopal parishes -- St. Augustine's, St. Luke's, and Intercession -- all chose the new course by majority vote of their congregations. The votes marked the first time that parishioners of a chapel of Trinity Parish have had a say in their future. Such actions are usually taken by the vote of the mother church's vestry. Earlier in the year, three other New York Episcopal parishes -- Calvary, Holy Communion, and St. George's -- voted to merge, sharing administrative services and ministers while retaining some separate worship schedules.
Miss Lucy J. Graves, a retired overseas missionary of the Episcopal Church, died in early June at her home in Fair Haven, Vt. Miss Graves served in China from 1908 to 1940 and later taught at church-related schools in New York and South Dakota.
The Rev. Almus M. Thorp, currently director of the Board for Theological Education for the Episcopal Church, has been named interim dean of Bexley Hall, which is the Episcopal member of an ecumenical cluster of seminaries here. He will serve in this capacity until May 1977, replacing the Very Rev. Hays Rockwell who has accepted the call to be rector of St. James' Episcopal Church in New York City. Dr. Thorp had served as dean of the school from 1959 to 1969, a period which saw the school move from Gambler, Ohio, to Rochester and into affiliation with Colgate Rochester Divinity School. That move eventually led to the cluster that now includes those schools and Crozer Theological Seminary.
Bicentennial greetings continue to come to the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. The latest, from the Bishop of the Lusitanian Church, assures the Rt. Rev. John M. Allin that the Episcopal Church will be remembered in the prayers of the Lusitanian Church as Episcopal Church people grapple with the issues before their September General Convention. In offering this assurance, Bishop Luis C.R. Pereira told the Presiding Bishop: "This is something the Lusitanian Church can do in response to the generous fellowship you have extended to us during so many years."
The first diocesan council meeting of the recently created united Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem was held here in late July. The meeting was chaired by Bishop Faiq Ibrahim Haddad, the first bishop of the new jurisdiction which includes Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Some 60 persons -- ordained and lay, men and women -- from all four countries gathered for the three-day session which was called to consider matters of administrative and financial concern in the new organization.
A grant from the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief has helped an Episcopal diocese in the Pacific northwest make a hunger response program a reality. The $20,000 from the Fund helped the Diocese of Olympia expand a volunteer program which takes food donated by local packers and growers, and repacks and distributes it to those in need in the Seattle area. The grant has also stimulated other churches in the Seattle area to join in financing the $33,000 ecumenical effort.
Delegates to the biennial convention of the 3. 1 million-member Lutheran Church in America voted to support a resolution calling for "unconditional amnesty" for "all persons who by action in the exercise of their conscience are in legal jeopardy because of their nonviolent resistance to the Southeast Asia war. " They also endorsed busing as "a means to equal access to quality education when that end cannot be better achieved otherwise. "
The General Synod of the Church of England has decided overwhelmingly to accept proposals offered by Prime Minister Callaghan which will give the Church a greater voice in the appointment of its bishops. At present bishops are nominated by Queen Elizabeth on the recommendation of the Prime Minister after consultation with his appointments secretary and the Archbishop of Canterbury's counterpart. Mr. Callaghan has proposed that the Church send the Prime Minister two names, in order of preference, for each episcopal vacancy so that the Prime Minister can accept either or ask for another nominee. The Proposal was approved by a vote of 390 to 29. YORK, Eng. -- The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Donald Coggan, told the summer session of the Church of England's General Synod that the next big issue in the controversy over women's ordination to the priesthood and episcopacy will be the "relationship" between member churches of the worldwide Anglican Communion which have approved ordination of women and those which have not. Dr. Coggan said the ordination of women issue will be discussed shortly by the Commission for Anglican-Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Discussions in Moscow, and in the Church of England-Old Catholic conference at Chichester, England, next April.