World Church-In Brief
Diocesan Press Service. April 3, 1967 [53-5]
Church World Service has initiated a new program of guaranteed loans for small businessmen and farmers overseas. The new project was launched on the island of Rhodes where bank interest rates had gone up to as much as 27 per cent. CWS did not itself loan the money but agreed to guarantee approved loans, provided the interest rate would not be more than 7 ½ per cent. Some $29, 000 in loans have been approved, with a resulting improvement in the local economic situation, and in the community.
Laymen Overseas, Inc. has announced the appointment of William C. Mathers, Jr., of Annandale, Va., as executive director of the ecumenically sponsored organization. Mr. Mathers, a former official of the Department of State, will head a program designed to prepare Christian laymen who will be living and working in a foreign culture to understand and appreciate that culture and to realize the relevance of Christianity within their situation. Among organizations sponsoring this program are the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church, the Episcopal Dioceses of Washington and Virginia, and the Overseas Mission Society.
The Council of the Church of South East Asia has re-appointed the Rev. James Pong of the Diocese of Hong Kong as Regional Officer for South East Asia, extending his term until the summer of 1968.
Two interfaith summer training programs in pastoral counseling will be offered this year to parish clergy and seminary students by the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry. The program for parish clergy will be an intensive month's course; the program for seminarians will be a 10-week course with emphasis on practical experience in hospital work.
The Sewannee Summer Fine Arts Center will offer courses from June 18 - July 23 in commercial art layout, photography, sculpture, drawing and painting, art theory and print making. For further details, and registration forms one can write the Director, Sewanee Summer Fine Arts Center, Sewanee, Tenn. 37375.
The Central Committee of the World Council of Churches will hold its annual meeting from Aug. 15 - 26 on the Greek island of Crete. The theme of the meeting will be evangelism. Equally high on the agenda priorities will be planning for the WCC's Fourth Assembly at Uppsala, Sweden in July, 1968.
The Very Rev. Robert F. Royster, Dean of the Cathedral of St. James, South Bend, Ind. , was chosen as the nation's outstanding volunteer community leader by the United Community Funds and Councils of America, Inc. Dean Royster received the Newton D. Baker II Award for his efforts to re-employ some 4,000 persons over 50 year of age left jobless when South Bend's Studebaker plant suddenly closed late in 1963.
An Association for Christian Mission, which would unify the work of all communions and agencies active in urban mission in New York City has been proposed by a 70- member interfaith committee, chaired by the Rt. Rev. J. Stuart Wetmore, Suffragan Bishop of New York. Such an organization would be organized into an upper house of agencies and communions responsible for planning and a lower house of church community associations in charge of identifying needs and taking action at the local level.
An urban summer program in Rochester, N. Y. , sponsored by the Boards of Urban and Campus Ministries of the Rochester Council of Churches will invite participation of Roman Catholic students this year. Volunteers work at full-time jobs they secure themselves and participate together in study programs. These jobs are in inner-city church programs, social agencies, businesses and industries.
Three Canadian communions are cooperating for the first time in the production of a radio series "Thirteen For '67", a series of in-depth conversations with 13 prominent Canadians. Sponsored by the Anglican, Roman Catholic and United Churches in connection with the Canadian centennial celebration, the series will seek the opinion of 13 people engaged in a wide variety of fields on the successes, concerns and problem areas of Canada today.
The Rev. John W. Turnbull, formerly professor of Christian ethics at Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, Austin, Tex., has been named associate director of the National Council of Churches' Washington (D. C.) Office. He will edit MEMO, a bi-monthly digest of legislative developments in Congress and share in the educational and informational work of the office.
Urban America, Inc. has announced the establishment of a Nonprofit Housing Center and the addition of four housing experts to its staff. The Center, which will replace Urban America's Local Development Services division, will aid religious organizations, labor unions, fraternal groups and other nonprofit sponsors of low- and moderate- income housing through the complexities of government assistance programs and will help local civic leaders form development funds to give initial impetus of housing construction.
Ghanaians, attending an open air service in Accra Stadium marking the first anniversary of the downfall of President Kwame Nkrumah, heard the Rt. Rev. Richard Roseveare, Anglican Bishop of Accra. Commenting during his sermon on the rise in religious observance since the coup, Bishop Roseveare cautioned against over- emphasizing numbers. He attributed such rise to "natural reaction against the public neglect of God for so many years." Mr. Nkrumah had sought to isolate, and then control church leadership. In 1962, for example, he expelled Bishop Roseveare and denied his reentry for more than three months. So great was Mr. Nkrumah's control that press and radio did not carry any of the protests raised by the United Church Council or the Roman Catholic diocese, nor did they report the Bishop's return.
The Canadian Bible Society will open an exhibit in conjunction with Canada's centennial and Expo '67 on the grounds of Christ Church Cathedral (Anglican) in the heart of downtown Montreal. Included in the exhibit, scheduled for May 15 - Sept. 15, will be rare manuscripts, historical relics, and motion picture clips of the complex problems of language interpretation and expression.
From the Rt. Rev. E. F. Easson, Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney, has come the proposal that the Episcopal Church in Scotland appoint "worker-priests" to serve in sparsely populated regions. These priests would earn their living in ordinary secular work and serve pastorally in their leisure time. As an alternative, Bishop Easson, proposed establishing a group of itinerant priests, or ordaining leading laymen to the diaconate with authority to administer the reserved sacrament, take services and perform baptisms.
The Rt. Rev. Nathaniel Mo Yung, it was only recently learned in this country, died on May 31, 1966 in Canton, China. Consecrated in 1950, Bishop Mo-Yung was in charge of the Diocese of South China. He is survived by a wife, daughter and son, all living in China, a daughter in New Zealand and a daughter in Oakland, Calif.