World Church-In Brief
Diocesan Press Service. May 5, 1967 [54-3]
The Uganda Joint Christian Council, which includes the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches of Uganda, was formed three years ago. Since then it has aimed at strengthening cooperative work in such areas as education, social welfare, and communications. Its education committee, for example, enables both communions to talk with one voice to government officials on matters of educational policy. (from NEW DAY, Uganda, Jan. 19, 1967)
A common baptismal rite has been urged by Dr. Fredrik A. Schiotz, president of the American Lutheran Church and of the Lutheran World Federation.
Urban America, Inc. has announced the election of James W. Rouse, Baltimore mortgage banker, developer and national leader in urban affairs, as president. Mr. Rouse fills the vacancy created by the death of Stephen R. Currier, the organization's founder and first president, who, with his wife, was lost on a flight over the Caribbean in January. Mr. Rouse serves as an Elder in the Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church.
A joint Protestant-Roman Catholic grain shipment of approximately 20, 000 tons of wheat and sorghum to help relieve famine in India left Baltimore aboard the SS. Naess Dragon, April 18. This is the third shipment sponsored by Church World Service, Catholic Relief Services and Lutheran World Relief during the current emergency. Episcopalians support Church World Service through contributions to the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief.
Canon Fine Tengaila Halapua has been appointed Assistant Bishop in Polynesia and Bishop Suffragan of Nuku'alofa.
The Rt. Rev. John Sadiq, Bishop of Nagpur, India, has been reappointed regional officer for the Church of India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon. He will serve until the Lambeth Conference in the summer of 1968.
Vietnam Christian Service now has 64 western staff, including a Swiss, Canadians and Americans, and 40 Vietnamese. They serve in one of 11 projects or are used in welfare programs of the government or other Christian agencies, working in prisoner-of-war camps, hospitals, child care centers, literacy classes, refugee camps and villages, and vocational schools and demonstration farms.
The Rt. Rev. Mokoto Goto, Bishop of Tokyo, Nippon Seikokai, was recently elected vice-chairman of the National Christian Council of Japan.
Independent African Churches Have Much To Tell Anglicans: "So far I have counted 4,684 independent church bodies in Africa at present, growing in membership at a rate of about half a million a year. One-tenth of this African membership is found in Kenya. The reason these bodies find it relatively easy to cooperate and form councils and federations is partly that they have far less rigid traditions than the older churches have, and partly that they have a far stronger missionary urge which ellipses the tendency to ecclesiastical quarreling over trivialia. (From "Reunion and the Sects", by the Rev. David B. Barrett, The Anglican Herald, Nairobi, Jan. 1967.
The Rev. Bernard Haring, C. SS. R., Professor of moral theology and pastoral sociology at the Academia Alfonsiana, Rome, has been appointed Harry Emerson Fosdick Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York City for the 1967-68 fall semester.