Church Group Seeks to Prevent Problem Drinking
Diocesan Press Service. December 21, 1973 [73281]
BOSTON, Mass. -- "Problem Drinking -- Strategies for Church Action" will be the theme of the 20th annual consultation of the North Conway Institute (NCI) to be held in June, 1974, in New Hampshire. The Boston-based 22-year-old Institute is the only ecumenical, interfaith association in the nation which is dedicated solely to helping the churches and synagogues of America fulfill their responsibility for education and ministry in the field of alcohol and drug problems.
For the past five years NCI's annual June conferences have focused on the church's role in helping persons avoid problems related to the misuse of alcohol and other drugs.
Morris E. Chafer, M.D., director of the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, in Washington, D.C., has been invited to deliver the keynote address and to set the stage for the consultation's intensive study and strategy planning sessions on how to get the religious community more involved in helping to solve America's number one drug problem. NCI believes strongly that the church has some of the real "keys" to the prevention of problem drinking, but that it needs help in identifying those keys and in learning how to use them more effectively.
Invited to the consultation will be top leaders, both clergy and lay persons, from the major denominations: executives, bishops, seminary and college faculty, and administrators, church educators, campus ministers, et al.
Other leaders for the June 19 - 21, 1974, consultation will include: NC's Executive Vice President, the Rev. David A. Works, Boston; Dr. Bruce H. Johnson, sociologist from the University of Illinois ; Professor Robert B. Russell, health educator of Southern Illinois University; the Rev. Thomas E. Price, Ph. D., chairman of the National Council of Churches Task Force on Alcohol and Drug Problems; and the Rev. David C. Hancock, D.D., director of Lynnville Treatment Center, Jordan, Minn.