People
Episcopal News Service. May 24, 1990 [90142W]
Deaconess Marian Brown, who ministered to Native Americans in the Western United States for more than 25 years, died on May 11 of heart failure in Episcopal Church Home, Hockessin, Delaware. Miss Brown, 88, had been a social worker in Philadelphia for seven years before being named a deaconess in the church in 1939. Church officials have identified her as the last surviving member of the deaconess order, which has since been discontinued by the Episcopal Church. Miss Brown ministered to the Navajo and Arapahoe tribes prior to retiring in 1968.
Harry C. Griffith has given up the executive directorship of the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer to assume full-time leadership of the Bible Reading Fellowship (BRF), an organization he founded 19 years ago to provide Bible study for Episcopalians in the United States. "We'll no longer simply be trying to distribute our own Bible study materials, but we'll be encouraging and facilitating Bible study generally throughout the church," Griffith said recently in his Winter Park, Florida, office. The BRF's Advisory Board includes four diocesan bishops and a number of biblical scholars.
The Rev. Dr. Nathan D. Baxter has been appointed administrative dean and associate professor of pastoral theology at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His primary responsibilities will include the development and implementation of programs aimed at enhancing student life and staff well-being. Dr. Baxter, who will assume his new position on July 1, is currently dean of Lancaster Theological Seminary and associate professor of church and ministry, and also a member of the Union of Black Episcopalians.
Episcopal Life editor Jerry Hames has announced the addition of three persons to his editorial staff. The Rev. Jerry Fargo, 52, has joined the staff as art director; Daniel Cattau, 39, has been contracted as news editor; and Carol Seischab, 46, has been named administrative assistant. Fargo's experience includes several years as a graphic designer and layout artist with three weekly tabloids. Cattau, a freelance writer, was formerly news bureau director of the Lutheran Council in the USA. Seischab has worked at the Episcopal Church Center in New York for two years, most recently as administrative deputy to the Rev. David Perry, director of the education for mission and ministry unit.
The Rev. Vine Deloria, a retired archdeacon and missionary among the Sioux Indians in South Dakota, died recently at a nursing home in Tucson at the age of 88. Son of one of the first Sioux to be ordained into the Episcopal Church and grandson of a renowned religious leader of the traditional Dakota religion, Deloria was executive secretary for Indian work in the Episcopal Church, the first Native American to be appointed to such a position in any major Protestant church. Bishop Craig Anderson of South Dakota called him one of the contemporary saints of the church, "a visionary" who set the agenda for Native American ministry in the church.