c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Following is a collection of news stories compiled from RNS staff, wire and denominational reports).

Evangelist: Church should provide certainties, not speculation

(RNS)-Liberalism has failed to meet the needs of modern society and transform the secular culture, the Rev. Barbara Brokhoff told the United Methodist Church’s Congress on Evangelism recently.”The sad truth is that (liberalism) has raised a generation or two who believe everything is relative, anything can change, and there are no absolutes whatsoever,”said Brokhoff, a Methodist evangelist and pastor in Largo, Fla.

Brokhoff made her remarks at the biennial Denman Lectures, a series of three lectures sponsored by the United Methodist Foundation for Evangelism. She was the first woman to give the lectures.”Modern and liberal theology is resulting in a dead church,”said Brokhoff. She said evangelicals are emerging as a significant force in society because they preach with certainty.”We don’t change the Bible, the Bible changes us,”she said.”The high standards of the Bible are not to be exchanged for the culture of low living.”

Orthodox membership increases since fall of communism

(RNS)-The global Orthodox population is growing because of a Christian revival in former communist countries.

World membership in Orthodox churches is estimated at between 200 and 250 million, reported Ecumenical News International, the news service of the World Council of Churches.

The Bucharest Patriarchate’s Vestitorul Ortodoxiei journal reported that the Romanian Orthodox church makes up 87 percent of the country’s 23 million citizens, making it the second largest Orthodox community after the Russian Orthodox Church’s 100 to 150 million members.

Next in line is the Greek Orthodox Archbishopric of Athens, with 9 million members, followed by the Bulgarian and Serbian patriarchates with 8 million members each.”It is clear that numbers are growing in traditionally Orthodox countries, as citizens rediscover church life,”said Michael Dida, a spokesman for the Bucharest Patriarchate,”and particularly in diaspora communities abroad, where conversions and emigration patterns have produced an even higher growth rate.” Denominations, ministries plan joint initiative for U.S. evangelism

(RNS)-Officials from a variety of Christian denominations and other organizations are planning a joint national initiative for evangelism in the United States.”It’s probably the broadest and the most comprehensive cooperative evangelistic effort put together in the United States,”said John Quam, national facilitator for citywide strategies of Mission America, a coalition of Christian denominations and agencies that plans to evangelize throughout the United States.

The effort will tie together individual initiatives that have been planned by some ministries. For example, Campus Crusade for Christ, an Orlando-based ministry, is distributing a film on Jesus, and Southern Baptists have been planning to evangelize door to door.

The initiative began with a meeting in December of top officials of groups including mainline and evangelical Protestants as well as evangelism directors of some Catholic dioceses.

North American nuns found hacked to death in Ghana

(RNS)-Two North American Catholic nuns were found dead on a Ghana beach Tuesday.

The two, an American and a Canadian, were hacked to death, the Associated Press reported.

Police identified the victims as Patricia Maclese, 48, from the United States, and Claudia Murphy, 45, from Canada. They had been hacked with a machete on a beach near Cape Coast, about 90 miles west of Accra, Ghana’s capital.

Two Ghanaians have been arrested, police said.

Maclese, who was affiliated with the Sisters of Presentation of the Virgin Mary, worked in the town of Kumasi. Murphy, of the Sisters of Our Lady of Africa, lived in Tamale.

Jean Sindab, National Council of Churches official, dies

(RNS)-Jean Sindab, 51, the National Council of Churches’ top official for environmental, economic justice and racial equality matters, died Monday (Jan. 8) after a year-long struggle against cancer.”Just days before she died, Jean said to me, `There are worse things than dying-life filled with pain and poverty,'”the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, NCC general secretary, said in announcing Sindab’s death.”Jean’s death is a major loss for the National Council of Churches of a unique person who made a very powerful contribution to our churches,”Campbell said.

Sindab was the NCC representative to the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. In that role she worked to bring local congregations into the environmental movement and to seek their help in ending environmental abuses affecting racial minorities and poor communities.

Before joining the NCC in 1991, Sindab worked for five years as executive secretary of the World Council of Churches’ Program to Combat Racism and was active in an international campaign to garner church support for economic sanctions against South Africa.

In 1988, Sindab took a leave of absence from the WCC to serve as a senior adviser to Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign.

Richard Schoenherr, scholar on declining number of priests, dies

(RNS)-Richard A. Schoenherr, the sociologist who raised public awareness about the declining number of Roman Catholic priests, died Tuesday after suffering a heart attack. He was 60.

Schoenherr was best known for his analysis, with Brigham Young University sociologist Lawrence A. Young, of priest census records of 86 dioceses, the New York Times reported. The two men concluded that the church was ordaining about 500 men annually in the early 1980s, a nearly 50 percent drop from the 1960s.

The former priest had taught at the University of Wisconsin at Madison for 25 years.

National Farm Worker Ministry names executive director

(RNS)-The Rev. David Paul Crump, a minister in the Reformed Church in America and the son of missionaries to Brazil, has been named the new executive director of the National Farm Worker Ministry.

Crump succeeds Sister Patricia Drydyk, who died last year.

The National Farm Worker Ministry, an ecumenical organization related to the National Council of Churches, began 75 years ago to aid migrant and other rural workers in their effort to achieve economic equality and social justice. More than 40 denominations and religious agencies support the ministry.”I see exciting and challenging times ahead for this ministry,”Crump said.”Farm workers continue to be the lowest paid workers in this country. They continue to be disenfranchised.”The Ministry can play a vital role in helping farm workers nationwide win the benefits and respect that they deserve,”he said.

From 1987 to 1994, Crump served as pastor of Winnebago Reformed Church on the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska. In 1994, he returned to school to complete work on his doctoral degree.

Palestinian priest named official of Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem

(RNS)-A Palestinian priest known for his work for peace and ecumenism was consecrated Jan. 6 as coadjutor bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem.

Bishop Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal, who is from Nazareth, is expected to succeed Bishop Samir Kafity of Jerusalem, who is scheduled to retire in 1998, reported Ecumenical News International, the news service of the World Council of Churches.

Bishop Riah has been involved in the peace process for years. In 1985, after founding the Palestinian Progressive Movement for Peace, Riah made two trips to Tunis to encourage Palestine Liberation Organization President Yasser Arafat to negotiate with the Israelis.