c. 1996 Religion News Service
Southern Baptists start record number of congregations overseas
(RNS)-The Southern Baptist Convention’s Foreign Mission Board said Friday (March 1) its missionaries established a record 2,612 new congregations overseas during 1995.
The increase brought to 39,073 the number of congregations overseas affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
The board also reported that there were 287,806 overseas baptisms-the Baptist way of joining the church-boosting membership among its affiliates overseas over the 4 million mark for the first time.
Growth was especially strong in Eastern Europe, according to the mission board report. It said Romania led overseas affiliates with 313 new congregations. Russia had 130 new congregations.
Brazil led in the number of baptisms, with 71,993. Kenya reported 23,078, baptisms, while Nigeria reported 20,000 and South Korea 16,050.
Oregon street preacher wins ruling on religious speech in public park
(RNS)-U.S. District Court Judge Ancer Haggerty has permanently blocked the city of Portland, Ore., from enforcing a city ordinance restricting speech in a downtown public park.
The ordinance, known as the”Free Speech Policy,”prohibited anyone from attempting to talk to users of Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland who were more than 10 feet away unless the speaker was at a small spot in the northeast corner of the park.
In July 1995, shouting street preacher Ron Rohman filed suit against the city contending that the policy violated state and federal free expression guarantees. In November 1995, Haggerty issued a temporary injunction blocking enforcement of the ordinance and on Feb. 26 made the injunction permanent.”The court reaffirmed the value of free speech and religious liberty,”said Kelly Ford of Beaverton, Ore., Rohman’s lawyer and a cooperating attorney with the Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom.”Ron’s speech has made a real difference in the lives of real people,”Ford said.
Rohman has been a street preacher since 1970 and in the Pioneer Courthouse Square since it opened in 1984.
Church workers in Guatemala threatened by death squads
(RNS)-Presbyterian human rights activists in Guatemala have again become the target of death threats by the so-called”Avenging Jaguar”death squad, Ecumenical News International (ENI) reported Thursday (Feb. 29).
The newest threat was directed at the Rev. Lucio Martinez, a Presbyterian pastor who directs the human rights office of the Kakchiquel presbytery (district) in Guatemala, according to ENI, the World Council of Churches-based news agency.
Another human rights worker, Margarita Valiente was also targeted.
ENI said the church workers have been targeted because of their support for the human rights of Guatemala’s indigenous people and their criticism of the military.
The threat against Martinez and Valiente came in the form of a typewritten note placed on the windshield of Martinez’s automobile on Feb. 26. At the time, Valiente was in the United States, where she had just testified before the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights about the 1995 murder of Manuel Saquic, a pastor of the Kakchiquel Presbytery.
Volunteers from the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church and the United Church of Canada have been accompanying Saquic’s widow, Maria Ventura, since Jan. 22, as a deterrent to possible violence against her. She began receiving death threats after signing an arrest warrant for Victor Roman, a former military officer charged with killing Saquic and another presbytery human rights worker.
Guatemala has been embroiled in a low-level civil war since 1962, when Marxist-influenced groups tried to overthrow the military government. The war has spawned a host of rogue military groups, or death squads. An estimated 120,000 people have died in the violence.
On Friday (March1), Reuters reported that kidnappers seized, tortured and then released a Guatemalan journalist. The reporter, Vinicio Pacheco, was seized”to pass on a message-press freedom has its price,”Pacheco said.
Reuters said kidnappings have soared since mid-January, when Alvaro Arzu, the country’s new president, purged top military officers.
Tammy Faye Messner leaves co-host job on talk show
(RNS)-Tammy Faye Messner, once the wife and partner of convicted television evangelist Jim Bakker, has resigned from her job as co-host of”The Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show,”the program’s producers announced Tuesday (Feb. 27).
In a statement, Worldvision Enterprises Inc. said Messner would be replaced by Ann Abernathy, a one-time co-host on Regis Philbin’s talk show.”The rigorous tape schedule and the distress that comes with a national television show is more than I can handle at this personally difficult time in my life,”Messner said in a statement released by Worldvision Enterprises.
She did not elaborate.
In November 1995, her husband, Roe Messner, a former PTL contractor, was convicted in Wichita, Kan., of federal bankruptcy fraud.
Messner was married to Bakker, head of the PTL television ministry, at the time the evangelist was convicted in 1989 of bilking 116,000 followers out of $158 million. Bakker spent more than four years in prison. The PTL empire and his marriage began to unravel after it was disclosed in 1987 that he had had a sexual encounter with church secretary Jessica Hahn.
Tammy Faye divorced Bakker in 1992 and married Messner. She began the talk show with Jim J. Bullock last December.
The statement said Tammy Faye Messner’s new projects include promotion of an inspirational”infomercial,”called”You Can Make It.”She also is finishing a book with the working title,”Telling It My Way,”the statement said.
Sister Ursula Infante, founder of Cabrini College, turns 99
(RNS)-Sister Ursula Infante knew Saint Francis Xavier Cabrini, the first American citizen to be canonized, long before Mother Cabrini, as she was known, was made a saint.
So it was fitting that when Sister Infante decided to found a college, she chose to name it after the woman who had been her mentor and inspiration.
Infante opened the doors of Cabrini college in Radnor, Pa., in 1957, when she was 60 years. On March 2, she turns 99 and the Cabrini community plans a party to mark the milestone.
African bishop named winner of 1996 World Methodist Peace Award
(RNS)-Bishop Mmutlanyane Stanley Mogoba, a former Robben Island prison-mate of South African President Nelson Mandela, has been named winner of the 1996 World Methodist Peace Award.
Mogoba, a Methodist bishop in the violence-wracked KawZula/Natal region of South Africa, was cited for”his consistency in never advocating violence or taking sides for either black or white Africans, tribes or political parties in the struggle against apartheid.”
Quote of the Day: Curt Ankarberg, Swedish Free Church.
(RNS)-On Feb. 29, Reuters reported that Sweden’s national television channel, TV4, had turned down a request from the Swedish Free Church to mount an advertising campaign in the week before Easter because Swedish law bars churches from broadcasting Christian messages.”I was given to understand the ads would have been passed if we removed the name of Jesus,”said Curt Ankarberg, organizer of the effort.”If we had done that there would have been nothing left.”
MJP END
