News Brief
Episcopal News Service. May 24, 1979 [79172]
The National Books Fund Committee of the Church Periodical Club of the Episcopal Church, meeting here recently, made 22 grants to provide books and periodicals for churches overseas. These included: Prayer Books in French for Bishop Samuel Sindamuka of the Anglican Diocese of Bujumbura in Burundi; a grant to establish a library in Campinas Parish, Brazil; text books in the fields of chemistry and physics to be used by Professor Grace Ching in the Peoples Republic of China; 900 copies of the liturgy in Spanish for Bishop Anselmo Carral of the Episcopal Diocese of Guatemala; text books for Holy Cross School in Bolahun, Liberia; and a grant to a women's prison in Peru to establish a library and to buy supportive Christian literature. According to Mrs. Willard Brown, President of the Church Periodical Club, the Missionary Bishops dinner at the triennial meeting of the Club in Denver will be Sept. 7. At the Club's banquet on Sept. 8, the speaker will be Mrs. Marion Kelleran, Alexandria, Va., chairman of the Anglican Consultative Council.
The biggest giveaway food program in the history of the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas -- "Operation Grapefruit" -- has just ended its distribution season after providing nearly two and a quarter million pounds of "ruby reds" to needy families over a large area of the diocese as well as points as far away as El Paso and Fort Defiance, Ariz. The grapefruit is given to the diocese by the Crest Fruit Co., of Alamo and the distribution facilities of the West Coast Produce Co., San Antonio, are made available at no cost to the diocese. In San Antonio, some 65 church, governmental, and charitable organizations were supplied grapefruit by the Episcopal Church committee. The program has been in operation for three years.
The second edition of For Thy Great Glory, the story of the building of Washington Cathedral, will be published in September. The revised edition picks up on construction activities since the volume first came out in 1965. During that 14-year period the nave has been extended and opened and new stained glass windows and other works of art have been dedicated. Many events of historical significance have taken place within the cathedral walls. New black and white photographs as well as additional color plates continue the pictorial record of building a Gothic cathedral in the U.S. during the twentieth century. The book will be available by mail order from the Cathedral Gift and Book Shop, Mount Saint Alban, Washington, D.C. 20016, at a pre-publication price of $25 plus postage and $30 after Sept. 1.
The right of the Episcopal Church to use the buildings of St. Stephen's Church, Plainfield, N.J., was affirmed by a state appeals court in a decision handed down recently. The Appelate Division of Superior Court upheld a ruling by a lower court that all property owned by St. Stephen's be placed in the hands of the Trustees of Church Property of the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey. The appeal was brought by a group of dissident parishioners of St. Stephen's who formally severed their relationship with the diocese in April, 1977, because of dissatisfaction with the ordination of women to the priesthood and Prayer Book revision. They sought to regain use of St. Stephen's buildings for their own purposes. Judge Harold A. Ackerman said that "A local church which is part of a hierarchical organization holds all its property in implied trust for the superior Ecclesiastical authority and cannot use that property for any purpose not sanctioned by the higher authority." The diocese has assumed responsibility for the priestly ministry at St. Stephen's with the Rev. Thomas Shirmer as priest-in-charge.
After 25 years as Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, the Rt. Rev. William H. Marmion has retired, effective May 31. On June 2 his successor, the Rev. A. Heath Light, became the fourth bishop of the 60-year-old diocese. Bishop Marmion and his brother, the Rt. Rev. C. Gresham Marmion -- retired Bishop of Kentucky -- were consecrated in 1954 and they have sat side by side in the House of Bishops throughout their episcopacy. For six years he was a member of the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church. He and Mrs. Marmion will continue to live in Roanoke in retirement.
Dr. Martin E. Marty, noted chronicler of religion, will be the speaker at the dinner of the Episcopal Society for Ministry on Aging at its meeting here on Sept. 17, at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. A prolific journalist and award-winning author, Dr. Marty is a Lutheran pastor, theologian, satirist and critic. He is professor of modern church history at the University of Chicago's Divinity School. Tickets for the dinner may be secured from the Society's exhibition booth at the General Convention in Denver in September or by writing ESMA's office, RD # 1, Box 28, Milford, N.J. 08848.
The New King James Bible, New Testament, will be available in bookstores about June 25, according to the publisher, the Thomas Nelson Company. The new version of the New Testament reflects the same process of Greek manuscript selection as the 1611 King James Version. Some of the more obvious differences which readers will notice are the changing of the "thee" and "thou" pronouns and their accompanying verbs like "shouldst" and "doeth" to more contemporary form. Other changes are the addition of quotation marks to set off dialogue and the capitalization of pronouns which refer to God. With only minor exceptions, however, the basic King James word order has been preserved.
The Rev. Elia Khader Khoury, an Arab priest deported by Israel, has been elected Assistant Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem, an ecclesiastical jurisdiction that includes Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. He is currently the spiritual leader of the Anglican community in Amman, Jordan, and was elected by a synod of clergy and laity under the chairmanship of Bishop Faiq Ibrahim Haddad, the head of the Diocese of Jerusalem. In 1969, Father Khoury, then at an Anglican Church in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank of Jordan, was arrested by Israeli police on suspicion that he had transported explosives in his car for Palestinian terrorists who set off a bomb in a supermarket in Jerusalem, killing two persons. He was later released and accepted deportation to Jordan. His election must be confirmed by a senate composed of the bishops of the four dioceses of the Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East -- Iran, Egypt, Cyprus and the Gulf, and Jerusalem.
More than 125 persons interested in exploring the concept of Total Ministry heard the Rt. Rev. Wesley Frensdorff of the Episcopal Diocese of Nevada say that "The Church is called to be a ministering community, not a community gathered around a minister." The address was given at a conference at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary here. Bishop Frensdorff told his audience that new models for ministry are needed. The terms used to name the clergy -- such as Father and Shepherd -- give the feeling that the laity should be dependent upon the clergy but this is not the true under - standing of ministry, he said.
A conference which may be of interest to Episcopal Church clergy and lay persons living in rural America will be held at the Shoreham-Americana Hotel here, June 25, according to the Rev. Robert B. Greene, director of the Resource Center for Small Churches, P.O. Box 752, Luling, Tex. 78648. A Religion and Rural Life Council will be formed to work on issues of mutual concern to churches and rural people. The idea for such a council emerged from the National Festival on Religion and Rural Life which was held in Indiana last summer. The 1978 festival focused on the plight of rural people who lack adequate health care, on transportation, on employment, on agricultural services, and on how the church can help.
The Rev. Elsom Eldridge, an Episcopal priest and Executive Director of the Educational Center here for 21 years, has died at the age of 62. At the Center he guided the development of non-denominational curriculum designed to emphasize self-awareness in religious education. The curriculum includes theological, educational and psychological understandings, especially the psychology of Carl Jung, who found within the Christian ethos the importance of the human drive for meaning and wholeness. Prior to coming to the Center he was Executive Secretary for Leadership Training for the National (now Executive) Council's Department of Christian Education from 1955 to 1958. He is survived by his wife and three sons. A memorial service was held at Christ Church Cathedral here on May 21.
A doctoral dissertation on the conflict in the Episcopal Church over the issue of the ordination of women to the priesthood has been completed by Shirley Sartori, Ph.D., Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Her dissertation, entitled "Conflict and Institutional Change: The Ordination of Women in the Episcopal Church, " was submitted to the School of Education at the State University of New York at Albany. The movement to permit women's ordination -- and a resulting counter-movement -- are described and analyzed in terms of a theory of conflict which focuses on the distinction between superordinate and subordinate classes within any association and the objective conditions of conflict between those who exercise authority and those who must be obedient to it. Copies of the paper are on file in the Henry Knox Sherrill Resource Center at the Episcopal Church Center in New York and in the Church's Archives in Austin, Tex. Microfilmed copies in book form are available from University Microfilms International, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48106.
Two publications in the Episcopal Church received awards recently at the annual Associated Church Press convention here. Advance, published 11 times a year by the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, and edited by the Ven. Erwin M. Soukup, won for best black and white cover for its December cover, which was described as "clean, simple and dramatic." The award for best four-color cover went to Cathedral Age, published quarterly by the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation, Washington, D.C., for its fall cover. The citation commented, "Cathedral Age uses a compact masthead and a spectacular photo and the results are superb." Nancy Montgomery, communications director at Washington Cathedral, is editor. All in the same family, Canadian Churchman, a monthly publication of the Anglican Church of Canada, received the largest number of awards at the convention -- four merit awards and the general excellence award in the newspaper category.