Newsbriefs

Religious from around the world.

By the Ministry staff

 

"Exodus" of Clergy and Laity Claimed in Episcopal Church

DALLASAn exodus of clergy and laity from the Episcopal Church is taking place "on a scale never before experienced in our history," according to the president of the American Church Union, an unofficial organization representing the "high church," or Anglo-Catholic wing, of the church.

In making his presidential re port to a meeting of the Union's executive committee at St. Mat thew's Cathedral here, Canon Albert J. duBois said Episcopal bishops seemed unaware that the church was confronting the "almost certainty" of division.

In the past year and a half, he said, more than 50 Episcopal clergymen have left to affiliate with one of several splinter groups of former Episcopalians that have formed.

Spanish Baptist Receives King's Assurance of Religious Freedom

MADRID—The president of the Spanish Baptist Union has been promised assistance by King Juan Carlos of Spain in maintaining religious freedom for Spain's Baptists.

During a banquet at the University of Madrid, King Carlos told Prof. Jose Borras, Baptist union president, "If you have any problems at all in regard to religious freedom in your Baptist  work, do not hesitate to come to me"

Professor Borras had led a series of seminars on Baptist beliefs and practices at the university. The lecture series was established in the university's Department of Modern Humanities by Queen Sophia, who had regularly at tended Professor Borras' lectures.

These and other recent events appear to be signs that the young Spanish King and Queen, Roman Catholics, want to inaugurate a democratic form of government, which will extend freedom to all religious faiths, Professor Borras said.

Professor Borras expressed his desire to invite the King and Queen to a Baptist worship service "in the near future." Queen Sophia recently at tended services in a Jewish synagogue in Madrid and attended a communion service at an Adventist church here.

Moral Aspects of a Recession Cited to American Christians

LURAY—A professor of economics at Southern Methodist University told a Lutheran seminar here that Americans are seeking the meaning of life in the nation's economic system rather than in God.

Dr. Paul Heyne told a Seminar on Church and National Life, sponsored by the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A., that "the gap in our economy is between what we have and what we think we ought to have—and that is a moral problem, not an economic one."

The economist, a graduate of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, declared that "we have no housing crisis, but we are victims of the strange assumption that everyone should have a $40,000 house. There is not a shortage of jobs, but there is a shortage of jobs which people are willing to take."

According to Dr. Heyne, "we are asking from our economic system something which only God can provide—meaning for our lives. It is a myth to believe that we live in the close-knit Greek 'city-state' type of democracy."

$300,000 in Government Funds Spent to Support TM, Americans United Say

SILVER SPRING, Md.—Americans United for Separation of Church and State said here that more than $300,000 in Federal, State, and local public funds has been used in the past four years to teach or promote transcendental meditation (TM) in this country.

The agency, which joined other plaintiffs in a suit in Federal court last February in New Jersey to halt the teaching of TM in five New Jersey high schools, charged that publicly funded TM pro grams are now found in schools, colleges, drug- and alcohol-abuse programs, and in nursing homes.

According to Americans United, TM contains substantial elements of the Hindu religion and there fore may not be constitutionally taught in public institutions at public expense.


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By the Ministry staff

January 1977

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