Word: membership
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Last week, in an unprecedented change of heart, the American Baptist Churches (membership: 1.6 million; the name was changed in 1972) became the first Protestant denomination to abandon its eager embrace of the prochoice position. After a three-year task force study, the A.B.C.'s decision-making General Board, meeting at Green Lake, Wis., voted 161 to 9 to revise its 1981 policy statement. The former position had asserted that having an abortion should be a "responsible, personal decision." The denomination now acknowledges a "diversity of deeply held convictions" in its ranks, from the prolife view that "abortion is immoral...
There are about as many women on the membership lists of some of the nation's exclusive private clubs as there are in the lineup of the Los Angeles Rams. Not that life at such all male places is that strenuous; how much muscle does it take to pick up a lunch check? Yet amid the antique rugs and deep leather chairs, the clubs do furnish a setting for the exertions of professional life: back slapping, ego massage and one "contact" sport -- making business connections. In short, though they offer relaxation, the clubs are places of business too. Meal tabs...
...Boston's 450-member St. Botolph Club recently admitted Katherine Fanning, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, and not a moment too soon. Just a day after last week's ruling, Boston officials warned three other clubs that they face the loss of food and liquor licenses if their membership policies are unchanged by the end of July...
Consider Texas Democrat Lloyd Bentsen, who on taking over the Senate Finance Committee in 1987 formed a breakfast club with a suggested membership price of $10,000. When his hometown newspapers carried stories about the scheme, Bentsen dropped the idea. A similar group at an identical price, formed by Democrat Robert Byrd after he became Senate majority leader in 1987, continues to thrive...
...membership in the Broederbond finally showed him the answer. "I had to conform," he recalls. "I had to toe the line." When he finally quit, "it was almost like committing social suicide. There were people who suddenly stopped being my friends." In his lectures at Stellenbosch, Smith began challenging the church's support of apartheid. Afrikaner students accused him of preaching integration. "Teach theory, not conclusions," his superiors warned him. When Smith joined in public protests against the government's bulldozing of squatter shacks in Capetown, he was called before a church commission to justify his action. It was then...