Word: presbyterianism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...upon the Chosen People? That question has been the source of considerable spiritual and political debate among Christians ever since Israel was founded in 1948. The problem came to the fore again last week in Biloxi, Miss., for 665 delegates to the national assembly of the 3 million-member Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The Israel issue led to a dispute that stirred passions over six days before the assembly finally approved an eight-page statement. The document is probably the most amicable declaration any U.S. denomination has yet issued on Jewish-Christian relations...
...grapple with PTL's growing problems, the board installed as its new chief operating officer Harry Hargrave, 38, a Presbyterian who is a Dallas investment consultant and specialist in theme parks. Hargrave told the staff that PTL will now emphasize "glorifying God" and "obeying the laws of the land." He faces a signal task. PTL has lavish building plans, a payroll of 2,000 and debts of $50 million, including $14.7 million owed to Messner...
...Evangelical Theologian Carl F.H. Henry predicts a "growing pressure for public financial accountability from all religious broadcasters who solicit funds over the airwaves . . . The personal life-styles of those who appeal for sacrificial support will also come under more scrutiny by the churches and by a skeptical society." To Presbyterian Minister Ben Haden of Chattanooga, Tenn., a pastor and radio-TV speaker, such changes will be good for evangelism: "The No. 1 stumbling block to the unbeliever about the Christian faith is not the Cross or the Second Coming or the Virgin Birth. It is the money angle...
...watches the Swaggart TV show. In Chile, he met Dictator Augusto Pinochet and later urged his audience in Santiago to "pray for General Pinochet and his beautiful wife." Swaggart usually avoids overt politicking in his Latin American sermons and disclaims partisanship. But the Rev. Jaime Wright, a U.S. Presbyterian working in Brazil, agreeing with Roman Catholic critics, charges that Swaggart and like-minded Evangelicals are giving "uncritical support" to oppressive right-wing regimes...
...escalation does not extend to all branches of Protestantism. Until World War II, mission endeavor was ruled by boards of such "mainline" denominations, affiliated with the National Council of Churches and Canadian Council of Churches, as the United Methodist and Presbyterian churches. But these groups have lately suffered a "precipitous decline" in overseas staffs, the Handbook reports, to less than half the total in the late 1960s. Since then, the expanding Evangelical and Fundamentalist boards, mostly independent of denominational control, have all but taken over...