Word: vestals
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Since 1979, fundamentalists have inexorably gained power in the biggest and richest U.S. Protestant denomination, the 15 million-member Southern Baptist Convention. Last year the rightward tilt was affirmed when fundamentalist Morris Chapman of Texas was elected president over Georgia's Daniel Vestal, leader of the moderates. Fundamentalists (who prefer to be called conservatives) have since piled pressure on Baptist seminaries to teach the literal historical accuracy of the Bible. They have also sacked recalcitrant officials like Lloyd Elder, head of the Sunday School Board, the huge denominational publishing house based in Nashville...
This week in Atlanta, Vestal will preside as thousands of dissident Baptists plot resistance to the fundamentalist trend. Chapman, for one, thinks the three-day conclave will launch something akin to a schism. At the same time, the fundamentalist leader is confident that few of the 38,000 S.B.C. congregations will join any eventual breakaway...
Meeting in the appropriately outsize New Orleans Superdome, delegates blessed the Fundamentalists, voting in as S.B.C. president the Rev. Morris Chapman of Wichita Falls, Texas. He outpolled an Atlanta moderate, the Rev. Daniel Vestal, 21,471 to 15,753. Like all presidents since 1979, Chapman will use his nominating powers to consolidate inerrantist control of S.B.C. schools and agencies. The meeting also gutted funding for a Washington office representing various Baptist denominations in favor of an S.B.C. lobby that will buttress the religious right on such matters as abortion and school prayer...
...public works and housing subsidies. In late October the central Bank of Japan cut its discount rate, the interest charged on loans to commercial banks, from 3.5% to 3%. It was the fourth cut this year. Officials are now studying tax reforms to spark consumer spending. Says James Vestal, senior economist with Britain's Baring Securities: "The government will facilitate change, and it will be a rocky road...
...have to go the Oracle of Delphi and sacrifice three vestal virgins for new shirts, and five if we want to choose the color," Gaffney adds. "It's not worth it." (Neither "the people who run the intramurals" nor the oracle was available for comment at the time this article went to press...