People

Christian Century, Oct 25, 2000

* A United Methodist pastor from Bloomington, Indiana, has been named the new president of Claremont School of Theology. Philip A. Amerson, senior pastor of First United Methodist Church of Bloomington, will succeed Robert Edgar, who left the presidential position to become general secretary of the National Council of Churches. Amerson will be the fifth president of Claremont School of Theology, a graduate theological seminary of the United Methodist Church located in Claremont, California. Amerson has been a pastor in Indianapolis and Evansville, Indiana, and has served on the faculties of Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, and Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis.

* David W. Perry, chief ecumenical officer for the Episcopal Church, will retire from his post on January 31 after a ceremony celebrating a historic full communion agreement with the Lutherans. A staff member at the New York headquarters of the 2.5-million-member church for more than two decades, Perry was the chief negotiator of the agreement with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in which the churches will be able to swap clergy and join in common mission projects. Perry will join in a January 6 celebration service at the Washington National Cathedral and then travel to a meeting of the World Council of Churches before retiring to live in Oregon.

* Rear Admiral Barry C. Black, 51, has been installed as the first Seventh-day Adventist and the first African-American to serve as chief of navy chaplains. Black was installed August 18 at a ceremony at the Washington Naval Yard in Washington, D.C. He will manage a corps of more than 1,000 chaplains in the U.S. Navy. Before replacing Rear Admiral A. Byron Holderby as the navy's chief of chaplains, Black served for three years as deputy chief of chaplains. Black is the second clergyman to lead the chaplain corps who is from a nonliturgical tradition. In the past few years, some evangelical navy chaplains have complained of bias by their high-church liturgical colleagues.

* Edward O. Miller, a longtime voice of liberal Protestantism who challenged and cherished the Episcopal Church, died September 16 in Bangor, Maine. He was 84. Miller was rector of St. George's Episcopal Church in Manhattan from 1946 to 1975 and became a leading advocate of a progressive social agenda. After the 1963 Supreme Court decision that banned state-sponsored prayer in public schools, Miller joined the American Civil Liberties Union in opposing congressional efforts to overturn the decision.