People

Christian Century, Feb 21, 2001

* Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who became famous when he placed his homemade plaque of the Ten Commandments in his federal courtroom, has chosen to hang the biblical laws in his office rather than the Supreme Court chamber. As a circuit judge campaigning in the November race for chief justice, he called himself "Alabama's Ten Commandments judge" and vowed to take the biblical laws with him to the Supreme Court building in Montgomery.

* Jesse Jackson, after acknowledging that he fathered a child out of wedlock, soon resumed public appearances. He first appeared with his wife at Salem Baptist Church in Chicago where he said: "After 38 years and five children later, Jackie, we're still here." Pastor James Meeks, also executive vice president of Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, said the civil rights leader is needed. "Not only do we love you ... we can't afford to lose you," Meeks said. Likewise, the Progressive National Baptist Convention's mid-winter board meeting, held January 25, prayed that God will forgive Jackson, adding that they "must insist that he not stand down from his calling and charge to be a prophet of God."

* Mark R. Ramseth, the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Montana Synod, has been elected as president of Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio. He succeeds Dennis A. Anderson. Trinity is one of eight ELCA seminaries.

* Julio Cesar Holguin, 53, a bishop who heads the Episcopal Church in the Dominican Republic, was elected president of the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI) during its fourth assembly that ended January 19. Holguin's election to a six-year term, succeeding Lutheran Walter Altmann, keeps that post in historic Protestant hands. However, the Anglican bishop said he supports the opening of the ecumenical group to fast-growing Pentecostal churches despite the wariness of some churches.

* Tirsh Grigor, a Church of England vicar, has raised at least $800 toward helping the homeless by sleeping in freezing temperatures on the porches of the four churches in her care for four nights in a row. Grigor, a member of the Ross-on-Wye team ministry some 12 miles south of Hereford, did her 7 P.M.-to-7 A.M. vigils prior to the Church of England's "Homelessness Sunday." The money benefits the Church Housing Trust, an organization providing services that homeless people would otherwise fail to obtain.

* Christian ethicist William Waldo Beach, 84, who taught 40 years at Duke Divinity School before retiring in 1986, died in Durham, North Carolina, January 11 following a stroke. Beach was a civil rights advocate at Duke in the late 1950s and supervised the dissertation of the first black student to earn a doctorate in Duke's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He coedited Christian Ethics: Sources of the Living Tradition with his ex-mentor at Yale University, H. Richard Niebuhr.

* Ninian Smart, 73, a popular scholar of world religions and current president of the large American Academy of Religion, died January 29 in Lancaster, England, after suffering a stroke. Smart recently moved back to his native Britain from Santa Barbara, California, where he had taught at the University of California branch for 25 years. Thirty years ago, Smart was involved in making the PBS series The Long Search. His many books on comparative religion include the recent Dimensions of the Sacred.

* William A. Beardslee, 84, a noted New Testament scholar who taught at Emory University in Atlanta from 1947 until his retirement in 1983, died in his sleep in Claremont, California, on January 25. Beardslee, among scholars who introduced literary criticism in New Testament research, also pioneered in applying process theology to biblical studies--a pursuit he led at the Center for Process Studies at the Claremont School of Theology.