Fall-out from Episcopal financial scandal

Christian Century, May 24, 1995

Forgiveness will not be easy, Larom observed. "If it had been one axvful slip, a temptation she couldn't resist, and she repented, whatever, fine. I can understand temptation and that's easy to forgive. But systematic looting over time and the personal betrayal, the betrayal to the church, the betrayal of the presiding bishop and all the people she worked with? That's a different thing. That's why I think this whole question of prosecution is very interesting, because I'm not sure that full restitution is going to cut the mustard."

Larom said she and other laid-off employees never imagined the staff and program cuts could be linked to financial malfeasance. "We all just believed giving was down," said Larom.

Browning has acknowledged that the embezzlement probably contributed to budgetary shortfalls that led to painful staff and program cuts. Experts in church and nonprofit finances were predicting that the scandal will hasten the trend of shifting donations to local and regional levels and away from national church agencies that are viewed with increasing distrust.

"I think anything which causes people to question the reliability of the denominational office will only make the situation worse," said Dean Hoge, a professor of sociology at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., who bas studied church giving.

People

* James P. Wind has been named to succeed Loren Mead as president of the Alban Institute, Inc. Wind, 46, is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and is currently serving as program officer in the religion division at the Lilly Endowment Inc., an Indianapolis-based foundation. He will assume the office September 1. Wind is the author of The Bible and the University and Constructing Your Congregation's Story and is the coeditor (with James W Lewis) of the recently published two-volume work American Congregations.

* Rabbi David Polish, a scholar who sought closer relations between Conservative and Reform Jews, died April 16 at the age of 85. Polish founded the Chicago Board of Rabbis and Congregation Beth Emet the Free Synagogue in Evanston, Illinois. He was past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, a contributor to the CHRISTIAN CENTURY, and the author of several books.