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Lutheran, The, Jun 1999

Waldorf College Arizona, an extension of the Forest City, Iowa, school, graduated its first student. Cheri Pint, who juggled school, a 30-hour-a-week job and raising two teenage daughters, received her bachelor's degree from the school's Glendale campus. Waldorf, which also has an extension campus in Tanzania, held a surprise ceremony for Pint minutes after her last class ended.

ELCA Region 6 held its first service of consecration for a diaconal minister. Karen S. White was set apart in a service led by Callon W. Holloway, bishop of the Southern Ohio Synod. White was called as the director of admissions of Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, Ohio.

e Members of the ELCA Department for Communication, Division for Church in Society and Office of the Bishop participated in a segment of 60 Minutes II. The story involved Michael Bray, a pastor of Reformation Lutheran, Bowie, Md., a church of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations. Bray, not on the clergy roster of any Lutheran denomination, advocates death for doctors who perform abortions. He holds an annual banquet honoring those who firebomb abortion clinics or shoot doctors who perform abortions. 60 Minutes II also interviewed Richard Dowhower, pastor of All Saints Lutheran Church, Bowie, and several parishioners, who are trying to distance themselves from Bray. n Immanuel Health Systems, affiliated with the ELCA Nebraska Synod, received the Gold Well WorkplaceAward from the Wellness Council of the Midlands, which serves as a national accreditation process to recognize employers for their health promotion programs. Well Workplace encourages and rewards health promotion activities wherever people work. Three Lutheran seminaries-Gettysburg, Gettysburg, Pa.; Southern, Columbia. SC.:and Philadelphia-that created a formal partnership last fall have been urged by 75 church leaders from 20 synods and the three seminaries to focus on faculty collaboration. The Brossman Charitable Foundation, Ephrata, Pa., gave a $250,000 grant to the Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg (Pa.), to aid the school's a telecommunications network. The grant will help integrate voice and data wiring to resident housing, provide Internet access, implement distance education and expand the library user services. Cable channel HBO shelved a documentary about hazing, shot at Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pa. The film, Frat House, depicts graphic and sometimes violent hazing of pledges at the school's Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. But fraternity members say the film was fictionalized and that the directors asked them to stage incidents.

The filmmakers deny the charges, but HBO decided not to run the film. An April 28 segment on ABC's 20/20 included an interview with a student from Concordia College, Moorhead, Minn., who sued the school and sorority for her hazing.

Pornography and prostitution is an ever-increasing problem in the country.

The Alliance for Speaking Truths on Prostitution, a nonprofit group directed by Al Erickson, an ELCA pastor, developed a course to teach youth how their faith calls them to respond. For more information about the six-session course, titled Wise as Serpents, call (612) 872-0684. fl