Nationwide TV Event Opens Reformed Church Meeting

The Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove is used to spectacular pageants and special events. But Saturday’s nationwide television hookup connecting some 60 Reformed Church in America congregations was pretty dramatic even for the $15-million glass church.

With cameras based in churches in New York and Chicago, plus the Crystal Cathedral, a professional television crew mixed songs and messages to beam live via satellite so that members could worship together--more than 50,000 of them.

The occasion was the opening of the church’s annual meeting, to be held this week at the Crystal Cathedral, the denomination’s best-known church, where the Rev. Robert H. Schuller broadcasts across the country his “Hour of Power” ministry.

Music Spans Continent

In Chicago it was Emmaus Road, a Christian rock group, adding spirit to Saturday’s 90-minute live broadcast. In New York it was the Klokken Bell Ringers. At the Crystal Cathedral, it was the Combined Children’s Choir of Southern California, and then the Korean Reformed Churches’ Combined Choir. All of it colorfully displayed on a 20-foot-high television screen at the Garden Grove church.

The spirit of the day was captured by the Rev. Edwin G. Mulder, one of the leaders on the West Coast, who surprised his wife Louella with roses for their 34th wedding anniversary during the hookup. And it all ended with the raising of a spectacular quilt 40 feet high, made up of more than 500 banners made by church members across the country.

The only indication amid all that warmth that there was anything controversial going on in the Reformed Church of America was a tiny black button worn by a couple of people near the back rows at the Crystal Cathedral that read, “Apartheid No.”

In May, Schuller informed leaders of the General Synod that he would not permit the keynote speaker, a leader of the African National Conference, to speak at the Garden Grove church. Schuller cited his concern that the South African group has been infiltrated by “violent elements.”

Alfred Nzo, secretary general of the African National Congress, is scheduled to give the keynote address at the General Synod on Wednesday. Church leaders had expected him to speak at the Crystal Cathedral’s arboretum, where all the sessions are to be held.

Speech Moved to Hotel

But after Schuller blocked Nzo’s speech there, Reformed Church in America leaders rescheduled the keynote speech for the nearby Doubletree Hotel, where several delegations at the annual meeting are staying.

The African National Conference, the oldest multiracial group in South Africa opposing white rule, has become increasingly militant, and has doubled its guerrilla attacks in the last 18 months, according to its own sources.

Schuller complained in a statement that the anti-apartheid position of the South African churches would be more appropriately represented by a nonviolent church leader like Archbishop-elect Desmond Tutu.

But E. Wayne Antworth, director for communications for the Reformed Church in America, said it was Tutu who encouraged the church to invite someone from the African National Congress.

Saturday, following the live tele-conference and amid handshakes from friends about how great it had been, Antworth cut off any questions about the controversy.

“There will be a press conference Wednesday where all of that will be discussed,” Antworth said. “There really should be no mention of that in any article about today’s program.”

Following the tele-conference, mutterings about the Nzo controversy could be heard among local church members and representatives attending the annual meeting. Some refused to discuss it for the record with The Times, but their general sentiment was expressed by the Rev. Albert Terry of the Hope Community Church in Los Angeles.

“I believe we have the right to hear what he (Nzo) has to say, and I think most of us want to hear him,” Terry said. “But it is unfortunate that the issue has somewhat clouded what would otherwise be a great week.”