An official of the Riverside-based Southeastern California...

An official of the Riverside-based Southeastern California Conference, largest regional body in the Seventh day Adventist Church, says he is “not pleased at all” with the decision this month by Adventist leaders to allow women to function as ministers but to deny them full status as ordained clergy.

Although there was some hint several weeks ago that the 48,000-member conference might ordain women pastors on its own, Haroldo S. Camacho, conference secretary, said this week that the regional body, including more than 100 churches in Riverside, San Bernardino, Imperial, San Diego and Orange counties, will not try to exceed its authority.

The conference this year submitted the names of at least two women as qualified candidates for ordination to the Pacific Union church jurisdiction based in Westlake Village, but officials there denied approval because of the unsettled issue in the 5.6-million-member denomination.

Nevertheless, Camacho said a symbolic protest might be made by members of the Southeastern California Conference next year. In remarks to a pro-ordination meeting during the Adventists’ Annual Council sessions in the Silver Spring, Md., church headquarters, Camacho said:

“In our conference there is a growing grass-roots support for declaring a moratorium on all ordinations, both for male and female candidates, until the General Conference (the world governing body) removes the sexist barrier from the meaning of ordination. Furthermore, all ordained ministers who . . . want to exchange their ministerial credentials for a (lesser status) ministerial license will be allowed that privilege.”

Camacho said, however, that no such actions will be considered until next fall when a special regional convention is convened.

Adventist leaders did decide to throw the general question of women’s ordination to the World Conference next July in Indianapolis, but their “no” recommendation noted a lack of support for change outside of North America and cited “the possible risk of disunity, dissension and diversion from the mission of the church.”

* CONFERENCES

Moral, legal and practical considerations of “the right to die” in the light of medical technology’s ability to prolong life will be discussed at a three-day conference next week at the School of Theology in Claremont. Helga Khuse of the Monash University Center for Bioethics in Australia will give the keynote speech 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Other papers will be given by theologian-ethicist John Bennett; theologian John Cobb, director of the conference-sponsoring Center for Process Studies at Claremont, and David Larson and Jim Waters of the Center for Christian Bioethics at Loma Linda University.

The AIDS Interfaith Council of Southern California will hold a conference Friday in Los Angeles for clergy, laity and others engaged in support services. Retired United Methodist Bishop Melvin Wheatley Jr., a one-time Westwood pastor, and Suffragan (Assistant) Bishop Oliver Garver Jr. of the Los Angeles Episcopal Diocese, who chairs the council, are among the speakers. The meeting, starting at 8:30 a.m., will be at the Moseley-Salvatori Conference Center, next to Good Samaritan Hospital. Registration is $35.

* ARCHEOLOGY

William Dever, who chairs the University of Arizona’s Near Eastern Studies Department, will present a slide-illustrated lecture at 7:30 p.m. Sunday in the Gallery Theater in Hollywood’s Barnsdall Park on a disputed topic in biblical archeology--”The Israelite Settlement of Canaan: Peaceful or by Conquest?” The lecture (admission $10) is sponsored by the California Museum of Ancient Art. Dever will also lecture at 7:45 p.m. Monday at the University of Judaism in Bel-Air, launching UCLA Extension’s Jewish Studies program on biblical archeology. The fee is $105 for the eight-week series and $15 for individual lectures.

* DATES

A popular interpreter of world religions, Huston Smith, will give talks and workshops next weekend at the Sepulveda Unitarian-Universalist Society. The author of “Religions of Man,” the Syracuse University professor will begin with a forum at 7:30 p.m. Friday on science as “a straitjacket and a springboard.”

Father Charles Curran, the moral theologian declared by the Vatican in 1988 to be ineligible to teach Catholic theology at Catholic University of America, will speak on “Tensions in Contemporary Roman Catholicism” during the 11 a.m. service Sunday at First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles. The censure of Curran, who is currently visiting professor of religion at USC, sparked a national debate on academic freedom and religious authority.

Evangelist Billy Graham, recently honored with a sidewalk star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, will be the guest preacher at the 9:30 and 11 a.m. services Sunday at Bel Air Presbyterian Church. It is rare that Graham, a Southern Baptist minister known for his mass evangelism crusades and broadcast ministries, accepts preaching invitations at churches in this country.

* PEOPLE

Pope Shenouda III, the patriarch of Coptic Christians in Egypt and abroad, will begin a 19-day Los Angeles area visit next Saturday. The 66-year-old spiritual leader started his tour of all 40 U.S. Coptic churches last month. He will give two public talks on Nov. 2--a Town Hall luncheon address at the Los Angeles Hilton Hotel and a 7:30 p.m. lecture at the School of Theology at Claremont. His Holiness, as he is addressed, was elected Pope of Alexandria in 1971.