After Year of Turmoil, Baptists Convene

Leaders of the National Baptist Convention USA Inc., including their embattled president, will hold the African American denomination’s midwinter board meeting next week in Los Angeles with the dust barely settled from last year’s tumultuous annual convention.

The Rev. Henry J. Lyons, a pastor in St. Petersburg, Fla., who was elected to a five-year term as president of the National Baptists in 1994, survived a challenge by some delegates to oust him from office at the Denver convention in September.

The 300-member board of directors will open its three-day meeting Tuesday at the Biltmore Hotel with an estimated 4,000 church pastors attending and allowed to vote on most issues, said the Rev. E.V. Hill, longtime pastor of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles.

Some pastors have accused Lyons of misusing funds as president of the denomination. But Hill, who headed the board’s ethics commission at last year’s convention, told the delegates that the commission’s investigation of 20% of the allegations discovered that no money was found missing from National Baptist treasuries.

Lyons had returned $214,500 to the Anti-Defamation League in late 1996 after it was learned that he had only distributed $30,000 of the $244,500 contributed by the Jewish agency for six black churches damaged or destroyed by fires in the South.

In a 24-page report that Hill recently circulated to pastors, the Los Angeles minister defended Lyons’ steps to ask forgiveness and declared that the church is paying its bills amid improved financial procedures.

In 112 assertions, all starting, “You can tell your people,” Hill said that to every accusation of wrongdoing or poor judgment, Lyons “confessed it openly and asked for forgiveness.”

Controversy also has swirled about Lyons’ bank account, the Baptist Builder Fund, which the St. Petersburg Times said contained $350,000 contributed by the military government of Nigeria, although Lyons was not registered as a paid lobbyist for the nation. The newspaper also said last month that a federal grand jury in Tampa had subpoenaed the denomination’s financial records for the past few years.

In a public statement in December, Lyons made no reference to a federal investigation but said that once he allowed himself “to be influenced by business opportunities, immediately came the unfortunate task of trying to merge the life of a modest-income preacher with the life of a capitalist or entrepreneur.” He said he has submitted amended tax returns.

Saying that he never took money donated to churches or the convention, Lyons added: “I received gifts, fees or the like from corporations who wanted to use my influence.”

ENVIRONMENT

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A multi-faith discussion of the international climate change conference last month in Kyoto, Japan, will be held Sunday evening at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral. The Los Angeles meeting is the second by a new religious coalition formed after Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, in the midst of his U.S. tour, declared at a Santa Barbara conference that environmental degradation was sinful and urged increased activism.

Jaydee Hanson of the National Council of Churches Eco-Justice Working Group will give the keynote speech Sunday after a video of the Greek Orthodox patriarch’s speech is played and discussed. The meeting, at 1324 S. Normandie Ave., will start at 6:30 p.m. Free. The co-sponsors are the Southern California Ecumenical Council (626) 578-6371 and the Interfaith Council for the United Nations (213) 938-8410.

SOCIAL SERVICES

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More than 7,500 families in the Logan Heights area of San Diego are expected to receive free groceries today in a charitable event tied to the Jan. 25 Super Bowl football game in the city. Supper Bowl ‘98, a project of the Pat Robertson-founded Operation Blessing International, won approval from the city’s host committee to hand out bags of groceries at Memorial Park Recreation Center starting at 9 a.m.

The fourth annual Supper Bowl, backed by 12 churches and corporate sponsors such as Campbell’s Soup and Kraft/Knudsen Foods, includes entertainment, sports clinics for youths, inspirational messages and children’s games. Operation Blessing provides short-term medical, hunger and disaster relief in the United States and overseas.

DATES

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Alan Keyes, an outspoken abortion opponent as he sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1996, will speak Thursday during the third annual Commitment to Life Conference at the Omni Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The conference, chiefly sponsored by Catholic archdiocesan groups, will mark the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court rulings expanding abortion rights. $10. (213) 637-7367.

* James W. Fowler, whose long-popular book “Stages of Faith” established him as an authority on faith and moral development, will give three free lectures next week at Fuller Seminary’s Travis Auditorium. The Symposium on Integration of Faith and Psychology will feature the Emory University scholar at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. (626) 584-5500.

* Bolivian-born Margarita Ortiz-Swetman, an assistant at St. John’s Episcopal Church, will be one of six women ordained to the Episcopal priesthood in a 10 a.m. rite today at St. John’s, 514 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles. Four men also will be ordained. In Palm Desert on Thursday, the Rev. Lois Hart was ordained at St. Margaret Episcopal Church, where she has been an associate rector.

* Journalist J. J. Goldberg, author of “Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment,” which challenges U.S. Judaism to be spiritually optimistic and ethnically confident, will talk on “Beyond the Holocaust” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, 3663 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. $15 at the door. (213) 388-2401.

FINALLY

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In a new chapter of an ongoing dispute among United Methodists over how churches should minister to gays and lesbians, the North Clairemont United Methodist Church in San Diego will hold a conference next Saturday on “transforming homosexuals” into heterosexuals.

Transforming Congregations is a movement of churches founded by the Rev. Robert Kuyper of Trinity United Methodist in Bakersfield. “Homosexuality is not God’s will for people and that God can lead people out of homosexuality,” according to Pastor James Hill of North Clairemont Methodist, who is president of Transforming Congregations’ board of directors.

The group’s aim contrasts with the goals of another unofficial Methodist movement called Reconciling Congregations, which encourages churches to welcome gays and lesbians into church life. The San Diego Metropolitan Community Church reported in that gay-oriented denomination’s newsletter that it plans to issue a dissenting response to the conference’s assertions.

The one-day Transforming Congregations conference will feature keynote speaker Joe Dallas, past president of Exodus International, who says he is a former homosexual. Seven workshops will be offered at the conference, which will start at 8:30 a.m. at the church, 4570 Mt. Herbert Ave., San Diego. $35. (619) 278-2433.

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HOLIDAY

Bishop Charles E. Blake, pastor of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ, will preach Sunday at a Long Beach interfaith service observing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. The communitywide service, which will include music by the Jordan High School International Choir and a Samoan choir, will start at 3 p.m. at Gospel Memorial Church of God in Christ, 1480 Atlantic Ave. Sister Barbara Boudreau, president of the South Coast Ecumenical Council, will host the event. (562) 0268.

Other King-related religious events in the Southland include:

* Inner-City Youth in Action will present its annual Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Award today to the Rev. Michael Beckwith of Santa Monica, the African American pastor of the integrated, 5,000-member Agape Church of Religious Science, in a ceremony at 7 p.m. at the Grant African Methodist Episcopal Church, 10435 S. Central Ave., Los Angeles.

* Members of Faithful St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church of South-Central Los Angeles will celebrate King’s birthday in a joint service 4 p.m. Sunday in North Hollywood with First Presbyterian Church, 5000 Colfax Ave. Excerpts from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech will be read. The church hosted First Presbyterian at last year’s service. (818) 766-8103.

* Emile Wilson, a 1971 graduate of Verbum Dei High School and a Rhodes scholar, will speak Monday at the annual King prayer breakfast sponsored by the Catholic archdiocese at the high school, 11100 S. Central Ave., Los Angeles. Reservations required.

* Entertainer Steve Allen, Rabbi Janet Marder, Cal State Northridge President Blenda Wilson and United Methodist Bishop Roy Sano will deliver tributes to the late civil rights leader Monday night at the 10th annual King service of the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council. The service at 7 p.m. will be at Temple Beth Hillel, 12326 Riverside Drive, Valley Village, although general parking will be at Temple Adat Ari El, 12020 Burbank Blvd., with shuttle buses operating after 6 p.m. (818) 718-6450, Ext. 3002.