OUR CHANGING WORLD

 

By the time you receive this issue I will be in Japan, the Lord willing, visiting churches and missionaries in Tokyo and Osaka. After eight days I will fly on to Thailand where for three weeks I will teach at a Bible institute in Chiangmai, near the Laos border, where I will have both Thai and Laotian students. I plan to spend considerable time with the nationals of those countries, including those who live in the back country. I will make notes on my experiences and pass them along to you through these columns. I greatly appreciate all those who pray for me --- and for Ouida who has to stay home.

Dwight Thomas, Ridgeway Dr., Elizabethtown, Ky. 42701, is very concerned that the prayer amendment become a part of the Constitution of the United States. He reminds us of how it reads: “Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit individual or group prayer in public schools or other public institutions. No person shall be required by the United States or by any state to participate in prayer. Neither the United States nor any state shall compose the words of any prayer to be said in the public schools.” It is called S. J. R. 72 or “the President’s Prayer Amendment,” and he urges that we write our representatives in Washington in behalf of this bill. Dwight is opposed to the alternate amendment, called “the silent prayer amendment,” for the Constitution already grants anyone the right to be silent.

If you think our world is not changing, you need to reconsider. The Presbyterians at Austin Theological Seminary in Austin, Tx. raised their eyebrows when two women from Churches of Christ enrolled this year to study for the ministry. One of them, a Church of Christ minister’s daughter, has an eye on the hospital chaplaincy, while the other one, believe it or not, is intending to be a pulpit minister. Several of our men are graduates of Austin.