NEWSLETTER 

of the

AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC AFFILIATION - CANADIAN SCIENTIFIC & CHRISTIAN AFFILIATION

VOLUME 29 NUMBER 5                                                    OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 1987

NEWSLETTER of the ASA/CSCA is published bimonthly for its membership by the American Scientific Affiliation, 55 Market St., Ipswich, MA 01938, Te. 617-356-5656. Information for the Newsletter may be sent to the Editor: Dr. Walter Hearn, 762 Arlington Ave., Berkeley, CA 94707,
Editor - Dr. Walter R. Hearn Production - Nancy C. Hanger

MANY MATTERS; MUCH MOTION

We've heard that scientists finally got their act together by confining themselves, a few centuries ago, to studies of "matter in motion."

In 1987 the American Scientific Affiliation has many matters on its agenda, all seeming to be in motion at once. That impression from the ASA Annual Meeting at Colorado College stayed with us in our homeward meanders through the "high country" of six western states.

After three weeks on the road, two apple boxes of mail awaited us. No way could we meet our September 1 deadline or squeeze all the important stuff into this issue. Managing editor Nancy Hanger may go easy on us, since she took off for England after Colorado. If you're reading this early in October, credit a "yeoperson effort" by a jetlagged managing editor.

The tour began in Beijing, where the group saw such sights as Tianamen Square, the Forbidden City, and Tiantan Temple. On the second day they took a side trip to the Ming Tombs and Great Wall. On the third day, after a visit to the Summer Palace, the group was scrambling over the stone ruins of the Yuanming Gardens when Charles Crown of Denver lost his footing. Charles, a medical doctor, realized immediately that he had broken his ankle-on the first stop of the tour.

"Oh, well," he said gamely, "I've been praying that I might be able to visit a Chinese hospital." As it turned out he saw the inside of three hospitals in Beijing and one in Shanghai before getting a permanent cast on his ankle. Did that put him, or the tour, out of action? No Peking duckout for plucky Chuck! With crutches and a lot of help from the others, he stayed with the group for the whole trip.

CITS (China International Tourist Service) provided a different local guide at each city plus a national guide who stayed with the group throughout the trip. She and about half of the local guides spoke understandable English. Chi-Hang's linguistic abilities came into play especially at meals, when the guides left the tour group to themselves.

Four ASA scientists were able to lecture on their areas of expertise through competent Chinese translators. In Beijing, physicist Fred Hickernell of Arizona gave a seminar at the Optics Institute of the prestigious Academia Sinica, differing from our National Academy of Sciences primarily in the fact that it operates research institutes all over China. (Fred and Theresa turned out to be quite knowledgeable about Chinese culture; mathematician Fred Hickernell of Hong Kong Baptist College is their son-Ed.)

After Man (where a buried "army" of thousands of terra cotta soldiers is being unearthed) came Shanghai. Engineer Merlyn Bilhorn of Connecticut gave two lectures at a Shanghai battery factory; one drew a busload of technologists from a battery factory in a neighboring province. At the Huashan Hospital attached to the Shanghai Medical University, the hospital's deputy director chaired the ASA presentations before the Institute of Neurology. Elving Anderson of Minnesota spoke on the genetics of epilepsy, and biochemist Bob Hernnann of Massachusetts on prospects for gene therapy of genetic diseases with neurological effects.

Next stop was Nanjing (formerly Nanking), with a visit to Nanjing Union Seminary, best-known of the few Protestant seminaries in China, reopened since the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. Although the conference on science and faith originally proposed by Chi-Hang Lee didn't work out, the ASA group was welcomed as a group of fellow Christians and shown around. On that campus is also located the Dept. of Religious Studies of Nanjing University. Nearby are the headquarters of the Amity Foundation, a charitable foundation familiar to several members of the group.

After Nanjing the group went to Guilin (in a beautiful setting of green cuspid mountains), and from there to Guangzhou (formerly Canton). From Shanghai to Nanjing and from Guangzhou to Hong Kong they traveled by train; the rest of their journey was by the only domestic airline, CAAC. (CAAC is rumored to stand for "China Airline Always Cancels" but the ASAers encountered no transportation foul-ups-Ed.) on their two Sundays in China, the group was able to worship in officially recognized Protestant churches in Beijing and Shanghai. Such churches are part of the government-supervised "Three Self Movement." Chi-Hang found both sermons quite evangelical. Other worshipers recognized the ASA group as real Christians by the fact that these westerners sang the hymns by heart in English while the congregation was singing in Chinese. In Beijing a student who tagged along to practice her English identified herself as a member of the church they had visited.

The tour was especially moving to Chi-Hang, of course ' who was born of Chinese parents in Vietnam but had never visited the land of his ancestors. Centuries ago the Lee clan sprang from near Xian. but Chi-Hang's grandparents and parents lived in a small village in Guangdong province not far from Guangzhou. When the other ASAers took the train to Honiz  at the end of the tour, Chi stayed behind, looked up an aunt he had last seen forty years ago (in Vietnam), and went with her to his grandparents' village. He took many pictures to show his mother and father, now living in New York, and met a few old-timers who remembered his family. He was almost shocked at how untouched by modern life the village remains.

Everywhere in China one feels the shadow of the destructive "Cultural Revolution." Visitors sense an erosion of trust in anything or anybody. One ASA member talked to a disillusioned Communist Party member once active in government who had been purged, then rehabilitated. What can someone like that call "good" about the past? Or the present?

Life is better than it used to be, many say. But what lies ahead? Can the "one-child" policy hold back the devastating effects of overpopulation? Will new personal and political freedoms again be repressed? The ASA trip was a delight, all seem to agree-but some of the impressions it left are sobering.

Chi-Hang was delighted at the spirit of cooperation and helpfulness of everyone on the tour, evidence to him of God's grace at work in the lives of Christians. He was also proud of the way they all handled chopsticks. When we greeted him with "Nee hao!" on his return, Chi said, "Your Chinese accent is almost as good as Bob Herrmnann's."

We're not sure that was a compliment. But Bob says Chi made the trip so pleasant that everybody wants to go back to China again. Now that does sound like a compliment.

ASA executive director Bob Hernnann says the conference was set up to bring individuals concerned about such issues into close contact with the people actually doing the work. He was pleased that ASA members with hands-on experience came to share their knowledge and insights, and that Christian students considering the field were there to hear them. Missing were the professional theologians, who need to be enlightened by the scientists as much as the scientists need to listen to the theolo 6ans. To their credit most of the 6-5 reaistrants were interested in both kinds of questions.

Elving Anderson's introductory paper had a positive tone, offering encouragement to those working in and preparing for the field (along the lines of his article in the April 1987 issue of Etenzity). He urged more participation of scientists in public education. citing some public misperceptions of gene-splicing. Elving has had 'input into the Office of Science & Technology Assessment (OTA) of the U.S. Congress, which produced a background paper on the subject.

The eight poster papers presented generated considerable excitement over research in progress. Then Ted Friedmann of U.C. San Diego gave a Thorough discussion of genetic diseases and of various possible approaches to therapy. The whole field is preliminary. with nothing so far beyond using virus vectors to introduce genes into fibroplasts and leucocytes from diseased individuals; no therapy for a human patient yet. Friedmann is working on Lesch-Nyham Syndrome. When asked about increased risk of mutations in germ-line therapy, the speaker had to think about that a bit. Stimulating questions kept popping up.

Leroy Walters, director of the Kennedy Center for Bioethics at Georgetown University, now heads the Gene Therapy subsection of NIH's Recombinant DNA Advisory Board. Walters gave a very solid overview of the history and promise of both somatic cell and germ-line gene therapy. Again, the germ-line studies seem problematic, one experiment in mice providing correction in only two out of 250 progeny. (Walters was a Messiah College classmate of Gei7y Hess, one of the conference planners.)

Bob Herrmann was extremely proud of the ASA participants. Pete Y orgey, now a postdoc at Harvard, asked penetrating questions all along. Ken Olson from Genentech made a convincing case for the production of pharmaceuticals by gene-splicing, and Weldon Jones of Bethel College was superbly prepared on drosophila genetics and the correlation to hormone action.

J. Robert Nelson of Texas Medical Center's Institute of Religion and Lew Bird of the Christian Medical Society's ethics commission tackled the ethical issues headon. As a consultant for the President's Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biological Research, Nelson knew Friedmann and Walters well. He challenged the (absent) theologians to address ethical issues; he is one of those who does. Bird reviewed ethical systems as they relate to medicine and medical science, sounding even more positive than Nelson toward the gene-splicers. Neither seemed to have much in common with Jeremy Rifkin.

On the last day, Iowa State's Don Robertson spoke eloquently on corn genetics, on his pioneer studies on the "jumping gene," and on future applications of gene-splicing to agriculture, including his effort to introduce the gene for beta-carotene into rice. Perhaps with Rifkin's criticisms in mind, he cited evidence that corn started out without that gene, acquiring it over time, so the presence of that gene would be no less "natural" in rice than in corn. The nutritional benefits to millions of Asian children would

At almost the last minute, Rifkin begged off, pleading more pressing business, but sent his legal colleague Andrew Kimbrell. As policy director of Rifkin's Foundation on Economic Trends, Kimbrell has filed a number of lawsuits to block the experimental introduction of genetically altered organisms into the environment. He gave a good talk, expressing his concerns about the environment and about gene therapy at the germ level. In answer to questions he seemed willing to approve gene therapy for patients suffering from severe genetic disease. The gene-splicers listened to him, but he zoomed in and out without hearing what others had to say.

Kimbrell missed the afternoon panel and David Kingsbury's presentation of the National Science Foundation's "Regulatory Concerns in Recombinant DNA Technology." As NSF's assistant director for biological, behavioral, and social sciences, Kingsbury serves on the Biotechnology Science Coordinating Committee (BSCQ. BSCC is an interagency group making sure that the emerging biotechnology industry is regulated so that its growth is fostered without endangering the public.

Bob Herrmann concluded that even though the government is committed to supporting the American gene-splicing industry, some good people in government are thinking carefully about the hazards of environmental release. Bob is glad about that.

This Annual Meeting, held August 2-6 at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, again demonstrated the wisdom of having one of ASA's commissions devote a meeting to that group's sphere of interest. "Theme" papers and a panel presented by commission members fleshed out the keynote addresses. Without excluding variety or controversy, this year's program focused on a set of problems Christians must face-and on seeking solutions to them as part of our Christian responsibility.

While working on the study that led to Earthkeeping, Vern was a physics professor at Calvin College. After a series of successes in political contests at the local level (entered largely out of his concern for environmental issues), he found himself in the Michigan State Senate where people expected him to do something about the environment. His ASA talks drew on his Christian motivation, scientific understanding, and political "savvy" to produce a remarkable feel of "life in the real world." Senator Ehlers laid it on the line about what needs to be done to "redeem the earth," why that is so hard to do in a democratic society, and what Christians can hope to accomplish through concerted political action.

The biblical principle of "dominion over the earth" culminates in Christ's own example of dominion: emptying himself to take on the form of a servant. We are called to "serve the earth" in reverence to its Creator. The principles may be straightforward but the situations are always complicated, as illustrated by many examples in Vern's second lecture. In some areas one can point to substantial progress, always coupled with more to be done-including some extremely urgent problems. In the 20 years since the first "Earth Day," an environmental consciousness has been awakened and millions of people have an earnest desire to protect "the only environment we have, ' In some cases, where the American people know what to do, they seem willing to pay the price.

Progress has been made in cleaning up surface waters (of the Great Lakes, some rivers, even the oceans), for examplebut our ground water is still being polluted. In air quality, the mentality has changed from one of "smoke means industrial progress" to smog control - but acid rain continues to do widespread damage. Some toxic waste dumps are being cleaned up by Superfund expenditures, and many communities are moving toward recycling and source reduction of solid wastes-but we've run out of land for landfills before our waste management problems have been solved.

Vern ended his third talk on a note not so much of optimism as of encouragement to "hang in there" with our individual and corporate efforts to exercise Christian stewardship of the earth. The audience was especially responsive when Vern was sharing his experiences in "practical politics." Standing up for the right principles is easy, he said, compared to actually getting a good bill through the Senate, for which he needs 20 votes. That requires a lot of common sense and consideration of the pressures on his fellow lawmakers-in other words. a Judicious application of the Golden Rule.

We suffer from shortsighted political leadership at times, Vern said, largely because for an elected official "the future extends only to the next election." But our "followeship" isn't always so good, either. One thing Vern learned early in his political life is that, in general, the public is faithfully represented by the leaders it elects. In fact, he has come to respect lawmakers as being on the whole even a little bit better than the voting public deserves.

Gulp. That sort of puts the ball (this wonderful planet!) back in our court.

Doesn't that make you sorry you missed the 1987 Annual Meeting? You could have been in on everything and had a bodacious vacation in cool Colorado to boot  even in a heat wave of historic proportions. Feeling out of it? Here's what to do about it:

Mark the dates AUGUST 5-8 on your 1988 calendar, or at the end of your 1987 calendar. That's when ASA's Arms Control Commission will be in charge of the 1988 ASA ANNUAL MEETING, at PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY in MALIBU, CALIFORNIA. "Moore" on that meeting program in coming issues-from political scientist Stan Moore, that is, Pepperdine professor and 1988 program chair.

Malibu is a few miles west of Los Angeles, right on the Pacific Ocean. Add enough travel time for next year's memorable southern California vacation. You've heard of Disneyland? The beach at Malibu? Surfs up!

Don't miss the next wave-or the next wave of the future.

For support of Don McNally's campus ministry and projects like this, and to pay a "fair share" for the ASA publications and services they receive, CSCA members will be asked at the October meeting to approve a dues increase. Bob VanderVennen, executive council chair, also requests that contributions be sent to CSCA executive director Douglas Morrison, P.O. Box 386, Fergus, Ontario N1M 3E2.

2. Empowering the Church in a Digital World is the theme of a conference to be held in Dayton, Ohio, on 1920 November 1987. Speakers from mainline denominations and seminaries will blend theological reflection with accounts of practical experience with new computer and communications technologies. For registration materials, contact: Kenneth Bedell, Director of Computer Ministries, United Theological Seminary, 1810 Harvard Blvd., Dayton, OH 45406.

3. The Graduate Christian Fellowship at the U. of Michigan is planning a conference on Christianity & Science for sometime in January or February 1988. They anticipate three lectures, on (1) philosophy of science from a Christian perspective, (2) a critique of the naturalistic view of science, and (3) a Christian view of the appropriate role of science and technology. Your nominations of potential speakers or other suggestions would be welcomed. Contact: Christina Postema, 1115 Maiden Lane Ct., Apt. 104, Ann Arbor, MI 48105.

4. Leadership '88 is a conference being planned for 27 June-1 July 1988 in Washington, D.C. under auspices of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. The aim of the conference is to encourage and equip a new generation of evangelical leaders, recognizing that many leaders of the likes of Billy Graham and Ted Engstrom are reaching retirement age. Of some 2,000 participants between age 25 and 45, it is hoped to have about a third from "marketplace occupations" (scientists, teachers, etc.), a third from church occupations, and a third from parachurch occupations. Executive director Bill Ditewig, who was an associate member of ASA during most of his 10 years on IVCF staff, thinks ASAers are the kinds of "marketplace movers and shakers" the conference wants to gather together to help "complete the Great Commission in this generation." The conference will be committed to the 1974 Lausanne Covenant and to the spirit of inclusiveness and cooperation of the Lausanne movement. For information, contact: Bill Ditewig, Leadership '88, P.O. Box 2620, Pasadena, CA 91102.

6. The first issue of a Christian Geography Newsletter has been published under the editorship of geographers Henry Aay of Calvin College and John Patterson of the U. of British Columbia. It is intended as a forum for exchange of ideas and resources among geographers who wish to pursue an explicit and rigorous Christian approach to their profession. Henk and John organized a session at the 1987 meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Portland this spring to discuss formation of a group interested in the relationship between Christianity and geography. Contact: Dr. Henry Aay, Dept. of Geology, Geography, & Environmental Studies, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI 49506.

Born in San Jose, California, John received a B.A. from U.C.L.A. and an M.S. (1938) and Ph.D. (1940) from Northwestern, followed by some postdoctoral work at the Radiation Laboratory at U.C. Davis and back at U.C.L.A. He was a member of the American Chemical Society and Sigma Xi, and had served on the editorial board of J. Chem. Ed. He had also done consulting work for International Chemical & Nuclear Co., and in 1962-63 was a Fulbright Fellow at San Marcos University in Lima, Peru. He was introduced to ASA by one of its founders, Alton Everest.

John Abernethy's research on enzyme chemistry focused on reactions catalyzed by papain and similar proteolytic enzymes. A series of his papers in Bioorganic Chem. continued into the 1980's in spite of his disability.

(Thirty years ago, the present Newsletter editor was writing a regular chemistry column in JASA. One day a paper in J. Amer. Chem. Soc., Vol. 81, pp. 3944-8, 5 Aug 1959, from Fresno State College caught our eye. It was by John Abernethy, whom we recognized as an ASA member, and it had an unusually long Acknowledgment section at the end. That section told a story of patient, dogged determination to accomplish something in research despite unpromising circumstances. John had gathered a bit of financial support from several different sources for supplies, wangled one undergraduate research fellowship, enlisted the help of another half-dozen students, and corresponded with several well-known investigators about his project-finally consulting with them about preparation of the manuscript. We considered his paper an inspiration to science teachers with no research funds in small colleges and recommended that they follow his pattern. "Research can be done," we wrote, ?,even in small Christian schools where it has never been done before, if we really want to do it, and if we go about it the right way." John certainly showed us the way-Ed)

Martin was born in Moline, Michigan, graduated from Calvin College in 1933, taught biology in secondary schools, and in 1945 received his Master's degree from the U. of Michigan. In 1946 he joined the Calvin faculty in the Organic Science Department (now known as Biology), participating in the rapid growth of the department and the college until his retirement.

At various times Martin attended summer institutes at Michigan State, Vanderbilt, and the U. of Oregon. The Calvin College herbarium contains many specimens of algae collected by Martin and his wife Frances during studies on the Oregon coast. He taught many different courses, but especially enjoyed challenging students in the plant morphology laboratory; he is said to have fairly bubbled with enthusiasm during exercises on the lowly liverworts.

In a college resolution of sympathy on Martin's death, biology chair John Beebe said: "Mart lived his life as an unaffected Christian gentleman with much concern for others, a continuing interest in his discipline and Calvin College, and a steadfast witness to his faith. Students, colleagues, and friends can attest to these virtues which made Mart a person we will remember fondly. We give thanks to God for Martin's life among us and commcnd~his wife Frances to the care and comfort of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ." (We offer Frances Karsten our sympathy also, and thank her for sharing that memoir with us-Ed.)

Attendees were also treated to accounts of the 1987 Annual Meeting by George Fielding and Paul Arveson. Paul chairs ASA's Ad Hoc Committee on Computer Applications. No doubt he also tried to enlist a little input from local members for some of that committee's projects.

Charles F. Austerbeny, Jr., has become an assistant professor of biology at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. In December 1986 he followed his thesis advisor from Washington U in St. Louis to Seattle, where his advisor had accepted a position at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Chuck successfully defended his dissertation in molecular biology in June 1987. He misses the St. Louis ASAers and hopes to get something going in the Omaha area. In Seattle, he was too busy to find ASA folks but he and his wife Gloria loved their association with Central Lutheran Church, After this hectic year, Chuck and Gloria are both ready to settle down for awhile.

Margaret Barth married Christopher Hebblethwaite, a reference librarian at SUNY-Oswego, on August 8. Margaret, a graduate student in ecology at Oswego, took time off from her final summer of field work at the Cranberry Lake Biological Station for the wedding. She will spend this year writing her dissertation on the foraging ecology of the barn swallow. Margaret Hebblethwaite is coauthor of a paper on "Ideal Free Coloniality" to appear this winter in The Ecolq& of Social Behavior (Academic Press; C. N. Slobodchikoff, ed.).

Neal 0. Brace, professor of chemistry at Wheaton College in Illinois, points out that Larry Funck, described in the last issue as the chair of his department, was really only filling in for the spring and summer while permanent chair Derek Chignell was in Hawaii with PACU. (We dare not guess what PACU stands for, for fear of another SNAFU -Eit) Neal enclosed several items of interest, including "Evolution as a Disease" (Chenitech, pp. 460-3, Aug. 1987), a speculation by engineer Stanley Henrici about the possible role of retroviruses in speciation. Several clippings from the Wheaton Daily Journal concern candidates for this fall's District 200 school board election, most prominent of which seems to be Paul MacKinney, founder of the Midwest Creationist Fellowship. Another candidate, George Kocan, also supports f1equal treatment" for "creationism." All this has led to several editorials by opinion editor Hiawatha Bray, who sees "creationism" as "a rebellion against a worldview that slights people who believe in God." As a believer, Bray resents efforts to get God "back into the classroom" by converting the loving, personal God of the Christian faith into "a cold, impersonal creator, a mere First Cause who can pass muster before the First Amendment."

James 0. Buswell III, dean of graduate studies at William Carey International University (WCIU), is rejoicing over several 1987 events. In May WCIU received "approved" status as a degree-granting institution, a step above the "authorization" granted in 1979 by the California State Board of Education-and a step toward accreditation by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. A few weeks later, WCIU conferred seven Master's degrees and its second Ph.D. to German scholar Hermann Janzen, who did his research and dissertation in applied linguistics in Thailand. A fully descriptive booklet about WCIU's field-based doctoral program in international studies is available from Dean Buswell, WCIU, 1539 East Howard St., Pasadena, CA 91104, USA. William F. Campbell is an M.D. who has served overseas in several Islamic countries. Currently he is in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, working with TEAM at their Oasis Hospital. He is impressed by the high quality of medicine being practiced there, and by the temperature, which was 104'F on May 17. (Another doctor told him it might get really hot by August!) Bill is trying to adjust to the Emirati Arabic spoken by most of the patients, and to whatever Arabic dialect is spoken in the church, which includes worshipers from the Philippines, Pakistan, and Kerala state in India. Some of the nursing staff are very mature Christians, bringing the water of eternal life to a dry and thirsty land. Physically, the miracle of "oil turned into water" for gardens is transforming the land. The Campbells' house is air-conditioned and there is even a local ice-skating rink, to the delight of Bill's wife.

David H. Chambers has received his Ph.D. in engineering mechanics at the U. of Illinois and is now a physicist in the laser division of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California.

Rik Carl DAmato received his doctorate in school psycholo" from Ball State University in Indiana. He is now assistant professor and co-director of the school psychology program in the Dept. of Educational Psychology of Mississippi State University, Starkville. He is interested in nontraditional applications of school psychology and clinical neuropsychology.

Donald G. Davis Jr. is professor of library and information science at the U. of Texas in Austin. In May he was the only American among eight speakers at an international seminar on "Library History in East and Middle Europe" at the U. of Wroclaw in Poland. Don's paper will appear initially in Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensia series Bibliothecalia Wratislaviensis. While in Poland he toured the historic manuscript and rare book libraries of the Ossolineum and the Jagiellonian University. Don has also co-edited a new reference work, ARBA Guide to Library Science Literature, 1970-1983 (Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1987). (ARBA sounds more Latin than Polish but it's actually an acronym for American Reference Books Annual Ed.) Don also notes that the quarterly Journal of Library History he has edited for the past 10 years is changing its name to Libraries & Culture in 1988.

Laszlo G. Fabry has relocated to Emmerting, West Germany. He is a staff scientist for Wacker-Chemitronic in Burghausen.

Richard H. Harrison was reported in our last issue to be still in a comatose state from an auto accident two years ago. A more recent communication from his wife Karin (not Karen, our goof-Ed.) says Dick still has serious medical problems but has now been out of the coma for several months. He can speak a little but has difficulty in swallowing, needs help to eat, sit up, etc. At the nursing home most of the other patients are elderly women, so he needs regular male visitors to talk to him, read to him, and generally stimulate him intellectually. If you can help, even occasionally, contact Karin Harrison, 16 Renee Court, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648. Her big news is that on May 18 Dick was awarded (in absentia) his Ph.D. in education from the U. of Penn., after friends and colleagues at Educational Testing Service put the finishing touches on his thesis for him. Before the accident Dick had completed his dissertation research on the success of deaf students in college.

James C. Hefley of Hannibal-LaGrange College in Missouri continues to serve as unofficial chronicler of events in the 14.6-million-member Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). In June the SBC met in St. Louis, and once again elected a theologically conservative candidate as its president. Just before that, Jim's own Hannibal Books brought out Vol. 2 of The Truth in Chrisis, "bringing the controversy up to date," with a press run of 10,000 copies. In the May 1987 issue of SBC Today, Alan Neely reviewed Vol. 1 along with two books from the "moderate" perspective, Joe Edward Barnhart's The Southern Baptist Holy War and Gordon H. James's Inerrancy and the Southern Baptist Convention. Neely recommended reading all of them 'with care" for a balanced view, noting sadly that "not one of these authors is sanguine about the future of the SBC."

Otto Helwig has returned to the U.S. and is now professor of civil engineering and agricultural engineering at Texas A & M University. Otto spent the past four years in the Middle East in a "tentmaking" capacity.

Charles E. Huummel and wife Anne are spending two months in Japan this fall, partly to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of the founding of the KGK~ the Japanese group affiliated with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. After WWII, Irene Webster (known as "Sensei" to generations of Japanese students) and Charlie helped Japanese students establish their own student movement. On this trip Charlie will have several ministry opportunities in Tokyo and Osaka. He is director of IVCF faculty ministries and currently a member of the ASA executive council.

G. Archie Johnston is executive director of the California Behavioral Science Institute in Long Beach. In June 1987 he received a D.Min. with emphasis on pastoral care from the California Graduate School of Theology. Archie's interests in "degree collecting" and in "orthomolecular psychotherapy" have both been mentioned in these pages before. For the past three years he combined them, and in August received a Master's degree from the International University for Nutrition for a study of "Super Nutrition and Lithium Orotate" as an adjunct to psychotherapy. Using the MMPI before and after as a means of assessing some 300 subjects, he showed that megavitamin therapy added to a standardized psychotherapy program was 66 percent more effective than the psychotherapy alone. The duration of psychotherapy was also cut in half, Archie says. This summer he was also elected to the American College of Forensic Psychologists.

Clarence Menninga will be on sabbatical from Calvin College in 1987-88 at the U. of Notre Dame in Indiana, focusing on the history and philosophy of science. He will study the process of "shifting paradigms" in science, using a casestudy approach. A geologist, Clarence has an ongoing interest in theories of dinosaur extinction.

Henry F. Schaefer Iff has moved to Athens, Georgia, to become Graham Perdue professor of chemistry at the U. of Georgia. "Fritz" Schaefer will direct the university's Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry, which was created to help lure him from his professorship at U.C. Berkeley. In 1984 Fritz became the youngest member ever elected to the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Sciences. Now 43 and the author of over 350 publications, he has several times been included in lists of the country's outstanding young scientists.