NEWSLETTER

 of the      
           
AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC AFFILIATION - CANADIAN SCIENTIFIC & CHRISTIAN AFFILIATION

VOLUME 29 NUMBER 4 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1987

NEWSLETTER of the ASA/CSCA is published bimonthly for it membership by the American Scientific Affiliation, 55 Market St. Ipswich, MA 01938. Tel. 617-356-5656. Information for the Newsletter may be sent to the Editor: Dr. Walter Hearn, 76 Arlington Ave., Berkeley, CA 94707,
Editor - Dr. Walter R. Hearn   Production -- Nancy C. Hanger

"NEE HAO!"

That's roughly the way to say "Hello! How are you?" in Mandarin. We're not sure how to answer, but "SHEE-EH SHEE-EH" ("thank you") would exhaust our entire Chinese vocabulary.

The thirty or so ASAers going to China following the ASA ANNUAL MEETING may come back full of phrases like "CHANG TU QI CHE ZHAN" ("long distance bus station") or "WO YAO ZU YI LIANG ZI XING CHE" ("I want to hire a bicycle"). On the other hand, since they'll be on a tour led by ASA ex-president Chi-Hang Lee, fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, and several Chinese dialects, they won't have to tie their Western tongues in knots. We wish them BON VOI YAxH (in French -- Ed.).

Our present ASA president, Ed Olson of Whitworth College, who speaks Geology and Chemistry, had to cancel his proposed ASA rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. You might say the roof caved in for lack of rafters. Everything else about the ANNUAL MEETING is Go, however.

At press time we hear that some 60 participants are touring the Double Helix with expert guides at the ASA's first nationwide conference on the Current Progress & Ethical Concerns of Gene-Splicing at Eastern College (touching all the bases, no doubt -- Ed.) This is obviously a great summer for traveling.

See you at COLORADO COLLEGE in COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO, AUGUST 2-6, for the 1987 ASA ANNUAL MEETING!

Pablo's post as clinical director of the Willowdale Center for Psychological Services and appointment at the Chelsea branch of Mass. General put Frances in the vicinity of Ipswich. She has three children, one each in college, high school, and elementary school. While in the San Francisco Bay area, the Polischuks pastored a Spanish-speaking church.

Bob Griffiths has previously received the U.S. senior-scientist award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the A. Cressy Morrison award of the New York Academy of Sciences, and the Dannie Heineman prize for mathematical physics.

BRAVO to Bob on this latest honor! In Carnegie Mellon's press release, it was good to see the American Scientific Affiliation listed beside the American Physical Society and Sigma Xi as societies to which Bob belongs. Until now, nutritionist John Halver of the University of Washington has been the only ASA member in NAS (elected in 1978); in the National Academy of Engineering, the only ASAer we know of is electrical engineer Aldert Van der Ziel of the University of Minnesota.

(In June, John Halver told ASA's Committee for Integrity in Science Education about the 1987 NAS meeting, where some members were upset about his contributing the preface to Teaching Science in a Climate of Controver sy. At one point a proposal was even made to bring discussion of the matter to the floor. John was pleased to see other NAS members, especially those in his own section who know him best, ready to come to his defense for expressing his belief in the Creator and for introducing the ASA booklet. As it turned out, the matter never came up. -- Ed.)

Even so, it seems likely that the legal profession will continue to play a role in disputes over public education. After the Tennessee and especially the Alabama textbook cases, some have wondered whether the "judicial cure" may turn out to be worse than the "educational disease." Many commentators expect those verdicts to lead to further litigation even though the Louisiana case is closed.

When planning its third triennial interdisciplinary conference on "Faith and Freedom," the Christian Legal Society asked for help in educating lawyers on some of the "public science" issues. John Wiester of ASA's Committee for Integrity in Science Education helped them organize a program on "Science, Law, and Education" as one of four "tracks" participants could sign up for.

Besides John, speakers included Texas A&M engineering professor Walter Bradley (on the origin of life); Messiah College biologist Gerald Hess (on biological evolution); U. of Chicago Ph.D. candidate Paul Nelson (on philosophy of science); Biblical Theological Seminary professor Robert Newman (on chance & design); and Hugh Ross of Reason to Believe, Inc. (on the new cosmology).

Scheduled plenary speakers included Thomas Bethell of the Hoover Institution (on "Religion, Science, and Public Education"); Os Guinness of the Brookings Institution (on "The American Hour"); and A. E. Dick Howard of the U. of Virginia law faculty (on "Constitutionalism").

That sounds like a conference a lot of ASAers might have attended if they'd known about it. Well, maybe you still can. The whole CLS Freedom and Faith '87 conference, originally scheduled for May 28-31 at Messiah College, has been postponed until the last weekend of October 1987. For information, contact CLS, P.O. Box 1492, Merrifield, VA 22116-1492 (tel. 703-5607314).

The American Bar Association Journal has a monthly feature called "Law Poll." The I January 1987 Law Poll reported on a survey of 578 lawyers made in October 1986. That survey revealed that 63 percent of U.S. lawyers "believe that the teaching of creationism. in public schools does not run afoul of the First Amendment's establishment clause." The article (and perhaps the questionnaire) defined creationism as "a theory that the Earth and its creatures came into being abruptly and in final form."

In February, Paul responded with a letter complaining about that definition, saying that: "Everybody knows that the form of the Earth changes daily and that its creatures have been subject to tremendous variation over the course of history." "Many creationists (probably a majority)," he added, "believe that the Earth is very old and that it did not come into being abruptly and in its final form." The words of Genesis 1:2 ("and the earth was without form and void") don't require a knowledge of Hebrew to understand that "things have changed since God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1)." Paul concluded: "A creationist is one who believes that a Creator created. Time and mechanism considerations create subsets of the category."

Powell's resignation immediately brought to mind Ed Larson's caution (in Tiial and Error. 7he American Controversy over Evolution and Creation, Oxford, 1985): With public opinion divided roughly in half, no permanent legal solution about teaching human evolution in public schools is possible. The side that loses simply hires better lawyers, prepares a better case, and waits for the courts to change  either in attitude or personnel. The losers in the Louisiana case are no doubt saying, "Now it's 6-3! Two more and we've got 'em!"

At the local level, what seems to some ASA members to be a "pseudocontroversy between a pseudoscience and a pseudoreligion" will probably continue in spite of the high court decision. ASA will keep trying to help people cope (especially teachers), but most of us long for the day when creation can go back to being a valued religious doctrine and evolution can go back to being a valuable scientific inference.

Looking ahead, another problem may be coming up' as one of those terms takes on a new meaning in general parlance. For example, of two magazines called Creation now published in California, one opposes evolution; the other is "a magazine of spirituality to sustain the earth -- a spirituality of creativity, reverence, generativity, earthiness, celebration, and wholeness." The New Creation Institute (NCI) in Missoula, Montana, is not at all related to the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) in San Diego. The ICR's concern is how living things got here; the NCI focuses on how well we take care of them now that they're here.

It's encouraging to see the broad-based North American Conference on Christianity and Ecology come into being (see BULLETIN BOARD item 1)_ But (here in Berkeley, at least -- Ed.) "creation spirituality' has a variety of meanings not always in harmony with biblical or theistic interpretations. Its emphasis on the goodness of God's creation (of which humans are a part) sometimes sounds like a coverup of human sin -- or at least a limitation of sin to "sins against creation."

Without biblical reminders like Romans 1, the new "creationists" may slip into worshiping and serving "the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever" (1:26). At one extreme, "creation spirituality' seems to merge into pantheistic "earth religion" with tree spirits, and the whole bit, to form a kind of "wholistic idolatry."

On the other hand, the message of Genesis is that God called his creation good, and intended his human creatures to "tend the garden" in a loving way. The new "creationists" remind us that an excessive focus on the Fall and redemption may have led evangelicals into distorting God's message -- with disastrous consequences for all of God's creation. Theologians debate the ways in which human fallenness affects God's creation. To borrow an adjective from evolutionary science, does creation today show pervasive fallenness or a "punctuated" fallenness?

Clearly, Christians must not wait for theological "theory" to sort itself out before facing the "fact" of human sin and its destructive effects on our environment. But we may be in for more semantic confusion, with "creation spirituality" and "creation science" both floating around.

ASA members care about spiritual reality as well as scientific understanding. But when people ask if we're "creationists," it may be more important than ever to reply, "That depends on what you mean."

Last year the three professors served as Fellows of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, studying the practice of science, relationship of science to Christian faith, and the so-called creation/evolution controversy. They co-authored a book-length manuscript descrying distortion of science by both "young-earth creationism" and scientistic naturalism. Current charges of heterodoxy stem from Menninga's earlier writings in Christian education journals, from Young's Creation and the Flood and Christianity and the Age of the Earth, and especially from Van Till's The Fourth Day (1986).

In interviews, the three have not shied away from calling themselves "creationists" who believe in God as the creator of everything in the cosmos and who accept the Bible as his authoritative Word. But their insistence that the Genesis creation narratives were not meant to be read as science troubles some influential members of the 304,000-member Christian Reformed Church (CRC), which owns and controls Calvin College. In particular, Lester De Koster, a former Calvin speech professor, wrote a very negative review of 7he Fourth Day, published as a seven-part series in Christian Renewal, a biweekly magazine published in St. Catherine's, Ontario. An official CRC publication, The Banner, has been more even-handed.

Headline writers Play up the CRC "Battle of the Bible." Barb Fichtenberg of Detroit sent a story by Jan Weist in the May 9 Detroit News. David Myers of Hope College sent one by Chris Meehan in the April 12 Grand Rapids Press. Meehan interviewed ASA's 1987 keynote speaker, Michigan state Senator Vernon Ehlers (a former Calvin physics professor). Vern said he understands the concerns about academic freedom, but added, "This investigative process has a long history in our church." The Press noted that some 30 years ago, three Calvin professors were fired for their interpretations of Scripture.

The investigating committee dislikes the term "inquisition," but is proceeding with depositions and other trappings of a trial. Many CRC members outside the Calvin community, as well as colleagues and students, have written letters in support of "the unholy trinity." A few more letters from ASA members probably wouldn't hurt.

VIEWS AND INTERVIEWS

Chiistianity Today used as its cover story for 3 April 1987 an article on how scientists who are Christians integrate their faith with their scientific work. For "Ceasefire in the Laboratory," writer Tim Stafford interviewed "working scientists" in university and government laboratories. ASA members we recognized included Stanford materials scientist Richard Bube, Carnegie-Mellon physicist Robert Griffiths, Harvard U. astronomer Owen Gingerich, Alberta chemist Walter 7horson, U.C. Berkeley biochemist David Cole, and Minnesota geneticist Elving Anderson. (We hope ASAers will invite the other scientists mentioned to join ASA. -- Ed.)

A companion article by Bill Durbin, Jr., "The Return of the God Hypothesis," called for "a new metaphysics" to "reveal a closer relationship between the Creator and his creation than mere mechanism had assumed." Durbin found merit in Charles 7hwaon's proposal for distinguishing "operation science" from "origin science" in 77W Mystery of Life's Origin, co-authored by Walter Bradley and Roger Olsen.

The April 17 Christianity Today carried an article by Kristine Christlieb entitled "Suddenly Respect." It dealt with a "comeback" of Christian thinking in university philosophy departments, naming nearly a dozen evangelicals who've had a part in that resurgence. The real focus of the article, however, was the Society of Christian Philosophers, founded in 1978 and now numbering some 800 members. The society and its journal were mentioned repeatedly -- in comparison to the rather offhand mention of ASA in the preceding issue. (Oh, well, at least Tim Stafford has heard of ASA. -- Fd)

More people are hearing of ASA these days. A press release about Teaching Science in a Climate of Controversy sent to radio and television stations across the country has produced some good results. The release introduced Teaching Science co-author John Wiester, consultant Robert Newman, and ASA executive director Robert Henmann as potential interviewees. It also suggested questions talk-show hosts might ask about ASA, the booklet, and the "climate of controversy' over public education.

Bob Herrmann appeared on two Boston stations and WGN Chicago in June in a discussion with theologian Langdon Gilkey, evolutionary biologist James Hobson of the U. of Chicago, and "creation science" representative Paul McKinney of Wheaton, IL. John Wiester has made guest appearances on secular and Christian broadcasts originating in Spokane (WA), Portland (OR), Sacramento, Monterey, Concord, Fresno (CA), Carson City (NV), and Pueblo (CO). Wondering what points a host will try to make, who else may be invited "for contrast," and what kinds of people will call in keep John on his toes -and on his knees.

(Even the Newsletter editor has been interviewed, by the director of religious broadcasting for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The Aussies don't understand this crazy American dispute, so we tried to explain it tohim. That made it a pretty good dye, myte. -- Ed)

The May issue of The American Biology Teacher carried a guest editorial by William V. Mayer, chair of the National Association of Biology Teachers 50th Anniversary Committee. He devoted it to organizations with "names designed to make one think of objective organizations concerned with serious investigation" of such areas as science. Guess who he had in mind.

Here's a hint: one of the organizations "selects data" and has produced an "insidious" booklet full of pseudoscience "clandestinely based on revelatory supernaturalism." In addition to his misreading of the ASA booklet as a creationist attack on evolution (which required quite a "selective reading" of his own), Mayer's review is remarkable for his use of the word clandestine six times in one and a third pages.

The harshest critic continues to be William Bennetta, a science writer associated with the California Academy of Sciences. He organized and edited responses to the ASA booklet from nine scientists in the May issue of The Science Teacher. Then in the March-June issue of CreationlEvolution Newsletter he not only fired off another round at the booklet but even blasted Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, for saying something tolerant of ASA. Bennetta thus comes across as a "loose cannon" rolling around on NCSE's deck.

That issue of CIE Newsletter contained other negative reviews (by Thomas Jukes, Neil Wells, and Steven Schafersman), but also a ringing defense of ASA by

Richard P. Aulie, founder and first liaison of the Chicagoarea Committee of Correspondence.

As time permits, the Committee for Integrity in Science Education, which produced ASA's booklet for teachers, tries to reply to responsible criticism. At a (clandestine?) meeting in June the committee roughed out individual replies to each publication, to avoid sounding as repetitious as their critics.

2. The 1988 ASA Annual Meeting will be held at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. (Our 1987 Annual Meeting in Colorado Springs counts as our midwestern meeting; next year we really go west on our four-year cross-country cycle. -- Ed.) In preparation, ASA's Arms Control Commission met at Stanford on May 9 to discuss the commission's agenda and to begin laying plans for the 1988 Annual Meeting program. Political scientist Stanley W. Moore of Pepperdine chaired the meeting of the commission, to which the ASA council has given responsibility for the 1988 program. A future issue of the Newsletter will list topics the commission thinks may be especially appropriate for next year's Annual Meeting.

3. The A. Kurt Weiss Memorial Lectureship has been set up as an annual series sponsored by the Christian Medical Coalition (CMC) at the U. of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City. According to Kenneth J Dormer, Kurt's colleague in the Dept. of Physiology & Biophysics, arrangements to form the coalition had just been completed at the time of Kurt's death in February. The purpose of CMC is to bring in distinguished Christians to challenge students and faculty with the "true basis for moral and ethical reasoning in medicine." Elton Trueblood's lecture in February became the occasion to dedicate the lectureship to Kurt Weiss. Kurt was president of ASA, 1979-81.

Bob Fischet's fine little God Did It, But How? is down to $4.95. Colin Russell's excellent Cross-Currents is at half-price, $5.48. Vie Joel Sonnenberg Story (about the recovery of the terribly burned little son of Mike Sonnenberg) is also half-price, $4.98. John Polkinghorne's 77w Way the World Is: The Christian Perspective of a Scientist is selling well at the discounted price listed in the ASA Source Book. God and the New Biology is a new Harper & Row title by Arthur Peacocke ($19.95).

In the social sciences, Michael recommends books by Robert Coles, "the only psychologist to be featured on the covers of both Tvne and Christianity Today," especially 77ze Moral Life of Children (now in paperback, $10.95) and The Political Life of Children ($19.95). Recommended by scholars Peter Berger and Robert Bellah is James Hunter's new Evangelicalism: 77ze Coming Generalion (hardbound, $19.95), based on surveys of students from Christian colleges.

Charles received his bachelor's and master's degrees at the U. of California in Berkeley, his Ph.D. from Rutgers in 1972. That year he joined the Miami faculty to teach such courses as social conflict, social stratification, and sociology of religion. He also taught sociology courses at the United Theological Seminary in Dayton as an adjunct professor.

Charles was founding editor of the journal Humanity and Society, and co-founder of the Association for Humanistic Sociology, which he served as president in 1981-1982.

He was a member of the American Sociological Association, Society for the Sociology of Religion, Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations, and other professional societies. He was secretary and a board member of the International Association of Near-Death Studies and edited its Newsletter, Vital Signs.

In his studies on the near-death phenomenon, Charles interviewed many people who had gone through such experiences. He was author of After the Beyond and coauthor of 77 Near-Death Experience: Problems, Prospects, Perspectives.

Memorial services were held at the Oxford Bible Fellowship, where our ASA Sunday worship was held in 1984. Charles is survived by his wife Betty, three sons (Matthew, Joseph, and James), and his mother, all of Oxford. Memorials to establish a scholarship fund for the Flynn children may be sent in Charles Flynn's name to the First National Bank of Southwestern Ohio, Oxford, OR

We send our condolences to Betty Flynn, with prayers for her and the three boys. (We also thank Ed Yamauchi, Miami professor of history and a founder of the Oxford Bible Fellowship, for a clipping about Charles's death from the campus newspaper. We regret the delay in publishing this notice. - Ed.)

Waft Heam of Berkeley chaired the panel. He told of his experiences as ASA's representative to the historic 1983 Pasadena conference, perhaps the first public airing by evangelicals of their strong differences on "Peacemaking in a Nuclear Age." Walt asked questioners to stick to personal moral issues rather than public policy issues, so members of the audience were left with many unasked questions as well as unanswered ones. But they were also left with a compassionate sense of need to support in prayer all Christians who have to make hard choices.

Jean-Pierre Adoul is a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, near Montreal.

Krk J. Bertsche is a Ph.D. candidate in physics at the U. of California in Berkeley. In February he presented a paper at a U.C./Cal Tech conference on Accelerator Mass Spectrometry in Irvine. Kirk and his four co-authors described advanced C-14 dating methods using the 11cyclotrino" or midget cyclotron being developed at Berkeley. Kirk's group thinks a milligram-size sample of 30,000-year-old material can be dated with their relatively simple, relatively cheap ($100,000), low-power setup with less than 10 percent uncertainty -- about as well as the "big boys" can do at present. (The current model is still not exactly a "lap-top" machine; the magnet weighs several tons! -- Ed.)

Laura Carr is a 1986 biology graduate of Princeton University. Her postcard came from Nairobi, Kenya, where she is serving with the Africa Inland Mission. After three months' study of Pazande, the language of the Zande tribe, she now helps with medical mission work at an isolated hospital at Banda in the NE corner of Zaire. Laura hopes that her two years of work in Zaire will give her a good understanding of Third World health care and help her decide what further studies she should pursue in medicine or community health.

Edward R. Dayton is vice-president-at-large of World Vision International of Monrovia, California. Ed is back in more direct supervision of World Vision's MARC (Missions Advanced Research and Communication) ministry following the April resignation of MARC director Sam Wilson, who became director of research of the Zwerner Institute of Muslim Studies in Pasadena. MARC will have an active role in support of the International Congress on World Evangelization to take place in Singapore in the summer of 1989.

Allen H. Erickson has moved to North Ogden, Utah, to become patent administrator for the Wasatch Operations of Morton Thiokol, Inc. (in the news last year as producer of the solid rocket motor for the ill-fated NASA Challenger flight). When we heard from him, Allen and his wife were looking for a local church where they can minister and grow.

Erastus Filos has completed his doctoral studies in physical chemistry at the University of Konstanz in West Germany but continues to do research there on Compton spectroscopy. He is now employed by a German company related to the Perkin-Elmer Corporation.

Lany L. Funck chairs the Chemistry Dept. of Wheaton College, IL. Wheaton is the only Illinois college recognized for excellence in science instruction by the Undergraduate Science Group, which includes such schools as Oberlin, Smith, and Vassar. Larry's department is in its second year of a Summer Science Internship Program permitting Wheaton students to collaborate with professors in full-time, daily lab research. Also participating will be two Chicago high school students, selected from a group of 20 Principal's Scholars who applied. One project this summer has to do with pyrrole synthesis, another with metal interactions with vitamin B-12 model compounds.

Richard Harrison is still in a comatose condition in a Plainfield, New Jersey, nursing facility after a tragic automobile accident two years ago. A note in the Metropolitan New York local section newsletter reminds us to continue to pray for Richard, for his wife Karen, and for their young son Paul.

George Jennings of Le Mars, Iowa, has been appointed editor of the quarterly Notes on Anthropology published by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). The journal publishes scholarly studies relevant to Bible translation and cross-cultural communication by SIL and Wycliffe workers worldwide. Since George has specialized in psychological anthropology in the Middle East, his appointment seems to reflect SIL's increasing interest in Islam around the world.

Glenn L Kirkland, a physicist retired from the Applied Physics Lab of Johns Hopkins, is noted for his volunteer work with the Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association (ADRDA). Last November Glenn was among ADRDA officials called to the White House to receive a presidential proclamation making that Alzeihemer's Disease month. (We know because we've seen a photo of President Reagan shaking Glenn's hand. -- Ed.)

Neal Matson of Slana, Alaska, has been mentioned in these pages before as a rugged pioneer who lives in a semi-wilderness area without phone or electricity, and with running water only when the snow melts. Such romantic isolation has its drawbacks, however, as when Neal ordered a bunch of copies of Teaching Science in a Climate of Controversy, urging Ipswich to ship 'em to arrive before the last week of May. That's when (every odd- numbered year) he makes his biennial trip to town (Anchorage), he said, and he'd sure hate to miss that package. He wants to introduce a few folks up there trained in science to ASA, and to help just plain folks in the church understand what the fuss is about. (Neal can snow a tenderfoot quicker'n a williwaw, but because he thinks Teaching Science is "great," we choose to picture him as a grizzled philosopher. A sample of Neal's philosophy: "When you go cross-country skiing, be sure to pick a small country." -- Ed.)

Kenneth C. Olson of Burlingame, California, is only one of three Ken Olsons or Olsens in ASA. This one is the biochemist whose isolation work made human growth hormone from DNA-altered bacteria a commercially available. product. In June the Newsletter editor visited Ken's lab at Genentech to preview his talk for the ASA GeneSplicing Conference at Eastern College. Ken predicts that recent regulatory and patentability hassles over tissue plasminogen activator (TPA), a new therapeutic product useful in coronary disease, will be only a temporary setback for Genentech.

Eric M. Parker received his Ph.D. in pharmacology from the U. of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in March. He is now a postdoctoral fellow in the Dept. of Pharmacology at the U. of Texas Health Science Center in Dallas. Eric will try to achieve expression of a cDNA encoding the avian beta-adrenergic receptor in yeast, then use site-directed mutagenesis to study the functional importance of various parts of the receptor's structure.

W. Stanford Reid is emeritus professor of history at the University of Guelph in Ontario. Last fall, at a symposium at McGill in Montreal, he spoke on "Calvin's View of Natural Science." This spring, at a Florida church, Stan gave a series of lectures on "The Impact of Christianity on Western Society," the subject of a book he is writing. He is also doing some research on Sir J. William Dawson's views on creation and evolution.

Ben Van Wagner teaches biology and science education at Bethany College in Scotts Valley, California. In April he attended a Chautauqua short course on "Creation, Evolution, or Both: A Multiple Model Approach" at the University of Dayton in Ohio. The course was taught by professor Craig Nelson of Indiana University. Ben did his graduate work under Kenneth V. Olson, professor of science education at Colorado State in Greeley.

Wesley Wentworth, who has spent twenty years in South Korea working as a sanitary engineer, feels called to help Korean Christian academics integrate their faith with their scholarly work. A friend's home in Wilmington, Delaware, serves as headquarters but Wes stays on the road most of the time, traveling from one university to another to call on Korean students and faculty whose name someone has given him. Wes operates (from the trunk of his car) a discount book service called "Christian Perspective Books"; some of his books were for sale at the Houghton College ASA Annual Meeting in 1986. On a swing up the west coast in April, Wes spent several days in Berkeley staying with Ginny and Waft Heam. ("Evangelical hotbed" may be too strong a phrase for the Hearns' Troll House, but the bed Wes slept in was still warm when the next guest arrived. That was Jim Sire of InterVarsity Press, another peripatetic missionary to the academic world. -- Ed.)

Kurt Wood's Fulbright contract as a university chemistry instructor in Morocco has terminated, so the Woods are back in the U.S. until about August 25. (Address: c/o Goria, 40 Fairview, Piedmont, CA 94610; tel. 415843-1624). Debbie says two-and-a-half-year-old Rachel, born in Morocco, is amazed at how many people here "speak American." Six-month-old Miriam hasn't commented on that. The Woods will go to France, then probably to another Muslim country, at the end of their "home ministry assignment" (the new term for "furlough") on behalf of Arab World Ministries (the new name for North Africa Mission).

Ann L. Woodworth, former managing editor of ASA publications, is a student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. The April 1987 issue of New England Church Life featured a front-page story by Ann on the "Baby M" case that had just been ruled on by the Superior Court of New Jersey. Quoting various legal, medical, ethical, and theological authorities, Ann discussed the case in light of broader questions evangelicals must face, including the problem of infertility (affecting perhaps a tenth of American couples) and the plight of some half-million children now under foster care (which will probably worsen if surrogacy becomes an easy option). Ann recalled the surrogate motherhood of Hagar in the biblical story of Abraham and Sarah -- and the fact that it didn't turn out very well.

David Yee of Oceanside, New York, is a chemist and director of research at Advance Biofactures Corporation, a small private pharmaceutical company. David and his wife serve their Long Island Abundant Life Church in various ways, teaching Sunday school classes and hosting a monthly discipleship group. David would Eke to sponsor Bible studies for college students, but nearby Hofstra and Adelphi are both commuter colleges where it is difficult to gather student groups for such purposes.