Words & Works

P: The News Bulletin of the Evangelical Confederation of Colombia (South America) published a summary of the persecution of Protestants there during the past five years. Items: 42 church buildings destroyed by fire and dynamite, 31 damaged, ten confiscated; 110 Protestant primary schools closed, 54 of them by government order, the rest by violence; 51 Protestant men, women & children killed, $148,000 lost in buildings destroyed, damaged or confiscated. During the same period, according to the confederation, Protestant church membership in Colombia increased 51%, from 7,908 in 1948 to 11,958 in 1953.

P: In an encyclical letter titled Fulgens Corona (The Radiant Crown), Pope Pius XII proclaimed the year 1954 (from December 1953 to December 1954) a Marian Year, in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The Marian Year will be marked by special ceremonies, and Roman Catholics everywhere were urged to concentrate their prayers on three main subjects: world peace, church unity, and "the church of silence"--Catholics who live behind the Iron Curtain under fear and persecution for their faith.

P: The militantly anti-Communist International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, which represents 97 unions in 73 countries, tossed a monkey wrench toward the machinery of Moral Re-Armament, the nondenominational, untheological, polite revival movement that evolved out of Frank Buchman's old Oxford Group. A report prepared by I.C.F.T.U.'s secretariat accused the Moral Re-Armament movement of interfering "with trade-union activities and [making] anti-trade-union efforts, even to the extent of trying to found 'yellow unions.' " M.R.A., it said, was undemocratic: "Buchman does not build up his movement from below . . . but from the ranks of leaders . . . The sources from which the Moral Re-Armament movement draws its necessary funds are completely unknown. All that can be said is that those who supply the money must be very well off."

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