Open Door giving
Campolo award
Open Door Community Church, 709 W. Lee Ave. in Sherwood, will honor the Rev. Ed Bacon, a retired Episcopal priest, at its annual fall conference Nov. 17-19.
Beginning at 7 p.m. Nov. 17 with a concert by the Rev. Vince Anderson, Bacon will then be given the Peggy Campolo Carrier Pigeon Award, which is named after Campolo -- the person who inspired Randy Eddy-McCain -- Open Door's pastor -- to begin the church, according to its website. Bacon is being recognized for his years supporting LGBT rights and striving for unity among faiths.
After breakfast at 9 a.m. Nov. 18, Bacon will give a talk, after which Ragan Courtney will make a presentation. A panel discussion that includes Bacon, the Rev. Stan Mitchell of GracePointe Church in Nashville, Tenn.; Peggy Campolo; and Jay Bakker will take place.
Anderson will give a workshop, "Singing the Psalms," at 2:15 p.m., and the evening will wrap up with a concert by Cynthia Clawson at 7 p.m. and a talk by Mitchell at 8.
The conference concludes with a 10:45 a.m. worship service Nov. 19 in which Mitchell will speak, after which there will be a potluck.
-- Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Priest's relic goes
to home church
OKARCHE, Okla. -- A first-class relic of "native son" Stanley Rother was presented to his hometown parish during a recent much-anticipated Mass and special gathering.
The relic -- a piece of the priest's rib -- was carried down the aisle in a reliquary shaped like a cross by his brother, Tom Rother, during the Mass on Oct. 15 at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, which Tom Rother and his family still attend, The Oklahoman reported.
"I think it's wonderful," Marti Rother, wife of Tom Rother and Stanley Rother's sister-in-law, said with a smile. "I just think it's something we will each go to every day to pray to."
The Rev. John Peter Swaminathan, Holy Trinity's pastor, thanked Oklahoma City archbishop Paul Coakley for remaining true to his promise to give the relic a permanent home at the church that Rother attended as a youth.
"A small town in Oklahoma has now become a prominent place on the U.S. map," Swaminathan said, anticipating thousands of visitors to Rother's hometown parish.
Rother was 46 when he was killed July 28, 1981, by unknown assailants in Guatemala. An Okarche native, Rother was an Archdiocese of Oklahoma City priest serving as pastor of the Santiago Atitlan parish in Guatemala at the time of his death.
-- The Associated Press
Once-lost Jewish
papers on display
NEW YORK -- The American public is getting a chance to view newly discovered Jewish documents that had been presumed destroyed during the Holocaust.
Ten documents brought over from Lithuania went on display Oct. 24 at New York's YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, which is working with the Lithuanian government to archive the 170,000-page collection.
The documents were hidden to protect them from the Nazis during World War II. They resurfaced during a move in 2016, and YIVO confirmed their significance this year.
The wide-ranging collection includes manuscripts by famous Yiddish writers, religious writings, poetry and record books of shuls and yeshivas. There are letters by Sholem Aleichem, whose writings inspired the Fiddler on the Roof character Tevye, and a Yiddish postcard written by the artist Marc Chagall in 1935.
Highlights of the Manhattan exhibition, which can be seen by appointment until January, include a 1751 astronomy manuscript with descriptions and drawings of the solar system and an 1883 Russian censor's copy of a theatrical poem by Abraham Goldfaden, founder of the modern Yiddish theater.
-- The Associated Press
Religion on 11/04/2017