The Battalion
TfITE
Baptist church makes history
by naming female senior pastor
WACO, Texas (AP) — Calvary Bap
tist Church members voted to hire a
37-year-old senior pastor who de
nominational officials believe is the first
female ever named senior pastor in a
Southern Baptist church in Texas.
Members voted, 1 90-73, to call the
Rev. julie Pennington-Russell Sunday
after hearing her preach.
"It's exciting to be a part of this,"
said member C. Sam Smith. "I think
it's historical. God is going be glori
fied even more in this church than
ever before."
Pennington-Russell is now senior
pastor at Nineteenth Avenue Baptist
Church in San Francisco — where
Pennington-Russell said gender is a
non-issue.
Not all members of Calvary, a tradi
tional mainstream Baptist church, agree
that a woman should be senior pastor.
Church member Rick Scott said
he and his wife will have to do
some serious soul searching about
staying at Calvary.
"I just don't feel that biblically a
precedent has been set for a women
to be a senior pastor in a church,"
he said.
Scott said the vote will prove divi
sive even though Pennington-Russell
was praised for her preaching and pas
toral care skills.
"You're going to see a little bit of a
shake-out, a pruning I've heard it
called," Scott said Sunday afternoon.
Pennington-Russell said although
the congregational vote for her was
lower than the 90 percent gauge used
by many male pastors when consider
ing a position, it will not stop her from
accepting the job.
"The 70 percent was really right in
the ballpark of what we thought be
cause it's so new," she said.
Approximately 90 Southern Baptist
women are serving as senior pastors or
co-pastors nationwide with fewer than
1,300 women ordained in Southern
Baptist Convention churches, said a
Southern Baptist ministry historian,
Sarah Frances Anders.
The new senior pastor replaces
the Rev. Ken Massey, who left Cal
vary last summer.
El Nino
New radios sought for better weather alet
DALLAS (AP) — El Nino-fueled demand for latest-gen
eration weather radios that alert listeners to tornado, hurri
cane and other warnings has caused a nationwide shortage
of the devices.
After the first deadly twisters hit Florida, Texas-based Ra
dio Shack went through a year's inventory in just weeks and
has had to reorder from an overseas manufacturer.
"The El Nino effect wreaked havoc not only with trying to
forecast the weather, but also for us to predict what the de
mand is for these radios," Rick Borinstein, Radio Shack senior
vice president of merchandising, said.
"We have had a run on weather alert radios since February
of this year when the first tornados hit Florida."
The National Weather Service said other tornadoes this year
in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee helped fuel the run.
"We are pleased there was demand that has increased," said
Skip Ely, National Weather Service chief meteorologist in Fort
Worth. "About 10 years ago, the service was underutilized.
Not that many people listened to weather radios."
The radios are made to receive FM broadcasts of forecasts,
watches, warnings and general weather information from the
nearest National Weather Service transmitting station.
They also can be set to sound an alarm when the weath
er service issues a severe weather watch or warning, such
as a tornado warning. Then, a loud tone is followed by the
alert broadcast.
Ely said his mother, who lives in Florida, bought one of the
radios after killer tornadoes swept through the state's central
section in February while many people slept.
"She got one of the last ones," he said.
Tony Magoulas, spokesman for Fort Worth,Texa
Tandy Corp., parent company of Radio Shack stores
company anticipated sales would be brisk for therai
But he would not say how many radios had been
"We are now air shipping more of them frorc
where they are built to our specifications," said Bo:
"We are trying to get them in stock. We anticipate
30 to 60 days, we will be back in flush inventoryx
across the country."
El Nino, the intense warming of the Pacific Ocean#
America, has shifted south the jet stream's wintei
bringing floods to southern California and tornadii
and heavy rains to Florida.
That's the kind of situation the radios were desi?
said Nathan McCollum of the Indian River Count)
ment of Emergency Services.
"The people who were in Central Florida in Febni,
about 10 to 12 minutes warning if they had their rad
said. "If they didn't have their radios, the first warm:
had was their structures collapsing."
Nate Hunt, manager of a Radio Shack store inFlor
pects to be restocked in late July.
"We haven't had them for about two months now,"H;
Sales in other parts of the country have been hot.
"I had heard the same thing in Alabama and evei
area," said Ely. "There has been an increase indemar
City councilman seeks denouncement of Waco Horroi
WACO, Texas (AP) — A councilman
wants Waco to officially denounce the
1916 lynching of a African-American man
who was hanged over a bonfire and mu
tilated on the City Hall lawn after his con
viction in the murder of a white woman.
Five-term councilman Lawrence
Johnson told fellow council members
that the lynching, known as the "Waco
Horror," remains a blot on city history.
Johnson said Waco should draft a
statement denouncing the incident and
proclaiming a commitment to racial har
mony, and he'd like to see a plaque
placed on City Hall grounds.
"I would like something to show that
even though it took 80 years, we've ac
knowledged it, and that we're past that
now," he told the Waco Tribune-Herald for
a story in Sunday's editions.
According to newspaper accounts of the
time, Jesse Washington, 17, was a field hand
on the farm of George and Lucy Fryer.
Washington confessed and later apol
ogized in court for the slaying of Fryer's
wife, 53, whose body was found in a cot
tonseed shed, the reports said.
In a one-day trial, Washington was
convicted and sentenced to hang by a
jury that deliberated in five minutes.
Court spectators then surged forward
and seized the defendant, dragging him
to an alley behind the courthouse.
There, according to the reports, Wash
ington was attacked with bricks, knives,
clubs and shovels, stripped and taken to the
front lawn of City Hall, where another mob
had built a bonfire beneath a hanging tree.
A crowd of 15,000, including the may
or and police chief, were said to have
watched as the man was doused with
coal oil, hanged and lowered into the
bonfire. Onlookers cut off body parts to
keep as souvenirs.
Washington's charred remains were
put in a bag and hung from a telephone
pole, the reports said.
The May 1916 incident was not
Waco's first or last racially motivated
lynching nor was it unusual among
thousands of lynchings in the South be
tween the Civil War and World War II.
But the incident brought national at
tention at the time, and the NAACP used
it in a pitch for a federal anti-lynching
law that eventually passed in 1921.
Johnson, a Waco native and president
of the local National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, said
he hadn't heard of the 1916 lynching un
til he visited the National Civil Rights
Museum in Memphis two years ago.
There he saw a picture of the burned
and disfigured corpse dangling from a tree
and surrounded by a grinning white men.
"What brought it home to me is that it
happened on the lawn of City Hall," he
said. "It became to me an act that was dif-
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♦ '• <. Kf -
117 Holleman Drive West
College Station,Texas 77840
COIUGIATS RESIDENCES
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ferent from other lynchings of tl
"There are indications thatc
cials were watching it happen;
nothing to stop it. I thought itw
we did something to purge thati:
to gain a sense of atonement.” I
Councilwoman Linda Ethridfl
she would like to hear a specific;^
al from Johnson and would we
council discussion about it.
"It will raise an interestir.l
tion," she said. "How do
with history? We like totalkabJ
good things in our history, bu:|
kind of discussion and rememl» s |
is appropriate for things t» v
shameful in history?" " I
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The Texas A&M University College of Liberal Arts,
in cooperation with the
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Tickets available
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Adults $10.00 Season $40.00
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Monday Evening. June 8,1998
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Monday Evening, June 15,1998
An Evening with
Violist, Karen Ritscher,
& Friends
Monday Evening, June 22,1998
An Evening With
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& Friends
Monday Evening, June 29,1998
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Texas Music Festival Symphony
Orchestra
Maxim Shostakovich, conductor
Nicholas Jones, cellist
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