September 3 2001

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GERALD KIESCHNICK, newly elected president of the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), says his priorities include promoting an attitude of "cooperation without compromise" toward the more liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (elca). At the LCMS's July convention in St. Louis, delegates voted 2-1 in favor of a resolution saying, "We cannot consider them [the elca] to be an orthodox Lutheran church body." H. George Anderson, presiding bishop of the elca, told the Post-Crescent newspaper of Appleton, Wisconsin: "Obviously this will complicate our relationship." Kieschnick, president of the synod's Texas district since 1991 and chairman of the LCMS Commission on Theology and Church Relations since 1998, received 50.8 percent of the votes cast at the denomination's July convention and will be installed as its 13th president this month. A former pastor, he succeeds A.L. Barry, who died in March.

President George W. Bush has nominated Eastern Nazarene College President KENT HILL to head the Europe and Eurasia bureau of the U.S. Agency for International Development, a humanitarian organization. The position directs foreign aid programs to the former Soviet Union, Balkan nations, and other European countries. The Senate must confirm the nomination. Hill is the former president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, d.c.