Briefs

___ Bhutan Christians face threats. Christians in the country of Bhutan are facing a much-escalated level of opposition and persecution, according to a report to the Baptist World Alliance from Kitbok Ryntathiang, director of the Christian Academy, Shillong, in northeast India. Bhutan is a small country of more than 2 million people in the Himalayan mountain region bordered by Tibet and India. According to Ryntathiang's report, when Christians came to church on Sunday morning, April 8, they were met by authorities and police who recorded their names. Police have interrogated a number of pastors and threatened them with imprisonment, demanding that the churches stop their witnessing.
___ Southwestern will honor four. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary will present its Distinguished Alumni awards this year to Jack Graham, F.B. Huey, Leon McBeth and Charles Sullivan. Graham is pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas; Huey is a professor of Old Testament emeritus at Southwestern; McBeth is a Baptist historian and distinguished professor of church history at Southwestern; and Sullivan is executive director-treasurer of the State Convention of Baptists in Indiana.
___ Southeastern deletes verse. Trustees of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary voted to delete a verse from the seminary's official hymn. The verse was added to the hymn in 1987 and was nothing more than "a political statement," Provost Russ Bush charged. The hymn was written to the tune of "Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life." The deleted verse proclaims: "For freedom Christ has set us free, Breaking the chains of captivity. Bound but to God we go forth whole, Free from the shackles of mind and soul."

The Baptist Standard