Banner Graphic, Volume 11, Number 212, Greencastle, Putnam County, 9 May 1981 — Page 6

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The Putnam County Banner Graphic, May 8,1981

George Foreman

They all thought I was crazy, but I told them 'You're witnessing a miracle'

(c) 1981 Boston Globe HOUSTON They’re singing gospel and clapping hands here in George Foreman’s church Brother Foreman is clapping, too, and swaying and singing. This huge vulnerable man used to be the heavyweight champion of boxing. In an earlier life, George Foreman fought Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali. Now he’s in there against the big guy with the pitchfork. Sinners, read on. “A lot of guys used to say to me, ‘George, you ought to go back to boxing. While you're young, you can fight a few years and then you can go back to preaching.’ “ ’NO,' I said. I’m going to do ALL I CAN for the Lord while I’m YOUNG, while I’m STRONG. I’m not going to WAIT until I break down. I KNOW the Lord would take me then, I KNOW that. But I’m going to go and get with HIM right NOW! ’ Thank you, Jesus.” This is the First Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and those are the words of its preacher, 32-year-old George Foreman. The congregation’s members, poor people, are happy to have such a man on their side. When he says he will help them fight evil, they believe they will win that fight. "Thank you, Jesus," they say. "Amen,” says Foreman. The First Church of the Lord Jesus Christ was founded recently by Foreman and his friend, Dexter Wilson. “On the day of the Pentecost,” Foreman proudly pointed out. Foreman is not a licensed minister, but the technicality matters not to his congregation. In their hearts, he is for real. The congregation meets in the homes of its members because it can’t afford a permanent building. Tonight, the service is at Jack Wingo’s house, a four-room bungalow on an unlighted, unpaved street in northwest Houston. There is a single naked lightbulb on the ceiling and wooden folding chairs set out. A stripped-down sound speaker mounted on a box is the pulpit. A picture of Jack Wingo’s baby girl is on the end table next to the sofa. Dexter Wilson’s electric guitar and amplifier are plugged into a socket. Thirty people come to pray all black, half children and most of the rest women. Somehow, they squeeze into the room, the smallest children crawling under the chairs. Foreman, wearing blue jeans, plaid shirt, and cotton bush jacket, dwarfs his pulpit. He begins by telling the children to listen quietly or risk being “rapped upside the head.” He eases into his topic marriage and fidelity. It is a spontaneous sermon. It is rambling, but what it lacks in structure it makes up for in feeling. Wilson, sitting on the amplifier, encourages Foreman in a low voice. Foreman’s forehead is glistening. A mosquito contemplates it but doesn’t land. A basket is set out and the two-hour service is over. Foreman is standing outside Jack Wingo’s house. “Did you plan your sermon?” he is asked. “No,” says Foreman. “I don’t know why I talked about marriage. I guess that was the message the Lord wanted me to give somebody tonight.” He is grinning as a thought occurs to him His second marriage recently ended in divorce. He is supporting four children, one from his first marriage and three born out of wedlock. “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe that message is forme.” “Will you marry again?” “Oh sure,” says Foreman. “I ain’t against marriage like all those popes they got in Europe.” Foreman won an Olympic gold medal at Mexico City in 1968, waved an American flag in the ring and became famous or infamous, depending upon one’s perspective at the time. He was a patriotic black man with a ghetto (Houston’s Fifth Ward) and Job Corps background. "That was my best moment as an athlete,” he says today. “I still love this country.” He won the heavyweight championship in 1973 by knocking down undefeated champion Joe Frazier six times in two rounds in Jamaica. He was 6 feet 4, 230 pounds, undefeated, and considered perhaps the most powerful puncher in boxing history. But he was no boxer, and Muhammad Ali took the title from him in 1974 with an eighthround knockout in Zaire. “As a boxer, I think I’ll be remembered as much for beating Frazier as for losing to Ali,” says Foreman. At this point in Foreman’s life, religion was a perfunctory exercise. “I used to go to church to meet the ladies,” he says. “I remember in Africa, Ali called me a Christian, and I didn’t even know what that was. I thought it was some nationality.” Foreman was in position for a shot at Ali’s title in 1977 when he unexpectedly lost a 12round decision to Jimmy Young on St. Patrick’s Day in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Some people say a fight is not the only thing Foreman lost tliat night. Foreman says God spoke to him in his dressing room afterward. He thought he died and was returned to life. He believed that Jesus had come alive in his body, and that the blood on his body was caused by a crown of thorns on his head. . His handlers conferred and decided something was wrong with Foreman. “Everybody thought I was crazy,” says

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GEORGE FOREMAN Former champ in 1976 photo

Foreman. “Eight people tried to hold me down, but I jumped up and got under the shower and was screaming, ‘l’m purifying myself.’ “I told them all, ‘You’re witnessing a miracle.’ ” His handlers and closest friends believed he was hallucinating, perhaps from dehydration, and sent him to a hospital. “They examined me from head to toe and never did find nothing, ” says Foreman. “You know all this science fiction stuff on television today? Ain’t nothing as strange as what happened to me.” After Puerto Rico, Foreman intended to continue boxing, but gradually religious fervor overtook him. “I intended to come back and tell the people what happened,” says Foreman, “and I was going to go on boxing and do the whole deal. But this thing got greater and greater every day. Every day I lived, it got a greater hold on me.” He quit boxing at the age of 28. “I was coming into my prime,” says Foreman. “I was just learning what it was about. These last four years would have been my best as a boxer.” The address is in the fashionable North Hollow subdivision in North Houston. The modem house is in the $150,000 range, and there are comfortable front and back yards. The house dwarfs Jack Wingo’s, where the service was held, but Foreman keeps it off limits to his congregation. “1 don’t want no single ladies coming in here and getting no ideas,” he says. Inside is a parody of bachelor dishevelment. A set of barbells and a bench occupy the center of the den. Awards, pictures and mementos sit atop the boxes they were moved in, waiting to be hung or shelved. Foreman’s Olympic gold medal, however, was stolen a few years ago. “I try to work out to keep my weight down so I don’t have to buy new clothes.” Foreman weighs 270 pounds and most of his added weight seems to have gone to his face, which is broader and fleshier than it was when he fought. His close-cropped hair adds to that impression. The way he looks now, Foreman would have a hard time returning to the ring. But that possibility is remote or nonexistent. “I’m happier now than I’ve ever been in my life,” says Foreman. “I feel I have found my niche. “I don’t condemn boxing or any sport. The Bible doesn’t say nothing against it. What I condemn is the spirit of it. Greed and avarice. That’s all it is. Everybody after all money and fame. The founding of his new church was an important step in his evangelism. He started out by preaching on the streets and in parks, and there his boxing identity made all the difference. “I used my past as bait,” says Foreman. “The people in the streets cared about boxing, but the people in my church don’t care about it.” “I stay away from false prophets,” says Foreman. “If I know a man’s major goal is raising money, I don’t associate.” His own fortune, he says, has evaporated. He still owns a 200-acre ranch in Marshall, Tex., but all the cattle have been sold. His fleet of foreign sports cars and Cadillacs has been reduced to one sedan. The house is his. The man who made $5 million for one night’s work in Zaire now sells industrial cleaning supplies to make ends meet. “I don’t spend a lot,” says Foreman. “It don’t take a lot of money to serve God. I have a saying: ‘I made the wagon.’ I’ve broken away from the material life. I don’t need it. Within the Houston religious community, which in its Bible Belt fervor numbers 2,000 churches, Foreman has built a quiet but sound reputation. “At first everybody believed that at the first temptation to go back to boxing, he would,” says Rev. John Lawson of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church. “When Spinks beat Ali, and he didn’t go back, it was obvious he was serious.” Foreman says he wants to return to all the places he fought to preach. He will continue to be fervent as long as “visions” keep coming to him as they did in Puerto Rico. “I had one come to me in my sleep,” says Foreman. “I was in Times Square, and there was this man who looked like Elvis Presley playing a guitar. And on the big message board they got there with all the lights, ‘I Love You’ was spelled out. That was God letting me know He remembered me. I get visions all the time, but only when He’s ready. It don’t matter when I need

Don't put energy burden on poor: bishops

NEW YORK (AP) - U.S. Roman Catholic bishops have taken a long, hard look at the nation’s energy situation and concluded that it’s tough and “is likely to get worse.” But they say that necessary sacrifices should be accepted cheerfully, in Christian spirit, and the brunt of them not heaped on the poor. In a 10,000-word statement, more than a year in preparation, the bishops say that protecting human life “is uppermost” in the church’s ap proach to the nation’s energy problems. Like the National Council of

Bad advice basis for lawsuit?

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) - The question whether a clergyman may be sued for malpractice if he gives you bad spiritual advice is being addressed by Samuel Ericsson, special counsel for the Christian Legal Society. Ericsson told a University of Notre Dame audience clergy malpractice suits filed so far are founded on the urge to avoid guilt, but human failing could endanger some basic freedoms. “I do not believe the religious community should be above the law or receive favored treatment in the law,” he said. “But we cannot lose sight of the difference between moral obligations and legal obligations.” Although he knows of only two such suits, the attorney said he fears once the idea is sparked, it will raise legal questions that courts are not prepared to face. Spiritual counseling malpractice cases don’t belong in the courts because pastoral counseling is “inextricably entwined with spiritual, theological, ecclesiastical, doctrinal religious issues that there’s no way the courts can competently deal with them,” Ericsson said. “Of the two clergy malpractice cases I know of, both involved suicides,” Ericsson said. “There is an attitude in our society there has to be responsibility somewhere other than ourselves for things that happen.” Ericsson is the defense attorney in a California clergy malpractice suit involving a 24-year-old seminary student, a member of Grace Community Church at Burbank, Calif., who killed himself. The lawyer said the student’s family staunch Catholics with whom the student had fought sued, claiming the church had prevented him from seeking professional counseling. The church hired untrained counselors and aggravated his depression, driving the student to suicide, Ericsson said. Ericsson said the case raises the question of the definition of church-related counseling. The suit also claims the counseling staff, aware of the student’s severe depression, should have alerted his family or summoned professional counselors. “Their opinion is the clergymen can handle the easy stuff, the widows and orphans.” Ericsson said. “But when they get serious emotional problems, you had better call in a specialist.”

Christians, Jews join in rebuilding NEW YORK (AP) - In a show of brotherhood, Jews as well as Christians are contributing to the rebuilding of the Church of St. Luke in the Fields, a 160-year-old Greenwich Village landmark gutted by fire. The congregation of Temple Emanu-El sent a $5,000 gift to express “brotherly concern.” Several other Jewish groups also sent contributions. The Rev. David R. Hunter, parish director of rebuilding, says contributions since the March fire have totaled more than $160,000 in 545 unsolcited gifts and pledges.

Churches (Protestant and Orthodox denominations), the Catholic bishops see the clearest, long-range hope in solar power, but they’re not as set against nuclear power. “Both pro- and anti-nuclear advocates seem prone to exaggerate claims, creating an atmosphere in which rational public discussion is difficult,” the bishops say, and they take a middle view of it. They suggest voter referendums about it so those on both sides can air their cases and help “dispel the mythology and reduce tensions that cloud the nuclear issue.”

church

Why was it abandoned?

Ruins of synagogue yield astonishing discoveries, mysterious questions in ancient hill town of Nabratein

By Donald J. Frederick National Geographic News Service DURHAM, N.C.-A synagogue that survived the Islamic conquest of Palestine had been excavated in the ancient hill town of Nabratein in Upper Galilee. Dedicated in A.D. 564 on the site of an older Jewish temple, the building attracted worshipers for 150 to 200 years before being destroyed. “IT’S THE FIRST firmly documented synagogue found in the Holy Land that lasted from the Byzantine into the Islamic era beginning in 640,” said Dr. Eric M. Meyers, an archeologist and professor of religion at Duke University. Byzantine and Arabic coins found in and around the synagogue verify that the building survived well into the eighth century. DATE ON DOOR Meyers found the dedication date on a door lintel that once adorned the imposing structure while directing an archeological dig at Nabratein, a village in Israel about three miles northeast of the present-day city of Zefat. Combining both Byzantine and Roman styles, the rectangular synagogue measured 56 feet long and 38 feet wide and was the dominant structure in the modest but prosperous town that once numbered perhaps 1,500 people. According to Jewish tradition, the temple faced south toward Jerusalem, but surprisingly for a building its size, had only one entrance on the southern wall. MEYERS’ WORK at Nabratein is supported by the National Geographic Society, Duke University, and the American Schools of Oriental Research. In the last few years, excavations at various sites in Upper Galilee have suggested that Jews in this mountainous, somewhat isolated region enjoyed a longer period of well-being than their counterparts in the more accessible south. Nabratein may have even supported a thriving Jewish folk art tradition in the sixth century. A large piece of black ceramic found in a Byzantine house dating from that time contains a drawing of the holy ark, descendant from the ark of the covenant of biblical times. A hanging lamp suspended in front of it is similar to the “enternal light” of contemporary Jewish iconography and the vigil light used by some Christian faiths. FOLK ART TRADITION “1 he drawing is astonishing,” said Meyers, “because the only previous renderings of the ark in the Holy Land appeared on formal floor mosaics and the like -- never on household articles.” The archeologist thinks the ceramic piece might have belonged to a dish used for the ritual washing of hands or other sacred purposes. “The repository of the sacred scrolls of Scripture enjoyed a place of pre-eminence in the folk art of the times,” he said. I he most sacred and revered part of any synagogue, the holy

The Protestant-Orthodox council has taken a stand against nuclear power generators, citing possibilities of permanent danger to the environment and the human genetic pool. Some people, including federal energy specialists, have questioned why churches should speak out at all on energy issues, but the Catholic bishops say “moral insight” is essential, not just technical expertise. “To the extent that energy is necessary for human life and health, and for life with dignity,

access to it is a matter of justice,” the statement says. Moreover, it adds, such considerations as the underlying “threat of war” over oil reserves and “the danger that scarcity poses for the poor” are reasons enough for the church to assess the problem. “Energy is one of those touchstone issues like arms control or the limits of federal power whose resolution will profoundly affect society in the 21st century,” the bishops say. “Unless some new perspectives are brought to bear, decision-makers will have little

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ark is a lavishly decorated receptacle that stands against the wall facing Jerusalem. It holds the Five Books of Moses known as the Torah scrolls. The eternal light hangs suspended before the ark as a symbol of faith and of the ancient temple in Jerusalem. NABRATEIN’S FAITH must have been severely tested in the mid-fourth century when the town and its first synagogue were suddenly abandoned. Heavy Roman taxation or the severe earthquakes that struck the region might have prompted the exodus. There were other problems -- dietary deficiencies leading to a lack of protein and a high degree of inbreeding in the small hill towns. “Apparently even though Jews and Christians were living in the same area they married only their co-religionists," Meyers said. “This didn’t help life spans in the small communities.” Whatever emptied Nabratein must have been serious. People didn’t return for about 150 years. COINS POINT EASTWARD The coins unearthed from this second major period of occupation proved another surprise. Byzantine and ArabicByzantine coins predominated. Only a single coin from the city of Tyre was found, although Tyrain coins were in wide circulation, so much that the Mediterranean port city dominated trading patterns in the city of Meron only six miles away. “In sharp contrast, Nabratein seems to be oriented eastward toward Syria rather than toward the Tyrian coast. This presents a striking new picture in this part of Galilee," concluded Meyers. THE PICTURE at Nabratein has been further complicated by the discovery of pottery indicating that the site was occupied from the Early Bronze Age (2350 8.C.) to Persian and Greek times. No floors and walls have yet been found to go with these remains, but we hope further excavations will eventually clarify the early history of the site," the archeologist said.

to rely on but the hard and rather narrow analytical tools that have guided energy development in the past.” The statement, drafted by a subcommittee headed by Bishop William Cosgrove of Belleville, 111, was approved in April by the 48-member board of the U.S. Catholic Conference, action arm of U.S. bishops. They stressed responsibility to protect human life and environment, although acknowledging that no energy strategy was wholly free of risk, and called for special aid to the poor in foreseen shortages. Strike is averted NEW YORK (AP) - Shortly before a threatened strike by a 186-member office workers union, the National Council of Churches reached a contract settlement last month, providing salary increases of 20 percent over two years, 10.5 percent now and 9.6 percent next year.

Excavations at Nabratein, an ancient town in Upper Galilee, verified a synagogue that survived the seventh century Islamic conquest of Palestine. Directed by Dr. Eric M. Meyers of Duke University, the dig also turned up hundreds of artifacts including household effects from Roman and Byzantine times and coins that spanned 1350 years.