Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 51

The Arizona Republic ALUlDITIONS SECTION Pagel Saturday, Nov. 25, 1978 i ft 5 A.sssrs'Sw' 1 1 1 i i i i isSseVJi; Listener donations keep neiv Christian radio station On the air RtDUUK pMtn By CMrto KrMCU Alan Cook grabs for another tape, above left, and then does the weather report, above, on the new Christian radio station KFLR. By GENE LUPTAK Republic Religion Editor The sounds coming from the radio station at 2345 W. Buckeye have changed considerably since July 30. Top 40 rock music by Jefferson Starship and Love Kisses used to be the fare on KRIZ.

Christian music by Bill Gaither and Regeneration now dominates the 1230 AM airway. The call letters have changed to KFLR. When KRIZ was put on the selling block, Family Life Radio, a network of four Christian stations in Michigan and Tucson, raised the down payment through listener donations. THERE WAS concern whether the Phoenix area would support another Christian station, said Alan Cook, program coordinator with Family Life Radio. At the time, there were four Christian radio stations and a Christian television station in Metropolitan Phoenix.

"We didn't want to come in and compete," Cook said. After an evaluation, the decision was made to buy KRIZ and become the Valley's fifth Christian station. KFLR is different from most stations, Christian or secular, in Greater Phoenix. It "middle-of-the-road" Christian music. Family Life Radio began in the early 1960s as an outgrowth of a youth ministry by Warren Bolthouse in the Jackson, area.

Bolthouse was given a half-hour a week on a local radio station for a Christian program geared to youth. His radio ministry expanded over the months until he was given the station's FM band of 80 hours a week. But the FM station had serious technical problems in 1967 knocking Bolthouse's programs off the air. Cook said because of that experience Bolt-house was convinced he needed to own a station. In 1968, a 250-watt station in Mason, was purchased, going on the air Jan.

2, 1969 as the first Family Life Radio station. Bolthouse and his associates also bought stations in Albion and Midland, and last year in Tucson formerly KOPO. Lee said KFLR is an extension of the local church. "Pastors can't be at the house all the time," said Cook. "We urge our listeners to to church.

You can't grow without fellowship. "For some shut-ins, perhaps, we are their church." doesn't carry commercials but depends on listeners to "keep it on the air with donations. Cook explained that Family Life Radio's concept to operate non-commercially allows the stations to be freer with scheduling programs and not burdened to sell time. And something is lost, Cook believes, when there is a spiritual message aired and then immediately a bread commercial comes on. Annually, the Family Life Radio stations stage donation drives to raise support money.

The drive for the Phoenix station, with a goal of $375,000, will be from Dec. 6 to 9 when all normal programming will be discontinued. Cook said the format of KFLR is to minister to Christians and the family, helping them to become "stronger and closer to the Lord." He said that the stations try to balance the programming and not run Bible study and preaching programs back-to-back. "Our contention is if there are a lot of speaking programs they will compete with each other," Cook said. Richard Lee, KFLR station manager, said that from 60 to 70 percent of the air time, which is 20 hours daily, is devoted to Bruce Thurman picks out a religious-themed record.

Religion, arts becoming close allies in nurturing spirit "Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God because they induce a kind of contact with the Creator and Ruler of the Universe." Thomas Merton rather than denigrate, regional cultures in recent years, so Christian artists have begun to promote ethnic traditions around the world as they seek to express religious ideas through the arts. As "religious aesthetics" programs continue to flourish, they are demonstrating the truth of an assertion made by John Lancaster Spalding, American essayist and Roman Catholic Bishop of Peoria, 111., from 1877 to 1908. "Religion and art are allies. Between them there is no antagonism, as there is none between theology and science." the unique role of all religious art in. uplifting humanity towards God." Pope John Paul II in his recent statement to the 50th anniversary of the Brussels-based International Catholic Organization for the Cinema (OCIP), II said that the Church should welcome and promote good cinema "with the understanding that this art requires, and at the same time, be a witness to the human, spiritual values demanded by Christian ethics." WHILE CHRISTIAN missionaries have begun to support, Catholic Conference is the only official U.S.

Catholic organization concerned with the arts and that only one diocese (Washington, D.C., archdiocese) has an arts office. "The area of arts in the community is more controversial, raising the question of how the church sees the value of art in nurturing the human spirit," Ms. Cirrillo said. "We would like to find ways to share and promote what is happening in that area." Livingston Biddle, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), has also encouraged the partnership between the arts and religion. He noted at the San Antonio conference that the 1965 act which established his agency had a declaration of purpose to "cultivate the inspirational values of the human spirit." BECAUSE MONEY from the NEA cannot go directly to churches, it must be used for non-ecclesiastical purposes to benefit communications, Biddle said.

The late Pope Paul VI was a patron of religious arts, and told participants in an international art seminar held at the Vatican in July that he was persuaded "of Churches are not the only institutions to sponsor such programs. The Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis offers a program in adult religious education in which discussions are held on the religious themes to be found in plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Tennessee Williams, and other dramatists. Seminarians are offered intern Religious News Service Creative artists and church people tend to agree with this statement from the late Trappist poet and mystic Thomas Merton. One cannot understand or appreciate the culture of our civilization without a knowledge of the Bible. But "religious aesthetics" has come a long way from counting the number of Bible references in a novel or the way in which Christ is portrayed in a painting.

Cultural appreciation is now being stressed in many congregations in an effort to help lay per Norman Vincent Mouse gives pitch for ecumenism ships in church-theater relations at the Guthrie. The seminars focus on such questions as: "What is the human situation and what does it mean to be human?" "How do we close ourselves off from God?" and "How is God present and working in the world?" IN A Pioneering statement, the 1977 General Synod of the United Church of Christ (UCC) urged the denomination's 1.8 million members to "open themselves to the power and the dynamics of the contemporary arts." It stressed that support of the arts is an "enriching religious expression and nourishing to the community." Christians working in the arts sons grasp the theological meanings to be found incomtemporary art. In some instances, actors, musicians, and cinematographers are exploring the deeper meanings of their creations. Christ Church United Methodist in New York City has launched a model Project on Arts and Values with a $25,000 grant from the Phillips Foundation. Under the direction of the Rev.

Frank Lloyd Dent, associate for education and the arts, the project is sponsoring several "lecture presentations" to explore the relations between religion and such art forms as theater, dance, film and mime. AMONG THE presentations are a study of how American film explores social criticism, by photographerfilm director Willard Van Dyke; a celebration of dance as religious expression by dance critic Walter Terry and members of the Boston Ballet; and an examination of the conflict between private conscience and public duty in drama, by Norris Houghton, directortheater scholar, and selected performers. retard spoilage or a mythical beast with a golden horn in the middle of its forehead. "Actually," the spots say, "ecumenical means that different churches work together on programs that show God's love in the community." "We're in favor of religious cooperation, especially if it means that the best minds in town and the pooled resources of caring people are focused on problems that matter to people," Freberg says in a message to broadcasters urging them to use the radio spots. Freberg is the comedian who used to spoof Lawrence Welk and others on records.

"If churches really do work together confronting those things that hurt people and addressing the things that make life more humane who can be against that?" Freberg asks in his message. By DAVID E. ANDERSON United Press International WASHINGTON If you have switched on your radio lately, you may have heard "Norman Vincent Mouse" talking about the plight of church mice. The message is one of three prepared by National Council of Churches and presented by comedian Stan Freberg in an effort to make the word "ecumenical" a household term. Freberg's character, Norman Vincent Mouse, is a hungry church mouse who says he opposed the ecumenical movement.

His tongue-in-cheek message says merging churches together would mean "fewer crumbs for the mice" from "all these different church suppers." The two other radio spots, similarly light-hearted, explain that "ecumenical" is not a substance put in bread to believe there is a need for such support on the part of national church bodies. A group of Roman Catholics attending the Fourth International Congress on Religion, the Arts, Architecture and the Environment at San Antonio in June stated that the U.S. Catholic Church needs "a central mechanism for pulling together the talents of people concerned about relationships between religion and the arts. Marie Cirillo, a former Glen-mary nun and currently director of Appalachian Community Arts in Clairfield, said that the Liturgical Commission of the U.S. RtmiHic Muitratien by Km RiUi i I 4.