09024
January 13, 2009
Notes about people
Ruth Z. Eschbach, a China-born daughter of Presbyterian missionaries who later served in the mission field in Asia herself, died in Berea, KY, on Nov. 30. She was 92.
Eschbach was the daughter of medical missionaries John H. and Mary Bushnell Wylie and grew up in China and California. After graduating from the College of Wooster and Eden Theological Seminary, she married Donald E. Zimmerman in 1940 and departed for Japan to begin a missionary career. As relations between Japan and the U.S. deteriorated, they transferred to the China mission field and went to the Philippines to study Chinese. When Japan overran the Philippines, the Zimmermans were interned as civilian prisoners of war from 1941-1945. Ruth served as a teacher in the camp.
After their release, the Zimmermans returned to the U.S. where Don served pastorates in Michigan, Missouri and Illinois and Ruth became a leader and later a staff member for Presbyterian Women. She was president of United Presbyterian Women from 1961-1964 and served on the staff from 1968-1983, the last 10 years as coordinator of Presbyterian Women.
Ruth Eschbach is survived by her son, Richard; her daughter, Sally ― who serves on the national staff of the PC(USA) as a cost accountant; stepsons James and Robert Eschbach; six grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
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Ogbu Kalu, a Nigerian scholar who was a towering figure in the fields of global mission, African Christianity and global Pentecostalism, died Jan. 7 in Chicago, where he was professor of world Christianity and mission at McCormick Theological Seminary. He was 66.
Kalu joined the McCormick faculty in 2001 and also served for years as the Director of the Chicago Center for Global Mission. He previously taught at Harvard University, the Presbyterian College and Theological Seminary in South Korea, the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and the University of Toronto.
A prolific writer on a wide range of subjects, Kalu has authored or edited 16 books including Power, Poverty and Prayer: The Challenges of Poverty and Pluralism in African Christianity, 1960-1996, African Christianity: An African Story, and African Pentecostalism: An Introduction, published by Oxford University Press in 2008 and already regarded by many as the seminal work of its kind.
He is survived by his wife, Wilhelmina, and four children.
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The Rev. Robert J. Marshall, who led the former Lutheran Church in America and helped lay the groundwork for the church’s merger with two other denominations to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, died Dec. 22. He was 90.
Marshall, a dedicated ecumenist, was elected president of the Lutheran Church in America, the largest Lutheran denomination in the U.S., in 1968. He served as president for a decade, helping prepare the LCA to merge with the American Lutheran Church and Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches in 1987 to form the 5 million-member ELCA.
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A brochure for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, designed by Michelle Bingham in the Creative Services department of the General Assembly Council’s office of Communications and Funds Development, received a graphic design award at the 19th Annual Louisville Graphic Design Association (LGDA) 100 Show.
The award was presented during a special reception and ceremony on Dec. 11.
The LGDA, founded in 1989, is an organization of creative professionals in Louisville and the surrounding areas. Its annual “100 Show” recognizes the 100 outstanding projects in these categories: students, graphic design, illustration, photography, motion and interactive media.
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The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, an eminent Catholic intellectual who tutored President Bush in Catholic social teaching and helped build the political coalition that made his election possible, died Jan. 8 at age 72.
Though he often portrayed himself as a simple priest, Neuhaus rose from a rabble-rousing leftist cleric in the 1960s to become a presidential mentor, helping Bush define his policies on gay marriage, abortion and stem-cell research, among other issues. In 2005, Time magazine named the Catholic priest one of America's 25 most influential evangelicals.
In the 1990s, Neuhaus co-founded the group Evangelicals and Catholics Together with former Nixon White House counsel Charles Colson, which helped cement the political alliance between two groups that had long been suspicious of each other.
Born and raised Lutheran in Canada, Neuhaus converted to Catholicism in 1990 and was ordained a Catholic priest the following year.
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