Female ministers have had a difficult time...

Female ministers have had a difficult time being accepted in various Baptist denominations, but when the Progressive National Baptist Convention holds its statewide annual meeting next week in Los Angeles the half-dozen women clergy attending will have full rights as participants.

Delegates at last year’s state convention, amid some controversy, approved a resolution that said clergywomen could preach and hold office at the annual meetings, according to the Rev. M. C. Williams, elected last year to a 2-year term as president.

“It was a significant move of the convention and follows the practice at the national level,” said Williams, one of the sponsors of the measure.

The Rev. Carolyn Dyson of San Francisco said she and the Rev. Sylvia Watson of Oxnard were the only two women ministers at last year’s meeting, but she expects that six or seven will be present for the 5-day meeting starting Monday night.

Delegates from 35 Progressive National Baptist churches in California will meet at the Roger Williams Baptist Church, the 800-member congregation on West Adams Boulevard pastored for the last 10 years by Williams. Gang and drug problems, jobs and teen-age pregnancy rates are among the issues before the meeting, Williams said.

STATISTICS

The Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese, the nation’s most populous diocese, reports its membership as 2,753,952 in the 1988 Official Catholic Directory published by P. J. Kenedy & Sons of Wilmette, Ill. That figure is up 95,000 from last year and widens the gap over the second-largest archdiocese, Chicago (2.35 million) and the third, New York (1.84 million). Church officials generally concede that the totals are reached through a combination of parish censuses and estimates. U.S. Catholics number 53.5 million, up more than 600,000 from last year. In California, which has more than 6.14 million Catholics, the Orange Diocese ranks second with 448,937 (up 18,920) and the Oakland Diocese third with 440,110 (up 3,665).

CONVENTIONS

Jehovah’s Witnesses will take over Dodger Stadium next Thursday through Sunday for the second in a series of three district conventions this summer. The peak attendance during the June 23-26 session was nearly 34,000 people, according to spokesman Robert Rhinehart. Crowds of up to 47,000 Witnesses are expected at a Spanish-language convention July 21-27. The meetings are held when the Los Angeles Dodgers are on road trips.

PEOPLE

An ecumenical flavor will be present tonight at the closing banquet of the biennial assembly of the Armenian Evangelical Union of North America. Patriarch Karekin II, spiritual leader of the Lebanon-based Apostolic Armenian Church who is on a monthlong visit to California, is a speaker along with the western primate of the Soviet-based Armenian Apostolic Church, Archbishop Vatche Hovsepian of Hollywood. Another speaker is the Rev. Lloyd Saatjian, Santa Ana district superintendent of the United Methodist Church and the brother of California’s First Lady, Gloria Deukmejian. The small (23 churches) Protestant denomination has been meeting at the Burbank Hilton, but the banquet will be at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City and the closing service at 10 a.m. Sunday at the convention-host United Armenian Congregational Church in the Cahuenga Pass.