Pepperdine University will host the 43rd annual...

Pepperdine University will host the 43rd annual meeting, starting Friday, of the American Scientific Affiliation, a national fellowship of Christian scientists.

Although the organization draws largely from evangelical churches and will meet on a campus associated with the Churches of Christ, one of the main speakers will be a Catholic priest who for years was influential in the U.S. bishops’ stances on international affairs and the nuclear arms race, Father Bryan Hehir of Washington.

Hehir, now senior research scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and Research at Georgetown University, will speak the night of Aug. 7 on the concept of deterrence in military policies and church perspectives.

The four-day conference will open with a lecture by Richard H. Bube, professor of Stanford University’s materials science and engineering department. He chaired that department from 1975 to 1986. Bube, one of the American Scientific Affiliation’s most active and prominent members, will talk on a “Crisis of Conscience for Christians in Science” in Elkins Auditorium.

Pepperdine political scientist Daniel Caldwell will give a lecture on “Ethical Dilemmas of Strategic Deterrence and Arms Control” next Saturday night.

Titles of other talks include: “Is There Hope for One Who Works in a Nuclear Weapons Lab?”; “The Final Epidemic: Nuclear War, AIDS or X?”; “Genesis 1 and Cosmic Background Radiation” and “The Scientific Study of Religion and Apologetics: The Religious Challenge of the Secular University.”

PEOPLE

The Rev. Kwangjin Kim, currently pastor of an Oakland congregation, will be assuming a newly created role of superintendent of the new Korean Mission for the United Methodist Church in the western states. The Korean Mission, authorized by the denomination’s western jurisdictional meeting this month in San Diego, will start work Oct. 1 out of the Los Angeles area. Kim will help start and nurture new Korean churches for as long as four years, or until they can be chartered and brought under jurisdiction of existing United Methodist structures. “Pastors who already have churches do not have enough time to develop new churches,” said the Rev. Jeen Shoung Park, Long Beach district superintendent.

CONVENTION

Black Catholics belonging to the Knights of St. Peter Claver and the Ladies Auxiliary will open their six-day, 73rd annual convention today at the Marriott Hotel in Anaheim. Bishop Norman McFarland of the Orange diocese will be the principal celebrant at the opening Mass at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Anaheim Convention Center.

DATES

The Rev. Nico Smith, a prominent white Dutch Reformed pastor of a white parish in South Africa, will preach Sunday at the 9:30 a.m. service at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Santa Barbara and each succeeding Sunday in August. Smith will also speak Aug. 19 at St. Peter’s by the Sea Presbyterian Church in Palos Verdes Estates.

In a concert intended to benefit Summerserendipity, a project to offer alternatives to drug and gang activity, Linda Hopkins will sing gospel songs and the 100-voice St. Brigid’s Catholic Church Choir will perform during a three-hour program starting at 6 p.m. Sunday at Washington High School in Los Angeles. Tickets are $10.