wfn.org | Disciples professor breaks ground with China appointment

["Communication Ministries" <wshuffit@oc.disciples.org>]

Date: June 29, 2001
Disciples News Service
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Contact: Curt Miller
E-mail: Cmiller@oc.disciples.org
on the Web: http://www.disciples.org

01a-35

	INDIANAPOLIS (DNS) -- The Chinese government this week granted
official permission to an Ohio Disciples theologian and a San
Francisco Presbyterian professor to teach at a Chinese seminary
-- the first time since the 1949 communist revolution that
foreigners from any country have been allowed to go to China for
extended periods as religion educators.  

	The Rev. Carolyn Higginbotham, a member of First Christian
Church (Disciples of Christ), Zanesville, Ohio, and her husband
James, also a Disciples minister and FCC member, will leave for
Nanjing (China) Union Theological Seminary in August.  She has
been granted "foreign expert" certification to teach the Old
Testament at the seminary.  He has been certified to teach
English.  Both have applied for visas, having cleared the more
difficult foreign expert evaluation by the Chinese government. 
They will spend a year in their posts.  

	Antoinette Wire, a Presbyterian Church (USA) educator, will
teach the New Testament at the Nanjing school.  

	"Clearly my focus above all is on the tremendous need for
theological education in China," Higginbotham said. "The church
is growing so rapidly. There is a tremendous need for trained
pastors.  I'm very honored to have the opportunity to help
provide solid biblical training for pastors in China and to be a
part of church growth in that way." 

	Work in the overseas mission field runs deeply in Carolyn
Higginbotham's family.  Her great-grandparents, Disciples
evangelist Frank Garrett and his wife Ethel, went to China as
missionaries in 1896, about ten years after the first Disciples
missionary went to the Asian nation.  Garrett, ironically,
taught the Old Testament in Nanjing in 1912. Higginbotham's
grandmother, Rose Garrett Holroyd was born in China, returned to
the U.S. for an education, and returned to mission work in
China.  She met and married a YMCA representative to China, and
Higginbotham's mother was born there.  Several aunts and uncles
served as missionaries in China as well.  

	The Higginbothams' ministry in China comes at the request of
the president of the Nanjing seminary and the China Christian
Council, the official church of China's estimated 15,000,000
Protestant Christians.  They were called as missionaries in
April by Global Ministries, the common overseas mission agency
of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United
Church of Christ. 

	Carolyn Higginbotham is associate professor of religion at
Muskingum College, New Concord, Ohio, a school related to the
Presbyterian Church (USA).  Her husband is a religion lecturer
at the college and is completing his doctoral studies at
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.  

	Higginbotham hopes her and her husband's year of ministry will
open other cross-cultural opportunities.  "I'm very excited
about the possibility for building new bridges between the
American and Chinese churches, and American people and the
people of China. Hopefully ... this will enable other scholars
to share in exchanges with the Chinese church in the future,"
she said. 

	-- end --