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[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #8714 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05209
April 18, 2005

Notes about people

by Jerry L. Van Marter

	Karen Hughes has joined the ranks of prominent Presbyterians in the
Bush Administration. Bush recently named Hughes, a member of Westlake Hills
Presbyterian Church in	Austin, TX, to a State Department post responsible
for improving the image of the United States throughout the Muslim world. 

	Other prominent Bush Administration officials include Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice, who is active at National Presbyterian Church in
Washington, and Defense Secretary Donald J. Rumsfeld, a member at Fourth
Presbyterian Church in Chicago.

# # #

	The Synod of Alaska-Northwest has named the Rev. Lucia Oerter its
director of communications.

	Oerter, a popular writer and speaker, has served pastorates in
Louisville, KY, and Indianapolis. Articles about her involvement in
electronic devotional ministry have appeared in Presbyterians Today, Church
and Society and the PC(USA)'s Churchwide Transformation magazine.

	The synod incorporates more than 60,000 Presbyterians in 287
congregations in Alaska, Washington and northern Idaho.

# # #

	The Rev. Frederick H. Bronkema, 71, died April 3 from complications
of Alzheimer's Disease.

	A native of Albany, NY, Bronkema graduated from Whitworth College in
Spokane, WA, where he starred in basketball and tennis, and from Princeton
Theological Seminary, where his father had beena professor. At Princeton he
met his wife, Marguerite Cobble;  they married just before traveling to
Edinburgh, Scotland, where Bronkema pursued graduate study. He then returned
to Princeton, where he completed his Th.M. in 1965.
 
	Against the wishes of his session at Red Clay Creek Presbyterian
Church in Wilmington, DE, Bronkema marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King,
Jr., in Selma, AL, in March of that year. That experience launched a life
committed to  justice, human rights and reconciliation. In 1966 he accepted a
missionary assignment to Portugal, where in 1968 he founded the "Center for
Reconciliation" in Figueira da Foz. Initially focused on reconciliation
between Catholics and Protestants in Portugal, the center soon became
renowned for addressing numerous geo-political conflicts around the world and
Bronkema became deeply involved in the ecumenical movement.

	He subsequently served at Union Theological Seminary in New York, the
Center for Intercultural Documentation in Cuernevaca, Mexico, and the
International Documentation Center in Rome, which figured prominently in
bring Protestant perspectives to the issues discussed at Vatican II. From
there he went to the Ecumenical Development Cooperative Society and was
instrumental in developing what, as "Oikocredit," has become the largest
non-profit micro-credit institution in the world, with an investment
portfolio of more than $200 million. Out of that work grew his involvement in
the Christian Commission for Development in Central America during the most
violent time in that region's history. He was run out of Honduras in 1988 by
that dictatorship's military and served as the director of the National
Council of Churches Human Rights Office until his retirement in 1993.

	In addition to his wife, Marguerite, Bronkema is survived by four
sons.

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