Missionary released from Chinese prison

EVERETT, Wash. — A missionary who was imprisoned for 15 months after trying to aid North Korean refugees in China has returned home to a greeting of balloons and flowers from delighted relatives and friends.

Upon arriving at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the Rev. Phillip Jun Buck, 68, said returning home was like being in a “dream state.”

Mr. Buck, who lives in Everett and preaches at Bethany Church in Edmonds, said he was praying for North Korean inmates with whom he had been imprisoned since May 2005. “They know the old man has finally returned home,” he said as his daughter, Grace Yoon, translated.

Mr. Buck, who provided shelter and work for North Koreans in northeastern China, was convicted last December of trying to sneak North Korean refugees through China into South Korea.

He could have faced up to 20 years in prison, but was sentenced instead to deportation and was barred from re-entering China.

China considers the thousands of North Koreans who cross its borders to be economic refugees, said David Bachman, a professor at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Relations at the University of Washington.

King’s Baptist group elects new president

CINCINNATI — The Progressive National Baptist Convention, the denominational home of Martin Luther King and other major civil rights figures, has a new president.

The Rev. T. DeWitt Smith will succeed the Rev. Major L. Jemison as leader of the denomination, one of four major black Baptist groups in the country.

Mr. Jemison is ending his four-year term.

Mr. Smith, senior pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Atlanta, was the denomination’s first vice president. It is customary for the person in that position to become president.

He ran uncontested, and his election was announced Aug. 11 during the Baptist group’s annual meeting in Cincinnati.

Mr. Smith holds many leadership posts within the denomination, including serving on the Progressive National Baptist executive board and the economic-development arm of the group.

He serves on the governing boards of the National Council of Churches and the Baptist World Alliance, and is a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

2nd minister arrested at Mormon pageant

SALT LAKE CITY — For the second week in a row, an evangelical Christian minister has been arrested outside a Mormon-themed pageant in northern Utah.

Daniel “Chip” Thompson, the 47-year-old director of Solid Rock Christian Fellowship, a campus ministry at Snow College in Ephraim, was arrested for investigation of criminal trespassing at the Aug. 18 Clarkston Pageant. The pageant depicts the life of Martin Harris, an early follower of Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Mr. Thompson was with eight others handing out religious tracts that compare Mormonism with other Christian beliefs. He said the Clarkston City cemetery’s amphitheater, where the pageant is performed, is public property, so he should not have been arrested.

“The Mormon officials started saying this was against the law — ’you can’t be here,’” Mr. Thompson said. “We just said, ’Sir, this is public property, and we’re within our legal rights to express our freedom of speech and our freedom of religion. This is America.’”

On Aug. 11, Brigham City pastor Joel Kramer, 39, of Living Hope Ministries was arrested at the same pageant for investigation of disorderly conduct in a dispute over his taping of the pageant for use in Christian videos he produces.

From wire dispatches and staff reports