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Salient Supplement

Mission '61

Whatever your Views may be concerning Christ, and the importance of His teaching on the relationship between God and men. we hope you will find time between Monday, 10th, and Friday, 14th April, to hear two outstanding speakers on the Christian faith in the university. They are Dr. Masumi Toyotome, M.A., B.D., Ph.D., and the Rev. Warner Hutchinson, B.A., B.D., General Secretary of the N.Z. Inter-Varsity Fellowship of Evangelical Unions.

Dr. Toyotome was born Beppu, Japan, during World War I. His parents are both native Japanese, his father being a Presbyterian minister with a special calling for pioneer evangelism, establishing churches in areas where they had not previously existed. The first ten years of Dr. Toyotome's life were spent in Japan, giving him a foundation in the Japanese language and some understanding of Japanese culture. He felt the impact of the militaristic spirit that was rising in Japan in the late 1920's, and in 1925 his family moved to America.

He graduated from the University of California in Los Angeles, B.A. in 1939, M.A. in 1941, both in Physical Chemistry. After two years as a research chemist with a vitamin manufacturing firm in Hollywood, the outbreak of World War II caused him to re-assess his life. He entered Union Theological Seminary in New York, graduating B.D. in 1945. The same year he was ordained as minister in the American Baptist Convention.

While serving as the Nisei Pastor in a small bilingual Japanese church in New York City, he continued his studies for his Ph.D. in religion at Columbia University. He received the doctorate in 1953 with a dissertation on The Poetic Images and Structures in the Sayings of Jesus," with help from Professor Mark Van Doren, the famous Shakespeare scholar and poet. Since leaving Columbia University, he has been connected with the Japanese Evangelical Missionary Society, working mainly among students. This work took him to the International Christian University in Tokyo, where he was the Assistant Professor of New Testament studies, director of the religious programme for the entire university, and pastor of the I.C.U. Church. He has recently been in Brazil investigating the problems of the Japanese people there; there are close on half a million people of Japanese ancestry in Brazil and Paraguay, with about 100,000 emigrating from Japan each year. In addition to his work with the J.E.M.S. as Executive Secretary of the Society, he is preparing two books for publication, one on the poetry of Jesus, the other on the relationship between science and the Christian faith. The latter, he expects, will take another ten years of research and thought; he intends to make it his life work.

Rev. Warner Hutchinson is American-born [unclear: and a] graduate of the University of California in Los Angeles with a B.A. in English Literature. He is also a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary and has been a Chaplain in the United States Navy. Since 1958 he has been the General Secretary of the New Zealand Inter-Varsity Fellowship, co-ordinating the work of the Evangelical Unions in the Universities and Training Colleges throughout the country.