In a significant step for women clergy...

In a significant step for women clergy in mainline denominations, the Rev. Margaret (Peggy) Owen Clark of New York City will be confirmed Sunday as the top executive for the Southern California churches of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Clark, 38, has been serving as co-regional minister for the 1.1-million-member denomination’s northeastern region, but her selection for the six-year term in Los Angeles will make her the only woman pastor currently serving solely as regional minister, as the post is called.

She will oversee the work of 120 congregations in Southern California, Hawaii and southern Nevada, whose total membership is nearly 34,000. She will succeed the Rev. Charles Malotte, who retired last year.

A specially called regional assembly at 4 p.m. Sunday at Pasadena First Christian Church is expected to affirm her selection by the denomination’s regional board.

Active in ecumenical organizations and committees, Clark speaks English, French and Spanish, and holds a doctor of ministry degree from New York Theological Seminary. Her husband, Dan, is a Presbyterian minister.

The Rev. Charles Lamb, a co-regional minister with her the last three years, commended Clark to the regional minister search committee in Southern California as a minister able “to work equally well with the highly educated and sophisticated and the poor and uneducated.”

CONGREGATIONS

The pastor of the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles said he will discuss the legal, ethical and social ramifications of surrogate parenthood in his pulpit Sunday with someone who knows about the experience firsthand. The Rev. Philip Zwerling said his pulpit guest at the 11 a.m. service will be Becky McKnight, a married mother of three children who acted as surrogate mother of another child she presented three years ago to a previously childless couple.

DATES

A joint Roman Catholic-Buddhist memorial service will be conducted at 10 a.m. today in Monterey Park for victims of terrorist attacks and fighting in Sri Lanka. A bomb blast in Columbo, the Sri Lanka capital, killed 111 people and injured about 300 on April 21. It was blamed by the government on terrorists in the minority Tamil population. A spokesman said the memorial services will be at Dharmaseel Temple, a Chinese Buddhist congregation in Monterey Park. The Buddhist service will be led by the Venerable G. Guna Ratana, a Chinese-speaking Sri Lankan monk who heads the congregation, and the Catholic service will be led by Father Flavian Wilath Gamuwa.

Problems anticipated by engaged and married couples in which only one person is Jewish are the chief topics in eight workshops planned by Wilshire Boulevard Temple from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday. “As Reform Jews,” said Senior Rabbi Harvey J. Fields, “we believe that our temple ought to be reaching out to meet the needs and personal choices of these people.”

Samuel Noah Kramer, the best-known authority on the ancient Sumerian culture of the Middle East, will lead off a four-day conference on Sumeria co-sponsored by Pepperdine University and the California Museum of Ancient Art. Kramer’s lecture at 7:30 p.m. Friday will be at the Japan American Theater in Los Angeles. Tickets are $10.

PEOPLE

The Rt. Rev. Graham Leonard, the outspoken Bishop of London who has opposed the prospect of the Church of England ordaining women to the priesthood, will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree Sunday from Anaheim’s Simon Greenleaf School of Law. The school seeks to integrate theology into the traditional law curriculum and awards a Master of Arts degree in Christian Apologetics, according to John Warwick Montgomery, the school’s dean. Leonard has strongly criticized liberal interpretations of the Bible and Christian doctrine by fellow Anglican bishops. He caused a stir in England and the United States when he flew to Oklahoma several months ago to conduct a confirmation service in a conservative parish that had been removed by the Episcopal Church. Besides receiving a degree, Leonard will give the commencement address in the ceremonies scheduled for 3 p.m. at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Orange.