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Princeton Theological Seminary named Iain R. Torrance, a Scottish Presbyterian leader and scholar at the University of Aberdeen, to become the school’s sixth president on July 1. He will succeed Thomas G. Gillespie, who previously announced his retirement. Torrance, dean of the faculty of arts and divinity in Aberdeen, is serving through May as the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Torrance is editor of the Scottish Journal of Theology, a teacher of patristics and Christian ethics at Christ’s College in Aberdeen and a member of the international dialogue between the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Orthodox Church.

James C. Hefley Jr., 73, an author of a book series that chronicled the conservative resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention, died March 20 in Hannibal, Missouri. Author of the The Truth in Crisis, a five-volume series, Hefley died after a long illness, Baptist Press reported. He founded Hannibal Books, an evangelical publishing company. Several denominational leaders credited Hefley with playing a key role in influencing Southern Baptists to change the theological direction of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, starting in the late 1970s.