An actor playing John Knox, one of the 16th century Scottish Protestant reformers, will head a special parade through Edinburgh, when Pope Benedict XVI arrives on a state visit in September, and it is the Pope’s own church that is planning the event.
“We want the day to be joyous, charitable and inclusive,” Peter Kearney, a spokesperson for the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, told ENInews on July 27.
The Pope arrives in the Scottish capital at the beginning of his four-day visit to Britain on Sept. 16, which is the feast day of St. Ninian, the earliest known Scottish …
The old adage “couples who pray together stay together” may be true, especially for African-Americans, a new study shows.
The survey of religion, race and relationships found that African-Americans attend church more as couples compared to members of other racial and ethnic groups.
Four in 10 African-American respondents said they attended services regularly as a couple, according to a study published in the August issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family. In comparison, 31 percent of Mexicans or Mexican-Americans, and 29 percent of whites, said they regularly shared a pew.
“Without prayer, black couples would be doing significantly …
Jesus taught that the church is to minister to the outsider, the stranger, the leper, but it can be easy to forget that.
But St. Paul's Presbyterian Church in San Angelo, Texas, does more than just remember this lesson — it has a long tradition of offering a church home to those who might not feel welcome anywhere else.
We’re mobilizing people in the camps and the shantytowns to let them know that getting housing is a right. Our vision is to make the problem of housing a focal point of people’s struggle,” said Reyneld Sanon of the Force for Reflection and Action on Housing (FRAKKA) here.
Grassroots groups in Haiti are developing strategies to respond to one of the greatest lingering crises after the January 12 earthquake: homelessness for 1.9 million people whose houses crumbled or were too damaged to occupy.
Though still fledgling, FRAKKA represents one initiative to unite grassroots groups and residents of internally displaced people’s …
Eight hundred colorful miniature figures of the 16th-century Protestant Reformer Martin Luther will soon be on display on the central market square of Wittenberg where he lived and worked.
The installation by German artist Ottmar Hörl is part of the Luther Decade celebrations that commemorate the period between Luther's arrival in Wittenberg in 1508 and the beginning of the Reformation in 1517.
“My installation aims to make it possible once again to understand and experience the unqualified relevance and significance of the person of Martin Luther,” Hörl said in advance of the opening of the installation on Aug. 14.
Luther …
When William Thornton goes to work in the morning, all he can see is a cross lifted against the sky as he swings around the steeple of First Methodist Church 100 feet above the petty concerns of the city.
His work reminds him of the balancing act of his own life.
“The spiritual aspect keeps me straight,” Thornton said. “It helps me. It surely helps me.”
Thornton might be a recovering drug addict or an ex-convict. He may be just a skilled construction worker. Or a seminary student working a summer job. Tony Stratton has all of those kinds of …
Among the new leaders elected at the recent Uniting General Council of the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) here was the Rev. Allen Nafuki, a Presbyterian from the tiny South Pacific island of Vanuatu
Nearly 35 percent of the 220,000 Vanuatuans who inhabit the 83 islands off the coast of Australia that comprise the nation are Presbyterians — probably the highest per capita concentration of Presbyterians in the world.
But traditionally, leaders from the region serving on global ecumenical bodies such as WCRC's executive committee come from Australia.
Score one for the little guys! "The Presbyterian Church of Vanuatu …
Two Presbyterian schools have added their names to the ring in a contest that will award half a million dollars to 20 winners.
In honor of the 10th anniversary of its Kohl's Cares program, Kohl’s department store is sponsoring a contest that will award $10 million to be split among 20 schools. The winners will be chosen based on the number of online votes they collect.
Two Presbyterian schools, Menaul School and Presbyterian Pan American School, are hoping to be among the recipients. The contest is open to public and private non-profit schools, grades K-12.
Votes are collected …
Although Philippines President Benigno Aquino has drawn public support for his “agenda for change,” a Protestant churches’ leader says reform will be hard to achieve if the leader of this southeast Asian nation of almost 100 million is to misread “the fundamental roots” of its “misery.”
“To identify corruption as the root of our misery is to misread the more fundamental issues of land, social justice, and sovereignty,” said the Rev. Rex Reyes, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines, a Protestant church grouping whose international partners include the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)..
Reyes, who spoke during …
The scenario might have seemed unlikely: prominent Muslims and Jews from the United States, trekking across the Atlantic in mournful, spiritual solidarity to visit two Nazi concentration camps. Together.
The trip to Dachau and Auschwitz was meant to combat the rise in Holocaust denial that has popped up in various Muslim and non-Muslim circles around the world — and online — in recent years.
“The best way to convince someone about the truth of something is to let them see it for themselves and experience it for themselves,” said Rabbi Jack Bemporad of the Center for Interreligious Understanding in Carlstadt, …