On the morning of July 30, the Rev. Saleem Ghubril took a walk around Brittain Lake on the campus of Westminster College. He was taking some time for solitude and reflection before delivering his final speech at the New Wilmington Mission Conference, where he had served as the daily morning speaker.

Churches in India have been urged to promote “earth citizenship” by Vandana Shiva, an Indian environmentalist honored for placing women and ecology at the heart of development discourse.

“We have to protect the earth to uphold our right to food and to ensure our own survival. Then only, can we exercise our fundamental rights and democracy,” said Shiva, delivering the annual lecture on July 31 in Bangalore in honor of M. A. Thomas, the founder of the city’s Ecumenical Christian Center.

“Both earth and democracy are in deep trouble and neither can be recovered without the other,” Shiva said in …

Focus on the Family has announced 110 job cuts in the latest round of layoffs that the Colorado ministry attributes to the departure of founder James Dobson and the reduced financial support from donors.

“This is not a happy time, obviously, having to say ‘goodbye’ to some of our ministry family,” said Focus spokesman Gary Schneeberger in an Aug. 2 statement.

“But our mission, and the measure of our success, isn’t how many of us work here. It’s whether those of us who work here are helping families thrive. We are, and we will keep doing so — robustly.”

Dobson …

The 5,000 teenagers gathered at the recent Presbyterian Youth Triennium know the issues of the world: the environment, poverty and war, to name a few.

But that knowledge must now translate into action — and the youth at Triennium can make that happen, said the Rev. Tony Campolo, speaking at the closing worship July 24.

While peace is a commonly held value within Judaism, Islam and Christianity, other religious values can often become sources of conflict. In order to build community beyond faith boundaries a group of young adults from each of the three faith groups recently spent a week here focusing on the common value of peace.

The World Council of Churches has reaffirmed the vision of a world without nuclear weapons, in marking the anniversary of the atomic bombing in 1945 of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

“Sixty-five years on, nuclear bombs still threaten humanity and deny a lasting peace,” WCC general secretary the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit said in a statement prior to the Aug. 6 anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in the closing days of the Second World War.

It is believed that at least 150,000 people died as a result of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and the …

In a decision with enormous legal, political, and religious implications, a federal judge on Wednesday (Aug. 4) struck down California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s watershed decision marks the first time a federal judge has declared a state gay marriage ban unconstitutional.

In a 138-page decision, Walker ruled that “moral and religious views” are not a “rational basis” for the state to deny same-sex couples equal marriage rights.   

Walker concluded that Proposition 8, California’s voter referendum that outlawed gay marriage in 2008, violates the constitutional rights of gay and lesbian couples.

“Proposition 8 fails …

Editor's note: This is the latest in a series of stories about congregations responding to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s call to "Grow Christ's Church Deep and Wide." The call to grow in evangelism, discipleship, servanthood and diversity was adopted by the 2008 General Assembly and renewed by the 2010 General Assembly. — Jerry L. Van Marter

For many affluent kids in the Silicon Valley summer is one activity-packed day camp, sleep-away camp and enrichment class after another.

Yet for the children of refugee families, newly arrived in the United States and living below the poverty level, it can …

As part of his job as the executive director of The Pittsburgh Promise, the Rev. Saleem Ghubril talks to thousands of students in Pittsburgh Public Schools. Some of his favorite visits are to first- and second-graders, even though explaining that his organization is working to raise college scholarship money for them can be a bit over their heads.

So to better communicate the idea that the students could have a big reward waiting for them if they do well in school, Ghubril brought a huge wrapped box to one of his talks. Using the box as a prop, he …

Church agencies in Pakistan are struggling to aid hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced and rendered homeless by devastating floods that have claimed nearly 1,500 lives.

“We are faced with a challenging situation as hundreds of bridges and roads have been washed out,” Mervin Parvez, the Church World Service (CWS) country director for Pakistan-Afghanistan, told ENInews from Islamabad in an Aug. 3 telephone interview. New York-based CWS counts the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) among its partners.

The United Nations’ children’s agency UNICEF said many of the estimated 3.5 million residents of the worst-hit Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa province had lost their …