About 200 young people travelling in a caravan of buses left Nairobi on Nov. 7 to promote action on climate change. Their two-week trip, punctuated with music, dance and drama and sponsored by faith-based and secular groups, will end in Durban, South Africa at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's conference called COP-17.
With changed ordination standards and the adoption of a new Form of Government, 2011 has brought much change to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — a fact that some bemoan and some celebrate.
“Is there any way to reconcile and live together with our differences, or are we destined to divorce and divide into like-minded fellowships?” asked the Rev. James C. Davis at the Covenant Network of Presbyterians’ annual gathering Nov. 3.
The Rev. Thomas W. Gillespie, a pastor, theologian and church leader of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), died Nov. 5 of complications from surgery earlier in the week. He was 83.
A native of Los Angeles, Gillespie graduated from Pepperdine University in 1951 and Princeton Theological Seminary in 1954. He earned his Ph.D. in New Testament from Claremont Graduate School of Theology in 1971. While at Princeton, he received the A.A. Hodge Prize in Systematic Theology in 1953.
Responding to fresh controversy over Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith, a group of Catholic elder statesmen on Nov. 2 called for more civility in politics, saying Catholics have been subjected to similar scrutiny.
Speaking as “Catholic citizens of different political persuasions,” the signers urged “not only (that) civility be maintained in the public discourse but that all inclinations to raise the issue of personal religious affiliation be avoided.”
Part of a fading Bible, painstakingly and secretly hand-copied by a group of Christians sentenced to a labor camp in China, will be on display at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, the institute announced.
A manuscript of the Book of Revelations was given on Nov. 2 to former president George W. Bush by ChinaAid Association, a Pennsylvania-based non-profit organization that monitors the state of religious freedom in China, especially the condition of banned churches run secretly in private homes.
His upbringing in Webster Groves, Mo., hinted that Jim McDonald might one day serve as a seminary president.
His subsequent career ― from small urban church pastor to active involvement in the sanctuary movement with Central American political refugees to public policy work on behalf of the world’s poor at Bread for the World ― almost made it inevitable that San Francisco Theological Seminary (SFTS), with its longstanding reputation for social and political activism, would be the seminary.
An interfaith symposium here on Oct. 29 explored the attitudes of Japanese religious communities to suicide, including whether the term should be changed to “voluntary death.”
With a stairwell for a confessional and a folding table for an altar, the lobby of the DCU Center arena here, about 40 miles west of Boston, doesn’t look especially holy ― until a band of circus workers gathers for Mass.
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary (LPTS) will not charge tuition for students in its master’s degree programs in divinity, marriage and family therapy and religion beginning in 2015. Tuition is currently a little over $10,200.
“As a result of this bold decision, Louisville Seminary is poised to make not only a difference in the future of this school and in theological education, but also a difference for the future of the church,” said Pamela G. Kidd, chair of the Board of Trustees, following the trustees’ unanimous and enthusiastic vote.
“Our mission field,” says Alison Murray, “is no longer primarily about getting on a plane — it really is about going out your own front door to your own neighborhood.”
Murray is staff leader for what has become the multi-site First Presbyterian Church of Colorado Springs, Colo.