A delegation of religious leaders from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is visiting the U.S and Canada as part of a tour seeking to build awareness of a re-emerging war at the border of the DRC and Rwanda.
On Aug. 27, Russia’s largest and busiest Protestant union, the 400.000-member-strong “Associated Russian Union of Christians of Evangelical-Pentecostal Faith” (ROSKhVE), lofted the unusual proposal that inter-confessional patrols guard church property.
During a plenary session at its meeting here Aug. 28-Sept. 5, the World Council of Churches (WCC) Central Committee explored emerging issues that hinder gender equality and the building of a safe community for women and men in churches and societies around the world.
God was out and now God is in. And Jerusalem wasn’t the capital of Israel and now it is. The accusations Sept. 5 that God had been “purged” from the Democrats’ national platform seemed too much for the party to bear. That afternoon, its national convention restored the divine to the document, as well as a statement affirming Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
An ecumenical group in Cameroon, Campus Crusade for Christ, has taken on an unusual cause ― increasing safety on the west African nation’s notoriously dangerous roads. Their campaign includes protests and advocacy.
In March of 2011, the Arab Republic of Syria became swept up in a people’s movement for political change.
Amidst this chaos and confusion stand 20 Presbyterian congregations located throughout Syria. They are part of the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon (NESSL), which was established by Presbyterian mission workers more than 150 years ago, and has been in close partnership with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ever since.
Author and historian John Dominic Crossan, one of the world’s foremost Jesus scholars, delivered a three-part lecture Sept. 1 at First Presbyterian Church in Mount Pleasant. The Faith in Reason seminar was sponsored by the church and by the D.L. Dykes, Jr. Foundation. Learn more at www.faithandreason.org.
On Tuesday, Sept. 4, Catholic monks at the Abbaye de Notre-Dame de Sept-Douleurs, near Jerusalem, noticed that the front door to their monastery was on fire. Vandals had set the door alight and sprayed Hebrew words on its walls included “Migron,” and “Jesus is a monkey.”
The Rev. Benedict Groeschel, a prominent author and speaker who is especially popular with conservative Catholics and bishops, has sparked outrage by saying that priests who sexually abuse children “on their first offense” should not go to jail.
A bill to legalize marriage for same-sex couples on Aug. 29 passed the first of three readings in the New Zealand parliament by a margin of two to one, creating the likelihood of passage into law early next year.