The 2014 General Social Survey was released last week and revealed that since 2012, the U.S. has about 7.5 million more Americans who are no longer active in religion.
Prayers are lifted for the police officers shot outside the police station in Ferguson, Missouri. I pray for their swift healing. I pray for a new path for all of us.
The Reverend Gradye Parsons
Stated Clerk of the General Assembly
Call to Mission, with a foreword by Hunter Farrell, director of Presbyterian World Mission, challenges congregations to explore their call to mission from both global and local perspectives.
SDOP, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, and the Presbyterian Hunger Program, the three ministries supported by the One Great Hour of Sharing Offering (OGHS), are working together to rebuild New Orleans and Delta wetland communities.
In Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers, Michael Long explores how Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister, used his children’s program as a platform for sharing countercultural beliefs about caring nonviolently for one another, animals, and the earth.
A group of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) staff and friends stood Tuesday as part of a national solidarity campaign to support Rosa Robles Loreto, the wife and mother who has spent eight months in sanctuary at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona.
“Rosa is in a very difficult situation right now. She’s been living at that church for eight months because she has a final order of deportation,” said Teresa Waggener, coordinator for Immigration Issues and an Assistant Stated Clerk for the PC(USA). “We all know her to be our sister and our neighbor and we love her, and we are not going to stand still.”
Rachel Held Evans has grown into a powerful voice in American Christianity, first as the author of “Evolving in Monkey Town” and later with the New York Times best-seller “A Year of Biblical Womanhood.” Those who follow her writings often note that her thinking has become increasingly progressive, especially on hot-button theological issues such as gender and sexuality. That shift culminated in her leaving evangelicalism for the Episcopal Church.
In a unique, proactive collaboration this spring with Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary’s Doors to Dialogue (D2D) initiative, Christine Hong—assisted by two of her Presbyterian Mission Agency colleagues, Rob Fohr, a mission catalyst, and Sara Otoum, a social media specialist—is teaching a pilot course called “Multifaith Perspectives on Global Displacement.”
New Englanders were hopeful the end of February would mean an end to the onslaught of heavy snow and freezing temperatures. But hopes continued to be dashed the first week of March with more snow and more problems for the churches and businesses in the region. With more than 100 inches falling in the last several weeks, communities continue to move closer to the all-time record amount of snowfall for a single season.
A Pew Research survey released Thursday (March 5) finds the pontiff rates a 90 percent “very” or “mostly favorable” rating among U.S. Roman Catholics. For Mass-attending Catholics, it’s a stratospheric 95 percent total positive rating.