As Amy Kim Kyremes-Parks, a member of the board of directors of More Light Presbyterians, greeted guests at Tuesday’s More Light Lunch, the spirit of welcome and sense of family was generous and palpable.
— Repudiating the “Doctrine of Discovery” will help the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) address the harm of past injustices and inform the denomination in its future mission work, a Presbyterian human rights attorney said Tuesday.
Cleaning basements, tearing down metal sheds and filling dumpsters are hardly the activities most high school students choose for summer vacation. But that’s exactly what two groups of Presbyterian youth are doing in Ferguson, Mo., this week as part of the Hands and Feet initiative.
The Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations is hoping the U.S. will reconsider its decision to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the decision on Tuesday after the U.N. human rights chief leveled criticism at President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
“The curse of Constantine put Christians ‘at the center,’ in our minds at least,” the Rev. Michael Blair explained at the Ecumenical and Interfaith breakfast on June 20. “The Roman emperor established us as a people of power, and we have been trying to maintain our status and privilege ever since. As churches, we need to confront one another about that.”
“In the faith journey with the Ghana/Lake Erie partnership, we are mutually empowered and enjoy each other’s unique hospitality,” said Agidi. “Our American friends are welcomed to Ghanaian homes with generous smiles of ‘Mia woe zor’ (welcome). This relationship continues to develop into individual and family ties. We mourn, comfort, rejoice with, support and mutually build up each other in our journey of faith and friendship.”
The Assembly Committee on The Way Forward is recommending significant changes in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)’s corporate arm and in how the church’s six agencies relate to one another, mid councils and congregations.
Included in the Way Forward Commission’s report, which the committee approved Tuesday, are resolutions prioritizing translation and accessibility in the PC(USA) and requiring race audits of the six agencies.
Guests of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians 20th anniversary luncheon recognized former General Assembly Moderator Susan Andrews, Executive Director Alex McNeil of More Light Presbyterians, and former and current board members of covenant network.
I’d been on the job for about three months when it came time for the joint planning meeting with the session and deacons. It was my first call to a small congregation in a medium-sized building. I was old enough to remember what church was like back in the ’70s, when vacation Bible school was a community event and Christmas and Easter meant extra chairs around the perimeter of the sanctuary. The church to which I’d been called didn’t even fill up on the big holidays.
Several hundred Presbyterians took to the streets on a hot and humid Tuesday afternoon in downtown St. Louis calling for social, racial and economic justice. Participants – including Co-Moderators Vilmarie Cintrón-Olivieri, and the Rev. Cindy Kohlmann, along with the Rev. J. Herbert Nelson, General Assembly stated clerk – joined other advocacy groups for the one-mile walk from the America’s Center (St. Louis’ convention center) to the City Justice Center to participate in a “bail out.”