The newly-reconfigured board of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A Corporation, is up and running — and the list of questions or issues it may need to take on in the months to come is considerable.

When the #MeToo hashtag exploded on the social media scene in October 2017, no one could have predicted its continued impact on the treatment of women both in and out of the workplace. For a while, #MeToo seemed to be more about bringing down famous people in big corporations or enterprises, like Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer. Hollywood is one thing, but harassment isn’t supposed to happen in churches, right?

A delegation from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Office of the General Assembly recently returned from a visit to Puerto Rico and came away surprised and encouraged by what they saw. The six-member group met with presbytery leaders and pastors over several days last month to share information and to look at ways the national church can help local churches move forward.

“I’m just the pastor. This congregation rocks!” Such is the outlook of Kirk Perucca, pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church. This small, ethnically diverse congregation located south of downtown Kansas City, Missouri, has been a Presbyterian Hunger Program Certified Hunger Action Congregation since 2017, but has been advocating hunger, fairness and justice issues for most of its 110-year-plus existence.

Faith is not just personal; it’s political. Our leaders pass laws about how we treat one another, laws about money and finances, laws about how our resources are allocated and more. The Bible addresses these issues as well in Scriptures like the Ten Commandments, the parable of the sheep and the goats, Sabbath rules and Jesus’ advice to the rich young ruler to sell his possessions and give to the poor. To say the Bible and Jesus are not political is to deny their influence and relevance to our lives in the 21st century.

This Labor Day marks the 10-year anniversary of “A Social Creed for the 21st Century,” an ecumenical message of hope adopted by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. The creed’s foundation lies in the Christian bases of faith, hope and love and offers a vision of society that “shares more and consumes less, seeks compassion over suspicion and equality over domination, and finds security in joined hands rather than massed arms.”