Easter Sunday’s coming. But on Saturday afternoon, those who attended the online “Hope in the Dark: A Holy Saturday Vigil for Palestine” were reminded that while we may be Sunday people, we live in a Friday-Saturday world, where “loss, grief and the humanness of tombs being filled are all around us,” as one speaker lamented.
As the International Day of Transgender Visibility falls on Easter this year, Christians wrestle again with the ways that religion wounds those on the margins of society and in what ways the resurrection calls Christian into new ways of seeing, believing and loving.
Lisa Baker has a promise for those pondering the idea of becoming a member of the National Response Team (NRT) of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. “It might seem daunting, but the reality is, you’ll get more than you give in this ministry,” said Baker, who’s part of the team. “Your heart becomes larger with every deployment.”
In response to a recent General Assembly mandate, the Advocacy Committee for LGBTQIA+ Equity is at work assisting the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in providing full expression to the rich diversity of its membership as described in the Book of Order.
For the past year, building on an initiative in the Presbyterian Mission Agency Mission Workplan to organize a Global Advisory Panel, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) team has been working with a representative group of the full range of the PC(USA)’s global partners to create a space where in the spirit of living into a decolonial vision of being the church we could meet with our global partners and explore together how the PC(USA) could most effectively show up in the world today.
While most pastors devote Holy Week to poring over commentaries, planning worship and washing feet, the Rev. Caroline Vickery also washes clothes. At the local laundromat.
Together with more than 140 other church leaders from around the world, the Rev. Bronwen Boswell, Acting Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), has signed a letter calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the halt of arms sales to Israel. Read the letter by Churches for Middle East Peace here.
“As Christians around the world prepare to commemorate the final suffering in the earthly life of Jesus Christ during Holy Week, we stand in solidarity with all in the Holy Land who suffer,” the letter states. “We repent of the ways we have not stood alongside our Palestinian siblings in faithful witness in the midst of their grief, agony, and sorrow.”
“Calvinists don’t really do the devil,” Dr. Philip G. Ziegler, professor of Christian Dogmatics at the University of Aberdeen, said on March 18 as he named the “strong sense of human responsibility and the demystifying impulse that marks Reformed theology” before setting out the plan for his six lectures to prove the doctrinal importance of the devil. Ziegler presented his case to about 150 attendees in person and online during the 2024 Annie Kinkead Warfield Lectures.
“Calvinists don’t really do the devil,” Dr. Philip G. Ziegler, professor of Christian Dogmatics at the University of Aberdeen, said on March 18 as he named the “strong sense of human responsibility and the demystifying impulse that marks Reformed theology” before setting out the plan for his six lectures to prove the doctrinal importance of the devil. Ziegler presented his case to about 150 attendees in person and online during the 2024 Annie Kinkead Warfield Lectures.
“Between 2 Pulpits” hosts the Rev. Dr. John Wilkinson and Katie Snyder called on the Rev. Dr. Laurie Kraus to wrap up their One Great Hour of Sharing podcast series by highlighting and illustrating the intersections of disaster assistance, ending hunger and the self-development of people.