(RNS) — Aretha Franklin, a singer who began her career with gospel music and was later crowned the “Queen of Soul,” died Thursday (Aug. 16) after battling a range of health issues. She was 76. Often simply called “Aretha,” Franklin got her start in the Detroit church of her pastor father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin. She was first recorded at his New Bethel Baptist Church on the album “Spirituals” at age 14. “Aretha, like Al Green, is one of the few artists who is universally accepted in the black church,” Bil Carpenter, author of “Uncloudy Days: The Gospel Music Encyclopedia,” told Religion News Service. “The church often shuns artists who sing R&B as backsliders and reject them when they come back and sing gospel. However, Aretha’s always been given a pass.” When Franklin, a Memphis, Tenn., native, who was raised in Detroit, was awarded the 2005 Presidential Medal of Freedom by then-President George W. Bush, the citation noted: “Her instantly recognizable voice has … [Read more...]
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Book Reviews 10 hours ago
No Innocent Bystanders: Becoming an Ally in the Struggle for Justice
Shannon Craigo-Snell and Christopher J. Doucot Westminster John Knox Press, 144 pages Reviewed by Angela Williams “No Innocent Bystanders” by Shannon Craigo-Snell and Christopher J. Doucot is a wonderfully practical primer written by, to and for white Christians seeking to become allies in the struggle for racial justice. Tracing the similarities and differences between the struggles for LGBTQ equality and racial justice, the book explores how to be an ally from historical, theological and practical perspectives. Craigo-Snell and Doucot give an excellent crash course in the history of the LGBTQ… continue reading... -
Outpost Blog 10 hours ago
On being a controversial preacher
In my first call, I was often accused of being a controversial preacher. Mind you, I never thought that about myself and did not think I set out to be controversial. I even send my sermons to two pastor-friends every week and receive their feedback, critique and guidance. I knew that unchecked preaching can become despotic and so I’ve put a check-and-balance in place. Yet there were the accusations all the same. It’s tough being a controversial preacher. Relationships suffer. My wife suffered. My pastor-friends suffered alongside me. Tithes are… continue reading... -
Outpost Blog 1 day ago
The Elder Preaching Institute
Eastminster Presbytery’s interim general presbyter, Nancy Kahaian, had just started her service with the presbytery and was meeting with each pastor individually. I went to have a meal with her to bring up a particular concern in mind. In two Sundays I was going to be on vacation and I didn’t have pulpit supply. It wasn’t that I hadn’t tried. I already had called everyone on the presbytery’s very small pulpit supply list. I had tried further connections. No one was available. My last hope was that Nancy would be… continue reading...
Parties in Stamford case had tried to expedite process in order to get a ruling on the merits of the case January 1, 1995 Uncategorized59 views The General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission -- in sidestepping the question of exactly how deeply a session should be required to probe into the private life of a gay elder who has acknowledged being in a committed, life-long relationship but has declined to say whether he is sexually active -- has put the question off but has not put it to rest.- Ministering with the Earth January 1, 1998 Book Reviews53 views By Mary Elizabeth MooreChalice. 1998. 226 pp. Pb. $19.99. ISBN 0-8272-2323-4 Ministering with the Earth is a quiltwork, both the on-the-ground activity and Moore's book about so ministering. Moore, professor of theology and Christian education at Claremont School of Theology, is fond of the metaphor, suitably pastoral and feminist.
- Remembered Voice: Reclaiming the Legacy of 'Neo-Orthodoxy' January 1, 1998 Book Reviews66 views By Douglas John HallWJKP. 1998. 145 pp. Pb. $18. ISBN 0-664-25772-0 It was in this order. I first read Tillich's Dynamics of Faith. Riveting. Next came The Courage to Be. Gripping. Then I went back and read the first volume of the Systematic Theology. Things began to make sense. Next came Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality. Positive.
The 223rd GA – July 30, 2018 July 23, 2018 Digital Issues2 comments General Assembly: 538 commissioners from 170 presbyteries gathered for a week in the heat of St. Louis to work in 14 committees, worship, pray, march, discuss and debate. They voted on issues ranging from climate change to mental health, heard about mission around the globe, created task forces and restructured the denomination. The depth and breadth of their work is too big to be contained in these pages, nonetheless this issue gives you a sense of the scope of the decisions made by the 223rd General Assembly. Visit pres-outlook.org/223GA for more...
Stony Point to receive year-by-year funding from Presbyterian Mission Agency April 26, 2018 Outlook Reporting1 comment CINCINNATI – The Presbyterian Mission Agency Board voted April 26 to provide at least a year’s funding to Stony Point Center for capital improvements – and voiced its support of Stony Point as being an important ministry of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
The board’s Stony Point Sustainability Task Force had asked the board to approve spending $3 million over three years for deferred maintenance and capital improvements at Stony Point, a facility of more than 30 acres about an hour outside New York City.
That money, however, would have had to come from Presbyter...
Going home: Part two August 9, 2018 Outpost Blog1 comment
(Read Going home: Part One)
Yesterday, I rejected the premise of Dr. Seuss’ book “Oh, The Places You’ll Go” in favor of taking seriously the places from which we come. While the majority of that article was dedicated to my own personal, lived experiences (and thus too subjective to be rigorously scrutinized), even as I wrote it, I was aware of some of the potential negative implications of it.
My argument, removed from its subjective confines, is that where we come from is not coincidental to God’s providence ...
Aretha Franklin started with gospel, ended with soul at age 76
Questions remain for faith-based agencies as border crisis passes
(RNS) — To the World Relief volunteers in a mobile welcome center parked outside the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Wash., it was clear that the woman released from the center moments before had been separated from her children while seeking asylum at the United States border with Mexico. The woman, called “Karla” to protect her identity, was smiling as she got into a car with Robin Jacobson, a board member with Advocates for Immigrants in Detention Northwest, which runs the welcome center. But as soon as the car door closed, Karla burst into tears. In the short drive to Jacobson’s home, it all spilled out, with help from the Google Translate app: how Karla and her family had fled gang violence in El Salvador, how she’d been separated from her two daughters, how the 6-year-old hadn’t wanted to let go, how Karla hadn’t known where her 13-year-old was for 25 days, how the time spent in detention was marked by “unexpected suffering.” Now Karla had a plane ticket to … [Read more...]
No Innocent Bystanders: Becoming an Ally in the Struggle for Justice
Shannon Craigo-Snell and Christopher J. Doucot Westminster John Knox Press, 144 pages Reviewed by Angela Williams “No Innocent Bystanders” by Shannon Craigo-Snell and Christopher J. Doucot is a wonderfully practical primer written by, to and for white Christians seeking to become allies in the struggle for racial justice. Tracing the similarities and differences between the struggles for LGBTQ equality and racial justice, the book explores how to be an ally from historical, theological and practical perspectives. Craigo-Snell and Doucot give an excellent crash course in the history of the LGBTQ equality movement in the U.S. and how the presence of straight allies helped that movement create change so quickly. After laying out some facts in the history of racism, the authors identify issues of welcome, relationship and classism that white would-be allies must address to start antiracism work. This framing adequately addresses the need for the work to be intersectional and for … [Read more...]
On being a controversial preacher
In my first call, I was often accused of being a controversial preacher. Mind you, I never thought that about myself and did not think I set out to be controversial. I even send my sermons to two pastor-friends every week and receive their feedback, critique and guidance. I knew that unchecked preaching can become despotic and so I’ve put a check-and-balance in place. Yet there were the accusations all the same. It’s tough being a controversial preacher. Relationships suffer. My wife suffered. My pastor-friends suffered alongside me. Tithes are inevitably pulled (short of revoking one’s membership, pulling a pledge is the “nuclear option” for congregants and I was always shocked – and appalled – at how seemingly flippantly some would detonate that option). I suppose, given my preaching training, that I shouldn’t be too terribly surprised by this. I distinctly remember being taught an “antithesis-thesis-synthesis” approach to preaching in seminary. Since this approach made good, … [Read more...]
Regarding ruling elders: The creative tension of spiritual leadership
(OGA) Those who partner with God in the spiritual leadership of the church live between two important truths. The first of these we hear from Jesus on the occasion of his last gathering with his disciples: “Without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Nothing is a very hard word. It must have been hard for the first disciples to hear. First, Jesus talks about his going away from them and then they hear that without him they can do nothing. How was the work to go forward? How was God’s agenda going to be accomplished if Jesus was going away and if without him they could do nothing? Nothing is still a hard word for believers to hear today, yet Jesus also says to twenty-first century Christians: “Without me you can do nothing.” This sounds offensive because at the top of just about any American list of virtues is a can-do spirit. Most Christians today would agree that doing God’s work should somehow involve God, but in practice God can end up a distant or even absent partner in our … [Read more...]
Organizers of GA 223 bail-out in St. Louis detention centers shift focus of campaign
(PNS) It has been described as one of the major highlights of the 223rd General Assembly (2018) in St. Louis. Hundreds of Presbyterians, including the Reverend J. Herbert Nelson, II, General Assembly Stated Clerk, Co-Moderators Vilmarie Cintrón-Olivieri and the Reverend Cindy Kohlmann, and Presbyterian Mission Agency Executive Director the Reverend Diane Moffett, walking to the City Justice Center. With a collection of more than $47,000 received at the assembly’s opening worship service, Nelson turned the money over to local organizations to begin bailing out individuals who had been prescreened for release because they could not afford their cash bail. In the weeks that have passed, local organizers like the Bail Project and the St. Louis Act Council have run into constant roadblocks as people who are released find themselves facing incarceration again at another local facility. Stated Clerk, the Rev. J. Herbert Nelson, II, speaks at the No Cash Bail March in St. Louis on June … [Read more...]
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