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As a teaching elder, long in tooth and at the risk of being branded a heretic, I feel compelled to comment on what I perceive in reading, listening and generally observing the actions and rhetoric surrounding present activities within the PC(USA).
(ENInews) Following the re-introduction in Uganda of a bill that would harshly punish homosexuality, gay rights activists, including some church leaders, are uniting through Twitter and Facebook to oppose it.
Maryland is thinking about letting gays and lesbians get married.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (OGA) One question I’m asked almost more than any other is, “So, where do you see hope in the PC(USA)?”
A comprehensive answer would take up more than the word limits of this column. But two things stand out.
Although giving has been declining for a decade for the special offerings of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a task force – saying there is “tremendous untapped potential” – is recommending that the church set a goal of raising $20 million from those offerings by 2020.
I blew it. Here I was up to my eyeballs co-editing two different letters of outreach to many of my disaffected friends in the PC(USA), promising to “sow seeds of grace, kindness, respect and cooperation in every possible way — all toward the end of us all serving as agents of reconciliation before the watching world, as Scripture requires of us.”
A century ago, the geographic center of Christianity was in Europe and North America.
First, a disclaimer: I am happily married to a person whose vocation is sociology of religion.
HAVANA (PNS)
Cuba and the United States have so much in common that despite political differences it’s “overtime” to normalize relations between the two countries, a Cuban foreign ministry official told a group of 15 visiting U.S. religious leaders here Nov. 30.
NOVEMBER 2008, GREEN ZONE,
BAGHDAD, IRAQ
Every day when my chaplain assistant and I drove around the Green Zone, we went by the 215 towers.
Churches in Egypt are praying and helping migrants who flee their homes due to political turmoil, violence and an uncertain future. If the “Arab Spring” fails to produce democratic societies, it might instead lead to persecution of religious minorities.
I just received a year-end greeting from a Web service that I tried briefly last summer and then forgot about. And while I was writing that sentence, another arrived from a service that I stopped using over a year ago.
I was fortunate to spend the week between Christmas and New Year’s in Switzerland, visiting a dear friend who, sadly, has had her cancer return with a vengeance. A pastor in Zurich, Denise and I met years ago at a Reformed theology conference sponsored by the Office of Theology and Worship. Later her daughter became our exchange student here in the States, and a big sister to our only child. Our families have stayed close.
Vatican City (ENInews) Ten years after the clergy sexual abuse scandal erupted in the United States, Catholic bishops from all over the world will meet this week at a Vatican summit aimed at preventing abuse and protecting children.
C’mon, all you honest parents out there, you know who you are.
As horror movies go, this one is so old-fashioned it could have been made 70 years ago and no one would have known the difference.
This film is going to win lots of critical acclaim, but it will struggle to catch on in the United States.
“Real Steel”: Yes, it was nominated for an Oscar for best achievement in visual effects. And the boxing robot scenes are worth the price of admission.
Grand Rapids, Mich.(Special to PNS) The Bible should be read “as if God was actually talking to us,” the Association of Presbyterian Christian Educators (APCE) was told here at its annual gathering this week.
DALLAS – The General Assembly Mid-Councils Commission is calling for reviews of the denomination's top-level agencies and its racial ethnic ministry.
The Rev. Janet Edwards, a nationally prominent advocate for same-sex couples in a presbytery that consistently opposes gay ordination and gay marriage,..
DALLAS – The General Assembly Mid-Councils Commission has voted 15-5 to permit non-geographic, “provisional presbyteries” as part of a “designated season of reflective experimentation” in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
DALLAS – The General Assembly Mid-Councils Commission made a key decision last fall: it would recommend to the 2012 General Assembly that synods would no longer exist in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as councils with ecclesiastical responsibility.
Louisville, Ky. The Special Offerings Advisory Task Force, commissioned by the 218th General Assembly (2008), is recommending a new vision for special offerings – $20 million in receipts by 2020. Seeking to tap the full potential of special offerings, the task force is also recommending one new offering and revisions in each of the other offerings.
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