The Andrew Murray - Desmond Tutu Prize for the Best Christian and Theological Book by a South African in any official language of South Africa, will be awarded for the first time in 2007. The recipient is J. Wentzel van Huyssteen for his book, Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology, published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company in the United States.
Elizabeth Kiss was installed as the eighth president of Agnes Scott College on April 20 at the school in Decatur, Ga.
In her installation address, she affirmed the value of women's education in a time when women hold majority in the nation's coeducational institutions. "Decatur Female Seminary was established in the context of a south still reeling from the economic and social crisis of the Civil War," Kiss said, referring to the college's original name. "Col. George Washington Scott, the Rev. Frank Gaines and the other founders were determined to elevate their community and convinced that the education of young women was key to this task.
LOUISVILLE -- In recognition of his deep commitment to the pastoral care of ministers, a fund has been established in memory of..
Voting by presbyteries remains close on proposed amendments to change Chapter XIV of the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) -- an indication that what some consider to be a flexible streamlining of the rules, others are finding problematic.
Overall, the Chapter 14 revisions being proposed are intended to reword and simplify the document (the revised version is about one-fourth shorter than the current chapter) and to give presbyteries more flexibility in calling pastors.
But clearly Presbyterians have differing views on the wisdom of the proposal.
Harare, 4 May (ENI)-- Zimbabwe President President Robert Mugabe has warned Roman Catholic bishops who published a pastoral letter criticising his government over the country's mounting economic and economic crises, saying that they have chosen 'a dangerous path'.
Mugabe said the bishops had become political. He described the letter written by the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference and read to congregations across the country on Palm Sunday (1 April) as 'political nonsense'.
Recently, I went to an indoor water park with my daughter. After a cruel, cold winter and spring in the D.C. region, I haven't seen my legs in months, and when I looked down, I noticed that a have multiple bruises in a neat line above my knees. I pressed on a brown spot, felt the dull ache of confined pain, and wondered how the small injuries occurred. I couldn't remember, couldn't figure it out.
It may sound strange, but the experience reminded me a lot of being a pastor, especially when ministering to people under the age of forty. Some of them, when they enter the sanctuary, don't come in with fresh and flawless skin, they have these bruises, sensitive places where they've been hurt, often by religious organizations. Inside our church and outside of it, I've seen the discoloration appear. Recently the marks have surfaced with the repeated and adamant claim of young Christians who say, "We're not like them."
I could hardly believe my ears when a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) pastor blurted a few years ago, "We need to rethink the whole topic of women's ordination." I was stunned because those words were coming from a woman.
"Why of all things do we need that?" I reacted. "Women's ordination is an established policy in the denomination."
"But too many people support it for the wrong reasons," she responded. She then explained how many of her colleagues had sensed a deep calling to Christian vocation, including the proclamation of the Word. But they also knew that the Bible singles them out to keep silent in church. Recognizing the disparity between God's call to them and God's Word to all, they simply chose to dismiss the Word -- at least those specific, exclusionary texts -- as pre-modern expressions of male chauvinism and patriarchy.
(PNS) Jill M. Hudson, longtime executive presbyter for Whitewater Valley Presbytery in Indianapolis, Ind., has been named middle governing body relations coordinator for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), beginning in September.
Hudson will succeed Gary Torrens, also a former presbytery executive, who is retiring in November after eight years in the position.
The announcement was made by Cliff Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the General Assembly, and Linda Bryant Valentine, executive director of the General Assembly Council. The position is shared between the General Assembly Council and the Office of the General Assembly.
LOUISVILLE -- A task force charged with revising the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s Form of Government (FOG) has backed away from its proposed rewrite of the PC(USA) Constitution's theological underpinnings (chapters 1-4 of The Book of Order).
The task force was authorized by last summer's 217th General Assembly to revise the FOG to make it more flexible for presbyteries and congregations. Some members of the task force had drafted a new section to replace the first four chapters.
But instead of recommending this new section entitled "The Foundations of Presbyterian Polity," the nine-member Form of Government Task Force tentatively decided at its April 12-14 meeting here to submit both "Foundations" and the existing first four Book of Order chapters to the 2008 assembly and let commissioners decide which they prefer.
Tom Taylor, former pastor of Glenkirk Church in Glendora, Calif., now is the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s deputy executive director for mission. Here are excerpts from a conversation Taylor had with the Outlook's national reporter, Leslie Scanlon.
LS: Now that you've been in the job for a few months, what are some of your general thoughts on how it's going?
TT: One of the first impressions I had in the first month or two was that I was surprised, really surprised in some ways, at how many great things are going in the life of this General Assembly. ... One of the real challenges I've seen is our communications challenge, to make sure we tell those stories and get the word out.
If every other area is getting new leaders, why not the racial-ethnic ministries or the women's ministries of the General Assembly? They both are welcoming one and the same new leader. Rhashell Hunter is the newly-arrived director for Racial-Ethnic and Women's Ministries for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s General Assembly Council.
On Easter Sunday, Hunter preached her final sermon as pastor of the Community Church in Flint, Mich., a congregation of about 130 members, where she had served for nine years.
She grew up in the manse; father Charles H. Hunter is a Presbyterian pastor. She earned bachelor's and master's degrees in fine arts, theatre, journalism, and teacher education. While pursuing a theatre career in New York City, she volunteered in an inner city soup kitchen. Soon she sensed a pastoral call and went to McCormick Theological Seminary, where she earned an M.Div. Later she returned there and earned a D.Min. with a focus in preaching.
c. 2007 Religion News Service
When Rhonda Kelley reads the Easter drama in her Bible, the professor of women's ministry feels God's affirmation of her as a woman.
"Jesus really valued women and always reached out to women," said Kelley, who teaches at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is co-editor of The Woman's Study Bible.
Women figure prominently in the Gospel lessons that culminate in Jesus' resurrection. In roles unusual for that period, they travel with Jesus and then are witnesses to his crucifixion and burial. And women, including Mary Magdalene, are the first to learn that his tomb is empty.
c. 2007 Religion News Service
Isabel Wood Rogers died March 18 at Westminster Canterbury, Richmond, at the age of 82, after a battle with cancer. "Dr. Izzie" as she was often called, left us a rich heritage.
She was born in Tallahassee, grew up and then took degrees at Florida State University, the University of Virginia (political science), the Presbyterian School of Christian Education (Richmond, Va.) and Duke University where she earned a Ph.D. in theology and ethics and was Phi Beta Kappa. After serving as Presbyterian chaplain and director of religious activities at Georgia College and State University she settled down as professor of applied Christianity at PSCE, now Union-PSCE in Richmond, for 37 years from 1961 to 1998.
She left us a heritage of insightful written works, focusing on her interests.
Izzie wrote a brief study entitled, In a Word: The Power of Language in which she explores the "shaping power" of language, such as words the biblical authors used to describe God as a "decreeing, punishing, conquering" and also "delivering, "divine." She warned against idolatry of race, class, age, and even of ourselves as we use language that creates God in our own image.
c. 2007 Religion News Service
Anne Lamott is the kind of Christian who makes a lot of other Christians nervous.
I think it's because she's honest.
She's honest about her sins, her foibles and her faith, and she makes no excuses for any of them.
She's wide open about her less-than-perfect faith walk, about being a single mother, a recovering addict, a bleeding-heart liberal, neurotic, insecure, and wickedly funny. Lamott has chronicled her wacky and (sometimes) wild adventures in faith in books such as Traveling Mercies, Plan B, and most recently the wonderful Grace (Eventually).
She makes a lot of people who also call themselves Christians nervous -- and sometimes even angry -- because Lamott should, they think, either keep her imperfections to herself or stop calling herself a Christian.
The novel The Devil Wears Prada is a serious study of the power of labels to define a person's worth. Author Lauren Weisberger was formerly assistant to the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, Anna Wintour. Thus, the novel is based on Lauren's earlier career with its addiction to fashion. The addictive ingredient is the glow, lure, and status of the designer label: Versace, Chanel, Christian Dior, Gucci, Manolo, and most supremely, Prada. The measure of a person is the label. Why the devil herself (the magazine editor in the movie version) wears Prada!
The Lenten season has come and gone again. Let's face it. It was a tough decision--what we agreed with ourselves to relinquish for Lent.
Chocolate always seems to muddle the question. How to keep going and stay sweetly resolved for forty days while wandering a dessert wilderness. Why not tomatoes? After all, they're seedy. And it is so much easier to stay away from such flagrant bursts of flesh. To soften the blow of denial, one pastor shared recently, "Don't even ask what happened the Lent I tried giving up caffeine."
Whatever happened, we're back onto salsa and desserts with a relish, weighing in heavy on the thought that time of reflection on passion and hymns of refrain are over for another year. The good news is Christ has risen indeed!
It is a year since Leslie Scanlon in May 2006 reported our denomination's deepest budget cut and the most extensive reordering of..
As I watch the slow disappearance of brothers and sisters who believe that the new wine in them demands new wineskins, I..
Link to Movie Review article, Mar 12, 2007
Advance Work:
1) Ask one member of the group to research the life of William Wilberforce, and how the movie emphasized certain parts (his opposition to slavery) and omitted others (his views on 'The 'Trouble in The Colonies,' the American Revolution). He served 45 years in Parliament. What American politicians have enjoyed such a breadth of service in Congress, and what legacy did they leave?
They didn't set out to make a statement. They simply were looking for a new president.
Their schools, er, uh, school -- Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education -- shares a storied history and a legacy for academic excellence in educator training and minister formation.
A year ago President Louis Weeks announced his retirement plans. Board Chair Art Ross commissioned the search committee, led by John Kuykendall, to find a gifted leader to succeed him.
Donald A. Hostetter, executive director emeritus of the Presbyterian Conference Association in Holmes, N.Y., died early on Easter Sunday morning in a hospital in Ireland. He had been unconscious for a week following a collapse on an airplane returning from leading a tour to the Greek Islands.
Outlook Editor Jack Haberer recently sat down with PC(USA) Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick to discuss some of the pressing issues in the church. This was originally published in three parts, but the entire article is presented online here with combined reader feedback.
JH: Some churches are talking about leaving the denomination. Why do you think they want to leave?
CK: In so many ways this season of church-leaving feels like where I came in to this some 40 to 45 years ago when my own church went to the PCA. The reasons are different but they are somewhat the same. They are obviously Christians--Presbyterians--who feel deeply, who have a passionate sense of dedication to the life of Jesus Christ and the inerrancy of the Word of God.
What has upset them is not simply the report that was adopted at the Assembly, but that it was confirmation in their minds of what they long had perceived: that the larger church is not valuing their deeply-held Christian convictions. I also sense that they feel that they've been left out. One of the issues in the PUP report that you can critique is, I sense, that it did not deal as much with power as with the other subjects. Some people felt left out by that ... There's in some sense a loss of hope. Beyond that, there are organized groups that are trying to lead people out, and at times I think they share what's not always correct information. So it's the combination of those factors that are weighing on people's hearts that has them losing hope in the PC(USA) that I love and you love really being an expression of what God intends for the church.
"Communication, communication, communication."
That's how Linda Valentine, executive director of the General Assembly Council, recently expressed what she sees as a top need of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
She frequently cites, for example, a Presbyterian Panel survey from May 2005 that revealed only 15 percent of Presbyterians in the pews considered themselves to be "generally informed" about the denomination's mission work.
It's become almost a mantra -- there's a disconnect between the national church and the grassroots, and that to build support (both financial and otherwise), the denomination needs to do a better job of "telling the story" of Presbyterians involved in mission.
Exactly what that means, however -- how to tell those stories most effectively, what technology and strategies to use in a financially-constricted environment -- is still being worked out. It's also not totally clear what impact those "good news" stories about the PC(USA) might have on the denomination's track record of unrelenting conflict.
Davidson, N.C. -- The board of trustees of Davidson College today introduced their 17th president, Thomas W. Ross Sr., a 1972 graduate of the college. Ross has been serving as executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in Winston-Salem, N.C. He previously served for 17 years as a North Carolina superior court judge.
Ross will take the reins of the college on August 1. He succeeds Robert F. Vagt, who retires from the post after this academic year. Vagt served as president for 10 years.
The film "Amazing Grace" is coming or has come, to a theatre near you. A high-minded friend who has seen the film told me that it was a "must see." He also told me that the film's music was the tune of what has become our country's unofficial national hymn: Amazing Grace, or, as the tune is also called, New Britain. This hymn was, until the 1930s, sung to a variety of other tunes. Had it not been married more recently to the tune to which it is usually sung today, it might have never made it to the charts.
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