Since a majority of subscribers to The Presbyterian Outlook are not graduates of Davidson College, I am providing the proposals that will come before its Board of Trustees meeting that began Feb 3rd. These proposals were presented for a ‘first reading’ at an October board meeting and have been in the hands of college alumni/ae since early December.
LOUISVILLE -- Despite concerns that a new curriculum might be too expensive for some small churches to afford, the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted Friday to spend $750,000 to develop a new curriculum next year written "by Presbyterians, for Presbyterians."
It shouldn’t come as too much of a shock: that we live in a country in which increasing numbers of people say they aren’t Christian, or don’t consider themselves to belong to any particular religious group.
That understanding — that it can no longer be assumed that people grew up in church or that they can be expected to come back some day — is provoking some congregations to consider new approaches to evangelism.
Ernest Gordon, 85, the retired dean of the chapel and university chaplain emeritus at Princeton University, died Jan. 16 at Princeton Medical Center after a long illness.
His 1962 book, Through the Valley of the Kwai, told about the ordeal he and thousands of other prisoners of the Japanese endured during World War II in the jungles of Burma. Despite the cruelty and horrible conditions, Gordon said he began to find his religious faith there.
MEMPHIS - "Does this matter? Can we do it?" asked Chris Whitehead, pastor of a federated Presbyterian and Methodist congregation in Mammoth, Ore., as he moderated a Jan. 19 workshop at the inaugural conference here of Churches Uniting in Christ (CUIC). Whitehead continued, "We have been given permission by our national judicatories to create new models of church unity at the congregational level. Now that we have permission, what are we going to do with it?"
Now is the time for a third force to emerge in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The phrase "third force" rather than "third way" is offered, because the third way, if it exists at all, is not yet in sight. A genuine third way through the political thicket in which we are caught will be biblically and confessionally rooted, and will represent the consensus of the faithful that God’s will for our time has been discerned and must be affirmed.
By Roberta C. Bondi
Abingdon. 2000. 292 pp. $25. 
ISBN 0-687-02405-6
— reviewed by Judy Haas Acheson of Kansas City, Mo.
In this age of terrorism, is it not so that each of us have become more pensive and introspective individuals? Isn’t there a certain melancholy to this contemplative mood that seems like a form of prayer? Is it not also true that in these reveries our minds focus first on ourselves and then widen into remembering our family stories and histories in an attempt to see how we fit into these tense current historic events?
The 35th anniversary of the Confession of 1967 falls this year. A few members remain, both of the committee that drafted the document, and of the committee that received and modified it somewhat in 1965, prior to its circulation in the presbyteries during 1966 and the first half of 1967.
The church has always had factions — even as the American republic has always had factions. At the time of the founding of the New Nation, our forebears sought to create a political system which would ensure some kind of balance of power among various interests in society. Thus was erected a federal system with division of power between the federal government and the state governments, and a separation of powers in the federal government through the creation of three branches: legislative, executive and judicial. And the Bill of Rights — the first 10 amendments — erected a wall, since steadily strengthened, to safeguard individual liberties.
Writing recently in The Outlook, Editor Robert Bullock recognized that annual meetings of the PC(USA) General Assembly seem to be hurting the church and bringing unnecessary division. He wrote: "Annual meetings allow divisive issues to be brought up every year with the potential for win-lose votes at the meeting and in the presbyteries . . . . Dealing with divisive issues year after year through an annual meeting of the General Assembly has not been a plus for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).If an institution’s national gathering does more harm than good to the institution, shouldn’t the institution consider seriously having the meeting less often?"
San Francisco Presbytery on Jan. 8 endorsed Laird J. Stuart as a nominee for Moderator of the 214th General Assembly (2002). He is the first nominee for the position which will be elected by the commissioners on June 15 in Columbus, Ohio.
Pastor of Calvary church, San Francisco, since 1993, Stuart earlier served churches in Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jerse, and Connecticut. He has served on the board of Pittsburgh Seminary, including a term as president, and is currently on the board of San Francisco Seminary.
Those of us who take the teachings of John Calvin as our theological base have always practiced -- or are supposed to practice -- a faith-based initiative toward the society in which we live. Calvin constantly emphasized the primacy of the community over the individual, teaching that we are bound together and must take responsibility for each other, not just in the church, but in the community at large.
By Leander Keck.
Fortress. 2001. 207 pp. Pb. $ 21. ISBN 0-8006-3170-6
— Reviewed by Gordon W. G. Raynal, pastor, Inman, S.C., church
Leander Keck, emeritus professor of biblical theology at Yale Divinity School and past president of the Society of Biblical Literature, has joined the ranks of scholars writing about the relationship between understanding Jesus as a figure of history and a figure of theological affirmation. In Who Is Jesus? Keck takes the reader on a tour of the history of this scholarship since the Enlightenment, when interest in the Jesus of history began to flourish.
It has come, its supporters say, from the grassroots – and it has grown fast enough that people wonder out loud whether the confessing church movement now is a force that must be reckoned with in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
In fewer than nine months, the sessions of more than 1,100 congregations – about 10 percent of all the PC(USA) churches – have signed confessional statements, most of them describing belief in the Lordship of Jesus, the authority of the Bible and the sanctity of marriage.
Churches Uniting in Christ (CUIC), the latest incarnation of a 40-year-old effort to unite American Protestants, will hold its inaugural service on Sunday, Jan. 20, at Mount Olive Cathedral Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Memphis.
Those expected to attend the service will include representatives of its nine founding churches, along with well-wishers from across the country and around the world.
I was overjoyed when I read that one of the proposed amendments coming out of this year's General Assembly was aimed at simplifying and shortening Ch. 14 of the Form of Government. It has seemed for years that every edition of the Book of Order was bulkier than the last. Much of that bulk came from items better handled in a manual of operations. My delight turned to horror, however, when I found hidden in the midst of the revision of Chapter 14 a provision that would allow the interim pastor of a congregation to become its next installed pastor by a two-thirds vote of the presbytery.
We Presbyterian evangelicals like to appeal to the past in our ongoing debates with those who claim to have received "more light" on certain important subjects than was available to the biblical writers and the 16th-century Reformers. And rightly so. A defense of both biblical authority and the normative status of our confessional heritage has never been more urgent.
With the end of Christmas, the celebration of Epiphany – the gift of the gospel to all peoples and all nations – and the dawn of the second year of a new century and millennium, the issue of breaking the cycle of violence presents itself to us on many fronts.
On this subject more than usual a reader might wonder what possible insight I could possess. Until now, I have been quite content to recognize the mystery of feminine wilds without devoting any imaginative energy to reflection on what it must be to have them. Most likely this restriction comes from being told as a little boy that if you kissed your own elbow you would turn into a girl.
By Samuel K. Roberts
Pilgrim. 2001. 307 pp. Pb. $26. ISBN 0-8298-1424-8
—reviewed by A. Elaine Crawford, Atlanta, Ga.
Sam Roberts' book builds a strong case for the development of a unique African-American ethical consciousness. While he focuses on the African-American community, Roberts understands various cultures as singular, but none, including African-American culture, as exclusively normative. He argues that African-American ethical consciousness has been shaped through the particular historical and cultural experience of African Americans in America.
He's been coming to our church lately. Not very well dressed, obviously from the street. Totally out of place in our fine building. We've got lots of street people who come into and out of our life.
Criss-crossing the country by car the way I do, I've been fortunate to have had few breakdowns. Other than hitting a cement abutment along the Ohio Turnpike and locking my keys in my car while stopping along a deserted stretch on the Pacific Coast Highway, nothing notable has happened.
This is an activist generation. It is reflected in civil life, national politics and the ecclesiastical scene. In a way this is good: many things need to be done, but too often we try to do too many things or even the wrong things -- so long as we're getting something done.
Despite late November spring-like temperatures, the fiery red, golden passion of October's glory has fallen fast. From the mighty oak, maple and ash, the crippled stem and crinkled leaf have tumbled down to the hard, hard ground, where they are crushed like fodder under the hoof of the deer and the boot of the hunter.
Shakespeare's Romeo said, "Here's much to do with hate, but more with love." When love and hate reach a certain intensity they both demand incarnation. The Christmas stories have two incarnations; one of hate and one of love. The difficulty is that neither one touches us until it touches us.
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