Thank God for people of faith who are here today. Our Faith Community is a giant. We’re in every city and town in America. But the Giant is asleep. The Giant also has a powerful, moral voice. But when it comes to fighting gun violence, the Giant is as quiet and timid as a church mouse.
If the U.S. is to reduce its unique level of gun deaths it will be because people of faith awaken their spiritual leaders and demand that they lead the fight from their pulpits and classrooms.
Margaret Flory is "one of the most outstanding leaders of the ecumenical movement of the 20th Century," Rubem Alves, Brazilian theologian and poet, wrote, "because her eyes had the power to see trees when they were only seeds." 
More than 150 people from around the world — not a few of them trees that first encountered Flory when they were seeds — gathered at New York's Riverside Church May 14-15 to honor Margaret Flory on the occasion of her 90th birthday.
These thoughts on the church’s ministry of healing are inspired by the willingness of Lawton Posey and Richard Ray to reflect theologically on their experiences of suffering and recovery for the sake of the church. I had a brush with mortality over Palm Sunday weekend, minor indeed compared with theirs. In the quiet of a two-day unexpected hospital stay, I remembered the Divine Healing Service on the Island of Iona in 1965, and words that introduced the laying on of hands following prayers for the sick and dying.
It began with a small twinge in her mid section. It was enough to cause Bridget to cancel a couple of appointments for March 8 and decide to stay home. I got her the usual white chalky stuff one takes for such twinges and things seemed to be just fine.
Until the headache hit.
I walk over to the bookcase. The top shelf is crammed full of 49 volumes of a series with similar spines. The authors date from the third through the 17th century and include some of the most arcane and least-read material on earth. I have purchased them over the years, and I have had to fork over at least a thousand dollars for them.
Nothing could be more timely, or more in the spirit of an Easter faith than the Moderator’s and Stated Clerk’s March 24th letter to the denomination. They deplore the gun violence in this country and its tragic toll in human lives (28,000-35,000 deaths per year since the 1960s). They call attention to the federal ban on assault weapons that will expire this September on the watch of an apathetic, fearful Congress. Since Congress is not expected to act, those million moms, bless their hearts, are on the march again, on Mother’s Day in our nation’s capital.
In previous years this magazine has sponsored what I thought was a wearying debate between those who took a rather relaxed view of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and those who insisted that belief in the resurrection of the body was essential. Without it we were all doomed to the theological and moral wasteland of Christian thought.
The United States has always been a religiously pluralistic place — now, more so than ever, said Nancy Ammerman, a sociologist of religion.
In a recent lecture series, Ammerman described how she sees things lining up — saying the United Stattes now has eight major streams of religious leanings, what she referred to as eight points on the compass.
I am new at this business, unaccustomed to writing each week for the whole church. A valued friend reacted quickly to last week’s editorial. He thought it was a little too far on the wild side; he was especially critical of my sweeping, dogmatic claims about validated ministries. Yet he admitted that the editorial opened up an ongoing discussion. Thus doth provocation produce dialogue.
My next few editorials will respond to recent news stories and guest viewpoints that have received no editorial treatment.
This week I will address the Jan. 31 meeting of Western North Carolina Presbyterian at which the ministry of Parker Williamson was not revalidated. This was reported in the Feb. 23 issue of The Outlook and the February issue of the Layman. I want also to respond to reader reaction to the Jan. 26 Outlook editorial, "Ministry of Fear."
I read with great interest the article by James Goodloe ("Righteous Judgment") and the endorsing letter by Eddie Soto. Though the term is never used, I assume that both are being critical of "Lectionary Preaching."
Both are correct when they say that lectio continua (preaching through a book of the Bible "in course," chapter by chapter) was used back to the earliest days of the church, and that the reformers, especially the Genevan reformers, urged pastors to preach through books of the Bible.
have been a member of the Outlook Foundation Board of Directors almost longer than I can remember. It came with the territory; it came very soon after I moved to Richmond in 1982 to become pastor of Second church. I think it was assumed that I would serve on the board because of The Outlook’s long history with this congregation. One of our predecessor journals was brought to Richmond in 1856 by the first pastor of this church, Moses Drury Hoge, and most of the ministers of Second church since 1938 had served on the board as well.
In some parts of the country we have endured a long, cold winter and the blizzards are still coming (after several weeks of sub-zero weather). Many people are sick of it and feel like they are caught in a frozen trap.
Some of this normal depression will pass, of course, when spring comes; when we get rid of the ice, the heavy coats and gloves, the constant aggravation of getting into a freezing car. Then we will feel better again.
I am both humbled and daunted by the confidence the search committee and board of the Presbyterian Outlook Foundation has shown by naming me editor. Standing on the shoulders of Aubrey Brown (1943-1978) George Hunt (1978-1988) and Robert Bullock (1988–2003) reminds me of the awesome responsibility that attaches to this position. The PC(USA), the denominations that birthed and nourished us into existence, the Reformed and Presbyterian family of churches in the United States, and even the holy universal church owe these past three editors an immense debt of gratitude, as do our readers.
In response to declining membership, a strategy report of a major presbytery several years ago emphasized new church development. Although anticipated, it was still rather disconcerting. How many commercial enterprises would respond to falling sales by opening new franchises? Instead, if they hoped to survive, they would concentrate on product improvement.
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
— Exodus 20:4–6 (ESV)
Does your board have a line in the sand when it comes to personal, professional, ethical or administrative behavior of church members and officers? How long will you permit unruly or fractious actions by one or two individuals to disrupt the important work of the congregation? What do you do if one of the church's officers clearly violates his or her ordination vows?
On the Supreme Court's docket for the current session is a review of the Ninth Circuit Court's judgment of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. If that phrase is removed, it would return to the version I memorized in public school. During World War II no one complained about a deficiency in the 29 words we voluntarily repeated during our daily flag raisings. Our generation swelled with patriotic pride and could hardly wait to enlist in our armed services to help topple those totalitarian regimes intent on conquering other European or Asian nations.
Please don't call me contentious. Don't call me disloyal. I'm just confused over the conviction deeply held by some of my dearest friends about their right to withhold or redirect funds that normally would go to the denomination. What I hear them saying is that the church courts have affirmed our legal right — which is accorded us by our polity ...which is based upon our theology — which issues from our God-endowed freedom — to determine where our money goes. Where all of our money goes.
Surely by now it is clear that we are standing under the judgment of God. Nothing else could account for the precipitous and calamitous decline of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) over the last 40 years. And while we stand under the judgment of God, this indeed is our only hope: the judgment of God is righteous.
Mel Gibson's labor of faith is not a popcorn and candy movie. It's gruesome, it's brutal, it's bloody, and it's sobering. For the faithful, it's a stark reminder of just how much Jesus sacrificed, and at what great cost our redemption has been paid.
"The Passion of the Christ" depicts the last 12 hours of the life of Jesus of Nazareth (played by Jim Cavaziel), from the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane to the tomb.
As a Presbyterian who claims but also hopes to transcend the label "liberal," I was heartened by The Outlook's reports (Nov. 3) of two addresses offered at the recent Presbyterian Coalition Gathering in Oregon. Jin Kim, newly-elected board president of Presbyterian's for Renewal, challenged his audience to look forward to a more racially/ethnically inclusive church, not backward to the supposed glory days of our 1950s segregated congregations.
As Western North Carolina Presbytery prepares to vote Jan. 31 on a recommendation not to revalidate the ministry of Parker Williamson with the Presbyerian Lay Committee, the present struggle for the soul of the Presbyterian Church is looking like a replay of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the 1920s. If the editor of The Layman eventually loses his ordination because of his encouragement to sessions to withhold per capita contributions, the decision would mirror the 1935 defrocking of J. Gresham Machen by New Brunswick Presbytery over his leadership of an independent mission board that appeared, like the Layman, to threaten the purse of mother church.
Across the denomination there is much interest concerning Western North Carolina Presbytery's Jan. 31 meeting, when the peers of Presbyterian Layman editor-in-chief and CEO Parker Williamson will consider a recommendation that his ministry with the Lay Committee not be revalidated.
With other news and controversial issues taking up much space in Presbyterian publications, I would like to call our attention to one of the amendments that is being sent down for vote by presbyteries. Amendment 03-G will require a minister or church employee to be placed on immediate administrative leave as soon as a sexual misconduct complaint is filed with the clerk of the governing body when the issue involves someone under 18 years or who is mentally unable to make decisions for him/herself.
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