Eight Presbyterians, including Cynthia Bolbach and Landon Whitsitt, the moderator and vice-moderator of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), have issued a letter and video expressing their hope in the future of the denomination.
The quaint expression, “essential tenets,” comes from the 18th century-bred subscription vow for Presbyterian officers: “Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God?”
(ENI) The international Christian organization Open Doors
released its annual World Watch List this week, naming the 50 countries where it says Christians face the worst persecution. For the first time in the 20 years that the list has been compiled, the situation for Christians did not improve in any country, Open Doors said.
A star-studded array of political and religious leaders — from President Obama to rock legend Bono to AIDS activist Kay Warren — came together Dec. 1 for World AIDS Day to call for an entirely AIDS-free generation by 2015.
The number of organizations engaged in religious lobbying or religion-related advocacy in Washington, D.C., has increased fivefold in the past four decades, from fewer than 40 in 1970 to more than 200 today.
HAVANA (PNS) The U.S. blockade of Cuba is a fundamentally theological issue because, in choosing isolation over reconciliation, the U.S. has chosen to serve mammon rather than God, Cuban Presbyterian theologian Reinerio Arce told Cuban and U.S. religious leaders here Dec. 1.
(General Assembly Mission Council) Work crews in Haiti clear rubble from a home outside of Léogâne. Less than a decade old, Church of All Nations, a church plant out of the Korean immigrant context, has not only taken root but is already bearing fruit.
Editor’s Note: Gradye Parsons, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and Linda Bryant Valentine, executive director of the General Assembly Mission Council, both have signed this statement of the Interfaith Commission of the National Council of Churches regarding the decision of the Lowe's home improvement chain to pull its advertising from the television program "All-American Muslim."
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (General Assembly Mission Council) Four new church developments and two presbyteries will receive mission program grants from Evangelism and Church Growth of the General Assembly Mission Council (GAMC).
HAVANA (PNS) The National Council of Churches in the U.S. and the Council of Churches of Cuba have issued a joint statement calling for reconciliation between the two countries and committing themselves to “pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit that our churches may bear witness to God’s will for justice in economic life.”
(Presbyterian News Service) Dagoberto Rodriguez, Cuba’s deputy minister of external affairsHAVANA – 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.
This is an update written by the Special Committee on the Nature of the Church for the 21st Century, after its meeting in late November, and provided by the committee's moderator, Carol Howard Merritt. The committee will meet again in Louisville Feb. 1-3 and will report to the General Assembly in July.
A fourth candidate has been endorsed to stand for moderator of the 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). All four announced so far are teaching elders.
Thomas W. Gillespie, retired president of Princeton Theological Seminary and for decades a key figure in Presbyterian theological education, died Nov. 5 of complications from surgery at the University Medical Center in Princeton. He was 83.
HAVANA (Presbyterian News Service) The National Council of Churches in the U.S.A. (NCC) will continue to press for normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba, an end to the 53-year-old U.S. embargo of Cuba and release of the “Cuban Five” held in U.S. prisons, NCC General Secretary Michael Kinnamon told a packed press conference here Dec. 2.
Louisville, Ky. (Presbyterian News Service) Nearly a year after southern Sudanese citizens voted to split from northern Sudan and form a new country, the Sudan Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) met here to worship, share stories and discuss mission in the two countries.
DALLAS (Special to PNS) “It’s a messy ministry,” said one host church leader of his experience working with refugees and immigrant churches. “But God is glorified in our willingness to work out our problems together,” said Abraham Samuel (Arabic Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Monrovia, CA, San Gabriel Presbytery).
Samuel Shamba Warlick, who was accused of sexually abusing the children of Presbyterian missionaries in Africa in the 1980s, has been sentenced to 12 years and six months in federal prison for distributing child pornography.
Berlin (ENI) A decision by the German Federal Administrative Court allowing a Berlin school to ban Muslim students from praying on their lunch break is being viewed as a ruling on public religious expression and has been closely watched by members of different faiths.
