NAIROBI, Kenya (ENI) The Kenyan government has promised to expand a refugee camp for thousands of desperate Somalis fleeing a drought crisis in the Horn of Africa, and faith groups and humanitarian agencies are praising the move.
WASHNGTON (Special to the Presbyterian News Service) On July 11, more than 150 U.S. citizens from faith-based, environmental and human rights organizations gathered in front of the White House to protest the pending Colombia Free Trade Agreement. A Presbyterian presence was prominent among them.
HONG KONG (ENI) The Vatican has excommunicated the Rev. Joseph Huang Bingzhang, a Catholic bishop in Shantou in the southern Guangdong province in China, for being ordained without a papal mandate.
NAIROBI, Kenya (ENI) Roman Catholic Bishop Caesar Mazzolari of South Sudan's Rumbek diocese died suddenly on July 16 at age 74, one week after the mainly Christian and animist region celebrated its independence from the mainly Arab and Islamic North.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (PNS) Concerned that the Obama administration and Congress are working on a budget deal that will place an undue burden on the poor “while shielding the wealthiest from any additional sacrifice,” leaders representing the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths on July 14 launched a new campaign to encourage policymakers to maintain a robust U.S. commitment to domestic and international poverty programs.
LOUISVILLE – The Rev. Brian Heron is embarking on a pilgrimage. And though his congregation will stay home while he’s out on the 10-week cycling trip, they’ll make a journey of their own.
INDIANAPOLIS (PNS) More than 75 Presbyterians in town for the denomination’s Big Tent event demonstrated their support of immigrants at the Indiana Statehouse July 2.
LOUISVILLE (OGA) When I welcomed everyone to the Big Tent in Indianapolis recently, I said that the Big Tent is like a General Assembly in that the halls are teeming with Presbyterians, either connecting for the first time or reconnecting with one another.
I think people are leaving. I know that there are people in my church who are considering it. What bothers them the most is the departure from viewing Scripture as authoritative and instead viewing Scripture as merely guidelines. We might as well replace Scripture with the Pirates’ Code. Remember the movie, “Pirates of the Caribbean”?
The votes are in. After roughly five years of discussion, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has approved a new Form of Government, intended to be more flexible and to give congregations and presbyteries more latitude in deciding how to do ministry.
Seattle (PNS) Like a massive ocean-liner, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Middle Governing Body Commission has begun the long, slow turn from gathering data to formulating recommendations for the mission and function of presbyteries and synods in a rapidly changing church and world.
College Ministries: The 219th General Assembly in 2010 voted to restore the denomination’s Office of Collegiate Ministries after an era of declining activity. A “strategic and sustainable plan” will be presented at the 220th GA in 2012.
(RNS) Religious leaders are hoping to hit a home run in a campaign to get Major League Baseball players to ban tobacco use on fields and dugouts of the national pastime.
LOUISVILLE (PNS) William P. Lytle, a staunch supporter of Presbyterian reunion who served as moderator of the General Assembly of the former United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (UPCUSA) in 1978 — five years before it combined with the Presbyterian Church in the United States to form the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — died May 27 in Los Gatos, Calif., after a lengthy illness. He was 87.
LOUISVILLE Two conservative PC(USA) groups have announced an agreement to share the services of the evangelical leader Paul Detterman. In addition to his duties as executive director of Presbyterians for Renewal (PFR), Detterman will also serve as administrative consultant for Fellowship PC(USA) for at least one year.
LOUISVILLE (PNS) “Watermarked,” an album renowned Presbyterian singer/songwriter David M. Bailey was working on when he died last fall, has been released posthumously.
Geneva (ENI) United Nations relief agencies launched global emergency appeals today seeking new aid funds to help 10 million people, including 2 million severely malnourished children, in countries in the
Before the lights were barely out from Big Tent 2011, that’s the kind of complex question denominational leaders began digging into – in a quick, less than 24-hour confab held at a particularly delicate time in the denomination’s life.
Indianapolis (PNS) Many of the models of how we organize the church are dying, said the Rev. Susan Andrews, former General Assembly moderator and executive presbyter for Hudson River Presbytery, introducing a panel of innovative church leaders July 1 at the Healthy Ministry Conference opening luncheon here at the Big Tent.
Indianapolis (PNS) When Cynthia Campbell was growing up, she never experienced a woman in a leadership role in the pulpit of her home church in Pasadena, Calif.
Indianapolis (PNS) About five miles away from the excitement of Big Tent on the afternoon of July 1, a small group of Presbyterians worked with picks, shovels and wheelbarrows to dig a hole about six inches deep, eight feet wide, and 20 feet long. The area will eventually serve as the floor of a greenhouse made from an old bus stop shelter.
