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.
