Young Presbyterian women may be eligible for the National Network of Presbyterian College Women (NNPCW) Scholarship Fund program. The deadline for 2008 applications is April 11.
The NNPCW's scholarship program helps equip young women to be leaders in both church and society. Three scholarships are offered this year: one $1,000 scholarship for an NNPCW member active in empowering women on her campus and two $1,500 scholarships for new immigrant women pursuing a college education.
A cross-section of Presbyterians are currently taking part in a United Nations-based effort to raise the status of women.
Thirty-two Presbyterians representing Presbyterian Women, the National Network of Presbyterian College Women, Racial Ethnic Young Women Together and Presbyterian Men are participating in the 52nd session of the Commission on the Status of Women, a body of the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
Speaking of what distinguishes the Reformed from the Lutheran confessional traditions, Karl Barth stated, "[T]he significance of the confession in the Reformed church consists in its essential nonsignificance, its obvious relativity, humanity, multiplicity, mutability, and transitoriness. One could describe the Reformed confession in its totality the way Schiller spoke of the bell: 'And as the mighty sound it gives/Dies gently on the listening ear/We feel how quickly all that lives/Must change, and fade, and disappear.' In point of fact, the Reformed confession is a fading bell stroke ... a disappearing shadow."1
In the beginning God created a man. It seems that pretty quickly God knew that if that's all there was there wouldn't be any more and so ... woman. Humankind in two forms with infinite variations. Size and color, habitat and interests, aptitudes and preferences and ... well, look at just your relatives and add to the list. God's plan. Our destiny.
It's taking quite a long time for all of us to get the big picture and maybe in this life we'll never get all that God intended but we still have to keep trying and celebrating whatever and whenever we do get it right.
Who can imagine how the things we call ideas live in the world, or how they change, or how they perish, or how they are renewed?1
Marilynne Robinson's question frames an essay on Montreat as a place of significant Christian influence in the Presbyterian Church in the United States, and since reunion, also in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The Conference Center in this privileged Presbyterian village near Asheville, N.C., has experienced rebirth in the past few years. Under the leadership of George Barber, an accountant who has just finished his tenure as president, the Conference Center (with the oversight of the Mountain Retreat Association Board) was put on a firm financial footing. More than $20 million in pledges and deferred giving have been secured for the Center during a time when General Assembly funding has dried up. That is a remarkable achievement in which the church can rejoice.
When reunion was an accomplished fact, and the dust and rhetoric surrounding it had settled down somewhat, a group emerged to question the way things were working out. They called themselves the "Genevans."
In the beginning, at St. Simons Island, Ga., in 1990, they didn't even have a name. Four presbytery executives, two of whom drifted away from the group later, invited participants in a conference on human sexuality to stay for an informative question-and-answer session after the conference.
Geneva (ENI) -- Observers of the Latin American Council of Churches say the sudden resignations of its general secretary, the Rev. Israel Batista, and six other staff may reflect disagreements about the direction of the region's biggest church grouping.
The council's board of directors announced in February that the staff had tendered their resignations at a board meeting held that month in Panama. It made no mention of any reasons given by the staff.
The resignations came as the board of directors was to carry out an evaluation of the Quito-headquartered organization's three-year plan.
New York (ENI) -- A group of U.S. church leaders has asked that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice directly address the crisis over the Gaza Strip in her planned visit to the Middle East this week.
The leaders of Anglican, Orthodox, Protestant, and Unitarian Universalist churches and Roman Catholic religious humanitarian groups on February 29 sent a letter to Rice. They urged her to 'to take urgent action to address the still unresolved Gaza crisis'. This crisis, the leaders, said 'is hindering progress on the peace process and also create conditions that pose a particular threat to the small Christian community in Gaza."
WASHINGTON -- People of faith from a variety of religious
traditions -- including Christians, Jews and Muslims -- will
join here in a day of worship and witness in opposition to
the war in Iraq on March 7
Anniversaries are important to Presbyterians. It is often my privilege as stated clerk to send official certificates to Presbyterian congregations when they celebrate anniversary milestones. These requests have come in abundance in recent years, a sign that our congregations take seriously their heritage, want to reconnect to their founding dreams, and make fresh commitments to live them out in a new time.
Anniversaries are important to Presbyterians. It is often my privilege as stated clerk to send official certificates to Presbyterian congregations when they celebrate anniversary milestones. These requests have come in abundance in recent years, a sign that our congregations take seriously their heritage, want to reconnect to their founding dreams, and make fresh commitments to live them out in a new time.
NEW YORK -- Serene Jones has been selected to become the 16th, and first woman, president of the historic Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The announcement was made Monday by David Callard, chairman of the seminary's board of trustees.
Dr. Jones will assume the presidency of the seminary on July 1. She will succeed Joseph C. Hough, Jr., who is retiring after serving as Union's president since 1999. Dr. Jones, the Titus Street Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School, will come to Union after seventeen years on the Yale faculty. At present she also serves as chair and faculty member of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. Jones has held faculty appointments at Yale Law School and in the Department of African American Studies and Religious Studies. She earned her M.Div. from Yale Divinity School (1985) as well as her Ph.D. in theology from Yale University (1991). She holds a B.A. from the University of Oklahoma (1981) and is an ordained minister in both the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ.
LOUISVILLE -- Exploring new visions of security in homes, neighborhoods, and the world will be the focus of the sixth annual Ecumenical Advocacy Days conference.
Scheduled for March 7-10 in Washington, D.C., the gathering will bring together religious advocates from around the world to learn about key issues and then lobby for them in the United States capital.
SAN DIEGO, CALIF. -- More than 1,000 Presbyterian church educators from the United States and Canada gathered here Feb. 13--16 for the annual Association of Presbyterian Church Educators conference.
The four-day event culminated with a dinner honoring the educator of the year, two lifetime achievement award winners and five scholarship recipients.
Joyce MacKichan-Walker, director of Christian education and minister of education at Nassau Church in Princeton, N.J., received the 2008 Associate of Presbyterian Church Educators (APCE) Educator of the Year award.
A gathering called "A Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant" brought together about 15,000 persons from 30 Baptist groups to Atlanta January 30 -- February 1. Church members, pastors, denominational leaders, and Baptists with names prominent in American life came together to find a new way forward after more than a decade of factional infighting and after racial and cultural divides dating from pre-Civil War times. The attendees represented 20 million Baptists in their respective unions and conventions.
It was organized by a group of church members led by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Mercer University President Bill Underwood.
LOUISVILLE -- Stony Point Center (SPC) was given the green light by the General Assembly Council (GAC) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to continue on its careful path toward financial stability after conference center officials outlined a more detailed plan for its future to the council last week.
It didn't take long for the next bit of strategy to emerge.
John Knox Presbytery, with offices in Richland Center, Wis. responding to a recent decision of the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission, has passed an overture which, if approved, could allow candidates to state objections based on conscience to the sexual behavior standards of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
It didn't take long for the next bit of strategy to emerge.
John Knox presbytery, responding to a recent decision of the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission, has passed an overture which, if approved, could allow candidates to state objections based on conscience to the sexual behavior standards of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
On Feb. 11, the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission (GAPJC) -- the highest court in the PC(USA) system -- issued a decision which said, in effect, that candidates for ordination must comply with those sexual behavior standards, even if they disagree in conscience with them. The PC(USA) requires that candidates for ordination or installation as minister, elder or deacon practice fidelity if they are married or chastity if they are single.
The General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission (GAPJC) unanimously rendered three court decisions on Feb. 11, 2008 (released Feb. 13) that initial commentators on all sides of the theological divide believe make it impossible to ordain candidates who refuse to comply with the requirement in G-6.0106b to limit sexual relations to "the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman ... or chastity in singleness."[i] The main GAPJC decision is Remedial Case 218-10, Bush, et al. vs. the Presbytery of Pittsburgh. [ii]
In my first half dozen or so readings of these decisions I was much less certain that the GAPJC had prohibited absolutely the ordination of those found to be in noncompliance with the "fidelity and chastity" requirement in G-6.0106b. I wrote an article that I showed around to renewal leaders that argued strongly that we should not "jump the gun" by assuming this to be the case. I had come to the conclusion that the GAPJC had very possibly prohibited only a "permission to depart" from the specific sexuality standard in G-6.0106b but not the actual ordination of those who so departed. I had begun to think it possible that the GAPJC had arrived at this splitting of hairs by making the tired and misleading distinction between (1) "standards" that remain "binding" and from which departures are not "permitted" on the one hand and (2) "essentials of Reformed faith and polity" from which alone departures would constitute a necessary "bar to ordination and/or installation."
LOUISVILLE -- Carl Mazza, the founder and leader of "Meeting Ground," a community-based ministry with the homeless and other marginalized people in Elkton, Md., is the third announced candidate to stand for moderator of the 218th General Assembly (2008), next summer in San Jose, Calif.
Mazza was endorsed on Jan. 18 by New Castle Presbytery, based in Newark, Del.
Mazza, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, founded Meeting Ground in 1981. It now encompasses two shelters, one for women and one for men; a transitional house; and a rural residential facility for men, women and children. Meeting Ground also operates a care program for children and youth and a church-based winter shelter program that rotates among area churches.
Princeton, N.J. -- The family of theologian and professor Thomas F. Torrance (1913--2007) has donated his books, personal papers, and manuscripts to the special collections of the Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries.
He was a frequent visitor to the seminary campus and also acted as an informal advisor and confidant to several of its presidents. His younger son, Iain R. Torrance, became Princeton Seminary's sixth president in 2004.
Part I of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Constitution, the Book of Confessions, is of particular interest to me. So I noted with attentiveness Pittsburgh Presbytery's overture to the 218th General Assembly to amend Part I of the Constitution of the PC(USA), the Book of Confessions, to, in the words of the overture, "restore The Heidelberg Catechism to an authentic and reliable English version of the historic document by replacing the 1962 translation, The Heidelberg Catechism, 1563-1963, 400th Anniversary Edition. Copyright 1962. United Church Press, with a translation that more faithfully renders the original text." In its rationale, the overture gives five examples of mistranslations of the original Heidelberg Catechism in the current PC(USA) Constitution. While each of these examples is interesting, many PC(USA) readers will be most interested in the fifth and last example, which concerns Q & A 87 in the Heidelberg Catechism having to do with "homosexual perversion."
LOUISVILLE -- Joan Gray, https://www.pcusa.org/gamoderator/bio.htm moderator of the 217th General Assembly, offered a word to a troubled church in the light of the recent decisions of the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission (GAPJC) https://www.pcusa.org/gapjc/.
Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick's Preliminary Top 10 issues before the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.):
LOUISVILLE -- In just two short months, the General Assembly Council will be asked to vote upon a proposed budget for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for the next two years. And one difficult decision the council will have to make in April is how much to spend on international missionaries.
The bottom line is: because the denomination does not have enough money, the number of mission co-workers serving the denomination overseas is dropping at what's been described as a "'precipitous pace."
© Copyright 2026 The Presbyterian Outlook. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Statement. Website by Web Publisher PRO
