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Voices

Voices of Dissent and the Bush Doctrine

In times of crisis as well as tranquility, public dissent is the conscientious conservator of democratic freedoms. As Rear Admiral Gene LaRocque, retired Navy, recently said, "Where there is no dissent, there is no democracy."

He was speaking in dissent and opposition to the "Bush Doctrine" of "exceptionalism" which has flouted the judicious wisdom of historic international principles for waging war, including the classical Christian bases of a just war.

Uncategorized

Van Kuiken guilty on charge of performing same-sex marriage church ceremony

Cincinnati Presbytery’s Judicial Commission has found minister A. Stephen Van Kuiken guilty of participating in same-sex marriage ceremony at Mount Auburn church and issued a rebuke.

The censure says he should perform marriage ceremonies "only for a man and a woman." If he performs "holy union" ceremonies for same-sex couples he is "directed to take special care to avoid any confusion of such services with Christian marriage."

Voices

Come to Good Friday

Here is the simple thing that I did. I opened an envelope that contained a hospital bill. It was 19 pages long, an exact tabulation of every syringe, every test, every pill, every process that had occurred. It was the concrete, specific inventory of everything that had happened to my mother. It was the ritual of her last days, a medicinal rosary, one bead after another of failed instruments and procedures. Each one, listed here, rested now in my hand nine years after her death.

Voices

Beyond Prayer: How do we begin to turn the Denomination around?

I have recently read and susequently re-read Robert Bullock's carefully crafted series on the current state of the denomination and those elements that have had an effect on our present malaise. Following this process I have also read articles in Presbyterians Today and The Layman, all dealing with elements of the same concern.

Book Reviews

The Invisible Child: On Reading and Writing Books for Children

By Katherine Paterson
Dutton. 2001. 266 pp. $24.99. ISBN 0-525-46482-4

— Review by Freda Gardner, Princeton, N.J.

The subtitle could be: What Makes Katherine Tick? What are the thoughts, experiences, loves, concerns that make this author so prolific, so admired around the world; so ready to speak to and with children and to care about them with a passion that marks the decades of her life? Who are the people that called forth that passion and keep it burning today? And what of God, who continues to call Katherine Paterson to many ministries, to the use of the gifts that are hers?

Editorials

Renewing the Covenant VIII: Seeing the New Church Emerging

Change is a human constant. In recent weeks the idea of covenant renewal in the Presbyterian Church has been discussed extensively, toward the end of suggesting an overall framework in which 21st-century American Presbyterian Christians in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) might reclaim the past and recommit to a new vision of the church and its work, that we might move beyond the paralysis which has descended upon us in recent decades.

Voices

Never Night Again!

The spring beauty of Easter is here again! On Resurrection Sunday churches everywhere will be overwhelmed with throngs. This is the day when even the faintest faith will flicker again. Some are more preoccupied with the pagan symbols of the goddess of spring — rabbits, eggs, flowers, brightly colored clothes — but they still are attracted to the one Easter object, the sign of the cross.

Voices

Where There’s Smoke…

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Where there’s fire, hose it down! Then again, if the smoke is coming from a fireplace, let it burn. And if the smoke is coming from a refinery, it may be incinerating toxins (good!) or it may be releasing them (evacuate!). Then again, what appears to be fire may actually be steam, which could be good (a power plant) or bad (a radiator).

Where there’s smoke, who knows what to do?

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