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Looking Around: A sounding bell

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 

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Looking Around: We were there

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.

Voices

Looking Around: Are Presbyterians losing traditions of social justice?

I had been a member of the southern Presbyterian church for ten years when, in 1954, two great issues confronted its General Assembly: (1) After our separation of 1860, should we unite with the "northern" Presbyterians? (2) Should we resolve to support the desegregation of this country's public schools?

In that spring an official "yes" to the second question was on its way to Assembly vote from its Church and Society Committee. Ironically, just before the GA came the Brown decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. Ever after, southern Presbyterians were given little credit for that "yes." 

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Looking Around: The renewed promise of Montreat

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.

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Looking Around: Genevans critique shift to top-down decision making

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.

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The unfulfilled dreams of Presbyterian reunion

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.

Voices

The spiritual lessons of baseball

For some, baseball is more than a game. Don McKim, a retired Presbyterian minister, theologian and writer, reflects on the spiritual lessons he's learned from baseball.

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Union Theological Seminary appoints first woman president in its history

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.

Editorials

City of reconciliation

Atlanta. The city's soul still aches from the carnage suffered generations ago when the nation was divided against itself. In recent years, the city has become a healing place, a hub of reconciliation.

Forty years ago, the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church gave impetus to a movement of racial reconciliation. Twenty-five years ago, the streets filled with celebrating Presbyterians as they reunited after 120 years apart.* And, just a few weeks ago, 15,000 Baptists gathered there, and began to forge another reconciliation, a New Baptist Covenant. We Americans, and especially Presbyterians, might do well to study and emulate it.

Voices

Mission meeting: Time for change brings new opportunities

DALLAS -- It's not reasonable to expect a three-day meeting in Texas to spit out all the answers to how the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ought to approach world mission. But the folks gathered here for a consultation on world mission Jan. 16-18 did have some pretty clear ideas about what's happening in the world that Presbyterians can't ignore -- changes sweeping the land, whether people have figured it out yet or not.

The bottom line: this is a time of tremendous change, in the PC(USA) and in the world. As Paul Pierson, a former missionary in Brazil and Portugal and senior professor of the history of mission and Latin American studies at Fuller Theological Seminary has written: "The changes in the worldwide church today are probably greater than those that took place during the sixteenth century Reformation. The transition today is analogous to the shift from the Jewish to the Gentile church in the first century."

How the PC(USA) responds, how well it adapts to change and how quickly, may go a long way in determining what it has to contribute in a pluralistic world.

"I think we're talking about something big" said Rick Ufford-Chase, a former General Assembly moderator and executive director of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship. "I think we're talking about something that's a 50-year shift" in how the denomination interacts with the world.

Voices

Surprises at the well

Often the task of exegesis is to rescue truth from familiarity. The story of Jesus and the woman at the well is known, but its amazing surprises often are overlooked. A few of them are particularly noteworthy.

1. Dominical mission: Go in need of those you hope to serve. On arriving at the well, the disciples set off to the nearby town to buy food. The story assumes that they took with them the soft leather bucket that was necessary equipment for any traveling band in the first century.

Voices

Doing church in a downturn

A worsening United States economy is  a huge challenge to churches. Church leaders need to prepare for it.

Even among loyal churchgoers, spiking gasoline prices, rising unemployment, unsellable houses, consumer indebtedness, sagging confidence in the future, and mounting rage over fair play in the marketplace test our constituents' willingness to support church as they know it.

Two of many examples: will Americans continue to contribute an average of $3,000 a year to their churches? Will they continue to subsidize out-of-the-way locations by driving 30 to 60 minutes at $10 to $20 a trip?

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Educators honor MacKichan-Walker

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.

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Advocacy Days conference to explore meaning of security

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.

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Baptist gathering focuses on unity in diverse understandings, serving Christ

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. 

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Presbytery proposes overture to overturn PJC ruling on ordination prohibition

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.

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Guest Commentary: Court scraps scruples on G-6.0106b; Constitutional amendments still needed

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."

Voices

Guest Commentary: Thoughts on the Judicial Commission’s decision on Bush

On February 11, the General Assembly Presbyterian Judicial Commission issued a pair of decisions addressing questions about the Authoritative Interpretation of G-6.0108 that was adopted by the 217th General Assembly in 2006.  These decisions have important implications in the life of the church, and have already generated many questions.

         The case of Buescher v. Presbytery of Olympia (Remedial Case 218-09) arose when Olympia Presbytery adopted a policy that "any violation of a mandate of the Book of Order (2005-2007) constitutes a failure to adhere to the essentials of reformed polity and thus presents a bar to ordination and installation." 

         The GAPJC held that this policy was unconstitutional. In doing so, it strongly affirmed several core principles of G-6.0108 and the 2006 Authoritative Interpretation:

Outlook Reporting

“Dr. Mac: “A tribute to Donald Macleod

Dr. Donald Macleod served as a mentor and friend when I began studies at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1969. This Scottish Presbyterian revered Psalm 100 as an international anthem of God's gracious friendship towards humankind. Its crescendo rises at the grand finale of praise: For the Lord is good; His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness to the end of the ages.

When Donald Macleod stood by you, a student in his class knew this professor seldom fell away as a fair-weather friend. . We saw ourselves as "Macleod's Men," though the language may be sexist, it's how we described ourselves on campus when few women studied for ministry. He received telephone contacts from a myriad of Search Committees looking to fill their pulpits. When "Dr. Mac" extolled the strengths of one of his "men," Pastoral Search Committees seemingly treated Macleod's inventory of candidates as the very voice of the Lord.

Editorials

Absolutes, standards, and exceptions

As a teenager in the 1970s, I was committed to following Jesus wherever he would lead. My spiritual mentors -- Christian businessmen -- directed me to follow the narrow way. They organized Bible study groups, taught spiritual disciplines, promoted moral purity, and championed absolutes. I followed their lead.

But, I also found their promotion of absolutes somewhat confusing. For example, as my parents' marriage unraveled, the mentors equated divorce with the unforgivable sin. Then our pastor separated from his wife. They not only fired him, they excommunicated him -- condemning him to eternal torment. The absolutes had to be maintained.

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Founder of homeless ministry is third candidate for GA moderator

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.

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T.F. Torrance collection donated to Princeton Seminary

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.

Voices

Ten minutes with Charles “Chuck” Burge

On January 7, Charles F. "Chuck" Burge began service as executive director of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, which publishes The Layman newspaper, the Layman Online, and Reformation Press books. 

He succeeds Parker Williamson, who retired as chief executive officer on Dec. 31, 2005. 

Burge worked with D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries for the past ten years, including serving as interim executive vice president.  Coral Ridge ministries is based at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. CRPC is in the Presbyterian Church in America, a denomination that split off the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. in 1973. Prior to his move to Lenoir, N.C., to assume his new post, Burge served on the session of the CRPC and was a certified trainer in the church's Evangelism Explosion program.

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