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NNPCW Scholarship Fund applications deadline April 11

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.

Presbyterians gather at United Nations to lift up women’s issues

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.

Resignations at Latin American Council ‘painful’, says church leader

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.

U.S. church leaders ask Rice to address crisis in Gaza

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."

Peace witness set for March 7 in nation’s capital

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

Looking Ahead: 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.

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 

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.

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.

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."

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.

Union Theological Seminary appoints first woman president in its history

NEW YORK -- Serene Jones has been selected to become the 16^th, 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.