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Memorial Service for William P. Thompson scheduled for Louisville center chapel

A Service of Remembrance for William P. Thompson, former Co-Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Stated Clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., will be held in the Chapel on November 28 at 11:00am. Mr. Thompson died on April 27. This service, to be led by former colleagues of Mr. Thompson, had been envisioned for a time before the General Assembly in June, but now follows the service earlier in the year for James Andrews and the Centennial remembrances of Eugene Carson Blake. Mr. Andrews was Mr. Thompson's successor in the reunited Church; Mr. Blake his predecessor. The current Stated Clerk, Clifton Kirkpatrick, will participate in this service, as he did in the Thompson funeral back in May.

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Statement of the Board of Directors of the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation

November 8, 2006

Comments on David Ray Griffin's Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11

Louisville, KY--The Board of Directors of the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation (PPC) has reviewed the decision to publish David Ray Griffin's Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11. The book was published by Westminster John Knox Press (WJK), a PPC imprint, earlier this year. "David Ray Griffin is a distinguished theologian who has published a number of books with PPC," said Kenneth Godshall, chair of the PPC Board of Directors. "This particular volume is not up to WJK editorial standards and not representative of the PPC publishing program."

The book makes the extraordinary claim that the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, were orchestrated by the federal government and made to appear to be the work of al-Qaeda. The book also challenges Christians to wrestle with questions raised by American foreign policy. "Griffin's theological reflections are helpful and timely," Godshall commented. "The Board believes, however, the conspiracy theory is spurious and based on questionable research." For more than 160 years the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation has published works that contribute to worldwide scholarship in the areas of biblical studies, theology, religion, and ethical issues of importance to the larger society. Under its WJK imprint, PPC publishes a theologically and religiously diverse selection of books that often extend beyond the Reformed tradition and the official policies of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

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Scott Anderson enrolled as inquirer

Scott Anderson, the only openly gay member of the former Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church, has been enrolled as an Inquirer under the care of the John Knox Presbytery after a unanimous vote of the presbytery on Nov. 14.

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Form of Government Task Force begins work on Book of Order;
Seek to show trust, transparency

LOUISVILLE -- Say "Form of Government" or "Hey, there's a new task force working to revise the Book of Order," and watch people's eyes roll right back into their heads. It's not exactly "Deal or No Deal."

But "people are hungry for a simpler way to shape our life," Joan Gray, the moderator of the 217th General Assembly, told the Form of Government Task Force recently. Presbyterians from the South remember when the Book of Order was a third of the size it is now, Gray said.

"If you come up with something that is useful and slim and flexible, it will be greeted with great rejoicing in the church," she said. "I don't think it will be a hard sell."

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Mother’s dilemma: Send son away to save his life?

© 2006. Used by permission

 

BARRANQUILLA, Colombia - Eli Maria Alvarez Jimenez has persistent dark circles under her eyes.

She looks tired and anxious. And she is.

Her youngest child, Mauricio Avilez, 26, left Barranquilla two years ago for safety's sake and hasn't yet been able to return.  He cannot resume his life there without renewed death threats from right-wing paramilitaries who want to stop his efforts to help some of Colombia's 3.6 million displaced poor in the name of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia (PCC).

So now she is telling him to go: To leave Colombia and to stay away until he is no longer hunted. And she has no idea when that may be. Neither does he.

Determining where to go, and then how to get there, are both easier said than done. Not to mention how he will fare in a strange place once he is gone.

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10 Minutes With … Ingrid Mattson

c. 2006 Religion News Service

 

When Ingrid Mattson was elected head of the Islamic Society of  North America in August, she became not only the first female leader in the organization's 43-year history, but also its first North American-born president.

Mattson, raised as a Catholic in Ontario, converted to Islam nearly 20 years ago after meeting West African Muslims in Paris. Today she is professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Conn., and director of the seminary's Islamic Chaplaincy Program.

RNS spoke with Mattson about the significance of her election.

Editorials

From confusion to clarity

Confusion reigns.

As a former member of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church (TTF), I have been distressed to see so many Presbyterian friends troubled, perplexed, and even angered by the actions taken by the 217th Birmingham General Assembly in response to the Task Force's recommendations.

Some of that confusion has been generated by inconsistent legal interpretations issued by the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) and by other "constitutional experts."

Added confusion has resulted from the difficulty of shifting from the polarizing political rhetoric used pre-GA--in the hope of defeating the proposals--to a more pastorally soothing rhetoric of reassurance we usually utilize after the home team loses or, as in this case, after our agenda fails to get the votes. Having spent nine months radicalizing the meaning of the recommendations, warning about unintended consequences, projecting worst-case scenarios, and expounding on any and all flaws, some opponents were too enraged by the action or, perhaps in a few cases, are too addicted to the fight to make that shift. The rhetoric of contempt has quieted in some places but continues unabated in others.

Voices

Pictures you won’t see in the papers

It was our privilege and responsibility to serve as moderator and vice-moderator respectively, of the Ecclesiology Committee of the 217th General Assembly meeting in Birmingham, Alabama. The Committee's primary responsibility was to recommend actions to the commissioners regarding the Report of the Theological Task Force On the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church. The task before us was daunting; nonetheless, we came away from the experience inspired by the way in which we Presbyterians can come together, with all our inevitable differences of opinion, to seek common ground and unity in spite of disagreement. 

Voices

Beyond Birmingham: What Next?

In the aftermath of the 2007 General Assembly we have observed the controversies breaking out concerning the meaning and significance of the Assembly's actions. In particular, we have heard the criticisms and complaints that the Birmingham Assembly's action of adopting (with amendment) Recommendation Five of the Theological Task Force on the PUP of the Church has brought us less peace, unity, and purity than we had before. 

As two members of the Task Force who helped develop Recommendation Five, who now continue to work together, and who feel a responsibility to promote shared understanding, we want to do what we can here to set the record straight.  

We appreciate the grave concerns being expressed by critics of the TTF report. We esteem as brothers and sisters those who find themselves caught on the same side of the aisle as those GA commissioners who found themselves in the voting minority. One of the chief teachings of the Task Force, in fact, is that minority positions held in good faith need to be respected. Moreover, the Task Force urged the church to avoid situations in which the majority rides roughshod over minority concerns. Accordingly, we write these reflections in the spirit of ongoing dialogue. We believe that dialogue offers hope for mutual understanding and for moving the whole church forward together. 

Voices

Time will tell

Do not say "Peace, peace" when there is no peace. In the debate over the recently adopted report of the Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church, some have rushed to point to those words of prophetic denunciation, believing that they fittingly apply to the present-day Presbyterian Church.

But is it not likewise a serious error for God's people to proclaim "Doom and disaster" when there is no doom and disaster? It seems that certain individuals and groups within the church are so certain that doom and disaster are imminent that they apparently refuse even to consider the possibility that God might have something else in mind for our future.

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Benefits, drawbacks of visiting members

Most church officers would agree that personal contact with new people who are visiting the church and with members who have special needs is a good thing. Religious institutions are unique in that regard. Not too many organizations have ready access to people in the privacy of their own homes, and service providers and businesses are not expected to suggest that they have an obligation or a right to pay customers or clients a private visit.

In the church the desire to call on people in their homes comes from sincere Christian motives. Most church members know that this is one of the responsibilities of the pastors as they provide prayers for the people [W- 1.4005 a. (3)], offer pastoral counseling (W-6.3003), meet with prospective new members, visit those who are in the hospital, call on shut-ins in their homes or in senior care facilities, console those who have lost loved ones, and assist those with special health, mental, or spiritual needs (G-6.0202).

Voices

Facing PC(USA) brokenness, healing needed to build trust

It seems there's not much everyone in our denomination can agree on these days, but one opinion I have heard voiced a good bit is that the trust level is low across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

If this assessment is correct, it is little wonder that we are struggling. Trust is the lifeblood of voluntary organizations. Our system of polity is based on the idea that we trust each other to make decisions in the best interest of the whole church. If that trust is missing, the system becomes a bunch of rules signifying nothing. Without the generous assumption that we can trust each other to do what is right, things fall apart.

Voices

Broadening, but also deepening

As a newly converted atheist, my study of Christianity began at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. Westminster was an outgrowth of J. Gresham Machen's separation from mainline Presbyterianism. It was, and still is, a bastion of Reformed orthodoxy.

Westminster's great strength was its stress on the authority of Scripture as the ultimate norm of faith and practice. Classes on the Old and New Testament were invigorating and faith-inspiring, carefully, though often critically, related to current scholarship. Theology courses had a polemic flavor, but immersed students in the worldview of the Westminster Confession. Historian Paul Wooley -- the only Democrat on the faculty -- exposed us to important primary sources, including Soren Kierkegaard and Jonathan Edwards.

Voices

A field for the future

Editor's Note: This sermon was preached at the recent General Assembly Council-Middle Governing Bodies Conference in Louisville, Ky.

 

Scripture: Jeremiah 32:6-15

 

In 1931, Karen Blixen lost her farm.

She had come to East Africa in 1914 from her home in Denmark, just as the Great War was breaking out in Europe. She had come to meet her husband and her future, far away from Europe's decay. Together, the Baron and Baroness von Blixen purchased some land in the mountains of Kenya to build a coffee plantation.

Their European friends told them it was a mistake; that the land was too high to grow coffee, that the market was too unstable, and that the enterprise would consume them. They were right. Coffee trees and marriages make for hard work, and offer few rewards, and the Baron grew impatient with his investment in both. In the end, he left both farm and wife and lived the life of the idle rich until his money ran out and he died penniless, of syphilis.

Voices

The church’s tears

For several years I have had some unforgettable acquaintances. Of course, I have not known them personally. We never hung out together. After all, they did live in Egypt some sixteen centuries ago.

They could also have been a little hard to understand. They seemed to have been a peculiarly solemn lot. Completely clueless when it came to small talk, off the chart introverts, they nevertheless had something we often lack. As I read through their interactions with one another again and again, I can sense a deeper stillness than we normally know. They had a very low, unprovokable center of gravity.

I have spent so much time reading through The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (London: Mowbrays, 1975) that I feel that I actually do know them in some mysterious way. In fact, as odd as it sounds, I know them so well that in their most personal moments I can feel their tears falling through their prayers.

Voices

The unity we seek

We Presbyterians are searching frantically to preserve the unity of our denomination, anything to keep the church from splitting. Let's try this way, that way, a third way. There must be some way we can find! But maybe what we need is to give up our ways and concentrate on what God in Christ has done. We Reformed souls are not very big on liturgy, but that's where our unity lodges and is celebrated -- in our liturgy.

Voices

Confessing a radical catholicity

Our utopian visions of harmonious love for each other quickly dissipate when we are confronted with the gritty everydayness of our life together in Christ, whether we are talking about the church down the street, our own Presbyterian denomination, or the larger church. Left to ourselves, our attempts at loving each other fall apart quickly and spectacularly. We try this love thing Jesus was talking about, but when we inevitably fail, which is bound to happen in the hands of sinners, we retreat into more familiar communities of the like-minded. 

Perhaps that is the ultimate question hanging over our intramural disagreements and divisions in the Presbyterian church. Deep down, will our American Protestant proclivity for separation and schism continue to lead us into smaller and smaller enclaves of the like-minded, or can we move in a different direction? Can we be led to recover our catholic roots? Is the church, with all its faults and blemishes, still the church we have been given that summons us to live with our enemies and to share a common faith and life with them, even bearing with them in love and forbearance around the Lord's table? 

Voices

Loving chaos

The report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church is a winner. I support it enthusiastically. Then again, my enthusiasm is influenced by the fact that -- as one mystified parishioner asserted months ago -- I have a high tolerance for chaos.

Years ago I played college basketball, although not well. When our team fell behind by 20 points, with little hope of recovery except some drastic measures be taken, the coach would look long and hard down the bench. I knew his meditation: Should I put Massey in the game and hope that the resulting confusion will lead to new scoring opportunities? Early in my playing career my teammates hated to see me enter the game; I couldn't remember the plays or I would follow them slavishly. At best my personal style could be described as unorthodox. More than once a teammate hit me in the back of the head with a passed ball, or I would return the favor. But over time these same teammates--as much anxiety as I caused them--began to appreciate the chaos I created. It proved even more disadvantageous to our opponents, who could not anticipate what they were about to experience. Out of chaos came creative play, and sometimes surprising victory.

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Ben Lacy Rose, retired pastor, professor, dies at 91

Ben Lacy Rose, professor emeritus of pastoral leadership and homiletics at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Va. (now Union-PSCE), died November 13 at his home in Westminster-Canterbury Richmond Retirement Community.

Born Dec. 12, 1914, in Fayetteville, N.C., he was moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.) from 1971 -- 1972, and was a Presbyterian pastor for nearly 70 years. He served the Chinquapin, Bethel, and Beulaville churches in Duplin County, N.C.; Central Church in Bristol, Va.; First Church in Wilmington, N.C.; and Chapel on the Boardwalk in Wrightsville Beach, N.C.

Dr. Rose served as professor of pastoral leadership and homiletics at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia from 1956-1973 and was named professor emeritus following his retirement. He held three degrees from Union Seminary: He earned the bachelor of divinity (B.D.) in 1938; a master of theology (Th.M.) in 1950; and the doctor of theology (Th.D.) in 1955.

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GA PJC reverses synod, presbytery courts in Heartland case

(PNS) The highest court of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has reversed two lower-court rulings in favor of a Kansas City, Mo., congregation that challenged a neighboring church in its ordaining as an elder a woman thought to be a lesbian.

The General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission (GAPJC) overturned decisions by both the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of Mid-America (SPJC) and the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbytery of Heartland (PPJC) in the case of Session of Colonial Presbyterian Church, Kansas City, Missouri v. Session of Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church [GCPC], Overland Park, Kansas.

"At this stage of the proceeding, this Commission is compelled to accept as true the allegation in the Complaint that the (Grace Covenant) session may have had cause for further inquiry based on its professed knowledge of the life and character of the elders-elect," the GAPJC said in its ruling released in mid-October.

The case originated after the session of Colonial Church questioned whether the session of Grace Covenant Church violated the Book of Order when it ordained four elders in July 2004.

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Renewal leaders, divided over staying or leaving PC(USA), release solidarity statement

Editor's Note: The following statement has been issued by various renewal leaders after their meeting in Chicago Nov. 7-8. "The intent is to state publicly the charitable nature of the relationships between those who are wishing to leave the PC(USA) and those who are committed to staying in the PC(USA), and to highlight a few previously released statements as worthy of consideration by the whole church," according to spokesman Michael Walker. Here is the full statement:


Nothing Can Separate Us

At all times and in all places, Christians are called to confess the Lordship of Jesus Christ with our lips and our lives and to do so without equivocation. The Church is called to "the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind; the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; the maintenance of divine worship; the preservation of the truth; the promotion of social righteousness; and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world." We confess that we have not fulfilled these "Great Ends" of the Church. Longing to be a more faithful people, we acknowledge our complete dependence upon the grace of God.

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Constitutional Presbyterians urge separation from PC(USA) if it ceases to be a ‘true church’

GREENVILLE, SC -- Speakers at a Nov. 3-4 gathering here of the "Constitutional Presbyterians" urged participants to separate from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) if the denomination ceases to be "a true church."

Some here believe it already has, citing an "authoritative interpretation" of the PC(USA) Constitution adopted by this summer's 217th General Assembly as part of its approval of its Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church (PUP).

The authoritative interpretation would allow a candidate for ordination to declare a principled objection to any provision of the Constitution. If the ordaining body determined that the objection did not constitute a departure from the essential tenets of the Reformed faith and practice, the person could be ordained.

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Small churches and their presbyteries face decisions

 

Bob Browning, a lawyer from Pineville, W.Va., could write a book on pastoral leadership in small Presbyterian churches.

He's trying to help figure out how four congregations in his part of the state will get along when their ordained pastor leaves at the end of this year. For the past several years, the four congregations -- with fewer than 50 members apiece -- have been sharing the services of one minister and two commissioned lay pastors, working together formally as the Presbyterian Parish of Southern West Virginia, "which we just call the parish," Browning said.

But now the pastor is leaving, and the congregations are revisiting the question of what arrangement could work best and what's financially viable.

Book Reviews

Update or upstart? Biblical scholars debate language usage of TNIV

It may seem unlikely that Focus on the Family's Dr. James Dobson and Rolling Stone Magazine would have much of anything in common. Sure, both are seeking to make an impact upon American culture by communicating particular messages and beliefs. But that is like saying that Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush are similar because they both desire to motivate and persuade a particular group of people.

Granted, it has been for very different reasons, but James Dobson and Rolling Stone have found at least a bit of common ground in that both recently have been at odds with the relatively new and somewhat controversial TNIV. "The TNI...what?" was the response I received most when attempting to gather thoughts and opinions from Presbyterian friends. I have to admit, upon first hearing of it, I thought the T stood for "Teen." It doesn't.

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