Let me tell you about my friend, Ben. He was an older man who had recently lost his wife. Returning home from a long trip, Ben found his sliding-glass door at the rear of his home shattered and a back door damaged. A neighborhood twelve-year-old had committed the crime. Ben came to see me about it because the investigating officers wanted to remove the boy from his home and place him in a home for troubled kids.
c. 2007 Religion News Service
Of all the actors, athletes and hip-hop performers venerated by urban teenagers in Southern California, most improbable of all, perhaps, was a 13-year-old girl by the name of Anne Frank.
So goes the inspiring story behind "Freedom Writers," a recent movie starring Hilary Swank. The film's Jan. 5 release was timed to precede the nation's commemoration of another figure in the ongoing fight against racial prejudice: Martin Luther King Jr.
Both are about people struggling to survive in a hostile environment. Both are about people who start out very awkwardly, but slowly learn to care for each other. Both are about experiencing racial discrimination, both overtly and covertly. Both are about learning to succeed in small but important ways, like relying on hard work, and refusing to be beaten down, and withstanding the criticism and rejection of others. Both are about taking pride in one's own story, one's own struggle, one's own life. Both are about gaining respect by maintaining dignity, integrity, and self-reliance. Oh, and getting by with a little help from your friends.
ORLANDO -- Saying the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is close to "utter ruin" and possibly extinction, the New Wineskins Association of Churches https://www.newwineconvo.com/ on February 8 laid the groundwork for a group of congregations to leave the denomination together, probably to join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC). https://www.epc.org
A vote on whether to leave likely will be taken the evening of Feb. 9.
ORLANDO -- The New Wineskins Association of Churches https://www.newwineconvo.com/ has voted unanimously to ask the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) https://www.epc.org/ to create a new, non-geographic presbytery to which congregations that want to leave the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) could be dismissed.
The EPC's General Assembly is expected to vote in June to create the presbytery.
'Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby': This bumpy-ride lowbrow comedy about a race car driver (Will Ferrell) contains a startlingly frank and lengthy discussion at the dinner table about prayer. Is it OK to pray to 'baby Jesus'? Or must we address a 'full-grown Jesus with a beard'?
A church moving into a golf club and conference center?!
That was my reaction when the invitation came to attend the dedication of the new facility of the First Presbyterian Church, Honolulu, Hawaii. It probably is no surprise to anyone that I jumped at the chance to go and check out how the Presbyterians were faring in the fiftieth state. What I found were vibrant, growing churches engaged in creative ministry and witness.
I have just returned from the Middle East. While there, we were thrilled to visit with Reformed Christians in Lebanon--the place of the first Presbyterian Church international mission endeavor--and to see the vitality and strength of the ministry there. We celebrated churches alive in worship, children learning the Christian faith, seminarians being trained for ministry, and a church reaching out to all those who suffer in a war-torn country.
[Ramallah] A loud siren wails in the main street of Ramallah as the ambulance races to the nearby hospital. The casualty inside the vehicle is a teenage Palestinian who received two bullets to his chest during clashes among rival armed militia.
In a separate incident, a number of disgruntled armed young men showered the Daraghmeh store with scores of bullets in Ramallah's commercial district. The fire engulfed the store's interior, resulting in losses totaling $450,000.
At the entrance of a well-established restaurant in the city, a big sign reads "No hand guns allowed on the premises."
As ammunition is readily available through black market middlemen, the sounds of bullets are heard frequently across the city. In a Pavlovian response, the citizens of Ramallah run into hiding as soon as the bullets start flying, their daily life controlled by the will of the gunmen.
LOUISVILLE -- Reading the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) can be dry work -- although, amazingly, some folks love to do it.
But the discussion the Form of Government Task Force https://www.pcusa.org/formofgovernment/index.htm is having about how to rewrite the Book of Order gives reflections -- like glimmers on the water -- of ways in which a denomination's rules really do make a difference in the daily lives of churches.
At its meeting here Jan. 11-13, the task force talked, for example, about what happens when a former or retired pastor stays in the community near the church where that pastor had served.
Editor's note: This year marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown in Virginia.
Off the coast of North Carolina lies Roanoke Island, whose Northern tip is the site of England's failed colony in the 1580's. Other than the sound of surf breaking against the shore, all is silence. You feel a palpable sense of loss.
Four hundred years ago, three ships -- the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery -- launched out of the Thames River from London toward the English Channel. The 105 passengers were men and boys; the women would come in later voyages. Five months later, on May 14, 1607, they founded Jamestown, England's first permanent colony. The site was a peninsula 40 miles up the James River in what is now Virginia.
Two dominant faiths stand side-by-side in our nation. Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson originated a public faith our presidents salute in their speeches, imploring God's blessing on the U.S. Jefferson called this national Deity the "Creator" and "Nature's God" in the Declaration of Independence. Orthodox Christianity ranks as the second popular faith alive nationally. God revealed Himself in Christ Jesus. Jefferson refused to use Christian imagery or language in the Declaration of Independence. He and the majority of Founding Fathers kept separate these two faiths.
Only three of Maria Chan Tun's five children lived past the age of five. In her Mexican village, Lerma, as in all of the developing world, water-borne disease is the primary killer of children.
But for Maria's seven grandchildren, the future is brighter.
In 2004, a Living Waters for the World ministry's purification system was installed at the Filadelfia Church that she attends. When she was told that her grandchildren would now have clean, healthy drinking water, Maria was moved to tears. She and her whole congregation celebrated this new privilege, and Pastor Carlos Arias explained that the water system could become a new ministry for the church, offering clean water not only to church members but also to others in the community.
by Harry S. Stout. New York: Viking, 2006. ISBN 0670034703. Hb., xxii + 552 pp. $29.95.
Wars take on their own mythologies and none more so than the American Civil War. It stands at a center of American consciousness and identity. More than 100,000 titles have been written on the conflict, in its various facets. Now Yale historian Harry S. Stout has given us a "moral history" of the Civil War, providing a unique--and disturbing--view of the years when this nation tore itself apart.
by N.T. Wright. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. ISBN 10:0-06-050715-2. Hb., 240 pp. $22.95
N.T. Wright admits, "Being a Christian in today's world is, of course, anything but simple. But there is a time for trying to say, as simply as possible, what it's all about, and this seems to me that sort of time."
Now is that sort of time, it seems to me. Some who claim that Christianity "makes sense" pare it down until the mystery is peeled away and we are left with a God whose edges are sharply drawn and whose greatest attribute is clarity. N.T. Wright is not to be confused with these voices that reduce Christianity to simplicity.
by Allen C. Guelzo, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans. Paperback edition, 2003. ISBN 0-8028-3872-3. 528 pp. $24
Lincoln has been the subject of an unending stream of biographies. Among the many good treatments of Lincoln's life and times, Guelzo's excellent biography deserves special attention because he examines Lincoln as a man of ideas. Lincoln famously wrapped his political ideas in religious themes, a trait that led many to lionize him as the "Christian president." Often forgotten, however, is that Lincoln entered politics as an enlightened skeptic (friends burned a scandalous, irreligious pamphlet "Infidelity" so it would not ruin his political career). The story of the development of Lincoln's philosophical and religious thought makes a fascinating story and Guelzo tells it well.
Where do you go to find the greatest innovations? One place to look is among the young. That's the way it was six years ago when a group of mostly Gen-X pastors formed the New Wineskins Initiative. Fueled by youthful energy, they dared to ask not only "Why?" but also "Why not?"
They diagnosed the failure of our connectional system to really connect pastors and elders among congregations. They imagined a church where informal networking could lift 21st century Presbyterianism to a new level of collegiality, accountability, and transforming ministry. Many of their brainstorms needed refining, as well they acknowledged, but their ideas were hope-filled.
(RNS) Fourteen members of an advisory group to the Atlanta-based Carter Center have resigned in protest over former President Jimmy Carter's recent book and statements on the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate.
'You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.'' (Matthew 5:27-8)
Maurice (Peter O'Toole) and his best friend Ian (Leslie Phillips) are two old English stage actors who meet for breakfast regularly at their favorite café, sometimes with other friends. They accompany each other to the theater. They look after each other, and frequently enjoy cocktails together in the early evening. Though Maurice is married, he doesn't seem to spend much time with Valerie (Vanessa Redgrave). Oh, he wanders over to visit occasionally, and they talk like old friends. Sometimes he gives her money, when he's had a little acting gig, maybe playing a dying man on a television hospital drama.
Donald G. Campbell, director of the Congregational Ministries Division of the General Assembly Council in Louisville, Ky., 1999-2006, has been named as the interim executive presbyter of Mission Presbytery, with offices in San Antonio, Texas.
When the New Wineskins Association of Churches meets again in Orlando in February, some of these evangelicals may be ready to leave the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on the spot, others probably not.
So the New Wineskins leadership is planning to offer alternatives: a roadmap for those who think the PC(USA) has abandoned orthodoxy, including a proposal for PC(USA) congregations to leave the denomination and take their property with them.
St. Jerome once said, "Small minds cannot grasp great subjects." In the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) we can prove him wrong. Our Office of Theology, Worship and Education is directed by a small mind, and he grasps the greatest of subjects. Joe Small is his name, and--all punning aside--his appointment as that office's director means that the great subjects will continue to inform the future of the PC(USA).
Outlook editor Jack Haberer is getting closer to what ails us with each editorial! In recent weeks each one has crept closer and closer. You can almost hear him muttering with Emerson:
Give me truths;
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition
On October 30, he quoted Tom Ehrlich's column in the September 11 Outlook. It said that what made 1964 such an "unhappy turning point" as the year the mainline denominations began to shrink, was that "post-war Baby Boomers began to graduate from high school." The discussion then turned on the question "What did they do after graduating from high school."
Back in the 1970s, Dennis Weaver starred in the popular TV series, "McCloud." He played the role of a western law officer who was teamed with a law officer from a big city "back East." Each of them played a perfect counterpoint to the other. At the end of one program, the camera shows the two of them walking away and you hear Weaver say, "There's a rock in my boot." The other character says with an almost parched wit, "It must have fallen out of your head."
I have a rock in my pocket. It is not very big. It is smooth. It was smooth when I got it, and it is even smoother now. Across the surface of one side is the word "CREDO." I received the rock at the end of participating in a June 2004 conference by that name.
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