Our polity as Presbyterians is grounded on the proposition that all authority rests in governing bodies acting either in plenary session or through committees, commissions, councils, and task forces. Though frequently described as a democratic process, it is decidedly not a democratic one, at least not in the common understanding that the will of the people is expressed through their representatives.
Reflections on Matthew 28:1-10
It is a dark and stormy night in upstate New York as I write this, and I close my eyes to recall the sun that warmed me one spring day several years ago, in Jerusalem. I was on a seminary trip and I had taken my last free day to go back with my video camera to “The Garden Tomb,” a verdant postage stamp-sized plot of ground off Nablus Road that stands as good a chance as any of being the actual site of Jesus’ burial and resurrection.
Editor's Note: As I write, we are preparing for tonight's Maundy Thursday observance at Second Church. The news reports are full of the latest court maneuverings related to the Terri Schiavo tragedy. By the time you read this, it will be a very different time. But the questions raised today deserve continued, prayerful consideration
We who belong to the church of Jesus Christ might do well to cast ourselves before God and beg for mercy for our part in (either to ignore, to cheer, or to feed) the deplorable circus that has grown up around the life and disability of Terri Schiavo. How did one family (out of hundreds who are now faced with similar circumstances) gain such notoriety over what ought to have been from the outset a matter -- not of personal preference -- but of decision by family, doctors, priest, pastor, and social worker?
Resurrection, when you think about it, can be very specific: one man, one cross, one life sacrificed for others.
But the Easter celebration also is a story across all time, a story of rebirth and new beginnings and hope.
Some Presbyterian congregations have their own Easter stories to tell. Some are of brand-new life, some of exciting new combinations, some of coaxing fresh growth out of old roots. In each case, these are Christians willing to do what Jesus did at Easter: to listen faithfully for God's voice, and to follow.
In an interview on National Public Radio February 27, Andy Trudeau was talking to Sheilah Kast about film scores nominated for an Oscar this year, one of which was composed by John Debney for The Passion of the Christ. That was Trudeau's choice. We heard selections accompanying various scenes in the film. Trudeau's discussion of music for the resurrection caught my attention.
Director Mel Gibson had told Debney that he wanted a martial feeling to the resurrection sequence because "that's where the real battle begins for the souls of mankind." Trudeau explained over background drum rolls of victory, pomp, and circumstance that the music represents a "moral marshalling of the troops."
The visit of your new Secretary of State to the Middle East, during which Condoleeza Rice met with Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, raised the tantalising possibility of an end to the Intifada. Carefully dipping her toes into the previously unrewarding swamp of Middle Eastern politics and peace making, Miss Rice spoke of the possibility of a new beginning for the peace process.
In 1922, a young Baptist minister delivered a sermon before a Presbyterian congregation in New York City, entitled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” It resulted in his leaving that pulpit to become one of America’s most influential Protestant preachers. Harry Emerson Fosdick, both loved and reviled, delivered intelligent and often controversial sermons from the church that John D. Rockefeller provided for him on Moningside Heights. The Riverside Church has stood for decades as a bastion of progressive theology.
I warn my seminary students to watch out for “litmus test” theology. “If you find yourself getting backed into a corner on a doctrinal issue, with someone pressing you merely to ‘check “yes”’ or ‘check “no,”’ do your best to redirect the conversation,” I advise them. Being a Christian believer is not, primarily, about checking the right boxes.
What does it mean to be an Easter Church—that is, a church that confesses “God raised the crucified Jesus from the dead?” Is there only one correct interpretation of that most central of Christian confessions or is there room in that confession for different interpretations of what it means? Is there only one “orthodox” interpretation?
Reflections on John 20:1-18
Every few years the calendar conspires against the church by placing the moveable feast of Easter on the same day most of the country springs forward to Daylight Savings Time. This year’s calendar is kind to us, and this ecclesiastical “perfect storm” is avoided.
LOUISVILLE -- Jim Wallis, the editor-in-chief of Sojourners Magazine, is a man who once was arrested in the Capitol rotunda, in front of eighth graders studying civics, while demonstrating against tax cuts for the rich. He describes himself as "a 19th century evangelist born in the wrong century."
Because Wallis is the kind of evangelical Christian who stands in the streets and speaks up for what he thinks is right, who thinks religion should always inform politics, who resonates in his bones with those 19th century Christians who fought for the abolition of slavery and for women's right to vote and for child labor laws.
He's in the midst of a book tour for the just-published and best-selling "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It."
Iain R. Torrance, a former moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, a scholar and writer with a deep interest in ecumenical concerns, was inaugurated and installed on March 11 as the sixth president of Princeton Theological Seminary.
In structuring his inauguration, Torrance clearly paid attention to today's ecumenical realities. The inaugural events included presentations from Christian, Muslim and Jewish theologians. And the audience as Torrance gave his inaugural address included a Greek Orthodox leader from New Jersey and more than 60 representatives from institutions of higher education, including the four ancient universities of Scotland as well as U.S. schools not directly connected with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), such as the divinity schools of Yale and Howard universities.
Despite the flap it's caused even internationally, many Presbyterian churchgoers are not aware of the vote the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) took last summer to authorize a process of selective, phased divestment in some companies doing business in Israel.
And among those who did know, there were differing opinions about the wisdom of what the assembly had done. A survey found ministers and liberals tending to favor the divestment action, and laypeople and conservatives tending to be opposed.
For a good, old-fashioned family movie, this one has it all: a timeless small town, a cute little girl, a well-meaning but distracted Dad, a few colorful secondary characters, and a dog who has an amazing capacity for bringing the humans closer together.
Annasophia Robb plays Opal, the pig-tailed 10-year old with the skinny legs and the big, blue innocent eyes and a wise-beyond-her-years outlook. She moves to this small town because her Dad (Jeff Daniels) is the new preacher. The church is just forming, and is meeting in a convenience store.
Opal describes her Dad, whom she also calls "Preacher", as a tortoise always going back inside its shell. He seems to spend a lot of time in their mobile home reading the Bible, but not much time going out and seeing people. He's sad because his wife, Opal's Mom, left him several years ago, he says, because she couldn't stand being a preacher's wife. So his resentment of his profession hangs with him along with his gritty determination to keep doing it, because he's already paid too high a price not to continue.
I liked it better than "Hoosiers."
In "Hoosiers," the new high school coach in a small Indiana town in the '50's preached teamwork, teamwork, teamwork, pass the ball, set picks, four passes before every shot, and then when the star shooter arrived, all that went out the window.
His big motivational ploy was to get them to measure the hoop when they went to the State tournament. They reported it as ten feet from the floor, the same height as every basketball hoop. It was his way of demonstrating to them that they didn't need to be intimidated. And in the end, they go all the way to the State Finals.
Now it's the '90's. Coach Carter (Samuel L. Jackson) arrives at Richmond High in California, a school that graduates only 50% of its students; a school where only 6% go to college. When he preaches "teamwork, teamwork, teamwork," he means more than passing the ball to the best shooter, or running a trap play to force a turnover. He means taking responsibility for yourself, and for everyone else on the team.
THE OUTLOOK has received a multitude of letters responding to Moderator Rick Ufford-Chase’s Guest Opinion, “Is Peace Possible,” in December 2004 (reprinted on p. 14 of this issue.) His hope has been realized, for in these pages, the church has begun serious, even heated, conversation about peace and war.
by Warren Goldstein (New Haven: Yale University, 2004)
In his biography entitled, William Sloane Coffin Jr.: A Holy Impatience, Warren Goldstein reminds us of a person who made a deep impression on may of us during the last four decades of our lives.
Christ is our peace. The gospel is not that peace is possible, but that it is actual. The dividing wall of hostility has been broken down, first between earth and heaven, then between Jew and Gentile, then between male and female, then between slave and free. If these divisions fall — biblically the great divisions — they all fall.
Reflections on Matthew 21:1-11
On Palm Sunday at the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City, churchgoers arrive early to get a good seat. The graceful procession of the children waving palms is a sight I recall decades after I worshipped there.
Luke 7:31-32 and 2 Corinthians 1:8-10
Editor’s Note: The author gave this presentation at a Vigil of Remembering for the 37th anniversary of the Tet Offensive and Counter-offensive in Vietnam. He writes: “This year, with one son now on station in the Gulf of Arabia with the 15th MEU(SOC), the vigil takes on an added significance for me.” Most of those attending were Vietnam War combat veterans and their families.
The response to the tragic tsunami on December 26 in a wide area of southern Asia has been overwhelmingly positive as the United Nations, numerous countries around the world, non-governmental agencies like the Red Cross, Oxfam, Catholic Charities, and United Jewish Appeal, orchestras in Vienna, celebrities and school children have donated generously to save lives and rebuild destroyed cities and villages.
Last July, I was troubled by the General Assembly’s resolution condemning the invasion of Iraq as “unwise, immoral and illegal.” It wasn’t the assembly’s weighing in on a public issue that bothered me, since it does so almost every year. Nor was it the church's stand against the war -- I had questioned the invasion myself.
The Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) announced on March 10 the members of teams that will work over the next few months to write draft sections -- possible approaches that the task force will consider for inclusion in its final report to the denomination.
The task force will vote on its report to the denomination on August 24 and 25, in a meeting in Chicago added to its schedule specifically to take that vote. The report is to be presented to the church by September 15
The three-year Presbyterian boycott of Taco Bell has ended, after the restaurant chain's parent corporation agreed to a deal that will increase what farm workers are paid by a penny for each pound of tomatoes they pick. That may not sound like much, but representatives of the farm workers say it can make a real difference in the amount of money those workers will earn.
Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), called it an historic agreement, and said its real significance is in the promise it holds on two fronts: for encouraging others in the food industry to also insist on fair wages and working conditions for farm workers; and for sending consumers a message that they should be responsible in spending their money with companies that require fair treatment for workers.
In this funny old town where I live and where I was trained theologically (at Union Seminary in Virginia) a continuing controversy is plaguing Black History Month. It concerns the use of a mock slave auction in an elementary school classroom in one of the conservative (red) suburbs that surround Richmond, the former capital of the Confederate States of America. Ironies abound.
While I make no brief against Black History Month or mock slave auctions, I do question the value of the latter in an elementary school. More to the point, I question the value of anything other than strict, basic education in elementary school (and in Sunday School) for elementary children. Children need to learn the basics if they are going to function responsibly as adults, as citizens, and as faithful Christians.
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