I am grateful that my colleague and friend, Ben Sparks, has broached the sometimes sensitive subject of Christian education, especially what is happening in the local church. I suspect, like so many pastors and educators at this time of the year, Ben has faced another confirmation class unfamiliar with the stories of the faith!
I have been praying (and looking) for signs of a wider unity in the PC (USA) than the division our sharp, destructive conflicts over sexuality and abortion reveal. Of course, a wider unity must be grounded biblically, theologically, and confessionally. We Presbyterians never saw a theological debate we didn't want to decorate, preach about, or organize a committee around. That's a positive quality so long as it does not imperil action and genuine confession.
I do not claim to know that unity, but I believe there is promise in the combined evangelical, mainline, Roman Catholic, and Jewish assault on hunger and poverty -- led by Jim Wallis and others. At a conference brought together around this theme in New York some weeks ago, an evangelical held up a Bible from which he had cut all references to the poor for whom God cares, for whom God holds rulers of the earth accountable, and to whom Jesus (Luke 4) said he would preach the good news. There were precious few pages remaining. He then said that if you cut out the references to sex in similar fashion, the Bible would remain intact.
In an effort to maintain members' trust and sustain its reputation, the Board of Pensions (BOP) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is reviewing several of its guidelines and policies.
The self-review takes in everything from the pension plan's contingency reserve to how it recruits and trains prospective members and governs itself. "Every few years, we undertake significant review, especially of the valuation methodology for the pension plan and the death and disability plan," said Robert W. Maggs Jr., the board's president and CEO. "We are trustees ... for over $6.5 billion dollars, and over 56,000 people count on us for their benefits or financial assistance. We can't risk reputational harm because of non-compliance or a bad governance process."
With that in mind, the 32-member board of Presbyterian clergy and lay members from throughout the United States is at both ends of the microscope.
In the wake of the anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, I have questions.
Do the Iraq war’s opponents want the new Iraq to dissolve in civil war? Do the war’s advocates believe our invasion was justified by an election in which the once-dominant group hardly participated, but which is having some impact throughout the Middle East?
If this question sounds like one a child might ask a harried parent, it is. Gestation is involved since ministers are made not born, and church officers need to consider where they really come from.
For the first time, the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is meeting in the spring -- and the next General Assembly isn't roaring directly outside the door, demanding to be let in.
So these denominational leaders are using the time, that extra little bit of breathing room, to think big-picture, to talk about how some of the strategic initiatives it's set in play -- efforts to look comprehensively at denominational funding and governance, for example -- are working out.
Charles Townes, the Nobel laureate whose inventions include the maser and laser and who has spent decades as a leading advocate for the convergence of science and religion, has won the 2005 Templeton Prize. The prize, valued at more than $1.5 million, was announced March 9 at a news conference at the Church Center for the United Nations in New York.
It has finally occurred in a public aside, in the March meeting of the Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church. A conflict erupted that many people have been waiting for impatiently. Could it be that the real challenge of status confessionis before the church of Jesus Christ in the United States of America is not homosexual ordination but the imperial conduct of this 'Christian' nation in its Middle East pursuits? If the Confessing Church movement has something to confess, then over against what apostasies and soul-destroying idolatries on behalf of Jesus Christ do they take their stand? Are they simply against other Presbyterians whom they deem heretical and unbiblical? Is the Covenant Network espousing a confessional position on the removal of G-6.0106b.? Are these organizations implicitly positioning themselves for "severance?"
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
For seventeen years I was a minister of the church in Switzerland, and since 1986 I have been Professor of Reformed Theology in Germany at the university in Goettingen. In Switzerland most Protestants are Reformed. In Germany the Reformed are a small minority in relation to Lutherans and the United Churches, but they are Reformed more consciously than in Switzerland.
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.
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