Dr. Anthea Butler was stopped for driving while black in her late-model luxury car. As a flashlight shone on her boyfriend’s pale face, the police officer asked, “Did you pick her up somewhere?” The officer assumed that the car could not have been hers, and that her presence next to a white male implied sex trafficking. He overlooked the Ivy League professor of color in the driver’s seat to speak to her passenger. Read more »
December 20, 2016
Lament, challenge and hope
Dr. Anthea Butler was stopped for driving while black in her late-model luxury car. As a flashlight shone on her boyfriend’s pale face, the police officer asked, “Did you pick her up somewhere?” The officer assumed that the car could not have been hers, and that her presence next to a white male implied sex trafficking. He overlooked the Ivy League professor of color in the driver’s seat to speak to her passenger. Read more »
The Presbyterian Mission Agency Board (PMAB), gathered as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) A Corporation, met this afternoon to vote on Tony De La Rosa’s contract extension as PMA interim executive director and finalize details of the transfer of Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat Center to the National Ghost Ranch Foundation (NGRF). 
As we move through traffic, I think how much we must seem like ants scrambling to find space as they rush through each other. I am back in Guatemala City, and each time I come here I am struck by how dense and congested this city is. 
If you talk with people living along the coastline of North and South Carolina, they will be quick to tell you, they’ve had enough rain to last a lifetime. Hurricane Matthew and 2015’s “one-thousand-year rain” have caused some significant problems for many, especially in the Charleston area. 
When it comes to conversations about church, most of us imagine sitting around a table and engaging face-to-face. Maybe it’s in a church basement, conference center, coffee shop, or a local bar. But lately Presbyterians have been gathering for a weekly conversation around their phones or computers, using Twitter and a common hashtag. 
In a newly published video message, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Stated Clerk, J. Herbert Nelson II says the mission of PC(USA) related racial-ethnic schools and colleges “are more critical now, than they’ve ever been.” 
The Way Forward Commission has begun to discern next steps for its work – including considering some issues it may be able to act on quickly, and starting to figure out how to organize its longer-term work. 
As immigration rights activists prepare for what is next in a post-election atmosphere of anti-immigrant sentiment, those that previously offered sanctuary to deportees aren’t waiting for the new administration to be installed. 
Many people make a new year’s resolution to read through the Bible, but one Louisville area Presbyterian pastor is joining a statewide effort in Kentucky to read the scriptures aloud, continuously and in an uninterrupted flow—Genesis to Revelation—in less than four days. 
The Presbyterian Hunger Program has a new coordinator. The Rev. Rebecca Barnes has assumed the role from departing Coordinator Ruth Farrell.