The Justice Department’s recent decision to end the use of private prisons is welcome news to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which has argued against the use of these facilities for more than a dozen years. The department made the announcement after concluding private prisons were not as safe or effective as those run by the government. Read more »
August 25, 2016
Presbyterians affirm Department of Justice decision to end use of private prisons
The Justice Department’s recent decision to end the use of private prisons is welcome news to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which has argued against the use of these facilities for more than a dozen years. The department made the announcement after concluding private prisons were not as safe or effective as those run by the government. Read more »
In December 2013 Steve Shive had a dream.
Shive, general presbyter of the Presbytery of Wyoming, says that in the dream, he felt a strong sense to create a place where God’s people could come together to work on spiritual practices. “I saw our teaching and ruling elders coming together to learn from each other,” he says, “and to engage in the presence of their lives in Christ in community.”
Winnebago Presbytery got a chance to learn from its counterpart in Colombia earlier this year when five visitors from Urabá Presbytery spent a week in northern Wisconsin. 
The sounds could be coming from any busy school office responding to myriad requests: Someone needs first aid for a scraped elbow. Someone else is turning in a missing nametag. Someone else wants to change classes.
But this school is different. It’s Synod School, the annual midsummer ministry of the Synod of Lakes and Prairies. It’s a nearly weeklong event—Sunday afternoon through Friday noon—that always runs the last week in July at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa.
The way Mark Roberson sees it, it was Roswell Presbyterian Church’s turn to plant a church.
Roberson, a ruling elder for over 50 years—18 at Roswell—knew about church planting. He’d worked with the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta’s New Church Development Commission, and in 2011 he just knew it was Roswell’s time.
Two years ago Presbyterian mission co-workers John and Gwen Haspels were driving down a road in Ethiopia when a man carrying an assault rifle jumped out in front of them. As the couple drove on, the man fired at them, severely injuring both of them. Presbyterians Today recently invited them to reflect on that fateful day and what reconciliation means in the aftermath of such an attack. 
Reconciliation among Cubans and Cuban Americans. Hope for reconciliation between the United States and Cuba reached a peak when Barack Obama became the first sitting president in 88 years to visit the island nation. People lined the streets of Havana, chanting for the American president—an act that could have sent them to jail in another era. 
The PC(USA) Peace & Global Witness Offering supports Presbyterian reconciliation efforts far and near. 
Most Presbyterians believe that discrimination is still a problem for women in the United States, despite anti-discrimination laws and policies. But is this still a problem in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a denomination that has been ordaining women for decades? 
Reconciliation is a word frequently invoked but seldom understood. Paul’s words from 2 Corinthians beautifully capture a defining aspect of reconciliation: its cosmic significance. In Christ, “there is a new creation” because “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:17–19). Reconciliation is part of who we are as Christ’s church.